“I know, Papa. Please do not remind me! I shall do my duty and marry the first man to approach me, if any such man should exist.”
“I fear it shall be a come down in the world for you to secure someone quickly… at least you are spared Collins, but I do not know who can be brought up to scratch. The one we find might well be more insufferable than he! I will speak to your Uncle Philips, perhaps he knows of a shopkeeper in need of a clever wife. Good heavens, Lizzy, it pains me to do this, but you leave me no option!”
“I know it is all my own doing, and I freely accept the consequences. Make whatever arrangements you wish, and I will abideby your choice. Pray, seek the most respectable match you can. It is not for myself, but I would not see Jane suffer, nor Kitty and Mary.”
Her father snorted. “Mary shall be facing a similar choice to yourself, most likely.”
“You know that nonsense with Lydia was not her fault, Papa. Is there not some redemption for her?”
He frowned. “Mary is only seventeen. I have yet a little time before I must decide what is to be done with her, and perhaps by that time you and Jane will have secured respectable matches, and some of it will be forgotten.”
Elizabeth stared at the floor. “I understand, Papa. May I go to my room now?”
“Aye, and do not show your face again for a month.”
“Yes, Papa,” she muttered in dejection, moving slowly toward the door.
“But you must come out again to sit with your mother in the drawing room every morning, in case any should call on us. And be certain that you are ready for next Thursday’s assembly! Your mother will not tolerate your absence from that occasion.”
Elizabeth groaned.
Chapter thirty-four
“Wish me farewell for these three weeks,” Colonel Fitzwilliam announced himself at the door to Darcy’s study. “I am off to Bath to set up Aunt Catherine and Anne in their new establishment.”
Darcy looked up from the letter he was writing to Georgiana. “The duty fell to you? I had thought your father was to escort them.”
“He made the initial inquiries, but I am to be the whipping boy. It is the price I must pay to keep in Mother’s good graces, for my own prospects depend upon her skill at morning calls—and, of course, the allowance from her fortune which is one day to become mine.”
“I hope you survive the journey unscathed, then. Be certain not to drink any brandy you are offered, or you may wake up to a different sort of prospect altogether.”
“I shall heed your advice! And what of you, Darcy? There is still some talk, but it is largely dying away, and more quickly than I might have expected. Are you feeling the consequences of the debacle?”
“In some measure, but the momentary discomfort of the exposure does not begin to compare to a lifetime with a wife I could not respect.”
Richard dropped into a chair. “Is there such a woman, Darcy? I have never enquired about your women—”
“There has never been any cause to.”
“Quite so. But now there is, and a rather fetching one at that. Do you intend to keep up your acquaintance with Miss Bennet?”
Darcy sighed and dropped his pen. “She is from trade. Surely, the question does not bear asking.”
“Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley might agree with you, but I see another man before me—a man who was rather smitten by a pair of fine eyes and an honest heart. Can you deny that you took pleasure in the time you spent with her?”
Darcy rose and began to pace. “I have never understood it possible to enjoy a woman’s company so. She is one I could call a friend, and more than that, even. I respect her, as I do very few others.”
“Are you certain that is all? She blushed rather hotly in your presence during that fracas the other evening. Can you truly tell me you have done nothing to entrap yourself?”
He shifted his shoulders inside his tight coat and looked anywhere but at Richard’s face. “I cannot. Viewed in a prudential light, her uncle has every right to make demands of me for even a fraction of the day’s events. But I called on him again, and I was calmly assured that the family intends nothing of the kind. She would not impose, which is yet another example of her goodness. Do not lecture me, as I see you are prepared to do. Every feeling of justice and honour objects, but she is correct. It would not work, it could not work!”
“Yet you enjoyed her company, and as more than a friend. Perhaps something else could be worked out? There are many ways in which a man may choose to enjoy female companionship. You desire her, do you not?”
“How could I not? Though it took me some while to confess it, even to myself, I could easily call her the handsomest woman of my acquaintance.”
“Then you must contrive some way to keep her near! Set her up with a pretty little cottage in the country, or better yet, an apartment in Marylebone. It would be just the thing.”
“I have never kept a mistress, as you well know. It did not seem fitting while my father lived, for in his tender sentiments, every woman was to be compared to my mother, faults and virtuesalike. I could not… there would have been none worthy of notice, and certainly none so appealing as to make me wish to see his disappointment in me. It was even less fitting when Father died, and I became guardian to a young girl. It was necessary that I might have shown my face to her as a figure she could respect, a man of honour. I could not set such an example for her.”
