Matlock clenched his fists, then his glare shifted from his sister to, surprisingly, his niece. “Anne?” He lifted his bushy brows in an unspoken question.
Darcy was struggling and gasping for breath with the torrent of feeling washing over him. His selfish obsession with Elizabeth Bennet may have involved those dearest to him in a scandal of magnificent proportions. Regret for Bingley, fear for Georgiana, and abject terror at the threat of losing Elizabeth now mingled with remorse for his treatment of his cousin. Anne had done nothing to deserve his vehement rejection, yet he had stood in this very room and declared a stranger more important to him than the cousin he had known since infancy. What disgust she must feel!
His eyes leaden with sorrow, he watched as Anne rose from the chaise with quiet strength. With each step toward them, she seemed to grow in confidence. By the time she had drawn close, Darcy’s eyebrows were arched in wonder. Anne de Bourgh, his sickly cousin, poised herself next to her mother with every inch the dignity and grace of her rank. His shock at her sudden shift in manner was only exceeded by the soft words which she now spoke.
“Mother, I have no wish to marry my brother.”
The two young men were absolutely speechless with horror, but their reaction paled beside the wrathful being of their aunt. “Anne!” She made a grasp for her daughter’s person, which Anne swiftly dodged with surprising adeptness. “You are not well!” her mother snarled, her lips curled and her bloodshot eyes flashing. Another vicious swipe of her hand landed on Anne’s shoulder, pushing the young woman back so that, without a quick save by Fitzwilliam, she might truly have fallen.
She recovered swiftly and spun with new energy to face her mother. “No, Mother, I am quite well, and I have been so for years.” She turned her light eyes to Darcy’s, and for the first time, he noticed how very much like Georgiana she did look. Her burst of vigour lent new spirit to her features, and he stared back into the face of… whom? His sister?
Anne darted a quick glance to her uncle, desiring his reassurance, and then drew a deep fortifying breath. “Yes, William. Uncle told me years ago. He thought I had a right to know. I was fifteen, and Mother was starting to make demands on you already.”
“I have heard enough of this!” Lady Catherine sliced her finger toward Matlock’s chest as though she would have skewered him had it been a mite longer. “Anne, we are leaving!”
“Youare going nowhere, Catherine!” the earl roared, his face more violent than either his son or nephew had ever seen. “It is time this was known! I will not see you continue to try to force Darcy into such a shameful, sinful union! Had he shown any inclination for it, I would have told him as well, years ago! Now he deserves to know what you have been trying to foist upon him!”
“You know nothing!” she shrieked. “I will see you ruined as well, James Fitzwilliam!”
“You would not dare risk it,” he scoffed. Turning back to Darcy, his tones mellowed in consideration for his nephew, who looked nearly faint. “My father, the earl, was good friends with your grandfather, Darcy. They determined when we were young that their eldest children—your father and Catherine—should marry. However, your father had his sights set on Anne, the youngest of all of us. He was almost as stubborn as you are, I’m afraid, and eventually, his suit was accepted. Catherine,” he shot his sister a moody glare, “was obsessed with your father, and I believe Pemberley as well, and never forgave him for passing her over.”
He stopped his narrative to calmly deflect a savage blow from that lady’s cane. With a hand tightened around her upper arm, the earl shoved the great and noble lady toward the door. She writhed, her feet dragging behind as she slashed and howled, spewing all manner of vitriol at her relatives. With a firm yank, the earl opened the door of the sitting room and commanded two footmen at the door, “See her to her carriage. Miss de Bourgh shall be staying behind.”
Lady Catherine flailed wildly, thrashing her arms. “Unhand me! How dare you lay a hand on a peeress!”
“They dare atmycommand, Catherine!” the earl hissed menacingly. “You would do well to remember that! Go back to Rosings and take that vermin of a parson with you!” He slammed the door of the study, only slightly muting the outraged cries of his sister as the strong young footmen dragged her bodily to her carriage.
Matlock returned to the three young people, his manner nonchalant. Anne was smothering a little smile, but Darcy and Richard were by no means master of themselves. Both were white as ghosts. It was Darcy’s place to speak, but it was another moment before he could find any words. At last, he managed a shaky beginning.
“Uncle,” his voice was nearly a whisper, “you level a very serious accusation at my father’s door.”
The earl heaved the weary sigh of the aged. “It was not quite like that, my boy.” He glanced at Anne, then continued. “I doubt he would have even realized… your mother was very ill after your birth, Darcy. It took her years to conceive, and when she did, she had a dreadful time of it. We all thought we had lost her. Your father took it very hard, blamed himself. He spent most evenings closeted in his study with a large bottle. I think the Darcy cellars have never suffered as much plundering as they did in those days. I thank heaven, my boy, that you are not one given to drink! A wealthy man in his cups can be very vulnerable under such an influence.” He shook his head regretfully. “George was not at all master of himself when he drank.”
Darcy and Fitzwilliam exchanged a quick, bemused glance, which the earl promised himself he would get to the bottom of later. Shrugging his shoulders, however, he forged on. “I was at Pemberley, as were most of the family when your mother was so ill. I remember going to check on your father in his study, and Catherine had just emerged. No one else was about. She passed it off as of no consequence, but Anne’s birth later that year was rather coincidentally timed.” He spared his niece a sympathetic smile. “Catherine looked a deal like your mother still in those days. Old Sir Lewis never had any children with his first wife, and there were never any others after Anne.”
Darcy was trembling, and he put a shaking hand to his forehead. “I need to sit down, Uncle.” Fitzwilliam, beginning to recover more quickly, clapped him comfortingly on the shoulder and steered him to the sofa.
Darcy was blinking rapidly, his eyes blurring with the scandalized fear and outrage of what his aunt had wrought. His own father imposed upon, taken advantage of, his cousin the unwitting result of an illicit union, and his own prospects only narrowly escaping such a blight. It was beyond the pale! Nothing could have previously induced him to believe his own family might have concealed such a black secret.
“I know what you’re thinking, my boy,” the earl sighed again, finding his own seat. “Why did I not tell you sooner?”
“I—I suspect that might have come to mind next, had my thoughts been able to organize so well.”
“Well, I never could bear to let your father know. He would never have forgiven himself. I told Anne, and of course, my Lady Matlock. We three decided that Anne should feign poor health until we could decide what else could be done about Catherine’s expectations. You needed a healthy bride, of course; your father was rather insistent on that point after losing your mother. Catherine would never have accepted another suitor for Anne unless you were off the market, my boy. Bloody long time you took going about it.”
Darcy looked again at Anne, the mystery still holding him in awe. “But I have seen you! You are so pale, Anne, and you do not eat….”
Anne’s mouth pulled to the side in a shy smile. “Mother would not be satisfied until I had seen her doctor. He bleeds me frequently and keeps me on the strictest of regimens. I do not get much exercise. Those concoctions he has been using recently make me even more fatigued. Mrs Jenkinson helps me keep up the act as well.”
Darcy dropped his face to his hands, his mind registering the selfish role he had played in the living nightmare his cousin had been subjected to. “I am sorry, Anne,” he murmured. “Had I only acted sooner….”
“It is not your fault, William,” she answered softly. “Uncle has been offering me sanctuary and help claiming my inheritance for years, but I never had the courage to accept. I am going to now.” She held her hand out to him, and with a new appreciation for his cousin—or whatever she was—he took it.
“Do not worry about that letter mother sent the solicitor. Miss Bingley quietly arranged through her coachman for me to send another directly on the heels of it. Rosings is mine, after all, and mother’s solicitor truly answers to me. I made it clear that if he released any harmful information as she had directed, he would never have an income again.”
Darcy’s face grew into a slow smile. “You are remarkable, Anne. I am sorry I had never seen it. All of these years—how can I make it up to you?”
She shook her head modestly, dropping her gaze with a soft blush. “I should like very much to be introduced to your Miss Elizabeth. She sounds wonderful, William. I hope I will be welcomed at Pemberley to come to know her, and… and my sister.”
