Page 6 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

Bingley stared at him. "You are asking whether I mean to abandon Jane because her sister has made a poor choice."

"I am asking you to weigh what it could cost you."

"I heard you the first time." Bingley's voice came out sharper than Darcy had ever heard it. "The answer is no! And I find it remarkable that you thought the question wanted asking."

Darcy looked at his friend. Amiable, cheerful, occasionally foolish Bingley, who had knotted the ropes on Braithwaite with shaking hands and not flinched. When had Bingley ever regarded him with something so near anger?

"Forgive me. I had to ask."

"You did not. But I shall forgive it, because you have not slept." Bingley leaned forward. "What do you need of me?"

"Keep Mrs. Bennet here. Jane will manage her, but she cannot do it alone. The story is that my aunt requires nursing and Mrs. Bennet is too valuable to be spared. Flatter her and she will stay."

"Done."

"And Bingley. Your sister cannot know."

Bingley grimaced. "No. Caroline would grieve for the Bennets extensively, and to everyone in the county." He stood. At the door he turned back. "Darcy."

"Yes?"

"I am going to marry Jane Bennet. However this ends, I am going to ask her. You should know that."

The next hour went to logistics. The letters dispatched. Word to the stables to ready the traveling coach. In the corridor he passed Mrs. Bennet, who had stopped weeping and was giving Jane her instructions regarding wedding clothes.

"...and Mrs. Darter must set aside whatever she is about, for Lydia cannot come home from Scotland a married woman with nothing to be seen in—" She broke off. "Mr. Darcy! I trust you have sent money north. Mr. Wickham cannot bring her back in a hired gig. And something must be settled on them, for an officer's pay will not keep a wife. His family is perfectly respectable, you know. Old Mr. Wickham was your own father's steward. There is nothing to be ashamed of!"

Darcy managed not to say what he was thinking, which took some doing. "I have written a great many letters this morning, ma'am. Everything that can be done is being done."

"Well. I should hope so. That poor girl, married over the anvil in the gown she stood up in! I shall never forgive myself for not having her wedding clothes made up in advance."

Could anyone have foreseen such a disaster? Married. Darcy doubted Wickham had any such intention.

Jane's eyes met Darcy's over their mother's cap, and neither of them corrected her. "Come, Mama," Jane said. "Lady Catherine's tray will be going up, and she does poorly without a familiar face by her."

"That woman has a houseful of servants and not a particle of gratitude. But there, we must be charitable, she cannot even scold anyone now, poor creature, and I have always said a sickroom wants a mother's touch..." Mrs. Bennet bustled off down the corridor, transformed from grieving mother to household general in the space of six steps. Jane followed, mouthing thank you at Darcy over her shoulder.

He watched them go. Mrs. Bennet had arrived before half-nine, shrieking, weeping, entirely without dignity, because her child was missing. She loved Lydia loudly, badly and with her whole ungovernable heart. Darcy had ridden through one night for Georgiana and leaped from a galloping horse for Elizabeth. He could not despise the woman. He would have done the same for any of them, only more quietly.

He was passing the first-floor landing when he heard singing.

Jane's voice, clear and sweet through the half-open sickroom door. A hymn. When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. Jane sang the first verse through, and then she stopped. She said, in her easy tea-table voice, "Will you sing the next verse with me, Lady Catherine?"

Darcy stopped on the landing.

The silence from the sickroom was not empty. He could feel it through the door, tight and waiting. The whole house knew her ladyship could sing. Fragments of hymns had been drifting along the corridors for a fortnight, four bars at a time, pushed through a mouth that would only half obey. But would she sing before a Bennet? Before the mother of the woman she had tried to destroy?

Jane waited with her hands folded. So far as Darcy could tell through the gap, Jane seemed to have all the time in the world.

Lady Catherine sang.

One line. Slurred, effortful, the consonants crushed and the vowels dragged, but the right line, in the right place.

"Oh! That was lovely," said Mrs. Bennet from the corner. "You have a fine voice, Lady Catherine. Not what it was, I am sure, but very fine for a woman in your condition. My sister Phillips had an ague once that took her voice for a fortnight, and she sounded like a crow for a month after. You sound nothing like a crow."

Through the gap Darcy saw Anne's face go tight and Mrs. Jenkinson close her eyes. And he saw his aunt's right hand, fisted on the coverlet, come open.

The fist had held through Jane's hymn. It opened at the crow. Everyone in the house spoke to his aunt as to an invalid, softly and with care. Mrs. Bennet had told her flatly that her voice was not what it was.