Page 12 of Yearning

Nothing from him.

“Well,” she said, “know this, sir. Know that you and I have a legally binding agreement, that papers were drawn up, and know that a gentleman does not back out of a marriage proposal, that a gentleman, once he gives is word, is bound by his word. You are mine, Fitzwilliam, and I intend to have you.” With that, she swept out of the room.

The colonel was in the doorway. He gave her a sort of sad smile, a disappointed smile, and she was struck by that.

She winced. “You… sir, you must know that I hold you in high regard, but…”

“But I am not him,” said the colonel softly. “I well understand, madam.”

“I KNOW YOU are not asleep,” came Richard’s voice.

Mr. Darcy opened his eyes to see that his cousin was at the foot of the bed. “What gave me away?”

“You are lucky that you are so very pitiable right now, or I would hurt you,” said Richard, nostrils flaring. “How dare you put me through that? Do you have any idea how mortifying that was?”

Darcy regarded him. “But you want her. I know you do.”

“As it happens, I do not.”

“I can hear it in the way you speak about her,” said Darcy. “There is a way your voice lilts when you talk of her, and I realize you have done it always, since you were introduced to her.”

“Well, she is singular, is she not? The way she spoke to our aunt Lady Catherine at that dinner. ‘Such of us who wished to learn never lacked the means.’” The colonel was smiling at the memory.

Darcy smiled, too. That was her sharpness, her glittering wit. “Yes, she was something to behold.”

“Indeed.”

“You want her.”

“I do not know if you can understand this, but I do not wish to marry a woman who is pining away for someone else. I wish my wife to want me, first and foremost, to love me.”

Darcy let out a breath. “Of course, of course.”

“So, I would rather you leave me out of whatever it is you are scheming, if you do not mind. This woman is rather devoted to you, and she is perhaps the most stubborn person I have ever met—well, with the exception of our aunt Lady Catherine—so, I think you must simply marry her. She is a grown woman. She knows what she wants.”

“She is an innocent very young woman who knows nothing of passion or pleasure and will never know if she marries me, and will spend her whole life tending to me, and I have but one leg, and I cannot live with myself if I do that to her. I shall not.”

Nothing from Richard.

Darcy sighed. “If you give her time, Richard, she will come to love you. If you… once the two of you are… are touching, after you—”

“Stop it,” said Richard.

“I am only saying, you and I know how affection grows following such things. She thinks she is in love with me, but once she is married to you—”

“No,” said Richard. “No, no, no. Leave me out of this, Darcy. I am not going to… to bed your wife for you.”

Darcy gave him a look and Richard’s nostrils flared but he held Darcy’s gaze until Darcy was forced to look away.

It was quiet.

Richard spoke again. “You may be right that she does not know what she’s throwing away, of course. I have thought it. Someone else, perhaps, but not me.”

Darcy’s heart squeezed and a fresh feeling of sorrow washed through him. You cannot choose her husband for her, he admonished himself. But perhaps he had wanted to for the reason that Richard had said. If he could not take her to bed himself, then engineering her into bed with someone else was somehow the next best thing. But he must let that go as well. “Will you help me, then? Will you help her see?”

“How can I do that?”

“Convince her to go on walks in the parks,” said Mr. Darcy. “To balls, to dance with eligible men, to dinner parties. Convince her to go and live a life?”