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“Oh, my dear,” she soothed, placing an arm about the weeping girl, feeling utterly helpless in the face of such grief.
But something did not quite make sense; Miss Darcy might well not be receiving visitors, but she ought to receive her calling cards, just the same. “Why would they not give you my card, had I left it?”
“I am kept a prisoner there. I cannot speak with anyone. I am only out now because there is no one awake to stop me.”
“You are a prisoner of this…Lord Matlock?”
“No, not him. The earl was only here for the first week of Fitzwilliam’s illness. Shortly thereafter, Colonel Fitzwilliam departed—Matlock’s younger son that is—once the earl left for his country seat. Lady Matlock comes down from London occasionally, but she never stays long, and barely notices me when she does.”
“Then who keeps you a prisoner?”
But a certain mulishness crept into Miss Darcy’s expression, and she answered nothing.
“Your brother…he is at home, with you?”
Her eyes again filled with tears. “Oh, how I wish! I would nurse him, and gladly, for the rest of my life! If only!” She buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with the force of her grief.
As Lizzy patted Miss Darcy’s back, she found a tear in her own eye. Mr Darcy, so handsome, so fit, and once…so alive. “I knew your brother only briefly, but it seems impossible that he should be so ill now. Did the earl take him back to the country?”
“No,” Miss Darcy replied, through bitter, choking sobs. “Anywhere else would be better than where he is, at Younge’s. It puts him in her power.” Abruptly she clamped her mouth shut.
What were those wild accusations Miss Darcy had first charged, believing Lizzy was there for a threat of some sort? ‘I have nothing left! I can give you nothing! You may tell George that she has taken it all, and then some!’
This is a great mystery indeed, Lizzy thought.
But as Miss Darcy’s sobs faded into bleak despair, it seemed somehow less so. She had no idea who George was, but obviously, someone in Miss Darcy’s household, a female, was extorting her, and using her brother to do it. And she apparently felt unable to go to her powerful aunt and uncle with the matter.
“Leaping from this cliff solves nothing,” Lizzy said at last. “And it will ruin any opportunity you have in the future to help Mr Darcy. You will not always be as powerless as you feel today.”
“My brother suffers because of me,” she insisted. “It is all my fault. Every awful thing that happens to him is my responsibility. Nothing you can say will change it.”
How the girl could possibly be responsible for Mr Darcy’s physical ailments was beyond comprehension, but plainly she believed it to be so. “Please explain,” Lizzy said softly, “how ripping your brother’s heart from his chest—a result which your death would surely cause—would improve his situation.”
“You speak as though he would ever know. I tell you, his mind is gone.”
“You have seen him? You know this for certain? I have some experience with illness, and I have seen fevers and blows to the head cause temporary incapacity. I saw Mr Darcy less than a month ago; these must be very recent developments. It is much too soon to give up hope.”
“There is nothing I can do to improve anything!” she cried.
“Perhaps not,” Lizzy said. “But you can certainly make it worse. And you have hit upon the one way to do it.”
Miss Darcy again buried her face in her hands. “He would be better off without me.”
“I doubt he thinks so,” Lizzy replied. “I am certain you are the person he loves best in all the world. But if you reject him and—and end yourself, he will hurt—much more deeply than you can understand, and every day for the rest of his life. He would much rather have you alive and flawed, even a veritable thorn in his flesh.”
“How can you know?” Miss Darcy asked, as if she despaired of hoping and yet, was desperate to believe.
“Because I, too, have sisters I love.”
They sat there together for some time, the angry wind whipping up their skirts with chilling force, the occasional spatter of rain dampening their shoulders, the endless rhythm of crashing surf beating at the base of the cliffs far below.
At last Miss Darcy gave a shuddering sigh. “I did not come here to jump,” she said at last. “I just wanted…it all to stop. To be finished.”
“Listen to me, dear,” Lizzy said earnestly. “You must have felt dreadfully alone to consider such an action. But nothing is ever as hopeless as it seems. I walk hereabouts every morning, and if you were to join me, surely we could come to more productive conclusions as we talk together. Things have a way of working out.” She took the girl’s cold hand in hers. “Promise me you will meet me again tomorrow, Miss Darcy.”
Lizzy practically held her breath waiting for the answer. It came as a slow nod.
“I…yes. It is very kind of you, Miss, um, Bennet, did you say?”
