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Chapter Twenty-Six
Istood silent in my surprise, and turned to Mr Darcy.
His jaw firmed, the only movement in his otherwise rigid posture. But something in what Lord Cavendish had said struck me as significant: “Cease protecting a woman who is dead and buried.”
Why in heaven’s name would he protect Anne de Bourgh at the expense of his current wife and future children’s happiness? I did not understand; but then, he would not allow me to. A wave of what might have been despair—and what was certainly anger—threatened my peace of mind. I wanted to storm out of the room like Lord Cavendish, perhaps throw things in my fury. I wanted to rage at him for all those secrets he held so dear. Somehow, I forced myself to calm.
Instead, sighing, I went to the settee nearest the hearth, sitting in front of the fire and staring into the flames. I did not know what he would do—leave, or go back to his desk and his letters and papers and pretend the conversation had not happened? Or, perhaps, was this why he had wanted me to stay for Lord Cavendish’s call—so that I would be forewarned how it would be? So that I would more willingly leave him? It was most disheartening.
However, he did none of those things. After several silent moments, he took a seat close beside me. Even, he took my hand in his own much larger one. It was so unexpected—and I was so relieved, after my dreary thoughts—that I scooted nearer to him, laying my head upon his shoulder.
“You have questions, I am certain, about Anne’s death. Because you have never asked them, I once thought you did not care to know the answers. Or, perhaps, you were afraid of the answers. I want you to know that I no longer believe either of those suppositions to be true. I rather believe you have patiently granted me my privacy until such time as I would more readily tell you the truth.”
“Not always patiently,” I admitted.
He let go of my hand to reach his arm around me, drawing me more firmly into his embrace. I could hear his heart thundering beneath my ear, the only sign of his distress. “In order to explain what I know of it, I must now mention circumstances which I would wish to forget myself, and which no obligation less than my duty to you should induce me to unfold to any human being. Having said this much, I feel no doubt of your secrecy.”
I nodded, feeling his lips brush briefly against the side of my head. His phrasing puzzled me—‘what I know of it’? Did he not know all? Some moments passed as he seemed to struggle to put his thoughts into words.
“The end began, I suppose, the afternoon she marched into my chambers and announced that she was ready to bear my child.”
I blinked up at him, and he grimaced. “She was expert at impediments to pregnancy, and had made it clear on our wedding night that she did not mean to have children any time soon.”
“Oh,” I said. “I was not aware there were ways to prevent it.”
“They are not always effective, but if one is cautious enough, they might be. I suppose I ought to have told you of them, in case you wished to delay. I am afraid I have been selfish, hoping to make a family with you.”
“I have no wish for delay,” I replied, looking away. “But…perhaps you are disappointed that I have not yet conceived.”
He tipped my chin up and bent to kiss me, a deep tenderness within the motion. “Of course not,” he said at last. “If it is to be only you and me, I will still be the happiest of men. There is nothing you could do to displease me, except to lose all patience with me.”
A weight lifted, a worry I had never acknowledged slipping away. I took a deep breath, and let it go. “So, she proclaimed her readiness for motherhood,” I said. “Did that cause so great a disgust within you? As you had not repudiated her, she could have become with child in any of her, er, liaisons, bringing you another man’s offspring.”
He let out a long sigh. “I suppose I should start even further back in time—when I learned exactly what pleasing her in the bedchamber required. I hope you will forgive me for being so coarse, but I fear you will not understand unless I am exceedingly blunt. She had a-a disgust of tenderness. She wished…she wished for pain.”
“What?” I looked up at him with some confusion; I did not understand. He explained further, though trying for delicacy. I had never in my life heard of such doings, and I confessed my revulsion.
“I admit, I do not truly understand either. I have known some, however, who have predilections that are unusual, and it does not render them evil, if both partners are willing. I will also acknowledge that I tried to-to more gently administer the punishments she demanded. It only infuriated her. I could not do it. What she needed in order to be, er, satiated, ruined every part of the union for me. We were as unsuited to be man and wife as two people could possibly be. I believed it was why she was unfaithful, you see. That she sought out partners who possessed similar…preferences.”
I shook my head, not in disbelief, but incredulity. It was too strange. And then an awful thought occurred to me. “Both Wickham and Mrs de Bourgh claimed to have hinted to the neighbourhood of your supposed abuse of Mrs Darcy. Could it be that she encouraged such abuse, and then blamed you for it?”
“For most of our marriage, she was extremely discreet, but that last year, well…yes, it became something of a game to her, hinting to others at the reasons for her bruises. My reputation was being slowly shattered.”
“You sound defensive of her choices, but she harmed you,” I shuddered. “However… titillating, I cannot believe violence, especially intimate violence, to be healthy or natural.”
“No, no, I do not mean to sound as though I endorsed her preferences; I only wish to make you understand that it was not her predilections upon which my dislike was founded. Long before I discovered her first affair, my opinion of her was decided. It was her insensitivity, her manipulations, her disloyalty and arrogance, her conceit and selfish disdain for the feelings of others, which were such as to form that groundwork of disapprobation, on which succeeding events built to an immoveable dislike. I found nothing, utterly nothing, I could respect in her, and her sexual preferences were the least of it.”
There was little I could say to this. I felt awful for what he had endured, and continued to endure, at her hands. I could only tuck myself in closer within his sheltering arms, and hope he could feel relief within that simple connexion. After several moments of silence, he spoke again.
“But as I told you, she approached me in my chambers boldly demanding a child. I am still dumbfounded by her tactic, as she usually showed great skill in conversation, especially in manipulation of a person from whom she wanted something. Upon reflection, I am convinced that by that point, she no longer truly even saw me as a man, only as an object controlling something she wished to be hers.”
“What did she say to you?”
“‘In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I wish my child to be a Darcy,’” he repeated woodenly.
I flinched at her tastelessness.
“I was beyond expression. I stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent. This she considered sufficient encouragement, and then was not more eloquent on the subject of my suitability for fatherhood than of her deeply rooted dislike. She hated me, my judgmental attitudes, my inability to allow her the freedoms she required. In one sentence, she expressed how much she wished her children to be handsome, intelligent, responsible, and constant, as she admitted my virtues; in the next, how she had struggled to conquer any such consideration. She had nearly allowed Wickham to get her with child a dozen times, she said, wholly for the delicious irony of it. But his birth was not high enough, and she demanded better blood in any child of hers.”
