Page 14 of The Blackmail of Mr. Darcy
Georgiana lifted her chin, “Of course we will. I hope you can get some sleep, as well, Brother.”
“I hope so, Poppet,” he returned. He smiled at everyone, bowed, and moved towards the well and the pump.
Elizabeth took the majority of the blankets in hand and thanked Georgiana and her lady’s maid for grabbing the rest. Molly and the other maid supported Jane’s walk to the house and slow ascent of the stairs. Elizabeth trailed everyone else, feeling a bit responsible for the group as a whole.
She was quite shocked to see two servants supporting—really, practically carrying—Mr. Bingley into the house. He looked very clean, compared to Mr. Darcy, wearing a spotless dressing gown. His lack of ability to walk was shocking, and she worried briefly that he had somehow inhaled a great deal of smoke. But when she heard him ask, “An’ you’re shhhure it’sss safe ’n’ everythin’?” she was convinced that he was inebriated.
No wonder he had not been able to help fight the fire!
Elizabeth felt a pang of disquiet about Mr. Bingley’s character, on behalf of her sister Jane, who seemed to like himexceedingly well. But, again, she pushed away the thought and concentrated on settling her sister back in bed. She checked in with Georgiana, too, and the girl gave her a long, emotional hug. That hug was interrupted by a tap on Georgiana’s sitting room door; Georgiana opened the door, and Elizabeth saw that it was Mr. Darcy, newly scrubbed and in fresh clothes. Both Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy blushed, for absolutely no reason.Well, Elizabeth reasoned,wearenear a bedchamber, in less than formal dress, in the early morning hours.
“Good night, Georgiana, Mr. Darcy,” she said, and then she hurried down the hall to check Jane one last time on her way to her own bed.
But when she laid there, looking up at the canopy over her bed, Elizabeth found that sleep eluded her. She kept picturing a soot-smeared, sweaty Mr. Darcy in contrast to an immaculate Mr. Bingley who was in his cups. She adjusted her pillow and pulled up her covers and resolutely closed her eyes, and still she saw images, a contrast between two men: Mr. Darcy giving calm orders and then working as hard or harder than servants to deal with an emergency, and Mr. Bingley slurring his words and only thinking of his own safety.
She switched to her other side, rearranged the covers, fluffed up her pillow, and tried again to blank out her mind. She was, once again, unsuccessful.
The thing was, for slightly more than a month, Elizabeth had fully believed the narrative that Mr. Bingley was everything a man should be: cheerful, open, eager to meet people, and happy to think well of them. The narrative went on to paint Mr. Darcy as the exact opposite: he was, everyone said, dour, more prone to frowning than smiling, rude and officious and arrogant.
And it was not merely that “everyone” said those good things about Mr. Bingley and those bad things about Mr. Darcy. Elizabeth felt it keenly, the realisation that she had said all ofthose things herself. Often. She may have instigated some of the narrative; she certainly had furthered it.
Now that she was friends with Georgiana, Elizabeth felt sorry that she had participated at all. Like everyone, both men were more nuanced than hero versus villain.
Elizabeth still liked Mr. Bingley’s happy smile and friendly manner, but she felt he was weak when it came to reining in his younger sister. Miss Bingley made multiple guests at Netherfield feel uncomfortable, and Mr. Bingley should step in and insist that she perform her duties as hostess better. If she did not, he should send her away to a relative or to her own establishment. Not only did he not step in on behalf of the comfort of guests, Elizabeth was not even sure if he ever noticed his guests’ distress.
As for Mr. Darcy, his love and care for his younger sister; his consideration towards Jane and herself; his leadership, knowledge, and willingness to work during an emergency all showed him to be a good man. He was still quiet and often serious, but he was also highly intelligent and surprisingly thoughtful.
Of course, she had been bemused about Mr. Darcy’s seeming inability to stand up against Miss Bingley. What was it with that woman, that men allowed her to act badly with impunity? She could tell that both men found her tiresome, and certainly Mr. Darcy made it clear several times a day that he disliked pretty much everything about her.
Still, watching Mr. Darcy in action tonight had taught her that he certainly was not a weak man, either physically or mentally.
Again, she worried that Miss Bingley knew something, possibly something about Georgiana, that she was threatening to divulge if Mr. Darcy did not do as she asked. It sounded likesomething out of a novel, but she wondered if Miss Bingley was attempting a blackmail against Mr. Darcy.
Chapter 10
Darcy
Darcy woke up later than usual, to a bar of sunlight crossing his face. He scrunched his eyes into narrow slits but looked to see if the curtains had been opened.
It turned out that the sunlight streaming in had found the single gap between hastily closed curtains. Darcy closed his eyes again. Later-than-usual was still way too early, he decided, given the sleepless night they had all endured. Darcy turned to one side in an effort to escape the sunbeam, and he experienced a twinge of pain in his back.
He sat up and stretched, feeling sore in multiple places. He prided himself on keeping fit, but although he was fit for riding and fencing, he apparently was not fit for heaving buckets of water. A hot bath should help with the soreness, for surely his chilly clean-up, earlier that morning, had not washed away the entirety of the fire’s residue.
However, given the unknown extent of damage to the kitchen, a hot bath was likely an unattainable wish.
Sitting up, Darcy saw that Ryles was gone. All the bedding he had used was neatly folded and stacked on the settee. Darcy saw that there were several containers of water warming on his hearth. He so appreciated his valet’s thoughtfulness, and hedecided to pay all of his own servants, and Bingley’s, too, if Bingley would not, a bonus for all the extra work they had put in the night before.
He got up, eager for his best attempt at a sponge bath, but then he saw a folded paper lying just inside the door to the hallway. He crossed to the door and tested the handle; it was still locked from the inside. The placement of the paper suggested that it had been thrust under the closed door.
Darcy inspected the cheap paper, noting that it was rough and tan rather than smooth and white. Unfolding it, he easily read the message even through the poor formation of letters and the inkblots: “Stay away from the Benet chit. W.”
His sleep deprived eyes flew open, and he suddenly felt as awake and on-alert as he had ever felt in his life. “W.” of course made him think that the note was from Wickham, but his nemesis had the skill to write beautifully, if he chose to. Would there be some reason for Wickham to adopt poor writing as a disguise against his identity, but then sign the note with his initial? And would Wickham know of Darcy’s location, so far from any of his homes? If he somehow had divined that Darcy was at Netherfield, how could Wickham know which bedchamber he used?
Darcy’s brain instantly flew to the possibility that Miss Bingley had written—or at least had gotten someone to write—the note. She was the one who had been voicing vague semi-threats. She certainly knew which room Darcy slept in. If she used Wickham’s initial, did she know about Ramsgate?
Thrusting the paper into his travel desk and locking the drawer, Darcy continued with his original intention; he poured some of the fire-warmed water into his basin and used a bar of soap to scrub his face, neck, hair, hands, and arms.
He carried another bucket of water to the hip bath in his dressing room, and he squatted in the water to further clean hisbody. He did not feel as clean as he would like, but it would have to do. Darcy ruefully smiled over the fact that, far from relaxing his sore muscles, the need to lift and carry the bucket of water had only aggravated those muscles. But how many servants were currently endeavouring to fulfil their duties with sore backs and arms?
