Page 56 of Till Death Us Do Part: Book 2
Had Wickham poisoned her, and if so, did she still believe his lies? What had Darcy done to convince her otherwise?--Not a damned thing, that was what!Not. one. damned. thing!
Morning found him entirely disgusted with the display, and heneededto start doing something, even if it was wrong, so the obvious place to start was the Longman table. If she could not fatten him up, nobody could.
Mrs Longman joined the men, seeing the young master staring at the table in introspection. “I should have helped your wife more.”
Darcy looked at her in consternation, but she continued undaunted. “Whatever thought just came to your mind, put it aside. I know it was not my place, and I always felt I would do more harm than good,” then she stared a moment, and finally added, “but I did not even try. I had my reasons, and they were good ones, but it might have turned out better if I had intervened.”
Darcy took a deep breath. “Is there any point in trying to talk you out of such feelings?”
“No, it is just one of those things. Sometimes you wish you had acted differently, even though what you did was essentially correct. We will never know. She could just as well have hatedthe interference as welcomed it. It could just as easily have made her leave sooner than later. My husband knew she was likely to leave, and perhaps we could have intervened, but she is a grown woman, and the mistress of this estate. I know such interference would have likely been unwelcome. I certainly would not have put up with it at her age.”
Both felt there was no need to beat the point to death, and Longman suggested, “With the kind of funds she has, she could be anywhere.”
Darcy sighed. “Yes. She could be staying in a cottage on Pemberley land, or take rooms in Kympton, and we would never know. Not likely of course, as I think her more likely on a ship to Boston or Rome.”
Both Longmans shrugged, aware that there was really no way to know.
Looking slightly uncomfortable but resolute, Mrs Longman asked, “How did you let it get so bad?”
Darcy sighed, coming back to the question he had asked himself over and over hundreds of times since he woke up in France, a victim of his own hubris and short-sighted thinking.
“Do you want the reason or the whiny excuse?” he asked grimly.
“Those two things are rarely as clear-cut as you might think,” Mrs Longman answered cautiously. “Tell me, what led you to treat your wife that way? What led you to believe her guilty?”
“I had no justifiable reason. If I had suspicions, I could well have answered them by talking to her for an hour. As for the excuses—”
He thought for a while and finally sighed in resignation.
“Sometimes, I just gettired. I endured twelve credible compromise attempts in just the last two years, and another ten or so half-hearted attempts. Bates found the middle daughter of the Earl of Somerford in my bed without a stitch of clothingabout two months before I went to Hertfordshire. I was so fed up that I put it about that I would not be compromised into marriage, regardless of the supposed provocation, but that sort of thing would not make it to a town like Meryton.”
“Go on,” Mrs Longman said gently.
“It became easy to think of it as a competition, where I had to be on my guard all the time. I was the fox, they were the hounds, and oh, woe is me! Ididin fact have to keep on my guard, but I did not have to take it to the level of pig-headed stubbornness that I finally exhibited.”
He thought back to what he could remember about the ball that had so abruptly changed his life.
“I asked her to dance,” he sighed, “which I had not intended to do, but—”
The couple waited patiently for him to pull the memory back to life.
“But she was just soenticingstanding there. She is so beautiful, to me anyway, so very beautiful. She is intelligent, challenging to me and frightening to someone of lesser mettle. She is strong; she withstood assault after assault from Miss Bingley, and then I find they get along famously now. She was—”
He sighed. “She was enticing—enchanting—alluring—so I asked her to dance. I knew it would cause rumours, but I am the master of an estate, not a monk. I thought it would be harmless.”
“What happened?”
“She got under my skin. She challenged me on George Wickham of all people, in a way that I felt she knew would bother me. She—being roughly as naïve and innocent as Georgiana in some ways—bought his story, and she challenged me to explain it.”
Longman said, “Sounds like just your sort of woman. She did not seem to like you, but she stood up to you anyway.”
“Yes. Well, after that—” he thought back through the sequence. “I was angry. First there were Wickham’s actions in Ramsgate last summer, then all that preceded, and here was a woman who knewnothingchallenging my honour, challenging my duty, challenging my integrity.”
He paused a moment, thinking it very important to sort out his true motivations from the chaos and disorder that followed those moments.
“Ordinarily, I would not care much what someone thinks, but her—her—” then he felt he was near to tears again, so he took a ragged breath and continued, “It was important thatsheof all people understand me. I was angry, and angry men are not wise, so I took her arm and led her to a corner where we could not be heard.”
Mrs Longman said, “That does not sound like you.”
