Beginning, Section IV
Chapter Twenty-One:
Posted on July 7, 2008
She turned and, horrified, gazed on the flushed face of Fitzwilliam Darcy.
"Elizabeth," he repeated on seeing that it was indeed Lizzy in the flesh and not a hallucination of his lovesick mind unhinging after the sleepless week he had had since he handed her that letter. He had no idea why she was standing here in his house but at that moment he didn't question it, pushing aside even his own questions about whether she had read the letter and what her thoughts had been afterwards. He took a deep breath, grasping around in his head for the words to say to her to assure her that -- regardless of why she had come to Glen Leigheas -- she was a welcome surprise.
"I'm sorry," she said with some difficulty, cutting into his thoughts. She turned to run from the room and he called out to her again, desperate to speak to her.
"Elizabeth, wait!" She stopped and turned slowly back towards him, her face as duskily rose as he knew his own to be. Any shock he had felt on seeing her had now dissipated completely and he took a long stride towards her.
"I'm so sorry," she repeated, her eyes unable to leave the floor, her cheeks flaming in mortification. "I'm so sorry, we didn't think you would be here. I never should have come."
He scarcely heard her apologies, not entirely understanding them, but latched onto the key complaint: he had not been expected. She had not come here intending to find him, though she could scarcely have come here without meaning to purposefully enter his sphere. ... But what did it mean, that she was wandering around in his house so soon after she'd made it clear that she never wanted to see him again?
"I'm a day early," he said, coming closer so that he was mere feet away from her. "Something came up. I thought I should deal with it before my guests arrived... We?" he suddenly asked, looking at her questioningly. Who was "we"? His mind leapt about, trying to figure out whom she meant -- her sister Jane? One of her university friends? Not -- surely -- George? ... no, George would never be that stupid.
"My aunt and uncle," Lizzy replied, as if grasping onto the facts. She hazarded a cautious glance up at Darcy's face and he seized onto the moment of eye contact. She delicately kept his gaze and fumbled about for the rest of whatever it was she had been going to say. "My aunt and uncle -- from my mother's side, you haven't met them -- are on their own Highland tour. ... I came along. ... My aunt lived in the town here for a summer when she was a girl... she wanted to come back. I never would have come here if I had known you were home," she repeated again.
"It's all right," he said, wanting to reassure her that he was glad to see her. He took one of her hands gently in his, unable to put his feelings into words and hoping that she could feel his contrite joy through his touch. Words were clearly not enough -- he had been given a second chance with Elizabeth, it seemed, and things were more than all right... if only he could keep himself from acting like an idiot. He realized, all of a sudden, that he was still holding the overnight bag he'd come in with, was still grimy from his journey, and in need of a shave. This was no way to greet a guest, especially one so unexpected and desperately wanted as Elizabeth. "I... I had better go," he said, self-conscious. "Please don't leave."
He dropped her hand quickly, afraid that he had been taking too much of a liberty with her given their most recent interactions, and fled back through the door and into the back hallway, eager to take the shortcut up to his room, so as to be able to return more quickly.
Lizzy stood staring for a moment. He had dropped her hand as if it had been toxic and had now disappeared back through the door by which he had entered, leaving her alone. Her hand went up to her mouth in horror and she ran towards the front hallway, desperate to be gone regardless of Darcy's last request. What on earth did he think of her for waltzing all over his house so soon after throwing his affections back into his face?
She had just left the library when she encountered her aunt and uncle and the housekeeper, however. They bundled her back into the library, unaware that anything had happened. ... But Lizzy could not listen to the interesting stories that Mrs Reynolds was telling, her mind was still back at that unexpected meeting just moments earlier in this very room.
How could he have spoken to her as civilly as he had? Why had he not ordered her away? ... And where had he gone? What would he do? And why, why had she come?
Mrs. Reynolds soon finished her speech and concluded her tour back in the front hallway, suggesting that the Americans might like to wander around the grounds a little, even though the gardens were, of course, not in bloom. Edward Gardiner expressed some interest in this idea, being a keen gardener, so Lizzy was not allowed to leave the property and instead found herself escorted through the gardens by her eager, chatty relations who had evidently had a marvelous time upstairs with Mrs. Reynolds.
They had just reached the pavilion Lizzy had seen earlier when she heard herself hailed once more, again by the young laird of Glen Leigheas. Her aunt and uncle looked on with some interest, recognizing Darcy from his photographs and the portrait of him in his study though not being on speaking terms with him.
"I was afraid that you'd gone," Darcy said, coming up to Lizzy. Her aunt and uncle moved a few steps away discreetly but looked on with interest.
"We're just here to see the house and grounds," Lizzy repeated again, anxious that Darcy should understand that they were here as tourists and were completely without ulterior motives.
"Are these your aunt and uncle?" Darcy asked, glancing up at the Gardiners with a smile.
"Oh yes, my American relations," Lizzy said, desperate to get some sort of response out of Darcy that she could work with. He disregarded her reference to his earlier disparagements of her family however and merely approached the couple with his hand outstretched.
"Hello, I'm Will Darcy," Darcy said, shaking each of their hands in turn. Lizzy was confused and watched in dumb amazement as her aunt and uncle introduced themselves to him, expressing their admiration for his home.
"I understand that you once spent a summer in Glen Leigheas?" Darcy asked Mary Gardiner politely, when the introductions were complete.
"Yes," Lizzy's aunt replied with a smile. "It was well before you were born, but I remembered it fondly. My father was a travel writer -- Harrison Ormandy -- and he spent some time writing about Scotland."
"I've read his book on this area," Darcy said with a smile. "We've got a signed copy in the library. My father always spoke very well of it -- and of him. I'm glad that you have had the chance to come back, although in, perhaps, a less hospitable season. You must be cold. Won't you come in and have some tea?" he asked kindly. He sent a glance over to Lizzy, whose face was blank but flushed. She had no idea why he was bothering to be nice to her and her family after everything that she had said to him, and she felt her past bad behavior horribly.
The Gardiners agreed to the proposal and Darcy led the way back towards the house, taking Lizzy's arm in his as he went.
"I trust your exams went well?" he asked politely, desperate to converse with her but unsure of what she thought of him.
"Yes, I think so," Lizzy answered, unnerved by his proximity and courtesy. The last time that she had been this close to him he had been declaring his love for her. "And your thesis?"
"It's done. Just more revisions now."
"Of course." She thought she sounded like an idiot. Why couldn't she speak to him?
"And your family? Are they well?" Darcy continued, after a lull.
"I think so," Lizzy said. "At least as of a week ago."
"Oh, yes, of course." He thought he sounded like an idiot. Why couldn't he speak to her?
"And you? Are you well?" Lizzy finally asked, forcing herself to finally meet his gaze.
"Yes," he said briefly. They walked a short ways in silence before he addressed her once more.
"So, how do you like Glen Leigheas?" he asked, his eyes softly inquiring along with his words.
"More than I can say," Lizzy answered truthfully. She didn't dare say any more, who was she to have a right to praise his home? He had been the one to inherit this place, to take care of it and to make it flourish. He was the only one with a right to an opinion about it.
"I'm glad," he replied softly as they reached the house once more. He led his three guests in through a side door and into a pleasant sitting room that had not been included in the tour. He released Lizzy's arm and went off in search of his housekeeper, leaving Lizzy feeling very alone. However, her aunt soon pounced on her.
"I thought you said you didn't know him well!" her aunt cried quietly.
"I don't," Lizzy said. "That is, we know each other, but I don't know him well at all."
"He's an extremely pleasant fellow," Edward Gardiner cut in, "regardless. To invite us in, even though we're strangers... never saw the like of it. You don't see politeness like that very often these days, no sir."
"And he's certainly as handsome as his pictures," Mary Gardiner added, shrewdly watching her niece. She had the idea that there was something more in the air than mere politeness and she had been watching Lizzy and the laird of Glen Leigheas walking together... they certainly didn't interact with one another as if they were casual acquaintances! Lizzy had the grace to blush, and her aunt smiled knowingly before continuing. "I thought you had said that he was disagreeable?"
"He... wasn't at his most charming back in the fall," Lizzy finally owned. "But he really is this kind and polite... though he's by far on his best behavior today."
"So is your precious George wrong about our good host?" Mary Gardiner asked, interested.
"He's not my George anymore and yes: he was wrong... Darcy is by far the better man," she managed to say before her host appeared back in the room, carrying a tea tray himself. He set it down on a low coffee table and began to make up the cups for the Americans before coming to sit down on a low settee beside Lizzy. Lizzy, unnerved by his presence and by his oddly charming behavior, stared down at her cup and blew on the hot liquid to cool it. He kept the conversation general, talking mostly to the Gardiners. A half hour passed and Lizzy just sat on the couch, sipping her tea quietly and slowly nibbling a shortbread finger. At last the Gardiners rose, with regret, saying that they would be due back at the inn and that they had trespassed on Darcy's time too long. He rose too and shook their hands again, leading them back towards the front door and walking them to their car.
He fell into line with Lizzy once more and spoke softly to her.
"I understand that you'll be staying in Glen Leigheas for the next two days?"
"Yes."
"Would you..." He paused, swallowed and started again, feeling idiotic that he, at a supposedly mature 31 years of age, should feel so awkward talking to a young woman. "Would you let me introduce Georgiana to you?" he asked.
Lizzy was flattered that he should want to share his precious sister with her, feeling that she was utterly undeserving of such notice, and smiled.
"I'd like that," she said softly.
"I'll have her come by the Inn," Darcy promised, opening the door of the Gardiners' little touring car for her. Having seen her into the vehicle, Darcy shut the door firmly and saw the group drive off, holding up a cautious hand to them as they departed.
The next morning Lizzy was in a quandary: if Darcy was going to bring his sister to the inn to see her, shouldn't she be sure to actually be at the inn? And what of her aunt and uncle's plans?
They debated the dilemma over a breakfast table groaning with food, the trademark of the traditional British breakfast. The Gardiners suggested that Lizzy could stay at the inn instead of coming away with them and Lizzy quibbled, not liking to slight either her own relations or Darcy's. By a fortunate stroke of luck, they were not quite yet done with their post-breakfast coffee when their landlady bustled into the dining room, a pleased smile on her face.
"The Darcys have come to call on you," she said delightedly. She knew both Will and Georgiana quite well of course but they'd never come to the inn before, except maybe once in a while to the tap room. "I've shown them to my own sitting room, seeing as neither the bar nor the dining room seems quite appropriate."
"Well, Lizzy, you're done, why don't you go ahead and greet them?" Mary Gardiner suggested, knowing full well that if the Darcys had come to the inn that it was to see her niece. She sent a warning look to her husband, who had made to also get up but sat back down again. Lizzy nodded briefly and rose from the table. She followed her hostess upstairs to a comfortable little sitting room, checking her appearance swiftly in a hall mirror before she entered.
The Darcys had been sitting on a be-flowered sofa when Lizzy entered, but they rose as soon as they saw her, the innkeeper shutting the door discreetly behind her as she left.
"Elizabeth," Darcy said, coming forward towards her, his sister following a little behind. "Good morning."
"Good morning." Why did she have to blush like this every time he talked to her? Yes, she feel like an utter heel for having thought so poorly of him -- and for having said all those awful things to his face! -- but he seemed to have at least forgiven her to some degree and she should be trying her hardest to earn back his friendship. "I didn't think you would come so early."
"It's my fault," Georgiana Darcy said, stepping a little forward. She was as lovely as she had been in the old photograph, though perhaps much of the look of naivety was gone, replaced by a slight aura of timidity. "When my brother told me that he wanted me to come to meet you, I argued that we shouldn't monopolize your whole day if you're only here for a short time. So we came first thing."
"I didn't mean that it was a problem," Lizzy said hastily, liking Georgiana despite some of her earlier prejudices and finding the girl's shy vulnerability heartbreaking. "I'm glad to see you. Lizzy Bennet."
"Georgiana -- Georgie -- Darcy." They shook hands and smiled at one another. "I'm so pleased to finally meet you."
"And I you." Lizzy wasn't quite sure what else to say, the whole situation was a little awkward now that the pleasantries were out of the way. She could either step to one side and get to know Georgie better, or else she could step to the other and attempt to converse with Darcy. She didn't think that she could sit and talk to both as if this was a normal introduction, where none of the parties knew much about the others. They all knew too much: Georgie knew that her brother had once had feelings for Lizzy (she was sure), Lizzy knew of Georgie's unfortunate past, and Darcy knew what Lizzy knew, and also what his sister knew. It was impossible.
Fortunately Lizzy was spared the decision of what to do next by the timely arrival of her aunt and uncle, who were all smiles and courtesy. They, happily, knew nothing at all and could behave normally and charmingly. ... They told Georgiana how much they had liked her portrait and they conversed easily with Darcy about their prospective itinerary for the day. Georgie took advantage of the situation and came over to Lizzy, asking quietly if she would come and sit down. Lizzy followed her new acquaintance over to a set of armchairs and sat down.
"I really am glad that I had a chance to meet you," Georgie said, smiling gently. "I've heard so much about you. My brother thinks of you very highly."
"His praise is undeserved," Lizzy replied sadly. "I have heard a great deal about you, too. -- Caroline Bingley sings your praises constantly." Lizzy smiled at the look of resignation that crossed Georgie's face fleetingly at the sound of that woman's name.
"I'd rather she not hound my brother so," the girl said, giving Lizzy a shy but meaningful glance. Lizzy had the grace to blush and quickly changed the subject.
"So you are a musician?" she asked. "I've heard that you're very gifted. Your brother says so, of course, and also your cousin Richard and your aunt."
"Aunt Lorna or Aunt Catherine?" Georgie asked, curious.
"Your Aunt Catherine." Lizzy pulled a face, and Georgie let out a small peal of laughter, her first. Lizzy's motherly instincts were instantly aroused, longing to invoke that glorious laugh again... and the quick, pleased glance that Darcy threw her on hearing it.
"You're an academic, too, like my brother and Aunt Catherine," Georgie commented. "I've heard extremely good things of your work."
"Not from your aunt, I imagine," Lizzy said, earning a an amused smile from Georgie, though not another laugh.
"No, from my brother. He tells me that he's never encountered anyone without Scottish roots who wrote so well and so passionately on Scottish history."
"I fear he exaggerates," Lizzy demurred, surprised. She had never quite known what Darcy thought of her work as a scholar -- obviously he had liked her but did he really also respect her work, when she had only just been able to devote herself to pure Scottish history?
"Oh no! My brother never lies," Georgie said, sincerely. "You can ask him yourself." Darcy was indeed coming over and Georgie relinquished her chair to him, going to speak to the Gardiners once more.
"You made her laugh," Darcy said, sitting down.
"You say that as if she never laughed."
"She doesn't, often. Not any more."
"Since the... affair with George?" Lizzy asked, anxious to show that she had read Darcy's letter and been convinced by it.
"Yes," Darcy said, taking in her meaning with an unreadable look in his eyes. "I spent last year in Aberdeen, keeping an eye on her. University has helped her open up so much more but she has a tendency to cling to those she trusts, even now. I've never seen her so open with strangers, and I thank you." He took up Lizzy's hand and squeezed it before letting it fall once more.
"I like her," Lizzy said frankly. "Thank you for giving me the chance to meet her."
"The pleasure is all ours. And there's someone else who would like to meet you, too. An old friend."
"Who?" asked Lizzy, confused.
"Charles." Darcy's expression was guarded, as if he half expected Lizzy to lash out at him on hearing that name.
"Really?" asked Lizzy, delighted. Now that she knew that Charles was innocent of everything except for a weak spine she was anxious to see him ... and to find out for herself how he could have missed all of Jane's communications. Also, Darcy's inviting Charles to come and see her could only further demonstrate his penitence for having hurt Jane.
"Yes. He and Caroline arrived just as Georgie and I were heading out, but he promised to come along when he'd unpacked."
"And Caroline didn't?" asked Lizzy, an amused glint in her eyes. Darcy saw the glint and smiled tenderly at her, recognizing some of the old Lizzy.
"As a matter of fact... no, she didn't. To tell you the truth, I don't think she was too pleased to have us leave the moment she'd arrived, but I told her that it was her fault for coming along. I'd invited Charles, but she decided that she was indispensable."
"I can see that."
At that moment the door to the sitting room opened again and Charles Bingley stepped through, beaming brightly but with a concerned look on his face. He barely got through his introductions to the Gardiners before honing in on Lizzy, and Darcy gallantly gave up his seat to the newcomer.
"Lizzy, it is so good to see you again!" Charles declared, scooting the armchair a little closer to her. "It's been absolute ages. Are you well? Is your family well?" The glance indicated that there was perhaps once family member in particular whom he wanted to hear about, but Lizzy decided to tease him a little, her good humor having been restored by Darcy's frank comments about Caroline.
"My family is all very well. My father has decided to get a dog, seeing as his children have abandoned him. Lydia is currently protesting my uncle's stricture that she must begin university in the fall, and Kitty is praying that Lydia won't get the marks to go to Edinburgh, and will instead go somewhere further afield."
"And your sister? Is she still in London?"
There was no way that Lizzy could tease him further when she saw the anxious look in his eyes, so she relented. "Yes. Jane is still in London. Have you not heard from her? I know that she has tried to reach you, but I do not think that she was successful."
"No, no, I have not had that privilege," Charles said desperately. "I have not seen or heard from her since we had brunch together, the morning after the ceilidh, over nine weeks ago."
"I think that she would be glad to hear from you," Lizzy said gently.
"Do you?" Charles asked, clinging to her words.
"Yes."
Georgie broke into their conversation just then, though there was no word or action to suggest in the least that she was a rival for Charles's affections -- indeed, it seemed that Caroline was bound to be disappointed on more than one count, as clearly neither Darcy nor Charles cared one whit for her schemes and dreams.
"Lizzy, I was just speaking to your aunt and uncle, and while they have accepted an invitation to come to supper tonight, I was wondering if you were going to go visit the other Speyside distilleries with them today or if I could entice you to come spend a little more time at Leigheas House." The girl seemed earnest and a little hesitant, unwilling to impose upon a new acquaintance but also earnest in her invitation, apparently quite curious to further scope out the woman her brother was demonstrating such kindness to. Lizzy took pity on her and agreed to come spend the day with Georgie rather than with her aunt and uncle, who agreed readily enough to the plan, kindly saying that they didn't need a third wheel for the day. They therefore decided that they had better begin their slate of activities and took leave of the others. Darcy took this as a hint that they, too, should leave, and Lizzy went quickly to her room to fetch her winter wraps and handbag.
Chapter Twenty-Two:
As Charles set off in his own car, leaving the other three at the inn, Lizzy's sense that her relationship with the two Darcys was bizarre, impossible, returned. She slid into the front seat of Darcy's car, which Georgiana had thoughtfully left free for her, but she could not think of anything to say to them both that wouldn't be commonplace, impersonal. After shutting the door and adjusting her seatbelt Lizzy once again had no idea what to do, how to act with the Darcys as a pair. She could handle one or the other, not both.
Darcy bravely strode into the awkward silence, making a comment about the village. Georgie cut in with an anecdote about the street they were passing through. Lizzy managed a compliment for the charm of the town, and its relative prosperity in comparison to some of the other places she had been in rural Scotland so far. She thought she detected a slight proud smile on Darcy's profile, and smiled herself at this discovery of his vanity over things related to the people he stood as local leader to. -- It was a pride to be admired.
They soon reached the stone pillars that flanked the road leading to the Glen Leigheas estate and the two Darcys continued with their commentary, offering insights on the land and the landmarks that Lizzy had passed in ignorant admiration the day before. After a quarter of an hour the car stopped in the wide gravel driveway and Darcy killed the engine. He paused for a moment, glancing at his guest as if not quite sure what to do with her now that he had brought her here. Georgie eased the way, waiting for Lizzy as she alighted from her seat, leading her into the house.
"There you are, Will!" a familiar voice called out as Caroline Bingley strode into view, immaculately dressed in smart tweeds. She looked as if she had intended to dress to suit her surroundings but there was a smartness and a wrongness about her choices that made it clear that she did not belong here. The Darcys barely paid any attention to her.
"Caroline," Darcy said brusquely, hanging a battered burberry on the wall of the mud-room he'd entered through.
"I understand you know Elizabeth," Georgie said, a trace of cheekiness in her expression that Lizzy would never have anticipated. -- Georgiana Darcy was apparently not quite as shy and retiring as her brother thought. -- Caroline stopped in her tracks, completely surprised. She recovered her composure quickly however.
"Oh yes, dear Eliza, how nice to see you again. And how is your dear sister?" It was all Lizzy could do to keep from throwing a punch at the conniving ----
Darcy judged the situation quickly and distracted Caroline, giving Lizzy a moment to calm her temper.
"Is Charles back yet?"
"No. I've been all alone. What are we going to do today?"
"We were going to give Elizabeth a tour of some of the grounds while the sun is still shining," he said, glancing over at Lizzy to see if she accepted his proposal. The sun was, in fact, shining beautifully but there were strong, cold winds whipping around the tree branches.
"Oh, yes!" Georgie echoed, pleased with the plan. "We'll take her to see the loch and the great meadow and the rest of the park's highlights."
Caroline looked distastefully out the window and seemed to be weighing the advantages of spending the morning with Will and his sister with the disadvantages related to spending the morning outside in the cold wind. The disadvantages clearly loomed larger in her mind so she rolled her eyes.
"Well, as I've had the chance to see them with you already hundreds of times I'll leave you to it," she said with practiced nonchalance and an emphasis on certain words that stressed her close relationship with the brother and sister. She turned and flounced from the room, murmuring something about washing her hair.
"You don't mind, do you?" Darcy asked Lizzy softly, coming back over to her.
"No, not at all," she said, trying to let him know that she was very willing to see further who he really was, what his life was really like.
"Do you ride?" Georgie asked, smiling at her new friend. "We could take the Land Rover, but there's something more satisfying about going on horseback."
"Yes, I ride," Lizzy answered, faltering, finding herself unable to tear her glance away from Darcy's despite the fact that his sister had been talking to her. "Haven't for years, but I should remember the basics, as long as you don't put me on the wildest of stallions or anything."
"Will you be cold?" Darcy asked, solicitous. He liked the idea of riding beside Lizzy, showing her his life's work, his life's haven, but he also felt protective of her.
"I can lend you a more suitable coat," Georgie suggested, gesturing at Lizzy's long coat, bought for its smartness over its practical warmth. "Luckily you've got the right sort of shoes, my feet look bigger." Lizzy nodded and was soon kitted out warmly an insulated windbreaker, riding gloves and helmet and led out to the small stables to one side of the house in which the Darcys kept four saddle horses. One of the young groundsmen helped Georgie and her brother to saddle up three of these and held the reins as the group mounted. As Darcy first mounted Lizzy whispered to his sister.
"How many people do you have working on the estate?" she asked, in a little wonder, and also self-conscious. She was a little uncomfortable with the idea of servants, having grown up in a self-sufficent middle-class family.
"As many as we can reasonably afford," the girl said, shrugging. "There are five associated with the house and gardens on a regular basis -- not counting the girl who runs the tours -- and four full-time on the grounds. My brother believes in offering as many jobs as he can to the local people." Yet again Darcy's magnanimous nature was being thrust at her, utterly contradicting the pointed lies George had fed her all throughout the fall. She mounted the horse offered her quickly, not sure of what to say in reply.
Once aboard, it took Lizzy a few moments to situate herself, sliding her fingers into almost-forgotten positions on the beautifully crafted reins, asserting her control over the horse through the assumption of confident body language. She suddenly wondered if this was crazy, going horseback riding with the Darcys. Certainly she would never have thought of it even days before.
Georgiana led the way and Lizzy remembered something George had said about the younger girl's interest in riding. Certainly she was a talented equestrienne, charging along at a brisk trot towards the loch. Darcy stayed closer to Lizzy, riding at her side and keeping an eye on her less confident progress.
"How do you like him?" he asked her, after watching Lizzy's determined concentration on her control of her horse turn more natural.
"Him?" she asked, distracted.
"Seamus. The horse."
"I like him. Not the wildest stallion, thank you."
"More like eighteen-year old gelding," Darcy replied with an amused smile. Lizzy laughed and smiled warmly at him. Butterflies began to dance around in his stomach and he forced himself to focus on the scenery, telling the beautiful girl beside him about the loch and the estate.
"It's not the largest of lochs," he said, "but I do think it's one of the lovelier ones -- when we get to the shore I'll show you the most scenic corners. Family legend has it that the first Grants of Glen Leigheas wanted to build their tower in the center of the loch, and tried to build an island there... although I'm not entirely sure that that would even be possible back then. In any case, they failed, not realizing how deep it is in the center -- very deep -- and instead built their fortress home on the peninsula that juts out a little just there." He pointed to the place where the heart-shaped lake tucked in a little. "Of course there aren't even any ruins there anymore, thanks to my grandfather."
"I think Mrs. Reynolds said he was an Englishman with little sympathy for historic romanticism?"
"Something like that, yes," Darcy agreed wryly. "A businessman who believed in order. In his defense, the ruins were exceptionally ruined, having been plundered for an expansion of the town in 1886, so he didn't end up in much trouble with the historic preservation people."
"Much?" asked Lizzy, intrigued by both the story and the teasing Darcy who was telling it to her.
Darcy laughed and shrugged. Lizzy wasn't sure that she had ever heard him laugh before and stared at him, rapt, for a fraction of a moment. He caught the glance.
"What?" he asked, feeling a little breathless under that gaze.
"I don't think that I've ever heard you laugh," she said frankly, watching him. "You said that your sister doesn't laugh much, but I've heard her laugh several times already. You, no."
He had no idea how to reply to this oddly personal comment after their light, easy earlier conversation and was glad when his sister, who had been riding some distance ahead, reached the shore of the loch and called back to them to hurry up. He shifted one foot and nudged his horse into an easy canter, Lizzy's following close behind. Georgie dismounted from her mount and urged the others to do likewise when their horses had slowed again to a cooling walk. The Darcys tied the three sets of reins to a hitching post of probable Victorian origin.
"Did you bring your camera?" Georgie asked Lizzy, gesturing out at the beautiful grey and blue and green of the mountain beyond the loch. She hadn't, neither comfortable with taking pictures of the Darcy's property as a friend nor as a tourist in their company. Georgie smiled.
"Just as well that I did, then," she said cheerfully, further shedding the quieter shell that she had first maintained as she got to know her brother's guest a little better. "Come on, I'll show you the best places to photograph and then we can e-mail you copies later." The younger girl's laughter became abundant as she shepherded Lizzy about the shore of the loch, showing her the best angles and often forcing her to stand in the pictures with some combination of the Darcys alongside her. Darcy was once again thoroughly charming and polite, helping his sister and acting as an exemplary host to his guest. After a little while they returned to the horses lest they cool down too much, and started off again at a gentle walk towards the site of the no-longer-existent ruins where they briefly repeated the photo-op before visiting the other notable sites on the estate.
By the time the three trundled back into the stable yard Georgie's camera's memory card was quite full. Lizzy had tried to insist that there was no way she could use so many pictures but the young girl had developed a streak of determination that the other two could only marvel and smile at. So much for shy Georgiana! It seemed she was already well on her way towards social confidence, if given the right kind of support and not overwhelmed with too many strangers at once.
By this time the three were also rather cold and wind-tossed. Lizzy laughed as she caught sight of her hair reflected in the glass panel of the tack-room door and made a disparaging comment about it to Georgie.
"Oh, the hair's hopeless," Georgie agreed. "But you've got a nice color from the ride. Maybe you should be forced to be outside for hours on end in January more often!" Lizzy rolled her eyes and followed the girl back out into the stable yard where her brother was waiting. Lizzy self-consciously reached up to her hair and tried to surreptitiously smooth it. Darcy said nothing, but fell into line beside Lizzy as the girls walked back towards the house.
Caroline cornered Darcy the moment the three riders had settled by a roaring fire in the sitting room Lizzy and her aunt and uncle had been in only the day before. Lizzy watched, amused, as the man was neatly cut off from first herself and then from his sister, in a manner that would have done a hunting lioness quite proud. Darcy bore the interruption with good grace, seeing that Lizzy and his sister were once again starting to talk to one another. He was glad that these two young women -- the two young women whose opinions mattered most to him, even yet -- were having a chance to meet, to get to know one another. So glad that he would willingly endure Caroline's aggressive overtures for a little while in exchange.
"I don't think she gets it," Georgie commented to Lizzy, coming to sit down beside her new friend and gesturing towards Caroline. "Anyone could tell that he's not the least bit interested in her."
Lizzy smiled faintly, not really sure how to respond to this comment in a way that didn't either make reference to Darcy's past interests in her or make her sound jealous -- which, she didn't think she was. -- Was she?
Georgie took the hint that Darcy's love life was something Lizzy did not want to discuss and instead got up and walked over to one of the windows. She beckoned to Lizzy and the older girl followed her.
"You can just see the loch from this window, see how far we went today? In that direction, anyway. There's a map here." She walked a few steps to where a map of the estate hung framed on the wall. The younger girl traced her finger on the map, showing their earlier route from the stable-yard to the loch, to the ruins, to the meadow. "And of course, then, Ben Leigheas is just here behind the house, you'll have seen it on the ride into the park when we arrived this morning. ... There's the main road, see? And then the distillery is... here, with the edge of the village. I can't believe how incredibly lucky I was to grow up here," the girl said, concluding her tour across the map.
Lizzy nodded, silent. Georgie was right: the girl had been extremely lucky, just as Darcy had been a remarkably fortunate young man, to have this Highland paradise for a home. But, then, he deserved it. Darcy hadn't just been lucky to inherit, as George no doubt would have said, Darcy had worked for his inheritance. An estate wasn't a luxury -- or an anachronistic right -- an estate was a responsibility: Georgie had been right when she had said that it was her and her brother's duty to hire as many workers as possible, regardless of the need for them. This giant property, this large house, all the men and women and children and animals that lived near them, these were all Darcy's responsibilities. And he had done right by them, he had made sacrifices so that he could do right by them. When his father had died, Darcy had taken the time to look after his sister -- but not only his sister. He had taken time away from his studies -- his real passion -- in order to make sure that his property's contribution to the local economy was running smoothly, and he still took the time when he was in St Andrews to keep in touch. He was, really, the C.E.O. of a thriving business while he finished his doctorate and looked after his younger sister. ... Once again the truth confronted Lizzy boldly: Fitzwilliam Darcy was a good, kind, selfless and responsible man, and she was more than a little in awe of him and more than a little humbled that he had -- once -- loved her.
She choked a little, glancing over at where Darcy was conversing with Caroline, suddenly filled with regrets as to how she had treated him during that awful interview in her room. He didn't deserve that... he deserved love and kindness and someone to comfort and strengthen him, just as he comforted and strengthened so many others. She wished, now, that she could have been that one, but she knew it was probably too late.
His attention wandered as Caroline began to describe her most recent column, which, as far as he could tell, consisted of a reflection on the romantic nature of stately homes -- never mind that she had often complained about some of the less modern aspects of Leigheas House. He had no interest in hearing Caroline talk on about romance, he really had no interest in hearing Caroline talk at all just now, with Lizzy standing just across the room. They hadn't really had a chance to talk, not to really talk ... about his letter, about whatever she might be thinking, about his desire to repent for his interfering behavior as regarded her sister. He glanced up, to gauge Lizzy's thoughts, and was arrested by the way her eyes were searching him out, and the curious, heart-stopping expression contained in them. A moment passed like that, he thought he could hear his heart beating.
"Given how romantic it is here, have many people been married here?" Caroline suddenly asked, calling Darcy's attention towards herself and breaking the breathless link between himself and Elizabeth Bennet. When he turned he could hear Lizzy turning, too talking softly to his sister. He answered Caroline politely, but made to rise, now knowing that it was imperative that he find private time with Lizzy, that there were things that they both needed to say.
"No," he said, briskly. "Not since my parents were married here. We've never hired out our home for that sort of thing. Will you excuse me?" he added, rising from his seat and looking about. Lizzy and Georgie had just left the room.
"I've got your dinner on the table," Flossie Reynolds suddenly said, popping through the back door of the sitting room. "I'll just go and tell the young ladies. Charles Bingley has returned and will be in the dining room in a moment."
"I'd better wash up," Darcy said quickly to Caroline and darting out of the room. It was just as well that it was time to lunch, he reflected, he needed a little time to order his thoughts, to talk to Lizzy to learn what that look had meant, what it had said. But he needed to figure out how to talk to her honestly in a way that she would not rebuff.
The Leigheas House housekeeper had outdone herself, Darcy reflected when he finally entered the dining room and sat down at his seat at the head of the table. Out of long-standing tradition the seat at the foot was kept empty, for the lady of Glen Leigheas, and Georgie was seated by his right hand, Caroline at his left. Lizzy had sat down beside her new friend, with Charles across. The banker seemed distracted, poking at his soup and needing to be asked repeatedly for the salt; Darcy resolved to speak with him, too.
"This was wonderful," Caroline Bingley said, simpering towards Mrs. Reynolds as she cleared the soup plates. "Even better than the one you served at Christmas. ... The Darcys always hold a simply scrumptious Christmas season here, you know, Eliza," she added pointedly, towards Lizzy.
"I can imagine," Lizzy said politely. "I could read your anticipation in the Christmas card you sent us."
"Oh yes, since you've never seen Leigheas at Christmas, I suppose you do have to imagine."
"You've only been the once," Georgie broke in, pointedly. "Though I can assure you," she added to Elizabeth, "that they are rather lovely. Maybe you can come next year, if you don't go home instead."
Lizzy made a polite noise and caught Darcy's gaze on her. She blushed and turned her attention towards the new course that Mrs. Reynolds had set down. Caroline seemed undeterred by her earlier set-down at the hands of her hostess, and continued to drive the conversation, heavily lacing it with names and references that the American would be unlikely to get. Lizzy bore this verbal attack well, confident in her own dislike for the snobby columnist and the knowledge that her own lack of reactions and composure would drive the other woman wild. It made for an interesting meal.
When the dessert plates were finally cleared, Georgie suggested that she and Lizzy go upload the photographs from the morning's ride, a task they had been distracted from starting by the start of the meal. Caroline soon latched onto the party, determined to see what exactly the trio had been up to while out on their own. This gave Darcy the chance to tackle his distracted friend who remained stationary in his seat even after the three women had left.
"Charles?" Darcy asked him, coming up beside him.
"What?" the banker asked, abruptly pulling his attention back into the moment. "Gracious, everyone's gone. What are the plans for the afternoon, then?"
"The others are uploading the photographs Georgie took this morning, while out on the estate. Did you have a good morning? You were gone some time."
"I was trying to clear my head," Charles said, getting up from his chair and following Darcy down the hall into the library. "Lizzy said... Lizzy told me this morning that Jane had tried to get ahold of me. That she wanted to hear from me. Why didn't she succeed?" Charles's eyes were concerned, and he had obviously been mulling over this discrepancy ever since he had driven off from the Glen Leigheas Inn.
"I have something to tell you," Darcy said, the weight of his wrong-doing heavy on his shoulders. Yes, he needed to make this right, but what if -- what if Charles hated him? What if he lost this friendship, which meant so much to him? -- But then, what if Lizzy stepped out of his life forever, on account of her sister's prolonged hurt? He was forced to choose between the two, and decided that he must do the right thing, the thing that was best for both Charles and Lizzy, even if he, Darcy, ended up the loser.
He sat down in an armchair and Charles did the same, watching, waiting.
"I have something to confess, and I don't think that you will be very pleased with either me or your sister."
"Caroline? Tell me. Your mysterious hints aren't doing me any good."
"Lizzy's right," Darcy replied bluntly. "Lizzy is right. Her sister does still care for you. Her sister has, Lizzy told me, tried -- unsuccessfully -- to contact you."
"How? Why?" Charles's world was spinning and he threw out the questions desperately, seeking answers.
"I was wrong, Caroline was wrong to insinuate that Jane might not care for you. We never knew her as well as you did, as Lizzy did. Your opinion, her opinion, should matter more. I don't know what damage we have inadvertently -- for, on my part at least, please trust that it was inadvertent -- caused, but Jane did have strong feelings for you. I don't know that anything can be done now, I suppose you can only try, but I think that you should contact her. Let her know that you were not the one at fault. Blame me. If I hadn't interfered in what wasn't any of my business... you might, even now, be with the woman whom you love."
Charles had received this news with surprise, and sadness. There was no anger in his face, but his expression was grave.
"No," he said. "No. I was the one at fault, not you. I let myself be persuaded to follow your plan. I should never have done so. I should never have just left Jane like that. I don't know that I can fix things between us now, either. It was my fault."
"I'll never agree to that," Darcy said firmly. "Never. And there's the matter of Jane's own communications with you -- I believe Lizzy when she says that Jane tried repeatedly to talk to you -- why did she never succeed? Is there any way that you couldn't have received her calls?"
"I don't know," Charles said. "That had been bothering me, ever since this morning. Jane didn't know my Edinburgh address," he admitted, "and while the St Andrews realtor should have forwarded any mail, I don't know that Jane would have sent anything there. We never e-mailed, though my work e-mail, at least, is available online -- wouldn't Jane have tried that? And my phone? I can't understand it. There are so many ways to contact people these days... how could Jane have failed to reach me?"
"Lizzy said that her sister tried."
"And you believe her, yes."
"Could -- pardon me if this is out of line -- ... but is there any way that the other interested party in this matter -- your sister -- could have intercepted messages? It is the only other explanation I've thought of."
"Caroline? Surely she wouldn't! I can't possibly accuse her of that... she loves me, and would never do something like that... especially when the conditions of our agreement about Jane were that we should wait and see if Jane contacted me! It was always about testing to see if Jane loved me, not about getting rid of Jane!"
Darcy was suddenly filled with more misgivings. "But it was... to Caroline."
"What are you saying?"
"Caroline did want Jane out of the way. She has repeatedly tried to convince me that you and my sister would be quite an attractive couple. Even all throughout the fall, when you were seeing Jane. And has made slighting comments about both Bennet sisters to me." He jaw hardened at the remembered insults.
"Why on earth would she say that?" Charles asked, dumbfounded. "Georgie's like a sister to me..."
"I realize that this is inconclusive, but Lizzy said something about a Christmas card at dinner.... did you know about this?"
"That Caroline sent a Christmas card to the Bennets? No. If I had known, I would have added a message to Jane, agreement or no agreement. Everyone deserves Christmas cheer, even gold-diggers... if Jane had been one."
"Do you think that Caroline withheld her card from you on the basis that it would hurt you to have her contact Jane?"
"Yes... well, I would, only you just said that Caroline had never liked Jane! Why would she send a Christmas card to someone she disliked, whom she had never sent a card to before, whom she wanted out of our lives?"
"Those are good questions," Darcy said grimly.
"I think I'm going to explore the possibility that someone has been hacking into my e-mail and my mobile." Charles's own expression was grim, but determined.
"I think that would be an excellent idea."
"...And would you mind very much if I ended my vacation here a little early and went to London?"
"Not at all. I'll tell Finn that you'll be needing the helicopter to take you to the airport." He had no sense of what would come of Charles's explorations and his planned confrontation with Jane -- whether Jane could forgive any of them, whether Caroline really was that malicious... He only knew that he trusted Lizzy completely and that it was paramount that he try to right the wrongs he had done her. Even if -- even if she did not love him, she must have the chance to see that he was sorry, that he cared. He resolved to go find her, to tell her what he had done and to beg any help he could to ease the way for his friend and her sister
Chapter Twenty-Three:
Posted on July 14, 2008
Georgie Darcy led her two guests upstairs after the meal had ended, chattering away cheerfully about the photographs she'd taken on the morning's ride, evidently now quite comfortable in Lizzy's company despite their short acquaintance. Both Lizzy and Caroline were distracted however, the former wondering whether her inner turmoil about the elder Darcy would show up in the pictures, the latter deadly curious as to what exactly Eliza Bennet had been up to this morning.
The room that Georgie entered was new to Lizzy; a handsome and well-loved room, paneled in warm oak and spanned with bookshelves and filing cabinets, a large and beautiful portrait of the Scottish girl on the wall. The American visitor paused a moment on the threshold, realizing that this was Darcy's study, his own and personal space. She wasn't sure if she should be there.
"Come on," Georgie insisted, sitting down in her brother's desk chair unceremoniously. Caroline promptly took the only other chair in the room, leaving Lizzy to hover in the background, having finally worked up the courage to cross into Darcy's den. As Georgie turned on a laptop and plugged the camera into it, Lizzy let her attention wander around the room, drinking up this physical manifestation of Darcy's mind and character.
It was both an elegant and a functional room, as Lizzy had first noticed; the bookshelves less elegant than the ones in the library downstairs, and were full of practical volumes related to Darcy's interests in medieval and Scottish history and culture, languages, estate management, and whisky. Aside from the portrait of his sister, Darcy had only decorated the room with a number of framed maps and photographs. Lizzy picked up the framed photograph closest to the computer, an informal family portrait of what she presumed to be the Darcy family, from years ago. Darcy was a boy verging into adolescence, with hints of the handsomeness that he was to grow into, looking happier than ever Lizzy had seen him in all the months that she had known him. Georgie was an infant swaddled in a tartan rug, her arms entwined around the neck of her breathtakingly-beautiful mother, Darcy senior sitting a little to the side. Lizzy put down the frame quickly and self-consciously after a moment, glancing over at her hostess to see if she minded. Georgie met her glance briefly and smiled a little, as if to indicate that she was pleased by Lizzy's curiosity, before returning to the computer screen and importing the digital photographs onto the computer.
"Will's computer is so much faster than mine," Georgie explained while the three waited for the pictures to load. "I always take advantage of this, whenever I can."
"Why don't you get a new computer?" Caroline asked, impatient.
"I've never gotten around to it and I have so much special software on my computer for my courses, it seems too much trouble to replace it. Oh! Here we go." The pictures had loaded and Georgie scrolled through them in a slideshow of sorts. Here was Lizzy by the loch, views of the wintery loch, Georgie and Lizzy, Lizzy and Darcy...
Lizzy's inner turmoil did show up in the pictures: each time she and Darcy were pictured together, the two seemed tense with one another. And whenever Darcy was the one taking the photograph, Lizzy didn't quite meet the camera's gaze.
"You really don't photograph well, Eliza" Caroline said bluntly, pleased. "Well, this is a bore. I'm going to go find the others." She strode out of the room and Georgie gestured to the now-empty chair with a flick of her head.
"Sit," she said. "And don't believe her for a minute. There are some remarkable ones here too." The girl paused a moment at a candid photograph she had taken of her brother and his guest at the site of the old tower-house. In the picture Darcy was telling Lizzy something about the extremely sparse ruins, touching her shoulder lightly and gesturing out with the other hand; Lizzy was listening to him, glancing up through her eyelashes in a shy, rapt manner.
"Do you like him?" Georgie asked, herself blunt with a curiosity that momentarily killed any of her well-bred politeness. "Not that it's really any of my business, but after spending a little time with you, and after everything he's said in the past, and, well, after this ..." she gestured at the screen, "I just can't help but wonder."
"Yes," Lizzy answered, her eyes averted from the picture on the computer screen. "Yes, I like your brother. I admire him."
"I won't probe further," the girl said, recovering herself. "But thank you for answering. Shall we see the others?"
Lizzy nodded, not wanting to share with Darcy's sister all of her horrible accusations and misconceptions, not wanting to hurt this girl's hopes by suggesting that if Darcy had once had feelings for her new friend that those hopes were probably hopeless now. They made it through the rest of the files with only very generalized conversation, regardless of a few more telling images, and Lizzy was left feeling confused once more. She did admire him, so much. And she had no idea where she stood with him at all, regardless of all of his courtesy here at his home... especially because of all of his courtesy.
"Shall I burn you a DVD of the better ones, then?" Georgie asked, unperturbed by her companion's occasional silence. Lizzy nodded. "Could you hand me a blank disc?" the younger girl added, gesturing towards one of the filing cabinets. "Top drawer, over to the right. There should be a whole stack, just grab one." Lizzy, not having any good reason to refuse to rifle through Darcy's drawers, got up and crossed towards the cabinets.
She opened the drawer easily, it was not locked. She located a blank disc easily too, handing it to Georgie, who instantly popped it into the computer and began fiddling with the files she wanted burned. "And a case?" the younger girl asked. Lizzy returned to the drawer and began to look for a case.
She found the empty disc-cases without trouble, but she lingered a moment to read the labels on the hanging files that were also stored in that drawer. They were related to Darcy's thesis and her eyes itched to read them... she was morbidly curious to read his academic writing, never having had the chance to do so before, save with the brief translation he had done for her, which was not quite the same thing at all -- though excellent writing in its own way. She controlled herself for the moment, however, and handed the box to her hostess, who seemed to be happily engaged in checking her e-mail while the disc burned.
"Oh!" the younger girl exclaimed, softly. "I've got to make a phone call... my partner for a composition project seems to have gotten confused as to when I was going to be on and off campus. I'd better just go clue him in briefly. Be back in a few minutes, when the disc is done you can just take it out and do whatever you want with it." Apologizing again for abandoning her new friend, Georgie darted from the room to make her call.
Thus left alone for the first time in Darcy's study, Lizzy's sense that she was intruding in a personal space returned. But, she realized, if she was already going to feel guilty for being in his room when she was ordered to wait there, she might as well seize her moment to snoop on his thesis, as she would never get this chance again until after it had been published, whenever that might be. She stole back over to the filing cabinet and lifted out one of the hanging files, carrying it back over to the desk with her, and began to read.
His writing was direct and powerful, not without a certain rhythm, and with an air of well-researched assurance. He handled his topics and his sources with patience and clarity, quietly convincing his readers of his truth in a way that utterly contradicted his aunt's flailing, flamboyant style. There was none of Lady Catherine's arrogance here; here was a scholar.
If Lizzy had been struggling against her admiration for and regret about Darcy earlier, it was nothing to what she was forced to struggle with now: she knew in her heart that she had utterly fallen in love with this man's mind, even as she had been teetering on the edge of falling for his strength, his patience, his compassion, his sense of responsibility. She flushed scarlet when the focus of her thoughts suddenly entered the room, unexpected in place of his missing sister.
"I'm sorry," Lizzy exclaimed softly, an awful sense of embarrassed familiarity settling on her. Once again she had been caught invading his space, this time a more personal space -- and now even rifling through his papers. She wouldn't blame him for casting her out into the cold for her impertinent nosiness.
He seemed surprised to see her there but strode over to her and touched her arm, compelling her to sit down once more, to stay. In doing so he caught sight of the papers spread before her and sent her a quizzical glance.
"And how do you like chapter twelve?" he asked, trailing his fingers around the back of her seat as he made his way towards the vacant chair.
"I'm so sorry. I don't know what made me do it... but I was getting a blank DVD from your drawer for your sister and I just couldn't help it... I wanted to know what your writing was like."
"So, how do you like chapter twelve?" Darcy repeated, leaning in a little. He had wanted to talk to her but his prepared comments drifted away as he saw her there, curled up with his thesis, reading it raptly with a curious expression on her face. The expression had passed when he had interrupted her, but he still wanted to know what she thought of his work... of him.
"I think it's incredible," Lizzy replied, truthfully. "It's extraordinary... your writing is extraordinary."
"And my ideas? They aren't plagiarized?" he made the joke cautiously, knowing that it would open the floodgates on their past emotional encounters, that there would be no turning back from whatever was next said.
She raised a hand to her thoroughly crimson face and spoke from within her hiding place, her voice muffled by the barrier. "No. No. I was an idiot... an utter idiot, and so very, very wrong. Please forget everything I said. There's no way you could be a plagiarist, you're probably the best still-student scholar I've ever met." She lowered a finger an inch, letting her lovely eyes peep out over her hand, shyly offering her apologies to Darcy. He was seized with hope at her comments and lifted her hand away from her face, setting it in her lap, not quite daring to keep hold of it or to touch her further, given her vehement rejection of his overtures in the past.
"I'm the one who should be asking for forgiveness," he said gravely, watching her for any sort of cue. "I'm the one who has done wrong, you were only mistaken and taken in. I want you to know that I took your words to heart. I know that I was mistaken, and that you were right, about your sister. I've confessed my part to Charles. He's going to go down to London, to see if she'll talk to him. Do you think she will? Can she?" His glance was anguished, full of his sense of responsibility. Lizzy was touched by his declaration that he had been the one in the wrong -- yes, he had been mistaken about Charles and Jane, but she had been the one in the wrong all this time, on so many more counts... She turned in her chair to face Darcy for the first time.
"You spoke to Charles? Charles wants to find Jane?" That he would do this for her heartened her and gave her hope that her sister might find some happiness after all.
"We're looking into the reasons why Charles never heard from Jane -- there's a chance that Caroline interfered -- but Charles wants to find your sister, to tell her the truth, to beg her forgiveness. Where can he find her? Will your sister see him? Can she forgive him?" The question of forgiveness was in the forefront of Darcy's mind, as he, too, desperately sought the forgiveness of a Bennet sister.
"I don't know," Lizzy said. "If I had been Jane, I would have refused to see Charles after all this time. But Jane -- Jane will forgive him, I think, if he goes to her and explains. Here." She wrote down Jane's address and contact information on a post-it note and handed it to Darcy, unaware of the pain that her comment about her own unforgiving nature had given him.
He took the note and folded it away in his wallet and then got up and walked towards the window. There was silence for a moment, and then a clicking sound: the disc had finished burning. Lizzy took it up and placed it into the empty case, not entirely sure of what to do, whether to stay or whether to go. Darcy turned around at the noise, however.
"What's that?" he asked.
"The photographs from this morning," Lizzy said, briefly. "Georgie was burning me a copy, as there were too many to easily e-mail. I'm not stealing all your papers, or anything like that, I promise."
"I didn't think you were."
There was silence again, neither one entirely certain how to go on, whether to prolong the interview or to break it off.
"You said that if you had been Jane that you would not forgive Charles," Darcy blurted out after a moment.
"If I thought that someone had intentionally hurt me, yes, I would not be quick to forgive them," Lizzy replied, choosing her words carefully.
"But 'your good opinion once lost is not lost forever'?" he countered urgently.
"No." She met his glance candidly. "If I were that resolute I should have to have impeccable judgement. And I'm afraid that I am occasionally very, very wrong in my opinions."
"Then you think that your opinions were wrong."
"Very wrong, some of them." Her eyes specified which opinions.
He couldn't believe his ears, his eyes -- it was too much. He seized up her hand again. "Elizabeth."
"I am so, so sorry," she said, rising and holding tight onto his hand. "I was blinded and wrong, and cannot forgive myself for saying the things that I said to you. For making the grave, grave error of not verifying my source material, and for letting my thesis shape the facts I was willing to acknowledge. For accusing you of things you had not done, for calling you criminal and a plagiarist and inhumane... when you are a great scholar, a good man, a caring brother and local leader, when you are a person worthy of great admiration... not thoughtless condemnation."
"If I say that you're still young, that you have ample time to learn from whatever small mistakes you may have made, don't take it as an insult -- I know that my ability with words fails me when I'm around you, and I mean you no disrespect -- but I am the one who should have known better... as you say, sources should have been verified. Evidently we, neither of us, are quite as careful in our own lives as we are in our work... I did not mean to hurt you. I am sorry for the pain I caused you, and your sister, and my friend."
"I believe you. I believe that you didn't mean to hurt me, just as I didn't mean to hurt you... much. I think we should put all that behind us, because, as you said, neither of us was thinking clearly or were in possession of all of the facts, as a good scholar should."
"Are there any other facts I need to know, then?" Darcy asked, suddenly, taking up her other hand in his free one. "My feelings are unchanged. I need to know what yours are now."
A moment of silence, and a surprised, pleased look crossed Lizzy's face.
"Unchanged?"
"Unchanged."
With that confirmation Lizzy was utterly elated: she had known Darcy's worth for days now, his mind for just minutes, but she had never entertained the prospect that his feelings could have weathered her horrible onslaught. But they had and she could now appreciate them, appreciate him. She launched herself forward and placed a cautious kiss on his lips, half afraid that he would back away. He caught hold of her, quelling those fears, and reciprocated, at first gently and then urgently, losing his hands in her soft flame-golden hair. It was for each of them a shocking moment of bliss, a realization of dreams, some of recent origin, some long-desired.
"Oh!"
At the soft syllable Lizzy and Darcy sprang apart and faced the door. Georgie was standing there, an astonished and pleased look on her face. "I'm sorry," she said.
"What was it?" Darcy asked, a little annoyed to be interrupted and a little embarrassed to have been caught out by his younger sister.
"I was just coming to collect Lizzy. Her aunt and uncle have returned early from their day's outing and just got here. I said they were welcome to stay, even though supper won't be served for a couple of hours yet."
"I'd better go to them," Lizzy said, loosing Darcy's hands reluctantly and glancing up at him shyly.
He felt like calling out 'don't,' but knew that she was right. She smiled -- a shy, loving smile -- at him -- and crossed to the threshold, where she turned back and looked at him again.
"Do you have all of the facts now?" Lizzy asked cheekily. He nodded, smiling widely, and made to follow her downstairs to his other guests. His sister delayed him a moment.
"It's nice to see that you don't waste time about the important things," she commented softly, with a pleased smile. "Now you be very, very nice to her because I've always wanted a sister." Darcy flushed a little but gave her a very pointed glare, and she let him pass.
The Gardiners were seated in the same family sitting-room that the Darcys appeared to favor when Lizzy arrived downstairs. She embraced her aunt and uncle warmly, inquiring about their day of touring Speyside distilleries.
"What did I miss?" she asked, taking a chair near her aunt's settee.
"We saw three distilleries and a museum," Edward Gardiner replied with satisfaction. "But your aunt protested that she could not possibly handle a fourth, so we decided to come back to town and then here. Did you have a nice day?"
"Yes, what did we miss?" asked Mary Gardiner, glancing up at the Darcys as they entered the room. The question was asked in innocence, but the matching blushes on the face of her niece and her host instantly raised her suspicions. Georgiana Darcy took pity on the pair and replied for them.
"We took Lizzy out for a tour of the grounds on horseback and took reams and reams of pictures. Maybe we can show them to you later, or else Lizzy has a copy." She turned and addressed Lizzy. "You did get your copy, didn't you?"
"Yes -- that is, it's still in your brother's study."
Charles entered the room then, and looked delighted to see Lizzy's aunt and uncle once more. "Mr and Mrs Gardiner! What a pleasure to see you again. I understand you're staying to supper?"
The Gardiners nodded and offered other gestures of assent.
"Excellent, excellent. Darcy, could I have a word?" Darcy nodded and followed his friend out of the room, leaving Georgie and Lizzy to entertain the Gardiners.
"I had a look at my laptop this afternoon," Charles said briefly, when the two men had reached a quiet corner. "And someone had set up a bounce list for my accounts, which included Jane's professional e-mail. You're right... someone was interested in preventing Jane from contacting me. And it may have been Caroline... I'm not sure who else would have access to both my work and my home accounts. What am I supposed to do?"
"Go to London. Talk to Jane, tell her what you know, and how you feel."
"Will she even speak to me?" Charles worried.
"Lizzy thinks that Jane will."
"You've spoken to Lizzy again, then?"
There was a pause as Darcy remembered his encounter with Lizzy. "... Yes."
"When, when should I go?"
"Finn's made the helicopter ready, as soon as you book a ticket tell him when you need to leave, and he'll get you to the airport. Don't worry about supper, you don't need to stay if you can get an earlier flight. And here, take this." It hurt a little to give away the only item that Lizzy had ever given him -- the post-it note with Jane's address on it -- but he knew he needed to.
Charles smiled his gratitude on reading the note and went running off towards his room, no doubt seeking a quiet corner in which to make a reservation for the next flight to London. Darcy stood a moment, watching after his friend, and then moved to head back towards the sitting room. He was interrupted by Caroline.
"Oh, is everyone downstairs again?" she asked, taking up Darcy's arm. "Lead the way." Darcy shrugged and led the way, watching in amusement as Caroline, on entering the room, looked confused at the sight of the Gardiners.
"Who?" she asked Darcy quietly, not sure who the two visitors were, and how polite she needed to be towards them.
"Edward and Mary Gardiner," Darcy replied simply. "They're only in the area a short time, and are staying to supper. Edward, Mary, this is Caroline Bingley. You've met her brother Charles, of course."
This left Caroline no better off than she was before in terms of information, so she was guardedly polite as she sat down beside Georgie Darcy and studied the tray of water, teas and biscuits that had been set out on the coffee table.
"Yes, of course," Edward Gardiner commented pleasantly. "Is he coming back?"
"I should think so, though he leaves us shortly," Darcy said, with a significant look at Lizzy. "He flies to London. No doubt he'll pay his respects before he goes."
"Goodness. Business?"
"Something like that." Lizzy smiled at Darcy and turned and mouthed the word Jane to her aunt and uncle, smiling brightly.
"Charles is going to London?" Caroline asked sharply, turning between the Dacrys with a confused look on her face. "He said nothing to me! I thought we were here for a whole week!"
"This was more important," Darcy replied.
Feeling ill at ease with her brother's imminent and mysterious departure and the questions it left her as to her own welcome at Leigheas House without him, Caroline decided to go onto the attack herself, so as to feel less defensive and ill-informed. Lizzy Bennet was her natural target, and she chose her barb carefully so as to embarrass the American girl and to remind Darcy of the girl's unsavory connections.
"Eliza, dear, it's been so long since we had a chance to catch up," Caroline said, leaning over to where Lizzy sat beside the two American strangers. "I've scarcely seen you since my ceilidh -- such a successful night, don't you think? I heard mention then that you were seeing someone. A waiter I think? A university drop-out? How's that working out for you?"
Darcy's eyes had become riveted on Lizzy; he had been easily able to catch the reference even without the name, and while he knew that Lizzy's eyes had been opened in regards to George it still stung like hell to hear that Lizzy had been seeing George at the very time that he himself had been falling in love with her. Even when he was hearing it from someone as unreliable and bitter as Caroline.
"That's long over," Lizzy said firmly, trying to reassure Darcy with her eyes even while she confirmed her past relationship with his archenemy. They'd only just come to an understanding and she was desperate to let him know that George was firmly in the past, a mistake.
"Whatever happened?" Caroline persisted, seeing in delight that Lizzy looked discomfited and Darcy more aloof. "From what members of your family said that night, it sounded like you and this George Wickham were getting pretty hot and heavy!"
The glass that Georgie had been holding dropped from her hand onto the floor and the young woman immediately dove down towards it to sweep up the pieces, her brother and Lizzy close behind her. Caroline wondered what all the fuss was as the two postgraduate students paused, ascertaining that all was well with the young musician. It was just a glass, after all! ... Though Georgie did look far from well, and asked to be excused for a moment and strode briskly from the room, her brother close behind her.
The American woman broke into the awkward lull in the conversation as Lizzy finished sweeping the shards of glass into a pile with the aid of a napkin and began to mop up the spilled water.
"I hear that you're a journalist," Mary Gardiner said politely. "Do you enjoy your work?"
Caroline beamed with her exquisitely perfect smile and took the bait, quite pleased to center the conversation on herself and her work. "I love it," she said frankly, casting a brief dirty look at where Lizzy was, on the floor, cleaning. "My column is carried in several of the most prominent magazines -- but I don't suppose you're familiar with our British publications? I also contribute to several of the online magazines -- it's so important to keep up to date and to exploit multiple varieties of media these days..."
Georgie stayed absent until shortly before the start of supper, when the guests were assembling in the front hall. When the girl did finally appear, Lizzy swooped down on her immediately, drawing her aside as Caroline proceeded to expound on the work she had had done to her teeth to dentist Mary Gardiner, as Darcy and Edward Gardiner talked quietly to an impatient Charles who had been unable to book a flight until the next morning.
"Are you all right?" Lizzy asked kindly, anxiously.
"You already asked me that," Georgie said. "And I am, I promise. It was just a bit of a shock, hearing that name again. My brother and anyone else who knows have been so careful around me -- it was just a shock, and I didn't really care to repeat the experience, so I stayed clear of Caroline for the rest of the afternoon. She seems to be getting along well with your aunt. Does she know that Mrs. Gardiner is your aunt?"
Lizzy sidestepped Georgie's attempt to change the conversation by answering to it briefly before resuming her agenda. "No, I don't think anyone's said. But you're sure that you're all right? I feel so stupid, having laid you open for such a shock... and your brother..." This was the point that stuck with Lizzy most; she had no idea what Darcy's real reaction to the news about her past relationship with George. He was an intelligent man and would likely question the veracity of Caroline's secondhand story (secondhand from members of Lizzy's family -- her cousins? her aunt? -- whose truthfulness might be in question), but she had confirmed that there had been a relationship. Was Darcy disgusted? He, too, had been absent for a time after the incident and when he had returned he had sat across the room. She had to ask Georgie outright. "What did your brother say to you when you were alone?" Her eyes entreated Darcy's sister to speak, she needed to know.
"He told me that you had met... him and that you'd originally believed some of the lies he told you. My brother said that he'd told you... everything. That you know what happened to me, those years ago."
"I was mistaken," Lizzy said firmly, trying to maker her position definitely clear to Georgie Darcy. "I was bitter about an insult your brother had paid me, not knowing I could hear him, and I was only too ready to dislike him. This made me listen to George, when I met him by chance in Edinburgh, we bonded through our grudge against your brother. We got along. You know that he can be charming. We started seeing each other... I'd come stay with him in Edinburgh, he would come and stay with me in St Andrews. ... But I was wrong about him. I was taken in, as you were. I've long since realized that your brother is the better man."
"The best of men... but I think you've figured that out, judging from what I saw earlier." Georgie's expression had been patient, defensively listening, throughout Lizzy's tale, but gained some cheerful animation when she alluded to her brother's blossoming romance. Lizzy had the grace to blush.
"But you understand now?" Lizzy asked, desperately anxious that things be all right with Georgiana, even if she was still a little unsure about Darcy. "I don't know why Caroline felt the need to drop that name in the conversation earlier, but I never meant for my past mistakes to hurt you. We were both taken in, we both wanted to believe that sympathy and charm were the same as kindness and goodness."
"I know," Georgie said, reassuring her new friend. "I understand. And Caroline doesn't know... the truth, she couldn't have known that she was hurting me." But, resolved the younger girl, regaining some of her inner playfulness I wouldn't mind offering her and unpleasant shock in return. Georgie smiled at Lizzy and then turned at the sound of the meal-gong to escort Edward Gardiner into the dining room
Chapter Twenty-Four:
Posted on July 21, 2008
Mrs Reynolds, whether through some machination of her own or on one or other of the Darcys' orders, had set the supper-table formally, complete with name-cards at every place. The two American women sat on either side of their host, with the other gentlemen in the middle of the table and the other two women further down. If Lizzy was curious about the change in the seating arrangements -- for Georgie had been at her brother's right hand earlier in the day yet was now near the foot of the table -- she made no comment, but gratefully accepted that seat between Darcy and Charles. She was anxious to gauge Darcy's reaction to the incident earlier, knowing that while Georgie was now fine and that while her own relationship with George was long done, Darcy might not have taken the news of her earlier relations with his rival very well at all -- after all, he'd taken the news of George's friendly overtures badly enough. She needed to know whether her newfound understanding with the doctoral student could weather this latest explosion, now that she was so in awe of him.
Lizzy took the first moment that she could for private conversation with Darcy, as the soup was being served. She was tentative, desperately afraid of hurting him, or them through the clouds of misunderstanding once again.
"Can we talk?" Lizzy asked carefully, touching her host's sleeve gently. "I haven't had a chance since... Can we talk later about what happened earlier?"
He smiled cautiously at her, touching her hand with the most feathery of caresses. "After we eat," he said. "When the others aren't here."
Lizzy nodded and gave him a small smile. The meal progressed with Darcy being extremely polite and solicitous, but otherwise distant. Lizzy wondered what was going through his mind and, distracted, picked at the delicious foods in front of her.
Georgiana watched from the other end of the table. She wasn't entirely sure why her brother and her American guest were behaving so distantly with each other now, but she wasn't well-pleased with it. She searched around in her mind for ways to smooth whatever bump they had hit -- she was sure it had something to do with Caroline's comments earlier, everything had been fine until that moment -- and concluded that she couldn't really do more for them, that they would have to talk to one another after the meal. She'd make sure that they talked if it looked like they weren't going to -- goodness knew her brother could be an idiot at times -- and in the meanwhile she could entertain herself by exacting some sort of revenge on Caroline.
Georgie's face was a picture of pleased frankness as she leaned across the table to address Caroline, Charles and the Gardiners momentarily distracted by their own friendly, uninhibited conversation.
"I'm so pleased for my brother," she said, her one dimple sweetly showing, faint traces of mischief peeping out of her usually timid eyes.
"And why is that?" asked Caroline, ever on the prowl for gossip on Darcy.
"I've never seen him so happy," Georgie continued. "And I'd never have guessed the cause if I hadn't seen it for myself."
"Mysterious girl, do enlighten me."
"Why Lizzy Bennet, of course. He's crazy about her. I'm hoping that this means he won't be one of Scotland's most eligible bachelors for very much longer -- I've always wanted a sister, and Lizzy's just a lovely person."
Caroline's pale face turned a fraction paler as she digested Georgie's bombshell. She stared first at Darcy, then at Lizzy, and turned back to her hostess.
"Sweetheart," Caroline said, "I know that you're anxious to see your brother settle down happily, but just look at them! I'm sure she's not your ideal sister-in-law -- I mean, really! -- and there's no sign of affection between them! Look, Eliza Bennet is sitting there picking at her fish, and your brother is sitting there conversing politely with Mrs Gardiner. I have no idea how she ended up invited to Glen Leigheas, but I wouldn't read too much into it, dear."
Lizzy and Darcy were seemingly ignoring each other, so Caroline's assumptions weren't too far off the mark, but Georgie wanted her barb to hit home. And, after all, Georgie's story was the truth.
"Maybe they aren't all over each other in public -- I've always found that a bit vulgar, you know... women leaning all over Will, whispering to him and all that -- but I walked in on them this afternoon... so I know that there is fairly major mutual attraction going on under the surface. And obviously Will wants Lizzy around, why else would he invite her aunt and uncle to come, considering he only met them yesterday? Will's polite, but he doesn't usually invite perfect strangers over... you know full well that he usually turns tail and flees in the other direction!"
Caroline's glance had become even more calculated. "Her aunt and uncle?"
"Of course. You really think that there are two sets of Americans touring the Speyside area at the end of January?"
Caroline didn't. She felt cheated that she'd been so polite to the American couple if they were only relations of Eliza Bennet's and she was apprehensive about Georgie's words... there! she'd just seen Darcy glancing over at Eliza Bennet with a look in his eyes that she had never seen in them before. Georgiana was right, what Caroline had suspected on earlier occasions was true: Darcy did have an interest in that interfering American bluestocking. And, as Eliza Bennet was far from stupid -- whatever her other faults, there was no way that she'd walk away from the attention of a man like Darcy. Barring some sort of miracle, Georgiana might well be right, Darcy might no longer be available in the singles' lists. It was a hard blow but Caroline could rally from it, there were other fish in the sea.
And if she couldn't have Darcy herself, then she'd make his relationship with the American a little more difficult. She was already formulating the story of the Highland Laird Finding An Unlikely Romance that she would write. There was Human Interest in such a story -- and if it happened to bring the gossip rags and tabloids in to hound Darcy and his girlfriend, so much the better.
When the final drops of drambuie-soaked dessert had been scraped from the plates the assembled guests lazily rose from their seats, headed towards the drawing room. Georgie had offered to perform an after-dinner concerto and herded the others along and away from the table. She paused a moment by her brother, who seemed to be considering his next move, and whispered urgently in his ear.
"You've heard me a hundred times, go spend a little time with Lizzy. She leaves the day after tomorrow."
Darcy gave her a distracted smile but made his beeline towards Caroline instead of Lizzy when he moved passed his sister. Georgie shrugged, obliged to head over towards the piano and unwilling to make a spectacle of herself with Charles and the Gardiners clamoring for her to play. Lizzy seemed to be lingering, her eyes on Darcy, but when he collared Caroline she instead followed her relations and sat distractedly on the edge of a sofa. Georgie took her seat at the piano and began to play, watching from the corner of her eye as Darcy disappeared into the hallway with Caroline Bingley.
"I've tried to be patient with you," Darcy said quietly to Caroline as soon as they had arrived out of earshot from the others.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Caroline said, honestly confused. She hadn't even started on her revenge yet!
"Jane Bennet," he explained, cryptically.
"Jane Bennet is in London," Caroline said. "And out of Charles's life. We had an arrangement with him. Remember our plan?"
"I remember our plan," Darcy said grimly. "I even regret our plan now. But it isn't the plan that I wanted to talk to you about. It's your actions."
"What actions?" She wondered if he knew anything, whether Eliza Bennet had put him up to this.
"Charles found out that you tampered with his e-mail."
So, Darcy did know something. And Charles did, too. This wasn't ideal, but it wasn't the end of the world either.
"So I blocked her work e-mail address. That's hardly criminal. I just wanted to be sure about Jane Bennet -- just like you! Only I really wanted to know how much she liked my brother. I didn't want to see him throw away his life on some nobody he'd only just met! So I narrowed the playing field a little." With that much logic down, she chanced a lie. "It's not like I prevented her from calling him."
"Did you?" Darcy's gaze was surprisingly direct. He didn't know that, did he? "And did you or did you not write to Jane Bennet, telling her that Charles was involved with my sister?"
"I don't think I said that," Caroline protested before realizing that she'd almost confessed. She paused, clarifying her statement before speaking again. "I said I wouldn't be surprised if such a thing should happen. It was just a Christmas card, one writes nonsense in them!"
"Why did you even send Jane Bennet a Christmas card?" Darcy asked. "If you didn't like her, and didn't even have her address, why bother? ... You wanted to rub Charles's 'desertion' in that poor young woman's face! I know that you went against the arrangement. And Charles knows. And Elizabeth knows. And Jane will know by tomorrow. I've tried to be patient with you, with all of your schemes and delusions, because we've been friends for quite some time and because I'm so fond of your brother. But if you ever try anything like this against Charles or any of the Bennets again, I will make sure that my family and friends cut you completely -- and that wouldn't do much good to your career and social life, would it?"
He knew enough and he was angry enough that Caroline didn't even slither out of the loopholes she had left herself, protesting that he'd misinterpreted her words, that she was innocent, or some-such. She was angry at his threats, angry at the way that he'd embraced the Bennets, angry at the way he'd turned on her. He deserved what was coming to him. She'd write that story straight away, steal a photograph of Lizzy and Darcy off Georgie's camera, and post it to an online UK gossip website she knew... she'd lose the chance to make money off of the story, but she'd get the story out faster and the magazines could probably get reporters up to Glen Leigheas the following day. Darcy would regret his threats, his turncoat behavior... and he could never prove that she, Caroline, was behind it all.
"And there's one more thing," Darcy added as Caroline turned to leave. She paused and slowly turned back around. "This isn't for me, it's for Georgie: don't talk about George Wickham in her presence." He gazed at Caroline sternly for a moment before turning on his own heel and walking back towards the drawing room and the silvery sounds of Georgie's playing.
George Wickham? Who? Oh yes, Lizzy's ex-lover. Well, Georgie Darcy could go to hell along with her brother after this evening... Caroline had no compunctions about the girl now that Will Darcy was out of the question and after the way Georgie had gone on and on at dinner about Lizzy Bennet. Caroline wondered briefly if there was a way to fit Wickham into her story on Darcy and Lizzy and walked back upstairs towards her room, eager to set her explosive charge out into the public, to hurt Darcy as he had hurt her. ... And then a gift fell into her lap: as she sat down at the desk in her bedroom, thumbing through the pages of a Darcy family photo-album she'd purloined earlier for her column on stately homes, she discovered a portrait of Darcy as a young man of about eighteen. At his side, as the label said, was a slightly younger George Wickham. Intrigued, she studied the other photographs and began to type wildly...
"Have a minute?" Darcy whispered in Lizzy's ear, leaning down from behind her sofa. She started, not having heard him enter the room, and nodded. He grabbed up her hand and led her out into the hallway. "Can we walk?" he asked. There was so much that needed to be said, to be clarified and he was restless. Lizzy nodded again and soon found herself wrapping up warmly and heading out into the moonlit gardens.
"I'm sorry, I had to talk to Caroline first," he said, tucking her arm into his as he led her down one of the paths away from the house. She wondered if he had been questioning Caroline about what she knew of Lizzy and Wickham. "Are you warm enough?"
"Yes." Would he just make his feelings clear? Could he please stop worrying her about his possible judgments in reference to Wickham?
"Caroline didn't deny trying to separate her brother from your sister. And she didn't deny the fact that she didn't like Jane, and she admitted to getting in the way between Charles and Jane. I've made it clear that she's not to get in the way again, that she has to accept the decisions that others make about their own lives. Charles will go to London tomorrow, and maybe things can come right for your sister after all."
She hadn't expected that. That he would work so hard to clear up the misunderstanding behind Jane's broken heart, to put Charles and Jane back together again -- in the very least if only to clear the bad air, but hopefully to move on forward together. The whole George incident hadn't been forgotten, no doubt, but he was handing her a peace offering and she readily accepted it.
"Thank you," she said, reaching her hand down from Darcy's arm towards his gloved hand. Wool fingers entwined with wool fingers and she smiled up at him. "It means so much to me that you'd help fix things between Charles and my sister."
"If I do wrong, I hope that I get the chance to put things right," Darcy said, lifting up the interlocked hands. "I have you to thank for showing me that I had done wrong." He kissed her glove gently and smiled softly at her. "You said that you wanted to talk about what happened earlier. I just wanted to say that it was... wonderful. Extraordinary. I hope that you don't regret it, you'd break my heart all over again."
"No!" Lizzy cried urgently. She had meant to talk about Caroline's Wickham allusions but it was equally imperative to talk about the kiss with Darcy in his office earlier. "No! I don't regret it at all." She blushed a little in the dark and continued softly: "The only thing I regret about it is that I didn't kiss you sooner."
It was dark, but a vivid look lit Darcy's face as he took the American into his arms.
After a little while Darcy loosed Lizzy but held firmly onto her hand as they turned onto another path, walking towards the little pavilion.
"You leave so soon," he said. "I wish that I could show you everything here."
"And I wish that I could stay and have you show me everything here. But I really must finish my tour with my aunt and uncle. They've come all the way across the Atlantic to see me and I can't disappoint them, especially as they've nearly finished the Scotland leg of their trip and will be heading south so soon. But then I'll be back in St Andrews," Lizzy added tentatively. "And then the new term will start. Will you... be in town?"
"Strictly, I don't need to be," he said, "it's just small bits and pieces until the committee read my dissertation... but yes, I would like to be in town very much and there's no reason I shouldn't be there, aside from odds and ends of business that I can take care of while you and your relations speed through the western Highlands."
"I like the way you think, Mr Darcy," Lizzy said playfully, warmly snug under his arm. They had reached the pavilion at last and settled down on a bench there. "Is it true that you and Georgie modeled for the angels up top?" Lizzy asked, as they sat down, curious. "The man at the distillery said so."
"Yes, actually," Darcy said, laughing a little. "I blame my father, of course. My mother had come up with the idea, and after she died my father decided to go through with it. I remember that I hated it -- Georgie was just a tot then, and she was rubbish as a model so the artist seemed to take it out on me... had me pose with my nose in the air, in the most awkward way. Still, it came out tolerably well and my father loved it. He was always very keen on the idea that one had to honor the angels."
"It's a charming idea -- that the angels drink the evaporated portion."
"My grandfather -- the very unromantic English one -- used to tut-tut the whole notion... but I'll have you know that when he was getting on -- he was ninety-one when he died -- he started to embrace the notion. He decided that it sounded like a grand plan, for he said if he 'had to be an angel in a white dress for all eternity', he wanted to be sure to enjoy himself. And he enjoyed his single malt."
Lizzy laughed and nestled into Darcy's warm arms, somehow forgetting entirely that there were such persons as Caroline Bingley or George Wickham in the world at all. Darcy sat, able to feel his blood coursing through him as he held the object of all his dreams, thanking whatever angels were looking out for him -- and noting that it was a worthwhile practice to pay them their due.
Across the country in a small Glasgow flat, George Wickham was browsing the internet while eating a late supper. It had been a long day, a busy day. It had been a week now that he'd been at his new job and, while it wasn't nearly as nice as the last one, he thought it might well do for now. It was a shame about the last job -- King's Royal Scottish Tours had been a cushy gig but he'd been shunted off to his current hospitality job after Marie King had caught him with that Swedish tourist in the back of the bus that one day. Marie had made a stink and asked that her father prevent such a thing from happening again, and lo and behold George was demoted to manning a desk in a small hotel owned by Mr. King's brother-in-law. As it had happened, George had broken up with Marie soon after that anyway; she was too curious about every detail of his life and he really preferred a girlfriend with a less interfering father.
There hadn't been time to meet anyone new, not in this first week of settling in to the new job. He needed the decent reference from this job to get a better one somewhere else later and the pay was good enough so he worked hard to charm the hotel's guests. He was good at that.
His mobile buzzed and he read the new text message on the screen briefly before turning back to the computer screen. Another girl staying in the hotel inviting him to the hotel bar... but he was tired. He sighed and clicked on a favorite gossip site. He blinked. He sat straight up and clicked on the new headline: "Whisky-Heir Finds Love! Scottish Laird Seen Escorting American Around Highland Estate" over a picture of Fitzwilliam Darcy's face. This he had to read.
When he had finished reading and looking through the pictures -- Lizzy Bennet had jumped ship soon enough! ... It was actually rather impressive how quickly her stock had risen with Darcy -- or, as was more likely, Darcy had been smitten with the delightful young woman for some time (which was just a delicious thought when he had been enjoying her favors not so long ago...). In any case Wickham was smiling broadly, a plan in his mind. He picked up his mobile again and dialed a number.
"Lydia Bennet," he said suavely, beaming. "If you'll ditch the rest of that school-group, of course I'd love to meet you for drinks. Show you the real Glasgow."
"Did you realize that it's past ten?" Darcy suddenly asked Lizzy. They'd been walking around the garden for hours, absorbed in each other and oblivious to the cold of the Highland night, and he'd only just checked his watch. "Your aunt and uncle will want to be heading back to the inn."
"Past ten?" asked Lizzy, freeing her hand momentarily from Darcy's in order to check her own watch. Her hand flew to her mouth for a moment in surprise. "Have we really been out here that long?" It certainly hadn't seemed that long, just maybe an hour or so of pleasant conversation and lovemaking in the icy lanes.
"You make the time fly," Darcy quipped, taking the hand back in his. "We'd better get back."
"Your poor sister must have played an entire symphony by now."
"She'd enjoy that. A captive audience. She is training as a concert performer, you know."
Lizzy ignored his logic and continued with her teasing. "You've been gone all evening. What kind of host are you?" Lizzy was exhilarated by her newfound ability to joke and flirt with Darcy. Any potential troubles had long since faded from her horizons, she was fully absorbed in the overwhelming joy of newfound love.
"Georgie solemnly assured me that I wouldn't be missed and that we should spend some time together," he replied, half-teasing in return.
"I don't think that she meant that you wouldn't be missed if you were missing for two hours!"
"I have to enjoy your company while I still can, before I have to surrender you to your aunt and uncle again," he replied in a sweetly plaintive tone that was utterly new to Lizzy. "I suppose you'll be off touring tomorrow?"
"I should be," Lizzy agreed reluctantly.
"Come have breakfast at the House first, then," Darcy insisted. "Bring your aunt and uncle if you like. And come to supper again. To say goodbye properly before you go."
"You're so insistent. How can I refuse?"
"Don't refuse. I need to see you often, to assure myself that I haven't been hallucinating this whole day... hallucinating about you."
"I find it rather hard to believe myself," Lizzy said softly. They had reached the door to Leigheas House, and the lights from inside the house gently illuminated each of their faces. Their admiration for each other still had a certain unreal quality about it and they stood there in the cold, Lizzy thumbing Darcy's lapels, Darcy stroking the curve of her jaw.
They were interrupted by a knock on the window nearest them. Georgie was standing at the window, so the two love-struck scholars started in an embarrassed manner and made their way to the door itself, coming into the light and the heat of the house with dazed blinking.
"We'd wondered what had happened to you," the once-quiet Georgie commented, a smile in her eyes. "I explained to the Gardiners that you needed a little time together, though, and they were quite understanding. Right up until ten o'clock, anyway. I pointed out that we have at least a half a dozen empty spare rooms and that you'd be welcome to any of them, if they didn't want to wait around for you any longer. They left about fifteen minutes ago."
"Do you want to stay?" asked Darcy, not wanting to let Lizzy out of his sight. "Or I could drive you over to the Inn."
"Stay," Georgie urged, once again resuming her wistful directness. "Do you realize that we've only known each other for a single day? I'd like to spend a little more time with you before you head back off again. You can't deny Will's favorite sister a chance to get to know the girl he's been mooning over for months."
Mooning? mouthed Lizzy, turning to Will. She was a little embarrassed by Georgie's frankness and insinuations, but equally touched by her message. She, too, wanted to get to know the girl before Georgie headed back to Aberdeen and she herself traveled out west and then back to St Andrews. She turned back to Georgie and accepted the invitation. The girl immediately ran off upstairs to prepare a room and Lizzy was left to face Darcy under the warm glow of the electric lights.
"Is that all right?" Lizzy asked him shyly.
"Of course," he said, coming forwards towards her. He caressed her face gently and then dropped his hand. Lizzy was struck, as she studied Darcy under the lights, by the enormity of him and what he represented; here was a man in love with her. She'd been in a dozen relationships over the years, some shorter than others, but she'd never entered into a relationship with someone who loved her. Fellows who liked her, who admired her... she had even been in love before, had men fall in love with her before, but never right from the onset. This, with Darcy, would be different. This would be serious. And the thought frightened her a little.
Sleep came fairly easily to the young scholars, though late. Georgiana had returned downstairs and had lingered for close on an hour longer before she finally retired, talking and smiling with her brother and Lizzy over glasses of Darcy's finest distillations, which Lizzy was fast learning to appreciate. The besotted pair had dawdled for some time longer, not entirely willing to part from one another, but had finally gone their own ways when the clock struck midnight, mindful that the Gardiners would want to collect Lizzy early enough to get in a full day's touring and that Charles would be departing for his plane early as well.
The bedchamber Georgie had prepared for her guest was a large and beautiful one but cold to the visiting American, despite the pajamas lent to her. Lizzy briefly pondered the possibility of slipping out into the hall and finding Darcy's room, wanting to both be in his exhilarating presence again and to enjoy his human warmth, but decided that it would be too presumptuous. With the potential seriousness of the relationship -- after all, in addition to the apparent intensity of Darcy's feelings, Darcy was at a different stage in life from her and looking to start settling down -- she was fearful of acting rashly, of doing anything to either upset the delicate balance she and Darcy had been establishing, of losing control over her own involvement in the relationship. She fell asleep thinking of Darcy, letting the remembered kisses warm her instead.
She was woken early the next morning by the sound of a helicopter not far from the house. She blinked for a moment or two, gaining her bearings: she was in Leigheas House as the particular guest of Fitzwilliam Darcy and she was wearing Georgiana Darcy's pajamas. She blinked again and looked around at the room, not having taken much notice of her surroundings the night before, and slid out from under the covers in an effort to ready herself for the day to come.
There was a sink along one wall of the room, and she padded over to it eagerly enough. The water was mostly very cold but it served for a quick wash and to brush her teeth with the toothbrush thoughtfully provided. There wasn't much Lizzy could do with the clothes she had worn the day before but she put them on anyway, hoping that the wrinkles didn't show much. She brushed her hair and then tidied her face with a little powder from a compact she'd had in her handbag, and then made her way cautiously out of the room and down the hallway towards the main staircase. She imagined that her aunt and uncle would be arriving for her within the hour and she wondered whether there was any breakfast ready.
"Lizzy?" The voice was soft but Lizzy would have known it anywhere. She smiled as she spied Darcy's figure coming up the stairs. She nestled briefly in his arms as they met and basked in the warmth of his smile. "Did Charles wake you?"
"Was Charles the helicopter?" Lizzy asked with interest.
"Yes," Darcy said a little sheepishly. "Did I mention that I was sending him off in the helicopter?"
Lizzy was stunned for a moment. Darcy had his own helicopter? ... But then, she shouldn't be surprised: after all, Darcy had his own estate, mansion and whisky label. "No... you didn't mention it. So Charles is really off to London?"
"He's really off to London, armed with the address you gave me and also that of a really good florist. I don't know what will happen, but at least it's the right thing to do."
"It is." Lizzy leaned up and fingered Darcy's freshly-shaven jawline. "Thank you."
"Thank you for giving me the chance to right my wrongs." They stared at one another for a moment, communicating what each of them felt through their eyes, and then Darcy collected himself. "Breakfast," he said, smiling. "Come with me."
He led Lizzy downstairs and back towards the back of the house and the kitchens, which had been omitted from the public tour. Lizzy soon found herself in a pleasant morning room complete with an impressive breakfast buffet and a view of the frost-dusted kitchen gardens. He then left her there as she assembled a plate for herself, departing quickly from the room and back towards his earlier mission. Understanding that he was busy acting as host to his disparate guests, Lizzy didn't mind much and settled down at the table with her meal.
She hadn't been eating long when something in her jacket-pocket started buzzing. It took her a moment for her to recognize the sound as belonging to her mobile phone, but she quickly retrieved it and saw with some amazement that the caller was Jane. Amazement because thoughtful Jane would never call anyone before eight o'clock in the morning, and because the only reason she might call -- Charles -- was currently in the air, still in Scotland.
"Hello?" Lizzy asked, with some justifiable confusion. "Jane?"
"Lizzy! I didn't wake you, did I?" Jane's voice was taut, worry more than evident in her voice. Lizzy sat straight up.
"No! As a matter of fact I was already awake. What is it? What's happened?"
"It's Lydia. You haven't heard anything from her have you?"
Lizzy was even more surprised. "No, there were no messages on my phone, at least. I'm up in the Highlands of course, though, not at the flat."
"Of course. I knew that. But we've been grasping at straws."
"What's happened?"
"She's gone missing. She went out last night and left her phone behind, and no one's heard from her for eleven hours."
"She probably just went out with friends and spent the night over at one of their houses," Lizzy reasoned. "She's not exactly the world's most responsible girl, you know, and seeing as it's Saturday morning she's probably fast asleep still. I bet she'll call in a couple of hours, begging for a ride home."
"But Lizzy, that's just it... she wasn't home. She was in Glasgow."
"Glasgow?" Lizzy asked in some confusion.
"She was there as part of a school trip with the other students in her art studio. And she doesn't have any friends out in Glasgow."
Suddenly Lizzy was far more sympathetic to Jane's worries over their missing young cousin. The young girl could be anywhere in the strange city, at the mercy of who knew what sort of people. "Tell me everything," Lizzy demanded.
The story unfolded like this: Lydia and her classmates had been busy all of Friday, attending an art exhibit and generally touring the city's architecture in carefully conducted small groups. They had been given the evening free but had been given a strict curfew of nine-thirty to be back at the hotel. Lydia had certainly been in the hotel at about eight-thirty when she had been seen messing around in the lounge opposite the hotel bar in the company of a half-dozen or so other students. Around this time she had received a call on her mobile which she had answered cheerfully. She had appeared to know the caller and had made plans to meet this person in the hotel bar itself, and had indeed made a laughing comment about how good it was that there was such a facility in the establishment if she was going to be locked inside all night. She had gone off to her room at about this time, but was not there when her roommate went up at ten o'clock, nor when the roommate awoke at six-thirty for breakfast prior to the bus ride back to Edinburgh. The roommate had reported the absence, a tally of the other students had been made, and a whirlwind of phone calls had ensued.
"There's one more thing," Jane added hesitantly. "They of course checked the phone to see whom she was headed out to see. ... It was George Wickham."
This final blow knocked Lizzy speechless. It had happened, that eventuality she had pondered and had cast aside as being too unlikely to trouble herself about... Lydia didn't know about George's true character because she, Lizzy, had decided against sharing her information. ... If Lydia had known how potentially dangerous he was, she never would have snuck off to see him... would she? In any case, Lydia had not had the facts and as a consequence was now missing. Lizzy's face went white with the weight of this realization and she barely made it through the rest of Jane's phone call, promising to keep in touch should she hear anything, promising to call her aunt and uncle in Edinburgh to see if there was any news. She hit the end call button numbly and stared ahead speechless.
It was moments later that Darcy returned, a quietly joyous smile on his face.
"I've woken Georgie up, she'll be down shortly. She has some clothes for you to borrow, if you'd like..." He broke off, noting her expression, and came over to her quickly. "What is it?" he demanded, taking up her cold hands in his.
"I must go," Lizzy said, and then repeated herself. "I must go. It's all my fault. How can I face my aunt and uncle, knowing what I know and knowing that I did nothing to stop her?" Her voiced was panicked and her eyes were wide. Darcy wasn't even sure if Lizzy registered his presence, which struck him straight to the heart. What was wrong?
"Tell me what's wrong," Darcy repeated. "Let me help you."
She finally looked at him, a pleading look in her eyes. "It's all my fault," she said. "It's all my fault. My cousin... Lydia... is missing. She's missing in Glasgow, and she was last seen preparing to meet... George, George Wickham."
"Shhh," Darcy murmured as Lizzy's voice started breaking towards hysterics. This was grave enough news given Wickham's record with seventeen year-old girls, but something else must be wrong for Lizzy to be reacting like this.
"It's all my fault," Lizzy repeated, staring back into space again and not seeming to notice him once more. "It's all my fault. If I had only told Lydia... if I had only warned my cousins that George was not someone they should know! But I decided not to! I was negligent. Oh, if only I had never met him, he's only caused me trouble. To think that he and I... that we... just remembering him! If only I'd never laid eyes on him... if only I'd never invited him out on that first date... if only I'd had the will to make him return to Edinburgh that night... but I slept with him... and I invited him into my life, introduced him to my relations... if it weren't for me, Lydia would never have known him well enough to go off with him!" She broke off suddenly, looking at Darcy with some alarm. She'd meant everything that she had said, but she certainly hadn't meant to speak so plainly about her past with Wickham to Darcy... they'd never actually discussed that together, after all, and it was likely to be a very touchy subject given Darcy's history with George. She stood up, a horrified look on her face, and she backed away from a concerned Darcy. There was silence.
The moment was interrupted: Georgiana suddenly entered with the Gardiners, who immediately fell on their niece. Startled by the interruption Lizzy hastily repeated a precis of her conversation with Jane, minus the reference to Wickham. The young Scottish girl and the American couple both expressed alarm, Georgie's especially poignant given her own predicament as a missing seventeen-year-old in Glasgow. Darcy rushed to his sister's side, anxious that she not be hurt by any revisitation of those memories, and the Gardiners bustled around Lizzy, insisting that they cut their trip short, that they drive to Glasgow immediately to see if there was anything they could do.
This was a generous offer indeed, given that Lydia Bennet was no relation of theirs, and Lizzy felt bound to decline it, especially knowing that she could be of little use in Glasgow. Her relations then insisted that they return to Edinburgh so as to assist the Bennets in any way they could, and this plan met with a better response -- Lizzy liked the idea of being with the Bennets at this time, being at the epicenter of any breaking news. All in a moment Lizzy and the Gardiners had taken their leave with hasty farewells, and then were gone, their Glen Leigheas- and holiday-idyll forgotten as they charged back towards the roads to Edinburgh
Chapter Twenty-Five:
Posted on July 24, 2008
There was silence in the room for a moment after Lizzy and her relations had left. Darcy and his sister looked at one another, and Georgie bit her lip.
"Are you all right?" Darcy asked her, sitting his sister down at the breakfast table and pouring her a glass of juice. As much as he was worried about Lizzy, his sister's welfare was also in the forefront of his mind, remembering the shock she'd had about Wickham only the day before. She took a sip of the juice and smiled at him weakly.
"It's just hitting a bit close to home," she said. "I mean, it's a crisis whichever way you look at it, but Lizzy said that Lydia was seventeen. So it's a seventeen year-old girl gone missing from Glasgow. I was a seventeen year-old girl who went missing from Glasgow."
"Georgie," he began, wondering whether she could handle the truth -- that the same man was behind Lydia's disappearance as her own -- and then smiled grimly at her; she was stronger now, Lizzy's outside presence had really brought that fact out in into the open, he was seeing it clearly for the first time. He decided to tell her the truth: "Georgie, it wasn't a coincidence... Lydia was last seen on her way to meet George Wickham."
Georgie blanched a moment, but her face was determined. "Well, then I think you'd better go to Glasgow and track him down."
"I was thinking the same thing myself. It's my fault for letting him go free, to repeat his same crime."
"No, it's mine," Georgie said quietly. "I was the one who asked you not to press charges. I thought that his actions were my fault then, but I see now that they weren't... that he's doing the same exact thing all over again. Go to Glasgow and see that he faces charges this time. -- And then go and find Elizabeth. Don't let George get in the way of your happiness. I'm fine, but I'll be even better if you're happy."
Darcy leaned down and kissed his sister's head.
"I love you, Georgie." He smiled at her for a moment and then turned away, striding out of the room.
"I love you too, Will," Georgie softly told the breakfast buffet.
When Caroline Bingley came down for a late breakfast she was surprised to see Darcy walking towards the front door, carrying an overnight bag.
"What on earth?" she asked in honest surprise. Will might be in her bad books with all that fuss he was making over Eliza Bennet but she was shocked that he would walk out on his own party -- that would be inconvenient, especially as she'd posted her story the night before and it was only a matter of hours before the first gossip-hounds began to trail their way up here to pester him. -- But maybe this was Darcy carrying Charles's bag, he had said something about Charles going to London today.
"I have to go to Glasgow immediately," Darcy said shortly, still angry with Caroline over her sabotage to Charles and Jane's relationship and that deliberate comment about Wickham the day before.
"What?" Caroline repeated. Why on earth would he go to Glasgow? No mention had been made of the trip the day before...
"I'm leaving in a few minutes. Your brother left for London several hours ago. Georgie can see you off to a train either today or tomorrow before she returns to school. I may be gone for some time."
"Oh," Caroline said, disconcerted. Darcy would be sidestepping all of the reporters! Unless... he'd seen the article and was leaving deliberately? But if he'd seen it, he would have guessed that she, Caroline, had written it, and he wouldn't be as distractedly polite as he was being. "Of course," she said, though she really had no idea what was wrong with her host. "I'll just get some breakfast, then," she said, edging around Darcy and leaving him to his own devices. He really was a very strange man, why hadn't she seen this in him before?
Fifteen minutes later, as Caroline tucked into a dish of yogurt, she heard the sound of Darcy's helicopter taking off. Georgie dashed into the room and stared out the window at the departing vehicle with an anxious expression. She then ran out again just as quickly, leaving Caroline to conclude that there was something wrong with the Darcys, however wealthy, attractive and eligible they might be, and that she would be well out of it to leave them be. With Darcy no longer a priority, Caroline decided to return to London; it had been too long since she had been there, and she might as well get a little enjoyment out of the fashionable flat she had paid such an exorbitant price for.
Her aunt and uncle were being too kind. Lydia was nothing to them and, indeed, probably one of Lizzy's least favorite relations, but they were leaving behind the western end of their tour so that she could be with her other aunt and uncle in their time of need -- protesting that they'd be just as happy to tour Edinburgh for the rest of their time in Scotland as Inverness and the Western Highlands. Their unselfishness was enough to make Lizzy scream, but she settled for fretting in the back seat of the little touring car, anxiously counting down the mileage to Edinburgh on the mile-marker signs along the roads.
Her aunt and uncle were being polite too. They didn't speak much, preferring to neither intrude upon their niece's thoughts nor to make judgements about a situation they were largely quite ignorant of. Lizzy appreciated the gesture, but it just made her feel even worse. She made an involuntary noise in her frustration and her uncle took that opening to try to reassure her.
"I'm sure Lydia will turn up," he said kindly. "She's probably camped out on this fellow's apartment's sofa and hasn't realized that she's missed her ride back to Edinburgh. You've told us about her antics, I'm sure this is nothing worse -- only in a different city."
This kind optimism was too much for Lizzy and she hid her face in her hands for a moment while trying to think of how to reply to this comment without rudeness.
"I suppose it's possible," she said cautiously.
"This fellow Wickham, you know him. You've spent a good bit of time with him, he knows you and your cousins and your aunt and uncle. I don't doubt that he's looking out for her, albeit in a somewhat careless fashion. She's not among strangers, you know. And while you may not be fond of him anymore, George Wickham isn't an out and out villain."
Oh, but he might well be, Lizzy thought briefly. "No," she said. "No, I suppose you are right. I don't think he would hurt Lydia. It's better she's with him than lost in one of the rougher ends of Glasgow." Though not much.
"It's quite possible she's been found already," Mary Gardiner added, also kindly, not taking her eyes away from the road as she drove. "Jane called you several hours ago now. Your cousin may be a bit of a boy-chasing bird-brain, but she's not entirely stupid, you know. She'll be sure to call her family when she realizes that she's been left behind."
"I hope so," Lizzy agreed restlessly. "It's just that she doesn't stop and think about the consequences of her actions. I love my aunt and uncle Bennet, but I don't think they've done a very good job at keeping an eye on Lydia since they moved here. Especially with the lower drinking age... she's run wild, and no one seems to care. They just laugh and call her 'lively.' But she's got no judgement at all! And to be going off with Wickham all on her own like that..."
"My dear, I don't think that you can fairly blame her there," Mary Gardiner said gently. "She was just taking your lead. Now, I don't blame you at all, but she's just running about town with an ex-boyfriend of yours. This isn't a disaster, just a spot of trouble. Don't worry, it will all come right."
"But it was my fault," Lizzy admitted miserably. "I knew that he was no good for me, let alone a seventeen year old girl. ... He has a history... and he has lied..."
"And did Lydia know this?" asked Edward Gardiner.
"No," Lizzy's wretchedness was growing acute. "No, I didn't tell her, though I learned over a week ago."
"My dear, we've been distracting you in that week. It's unfortunate, but nothing to beat yourself up about. And we don't even know that Lydia's in trouble! I, for one, think it's most likely that she's just missed the bus after a late night."
With that the Gardiners subsided into silence again and Lizzy was left to hurl herself between the rocks of hope and self-recrimination as the car sped its way towards Edinburgh.
There was still no news of Lydia when the little car pulled up outside the Bennets' pleasant terrace home. Lizzy and the Gardiners were welcomed in, however, with open arms, the fresh ears a great comfort to Frances Bennet. Mary and Kitty were also in evidence, the former home for the vacation, the latter home for the weekend on account of the family crisis. Lizzy's uncle was absent, apparently gone off to Glasgow that morning, along with an administrator from Lydia's school.
After a little while the Gardiners retired in search of a hotel, leaving Lizzy to stay with her cousins. Lizzy was sorry to see her maternal aunt and uncle go off for the night, feeling the loss of their level-minded common-sense keenly as the night wore on in the company of her paternal aunt. She found herself drawn closer to her cousins however, and found their company soothing: there was no need for them to speak to one another, they would just sit together and offer silent support to one another in between hopeful dashes towards the telephone and reluctant service to a distraught Frances Bennet.
It was in this silence that Lizzy found herself first thinking back on Glen Leigheas; for all of the hours of the car ride south Lizzy had been consumed with her own complicity in Lydia's troubles, and she hadn't stopped to think about her sudden flight from Darcy's home or the consequences of this latest bombshell on the fledgling relationship between herself and the Highland laird. She toyed with the idea of calling him, of hearing his competent and reassuring voice on the phone, and she even seized up her phone, intent on calling him. It was a minute before she realized that she didn't have his number, never having dreamed of wanting to call him even a few days earlier.
What would he be thinking of all of this? What would he be thinking of her? She'd admitted that she'd trusted, dated and slept with his greatest rival, whereas she'd barely established any sort of trust with him. Her cousin was silly and vapid enough to go missing with that same rival, and she had done nothing to stop this. ... And she'd run out of his house without so much as a proper goodbye or thank-you for all that he had done for her. She regretted that now, having left matters up in the air like this; she didn't know when she would next see Darcy... and she didn't know what she would say to him when she did.
Two more days rolled by without any sort of informative communication from Glasgow or from Glen Leigheas. Both of these were disappointing, though the latter was, perhaps, understandable -- she doubted that Darcy had her contact information any more than she had his. All the same, she wished that she could talk to him.
She settled for talking to her young cousin Kitty, who had been much shaken by her sister's disappearance. As much as Kitty might resent her sister at times, she and Lydia had always been close, and the complete surprise of it all had affected her badly and she spent every moment that she wasn't at class sitting in the sitting room at her house, waiting for some scrap of news to come in her father's daily phone call home.
"It's been days," Kitty fretted, pacing by a window and coming up beside Lizzy. Mary was currently babysitting their mother, and she felt the need to vent. "What if she's lying dead in a ditch?"
"Well, if she's really with George Wickham, then I doubt she is," Lizzy admitted cautiously.
"What do you mean?" asked Kitty.
Lizzy paused, and decided that she might as well come clean. "I was given some information about George two weeks ago. Reliable information. George isn't a very nice person to know -- but he's not a murderer. But he did coerce a seventeen year old girl to go away with him, and he held her for ransom."
"Are you kidding?" Kitty asked, shocked. "Oh my God! When... how... who...?"
"A girl I know, the sister of someone I... know. Fitzwilliam Darcy." She blushed, and Kitty turned a curious eye on her older cousin, who continued with her story. "This was a few years ago. The attempt failed -- the girl's family found her -- and she didn't press charges. But if George is pulling the same stunt then we should be hearing from him soon... Uncle's not rich, but he's well enough off..."
"He might think because Dad owns the business that he's got money," Kitty agreed. "Well, I'd never wish being kidnapped on Lydia regardless of how annoying she can be at times, but I hope you're right: I really don't want the latest story on the BBC to be about her dead body being found."
"The story that came out today about her being missing is quite bad enough," Lizzy agreed. Where was Lydia, and why hadn't anyone heard anything about her? It ought to be dead hard to go missing in a country with as many CCTV cameras in it as the UK. -- And, most importantly, was Lydia safe? Lizzy might have been able to warn one cousin about George, albeit late, but the guilt over this whole affair weighed so heavily on her... because she had thoughtlessly declined to warn the other girl.
Within half an hour of Darcy's arrival in Glasgow he had set out on the trail of his erstwhile friend and playmate. With Lydia's disappearance having been reported only hours earlier, it was still too soon for it to be a proper Missing Persons case, but Darcy wasn't troubling himself with the police just yet. He had a file of information about George and he intended to follow every lead he could to track down Lydia Bennet. He owed that much to Lizzy, to Georgie, to himself. With George Wickham safely behind bars he'd have put the worst of his demons to rest, and he'd be able to move ahead towards his future with a relatively clean slate. And he wanted that future so badly, now that the greatest dreams of his life -- his doctorate, Georgie's well-being, and Lizzy's regard -- were so nearly in his grasp.
He tracked down Wickham's employer easily enough, though Lizzy's latest information about George's whereabouts, mentioned in passing, was a little out of date: his employer was the owner of the self-same hotel that Lydia Bennet had gone missing from. The owner, disturbed enough already about the bad press that was being circulated about his hotel's connection to the missing girl, gave him Wickham's address willingly, and the landlord of the block of flats was only too happy to show Darcy into the flat with the payment of Wickham's overdue past rent. The flat was, however, as the landlord pointed out, empty of life, though the contents of the refrigerator suggested that the last departure had been a fairly recent one.
Darcy spent two more, fruitless days following whatever leads he had on George's old Glaswegian connections. All came up blank despite Darcy's careful research, and Darcy began to despair of finding Wickham -- he could have well slipped away to Ireland by now. He wished that he had something to report, any small promising clue, any excuse to call Lizzy and to reassure her, but he had nothing and he didn't want to call her aunt and uncle's house -- the number must be in the phone book, though he had no phone numbers for her at all -- without something to show for all of his efforts.
He resolved to go to the police and to offer up his knowledge about Wickham to them, hoping that they might have some clue he could help unravel. His own efforts were clearly not enough, and the specter of George Wickham loomed too large over his head to give up... not to mention the delicate blossom of Lizzy's happiness; the mere memory of Lizzy's anguished cries still had the power to make him tremble.
The desk sergeant was skeptical at first but eventually showed Darcy into the inner labyrinth of the police station. The detective assigned to Lydia's case was polite and listened to Darcy's tale with inscrutable silence, and then asked Darcy to write out his story in a statement; this done, the detective leaned forward, elbows on the metal table between them, and spoke in a thick Glaswegian accent that Darcy struggled for a moment to understand. Then he nodded.
"Of course. I'd be happy to look at George's computer print-outs," he agreed. It wasn't a bad idea, really, seeing if Darcy could shed any light on George's last movements, and he was glad to be able to do something; there was a sense of urgency about the whole situation: the start of the new term was coming up, and Darcy hated to think of Lizzy struggling to deal with her pain and her work all at once. This was all his fault, and it was his duty to clear it up as soon as possible for her... and, he supposed, for the others involved too.
At first glance there was no specific evidence indicating that Wickham had wanted to kidnap Lydia. There was, as the detective had told Darcy, a text message from Lydia to George informing him that she was at the hotel and in need of some livelier company if he wasn't too busy with his (now ex-) girlfriend (though the actual text of the text message naturally read far more basically), and a record of a call made to Lydia's phone shortly afterwards, lasting about a minute and a half -- and the phone had been switched off afterwards, meaning that it couldn't be tracked. This left the contents of the computer.
George was no great shakes as a computer user, the police were glad to say: he'd obviously been online at the time of Lydia's calls, and hadn't bothered to erase his browser history or to even password protect the computer itself or any of the files. Darcy scanned through the printed browser history earnestly; the police had already begun to follow the more obvious leads (George had checked the traffic reports shortly before he'd left his flat, for one) but one of the last items on the list spoke directly to Darcy. He quickly asked for the print-out of that particular site and read the story contained there with dread.
Whisky-Heir Finds Love! Scottish Laird Seen Escorting American Around Highland Estate: Ladies, sigh once more, for it seems that one of Scotland's most eligible bachelors may be unexpectedly headed towards the matrimonial noose! This author can report that Fitzwilliam Darcy son of the late George Darcy III, owner of the Glen Leigheas single malt whisky label and laird an estate of that name, has been escorting a female guest around his home familiarly.
The laird -- known in fashionable circles for his brains, aloof nature, healthy bank-balance and stunning good looks -- spent an entire day and was seen exchanging tender looks and saliva with a red-haired American. The sightings of the couple (see picture) are all the more gossip-inducing because Darcy has not been explicitly romantically linked with a woman in years, suggesting that wedding bells may soon be ringing in the Highland glen if he's invited his guest to stay with him at his remote home in this inhospitable season.
Who is the lucky girl? A fellow student at the University of St Andrews, where Darcy has been finishing his doctorate (evidently the place to go to snag the fellows! Remember Prince William?). New to these pages as she is, this young woman has quickly climbed up the social trellis: merely a month earlier she had been dating the son of one of Darcy's former employees (see picture). Will this be a fairy tale story come true? Or is this just another American adventuress coming to steal away Britain's finest?
Along with this nauseating and potentially libelous article there were two pictures: one of Darcy with his arm gently touching the small of Lizzy's back as he pointed out Leigheas House from the Glen's great meadow, the other of Darcy and George as youths of about eighteen and twenty-one, shortly before Darcy's father had died, standing in the still house. Both photographs, Darcy guessed, had come from his own house... the one from Georgie's many pictures from the day of the ride, the other from a family album. Though the article was anonymous, Darcy had a good idea about who had written it: none of his staff would be likely to, nor Georgie, nor Charles... and that left Caroline as the only other person who would have that information and access to those photographs. Anger against her surged up within him, but he forced it aside. There were bigger matters at stake here: such an article could play havoc with his tenuous relationship with Lizzy, and -- more concretely disturbing -- it provided Wickham with a motive for kidnapping Lydia.
"Wha' is it?" the detective asked, looking at Darcy's frowning face.
"I may have found you a motive," Darcy said carefully, wanting to share his thesis but afraid of giving it too much weight until there was proof to support it. "This article... I suppose by now you've figured out that it refers to me. Most of it is cow-dung, but if Wickham read this, he would have known that the young woman in question is named Elizabeth Bennet, a former... girlfriend of his. She's Lydia Bennet's first cousin. I told you that Wickham had once run off with my sister, at the age of seventeen, with the intention of gaining a ransom from me and causing me pain -- there's no love lost between us, and I fear that Lydia Bennet may be the latest pawn. Wickham may well have known that such a blow to Elizabeth's family would hurt me and my relationship with her, and that I'd be willing to pay to restore the girl to her family if her family could not."
The detective chewed his tongue for a moment, looking back over his notes and the case file.
"I'm no' sayin' that I don't believe you," he said cautiously, "but, say I do: what would Wickham do now?"
"Last time he took the girl to a cottage in the countryside and held her there while his message made its way to me."
"Then we'd best start lookin' for cottages."
That had been it: Darcy had made a solid contribution, though of course the lead had not yet panned out. The police had thanked Darcy for his efforts, though they found the cottages from near Wickham's earlier ransom attempt empty, and informed him that while his help had been appreciated that they could take the case from there. He was also ordered to stay in touch, especially should a ransom note come through to him. Darcy ordered Mrs. Reynolds to go through his mail and otherwise sought a further lead in order to track Lydia and Wickham down -- after all, now the placement of guilt was even clearer: Darcy was solely to blame, not only for not pressing charges against George, but for laying Elizabeth and her family open for exploitation on account of his feelings for her.
He couldn't bear to see Elizabeth again with this newest guilt, this latest offense, unresolved. He ached to see her again, to take her in his arms and comfort her in her time of need, to kiss away her tears, to smooth her furrowed brow... but he could not. He was the cause of her troubles. He must resolve them before he could once again claim the right of protector and comforter.
He was grasping at coarser and coarser straws, sitting with a list of his boarding school's alumni before him on the hotel desk, his phone in hand. ... George himself wouldn't have a cottage, but he had certainly gone to school with people who would have spare cottages and homes. There was a small chance that one of his old friends might have an idea about George's rural vacationing preferences and as long as there was a chance, Darcy was going to take it. The police were being too slow -- and the days were slowly ticking towards the start of the Candlemas term.
Several hours into this practice Darcy hit upon the name of one Alec "Shinty-Boy" Mackenzie, a classmate of George's known only for his great talents on the shinty field and -- more relevantly -- his great gullibility. Darcy knew that the two young men had been friends and had been caught out in a number of scrapes together, so he hazarded another phone call, even given the extreme unlikelihood that Shinty-Boy would know anything. He was glad that he did.
"George Wickham?" Shinty-Boy jovially. "That's mad, you know I did just hear from him recently! Fancy that. He goes missing off the face of the planet for something like years -- I mean, where was he at the fifth reunion? -- and then out of the blue he calls me up, asking if I have time to get together for a drink!"
"So did you see him?" Darcy asked urgently.
"Oh, aye, of course! Turns out that he was calling from the phone box in a pub in Irvine of all places. Trundled over there and we had a few pints, along with George's latest young lady -- she was a looker, her! Though a bit young, because we both know that Georgie-boy is headed on thirty and I think this bird was only headed on twenty. Smart thing, could hold her own and cheerful as a bumble-bee."
"Yes?" Darcy asked again -- here was what sounded like concrete proof of George and Lydia being together, and in an identifiable place.
"So, as I was saying, we knocked back a few pints. And then George asks if I've still got the family cottage outside Girdle Toll, and I say 'that I do' and he borrows the key off me so that he and the girl don't have to drive home for the night. And we exchanged mobile numbers, and I went home, seeing as my wife doesn't like me staying out all night."
"Could George still be at Girdle Toll?"
"Oh, aye, it's possible, if the lucky sod doesn't have to work -- quiet little place and he hasn't mailed me back the key yet. If you're looking for him I have his mobile number, you want it?"
"No -- I've tried that already," Darcy said grimly. Or, at least, the police had. "But could I have the address? I've got some urgent business with him."
"It'll be the single malts then?" Shinty-Boy said agreeably. "Is that where he's been all these years, holed up in your little Highland paradise? Oh, aye." And he read off the address to the cottage.
It was a long chance, but it was the most detailed information Darcy had had yet. He immediately called the police and reported that he wanted to go to Ayrshire. After all, he had a helicopter at his disposal.
The Gardiners were leaving for the English leg of their trip. Lizzy helped them to pack up the car, feeling nothing but regret about the way things had turned out. ... But she had only herself to blame, really.
"Have a nice trip," she called to her aunt and uncle as they drove their little car back to the rental facility. They'd take the train down to London, where they'd meet Jane, and thereafter travel around a few select shires. She waved them out of sight, and then turned to see her cousin Kitty coming up the street, having dashed back home after her morning class.
"Anything?" Kitty asked anxiously.
"No," Lizzy said quietly. "Nothing new." -- And then, the telephone rang, at ten-forty-five in the morning, an unprecedented time of day. And, then, there was a shriek from inside and the two girls ran in.
"Oh! Girls, girls! They've found Lydia! They've found Lydia!" Frances Bennet was dancing about, waving the phone's receiver around madly. "They've found her! My baby girl!"
Kitty instantly seized up the phone and began to speak to her father, who was on the other end. "Is she all right?" Kitty asked. "When do you come home?" Kitty listened for a moment, and then nodded and handed the phone to Mary, who was also waiting anxiously to talk to her father.
"They think she can probably come home tomorrow," Kitty announced to the others. "She's fine, she's fine! ... But she has to do statements, or something." Kitty turned to Lizzy and said in an undertone, "you were right. George did try to hold her ransom."
Lizzy sat down, feeling a little faint. It was all her fault... George would only know Lydia as a very passing acquaintance if it hadn't been for Lizzy... Then, she rallied herself.
"Jane," she said. "I must tell Jane." And she seized up her mobile in her shaking fingers and dialed her sister's number to tell her the good news.
"Oh, I am glad!" Jane cried out, with perfect Jane-like empathy. "That is so wonderful to hear... I've been walking around like a zombie, I fear, worried sick. So she's all right? She's coming home?"
"Yes," Lizzy said, and then walked out into the hallway so that she could talk with some semblance of privacy. "Yes, she's coming home. But, oh Jane! It's all my fault... if only I'd told her what I knew... it was Wickham, and he did copy his actions from his earlier incident with Georgiana Darcy. Kitty says that there was a ransom attempt. It's all my fault, Jane!"
"No more than mine for agreeing to withhold the information. I really did believe that he might have changed... and I am sad that I was mistaken. But she's fine now? Regardless of what has happened, the crucial point must be Lydia's well-being. She is well? She is returning home?"
"Uncle thought perhaps tomorrow. She's making statements today."
"I see." It was probably for the best that Wickham be held to account for his actions, though Jane was sorry to hear that any man would go to prison. Lizzy tried to smile, still overwrought with emotion, and changed the topic. Now that the greatest worries over Lydia had been dispelled there was another matter Lizzy was desperately curious about -- whatever had happened with Charles and Jane? Had Charles gone to see her?
"Well, it is over," Lizzy said. "It is now over. And Aunt and Uncle Gardiner are on their way down south to see you. You must be looking forward to having visitors from Scotland."
"Oh, yes," Jane agreed candidly. She did not take the bait, she had not had another visitor from Scotland. What was wrong with Charles now? They talked for a few more moments and then Jane rang off. Lizzy walked back into the sitting room and collapsed on a couch with Kitty, as Frances Bennet danced around the room with her patient eldest daughter.
"Uh, Lizzy?" Kitty hazarded, under the cover of her mother's squeals.
"Yes?" asked Lizzy, watching the spectacle wearily.
"Um... there's something I found last night that I think you should see," she said. She reached into her book-bag and pulled out a laptop which she switched on and placed on Lizzy's lap once she had loaded a webpage. "You made me curious the other day," she explained, "when you mentioned Fitzwilliam Darcy and blushed like that -- I know it was being nosy, but I decided to google him, to figure out whether your blush or George's old crap was the real deal. And, as awful as it is, I found this."
Lizzy gaped, horrified, as she read the article on the computer and gazed at the pictures. Whisky-Heir Finds Love! Scottish Laird Seen Escorting American Around Highland Estate! Not only was it a revolting piece, but the pictures made it all to clear to Lizzy that Wickham might have had another motive other than Lydia's charms and her father's cheque-book: Wickham might well have known that Darcy cared for Lizzy, and Lydia could act as another Georgiana in his endless games with Darcy. And, if this were so, it was Lizzy's fault once more, for getting involved with Darcy... otherwise George probably wouldn't have bothered risking his liberty.
And... in addition to all the pain that caused, the article, printed in black and white (or shining on the computer screen in black and pink), returned another old ghost: she was clearly not good enough for Darcy. She was clearly an interloper who didn't belong in Darcy's world... the relationship had already hurt Lizzy's family, and it probably wouldn't get much easier. Heartsick and worried, Lizzy wished, once again, that she could talk to Darcy, that she could be soothed by his reassuring presence and quiet strength... if he still wanted anything to do with her
Chapter Twenty-Six:
Posted on July 28, 2008
Distraught with her latest feelings of inferiority and guilt, Lizzy opted not to wait in Edinburgh for her young cousin's return. It was enough to know that she was safe, and Lizzy desperately needed some space and some time in which to think, in which to gather herself up and mentally prepare for the start of the new semester. ... And she desperately needed to talk to Darcy, to figure out what would happen now that... now that Lydia had run off with Wickham, now that Lizzy had admitted to her intimate relationship with that same man, now that this nauseating article had come out, now that she was aware just how much of a fairy tale their burgeoning relationship had been. And Darcy would be in St Andrews, either sooner or later.
To get away from her family -- her aunt who had forgotten her fears so quickly, not knowing how close the family had come to something truly catastrophic, and her cousin Kitty who was being too astute by half -- Lizzy declined the offer of a ride to Fife from her aunt and instead called up Charlotte to ask if she could swing by Edinburgh on her drive north. Charlotte agreed, though it was out of the way, and additionally offered to take Mary back to St Andrews. Mary also agreed, lending welcome additional company to the small car; Lizzy wasn't quite ready to talk to Charlotte about the events of the last few weeks and was only too pleased to let Mary quietly explain why Lizzy was in Edinburgh with her paternal relations.
Lizzy couldn't quite believe that the flat looked exactly the same as it had when she had left it those weeks ago. Had it really only been about three weeks ago that Darcy had strode into her room and declared his love for her?-- Yes, there was hardly any dust in her room, still tidy from those cleaning efforts. The box that had held the croissants was still sitting in her rubbish bin -- had she really been so distracted that she hadn't dumped out her garbage before she left for the Highlands? -- Yes, she supposed that she had. ... And there was the corner in which she had sat, conversing with Jane about Wickham and resolving not to warn Lydia about the too-charming Scot. Lizzy tossed her belongings down on her floor and fled back into the common room: her bedroom held too many bitter memories.
"Have a nice break?" Lizzy's flatmate Katya asked cheerfully, coming into the common room as well. "How were the Highlands?"
"Oh," Lizzy said, startled. "The Highlands were gorgeous. Lovely. I had a marvelous time there." And, so she had -- before everything had gone to hell.
"Excellent. I keep on meaning to go, I've got some second cousins in Inverness."
Lizzy made some sort of polite noise and welcomed the return of Charlotte into the common room.
"We need food," Charlotte said. "I think there are a half-dozen tins of soup and a smattering of pasta in the cupboard, but students cannot live on soup and pasta alone -- more's the pity. A Tesco run is in order, I think. Come along Liz, grab a coat, you're coming with us."
She went through the motions of her old life from the Michaelmas semester: she went to the store with her flatmates, she went out to a pub, she bought notebooks for her classes to come. She smiled and she laughed, as ever, but her mind wasn't really with her friends; her mind was hundreds of miles away, up in a Highland glen. What had happened? And, more importantly, what would happen now? She needed to talk to Darcy, that much she knew. Hopefully he would soon appear, as promised before the world had fallen apart, but if not, how to contact him? She could always ask Jane to ask Charles for Darcy's mobile number, or address, or ask Jane for Charles's number so that she could call to ask herself... but she couldn't really ask for Charles's information until Jane had given her some indication that Charles was no longer a taboo subject.
She soon remembered that she had his e-mail address, carbon copied to her in a number of messages from Dr Alban the semester before. She anxiously switched on her computer and ransacked through her inbox until she found it -- fgd1444@st-andrews.ac.uk -- and promptly pulled up a fresh template in which to write him a message.
Dear Darcy No... that was either too formal or too informal, depending on which way you looked at it. Dear Will? Again, possibly too presumptuous, if he really had taken the whole Wickham history as an offense. She decided to skip the salutation and spent a frustrating half-hour writing and discarding drafts of a message. At the end of this time the only message she hadn't deleted was: I'm back in St Andrews now. Lydia is fine. Thank you for everything at Glen Leigheas. When are you coming back to campus?
And, still, it was too impersonal, but she didn't feel comfortable alluding to her aunt and uncle's departure for England -- after all, Charles had never appeared there -- and she didn't feel comfortable directly alluding to their fledgling relationship -- after all, he might have reconsidered. And she couldn't bring herself to mention the article, she rather hoped that he'd never see it. -- Which left only that inadequate skeleton message.
"What are you up to?" Charlotte asked, coming into the room cheerfully. Now that Lizzy had had a little time to settle in, Charlotte's curiosity was eating her up once more: what had happened before the break with Darcy coming to see Lizzy, and then Lizzy holing up in her room for a whole day and then disappearing? What had happened on the break to make Lizzy's face so taut and her attention span so distracted? -- Aside from the incident with Lizzy's cousin going missing for a few days, though that was now happily resolved. Charlotte, as a good friend, knew that something was wrong, but she needed Lizzy to explain what exactly in order to be of any help. She hoped that with a little probing Lizzy might confide in her.
But Lizzy didn't. "Oh, nothing," she said, hurriedly deleting her draft and shutting the laptop. She might be pining for What Might Have Been but she wasn't ready to own her possible heartbreak just yet. "You?"
With Lydia safe under her father's now more watchful eye, Darcy knew that one of his self-set tasks was completed. George had been safely seen away to gaol and Mr Bennet had been briefed about the details behind what had happened. Mr Bennet might be a somewhat negligent parent and the owner of a business that Darcy had little respect for, but he seemed to genuinely love his daughter -- and, more importantly, his niece -- and was properly shocked when he heard about the ransom note that had appeared at Glen Leigheas under Mrs Reynolds's eagle eye. Leaving Lydia's discipline to Mr Bennet, Darcy soon arranged a flight to London to tackle one of the other major problems on his and Lizzy's horizon: Charles.
Darcy had fortunately been able to get hold Charles before he arrived at Jane's flat in London on the day that they had all gone their separate ways from Glen Leigheas. He was concerned enough about whether Jane would welcome Charles back into her life as it was -- Lizzy set such a high store by the match up -- and he didn't want to thrust Charles at Jane in such a distraught time for the girl, when her young cousin had gone missing. Charles had agreed that he should stay out of the way until Darcy had some better news for him, terrified himself about the addition of bad timing into the mix of his crimes.
As soon as all was well with Lydia, Darcy called Charles to tell him the good news. Charles welcomed the news enthusiastically and Darcy could hear the other man's excitement over the line. He wished Charles well, and then set out for the airport, determined to also apologize to Jane in person. She deserved at least that much -- and if Darcy was in London, then he could also have a little chat with a certain journalist who was in his bad books just now. When he was through with her she'd have no career, if he could help it.
Charles met his friend at Heathrow, but he wasn't smiling. Nor was he utterly distraught, which instantly raised Darcy's curiosity: why hadn't Charles managed to see Jane yet?
"So, how was it?" he asked his friend.
"She wasn't there!" Charles exclaimed. "Her flatmates said she was away for the week."
"Did you leave a message?"
"What kind of a message could I leave? Hi, it's Charles: long time, no see. Give me a ring when you see this? No... as you've said, I need to apologize in person. She deserves that -- and I can't give her the chance to walk away before I get the chance to say my piece."
"Do you have the date of her return?"
"Yes, but I've got to be back in Edinburgh the day after tomorrow, and she doesn't get back until two days after that."
"Maybe I can find out where she's gone," Darcy offered. He owed both of these good people that much and, while he wasn't sure that he would succeed, the least he could do would be to try on their behalf.
"Would you?" asked Charles eagerly.
"Yes. And if we can't find her before you have to return to work, then we'll make sure you see her this weekend. I'll even loan you the helicopter if I have to. Now, there's something else you should know... your sister..." And he told Charles about the article Caroline had written.
He managed to get an interview with the boss of Jane's office fairly easily -- it turned out that Mr Peterson was an avid customer of the Glen Leigheas label, and so instantly recognized Darcy's name. Curious as to the reason why the producer of his favorite beverage had arrived in his office, Mr Peterson welcomed the young man in immediately.
"Wonderful to meet you, Mr Darcy," he said jovially, in an artlessly friendly fashion that reminded Darcy instantly of Charles. "But I really have no idea why you are here. We didn't have an appointment?"
"No," Darcy said, suddenly a little embarrassed. What was he supposed to say: I'm here to get personal details that you may or may not know about one of your employees so that I can get my friend to track her down for an urgent apology, so I can go have a chance with her sister? The famous Darcy eloquence had an awful and mortifying habit of drying up whenever Lizzy Bennet was concerned in a conversation. "It's about one of your employees: Jane Bennet. I'm trying to get hold of her, and she's on vacation. I know that I really have no right to this information and that it's a bit of a long shot, but I was wondering if you knew where she was headed? Did she leave any contact information?"
Mr Peterson looked calculatingly at Darcy. "Have you tried her mobile?" he asked.
"That's where it gets complicated," Darcy owned, breaking down to the idea that he'd have to tell the truth, as elaborate and fanciful as it might be. "You see..." And out came the whole story: about Charles and Jane in Scotland, about Darcy's and Caroline's interference, about Lizzy Bennet, about Lydia Bennet, about Charles, about Caroline, about Jane being missing. About Charles's love for her.
For a moment, it looked as if the tale had been a bit too much for the good Mr Peterson. He looked incredulous, and then got up from his desk and walked over to a cabinet to the side of the office and removed two glasses and a bottle of what Darcy recognized as an eighteen-year-old sample of his own product. Mr Peterson poured out two drams and then offered Darcy a glass, which the anxious man took, before sitting down again.
"Would it be too much to expect you to believe that a very similar thing once happened to me? Minus the deranged kidnapped lunatic, of course." Mr Peterson said, an odd expression on his face.
"Really, sir?" asked Darcy, half-choking on his beverage. That had been the last thing he had expected to hear: he'd half expected to be tossed out on his ear.
"Yes," the older man said, staring into space for a moment. "But I'm sorry, I don't have any contact information from Jane about where she'll be. I've got her mobile number, and that's all. She'll be back in four days, can you wait until then?"
"No, Charles has to be back in Edinburgh in two days."
"Oh, yes, of course."
There was a silence. Then Mr Peterson spoke again.
"Would it be any help if I sent Miss Bennet back up to Scotland?" he asked. "She got on marvelously with the woman at the Edinburgh bureau -- which is just one woman, you know -- and I've been half thinking of having a story about the university at St Andrews in the magazine some time soon. Very hot right now, what with the prince having gone there... and it's been a few years since the big stories, when the prince was there, of course. Might be interesting to both our British and our American readers to read a piece on what has changed up there. And Jane could be the very woman to do it, especially given the fact that she had contacts there through her sister. I could give her a couple of weeks up there."
"That might just be the thing," Darcy said gratefully. In this case, Lizzy would be able to see that Jane and Charles's meeting was given all of the support that it might need. And she'd be able to see her beloved sister again, which would please her. He smiled suddenly. "I see you like the eighteen-year," he said with more cheer than he had had in days. "I'll see that you get a crate."
"Much obliged," said the jovial Mr Peterson. "Much obliged."
The next interview was significantly less pleasant. When Caroline finally opened the door of her flat to Darcy, she offered him neither single malt nor a seat, and certainly not much civility. He supposed that she knew why he was there.
"I told you," Darcy thundered at her when the door to the hallway had been closed. "I warned you, Caroline, to stop messing with the Bennets. I know that you wrote that appalling piece of garbage about me and Elizabeth Bennet. And you blatantly disregarded everything I had said to you. I'm not going to let this slide, Caroline. I know your editor, and I will be laying out such proof as I have before him, that you published a libelous story about me. I'm not sure that those many papers will want to carry your column any longer, especially at the terms you've stipulated to them."
"Come off it, Darcy. You have no proof. Go away and leave me be."
"I've managed to discover what IP address was used," Darcy said, quietly menacing. "I have useful friends, you know. And I will do my best to see that your defamation of Lizzy's character is made public. She does not deserve the things that you said about her."
"What did I say about her? That she'd quickly gone from son of employee to son of owner and laird? That's hardly untrue. I didn't say anything strictly untrue, and you know it."
"You think that you're safe, but even if I can't make a case stand up against you -- and believe me, I will try -- don't think that you can do something like this and walk off unscathed. I've told your brother, and I don't think that he was very impressed. I don't know what he'll do about it, but be certain that he intends to do something -- once he clears up his love life again, after the tricks you played."
Caroline turned a sort of purple color: much of her social credibility in some of the best London circles had derived from her brother and his friend. To lose the goodwill of both would be rather awkward -- and the threats about Darcy going to her editors was also worrying. For the first time in ages Caroline Bingley had no catty retort on her lips, and for the first time in her life she physically pushed Darcy out of the door and away from her.
"I'm not afraid of you!" she shouted as Darcy turned and walked away towards the lifts. -- But her actions belied her words.
She booked a ticket for Spain, deciding that it might be nice to get away at this time of year, at least until things blew over a little.
The Candlemas semester started in earnest and still there was no sign of Darcy. Lizzy began to regret deleting that e-mail; it would be too late to write him now and still there was no sign of him anywhere. She'd even asked Dr Alban, in passing, about the progress of Darcy's thesis, but received a vague reply that indicated that Darcy had not been in touch with his advisor for some weeks. What on earth had happened to him?
As if Lizzy's full schedule of worrying and second-guessing wasn't enough to occupy her, she was kept quite busy with her new schedule of classes: she had another semester of the core graduate survey in Scottish history, was starting to learn Gaelic, and had to take a historical themes course. She enjoyed the coursework but it wasn't enough to distract her: doing work in Scottish history, in basic Gaelic, just made her think of Darcy's own expertise with the history, with the language, and it made her remember the invigorating way he'd challenge her into doing her best, back in Dr Alban's one-on-one class the previous semester...
But despite her constant thoughts about Darcy, she had so far been unable to share what had happened to her over her holiday with anyone. Various people knew pieces: Kitty knew that Lizzy had been to Glen Leigheas from that horrible article, and that something had happened between her cousin and Fitzwilliam Darcy. Most people knew that she'd been in the Highlands. Her aunt and uncle knew that something had happened between their niece and the whisky-laird. Jane knew about Lizzy's culpability in the whole Lydia-George affair. Charlotte must know that there was something up between Darcy and her flatmate. But no one knew what Lizzy knew: that she had been horribly wrong, that she had then fallen in love, that she had admitted to the one thing that must make the man she loved detest her, that she had stood back and allowed an angry man to kidnap her younger cousin.
She longed for Jane's quiet, reassuring presence so that she might finally unload the weight that rested on her shoulders day and night as Darcy remained absent. Jane already knew all of the hardest pieces of the story, she would understand Lizzy's fears, and also the pain of being separated from the man she loved... since evidently Charles had never done his piece.
Miraculously, Lizzy received an excited phone call from Jane her first day back at work after her holiday.
"Oh, Lizzy! I was so pleased, I had to call you right away!"
Charles had finally gotten his act together! "Yes, Jane?"
"I'm coming to Scotland again!" Charles was good! "I've got an assignment to write a story about your university! Do you think you could find me a good hotel?"
So, Charles had not followed through. Otherwise the elated girl would probably be staking out in Edinburgh, so as to be closer to him. The perfectly-timed trip was merely a business affair.
"I'm so happy, Jane," Lizzy replied, with just a little too much feeling. "Of course I'll try to help."
"It's only been about a month, but it will be so good to see you, Lizzy," Jane said, hearing the slight quaver in her sister's voice. "Just a month, but so many things have happened. I miss our old chats."
"So do I, Jane, so do I. Let's have one when you're here." She could think of nothing she'd like better, save for Darcy appearing at her doorstep with a large bouquet of flowers and a smile on his lips.
As pleased as Jane was to see her sister, Lizzy could tell that she was still somewhat unhappy, despite her new assignment and her lovely vacation with her aunt and uncle. The sisters embraced eagerly on the platform at Leuchars train station, and chatted eagerly about Jane's train ride north while they settled into Charlotte's little car. They kept the conversation general until they reached Jane's small hotel, where, in private, each finally broke down under the emotional loads they'd each been carrying.
"Lizzy, you are unhappy," Jane said frankly, coming to sit beside her sister on the bed. "Please tell me why. I know that you were greatly disturbed by what happened with Lydia but, while it was serious, it has been happily resolved! Our aunt assures me that Lydia is in good spirits and generally untroubled by her experience -- it seems unlikely that there will be any lasting damage. And, if it's not that, what else is wrong?"
"So much, Jane, so much. You know that when I called you I was at Glen Leigheas?"
"Yes, of course, our aunt and uncle showed me their travel itinerary. They said it was a beautiful place."
"No, I mean, I was at Leigheas House. With the Darcys."
"That early in the morning?" Jane asked, a little confused.
"Yes, Jane. I'd spent the night. Darcy... Will... and I had been walking, and we lost track of time. I stayed over."
"I didn't know that you and Will had patched things up," Jane said, surprised but pleased. She hated anyone to be at odds, most of all anyone in love.
"We 'patched things up' while I was at Glen Leigheas. He still loved me." Lizzy choked a little at the glorious memory and the fear, close on its heels, that that love might exist no more, or in a damaged form. "But then I stupidly told him more about my relationship with Wickham... it must have been like rubbing it in his face! We never had the chance to properly talk about it, Lydia's whole mess erupted and I ran out of there, knowing that it was all my fault. And he hasn't come back to St Andrews like he said that he would. So I don't know what is happening..." Lizzy quickly caught herself and stopped speaking, knowing that Jane would know the feelings she described all too well.
"Shh, Lizzy," Jane murmured, taking her sister in her arms. "It will be fine. All will be fine. You'll talk, I'm sure, you can't help but to run into one another. You'll sort it all out." There was a note of wistfulness in her voice.
"Has there been no word from Charles?" Lizzy asked suddenly. She wouldn't raise or dash Jane's hopes by bringing up Charles's presence in and subsequent departure from the Highlands, but she thought that her own distress warranted the chance to ask such a direct question, at least once.
"No," Jane said sadly. "I think I've quite given up on that dream. Neither hide nor hair of him since I was last up here. ... It's silly, but I had this day-dream that he'd show up at my door, explaining himself -- somehow, anyhow -- and tell that he still loved me, and it would all be beautiful. But there's been no one... except one of my flatmates did say a man of Charles's description stopped by the flat while I was away, but it's London, it could have been anyone, at least three of my coworkers fit that description. And why wouldn't he phone if it was him? Maybe the U.K. isn't for me, Lizzy. Maybe I'll go back home when I'm done with my contract here."
Lizzy could only take her own turn to hold her sister and sit there with her as the one thought wistfully about Fitzwilliam Darcy, and the other of Charles Bingley. A fine mess those two young men have made of the Bennet sisters, Lizzy thought wryly. A fine mess indeed.
When Lizzy finally made her way back to her flat that evening, she was completely and pleasantly surprised to discover that she'd received an e-mail from Georgiana Darcy. She'd barely given a thought to Darcy's younger sister, except to regret that they had parted so hurriedly: she'd honestly liked the shy, sweet, funny girl, who would also have been a handy link to Darcy in this awkward absence of his. Lizzy read the message anxiously, hoping that there might be some word about Darcy and his whereabouts, his state of mind, and his feelings. There was.
Dear Lizzy, pardon me for e-mailing you out of the blue like this, but I had no idea how else to reach you. Handily you're on the e-mail list for students in postgraduate Scottish history, whose postings Will has occasionally forwarded to me in the past year, or else I'd have no notion at all of how to reach you -- Will has been away nearly these last two weeks and I've barely heard from him. Have you?I'm writing to say that I really enjoyed meeting you, and hope that we'll meet again soon. I'll certainly drop you a line whenever I next come to see Will in St Andys (or, even better, if you don't think it impertinent, do you have a mobile number?). Actually, I'm also really writing to say that you left your disc with the pictures in Will's study (I happened across them when I was home for a day this last week) and I want to get it back to you. Seeing as my brother is so disobligingly absent, I figure my best shot is the good old Royal Mail. Would you be so good as to send me your address? I promise to get Mrs Reynolds to send some of her famous chocolate biscuits along with it -- I understand every good care package to students involves baked goods (though I'm afraid that I wouldn't actually know, never having had anyone to send me anything -- Mrs Reynolds prefers to feed me at home and Will is much better with gifts like pianos or ponies than with the small things...)
In closing, I just wanted to tell you some things, which I hope you won't find rude. I'm not sure that it's my place to say, but I think you should know that Will was utterly devastated to see you go. He told me why you left, and I have the greatest sympathy, knowing the details. (He says that Wickham is now in gaol, and I think that I am glad). But know that Will felt everything that you were feeling about your cousin now two years ago, because he was feeling those things about me. I know that I am biased because my brother has been so good to me, but he really is the best of men and I hope that you will be kind to him because he really loves you. Please say that everything is all right? ... And, do you have any notion of what he's doing in Edinburgh?
With lots of love, Georgie Darcy.
The e-mail was all at once a comforting and a confusing thing to read. Lizzy was only too delighted to read that Will had been upset by her sudden disappearance -- that boded well for him not being too angry at Lizzy, despite what she thought of as her betrayal of him -- and that he would understand her feelings of guilt over Lydia. After all, he had been in exactly the same place, not having warned his younger, impressionable female relative about the dangers of Wickham. And Georgie seemed to have great faith that Will intended to pursue his relationship with Lizzy, which was a balm to an anxious spirit.
But... But it was also worrying. What was Darcy doing in Edinburgh instead of St Andrews? Why hadn't he contacted Lizzy yet? Why hadn't he said anything about Lizzy to his sister?
Lizzy managed to write back a brief, friendly, largely impersonal message, enclosing her address and other contact information at the end, hoping that somehow Georgie might get through to her brother where Lizzy had so far failed.
Dear Georgie, It was lovely to hear from you, especially as I haven't heard anything from your brother lately. I have no more idea what he is up to in Edinburgh than you do. Perhaps archives or business? I hope that I will see him soon. In the meanwhile, however, I'd best get on with my work. My address is below, and of course I'd love to see you whenever you're in town. -- And I look forward to both the disc and the biscuits, and with that sob story, you tempt me to send you your very own package! (do you have an address?) - Lizzy Bennet.
Lizzy's next clue as to Darcy's mysterious behavior came unexpectedly during the next weekend, when Frances Bennet once again insisted that her daughters spend an afternoon together, as was their occasional custom. Lizzy remembered the tradition from the earlier term, and agreed that she and Jane should tag along, at Mary's request. Lizzy was a little apprehensive, however: this would be the first time that she saw Lydia since the incident in Glasgow. Would she be changed?
The rough answer to this question appeared to be a resounding No. Lydia was as brazen and outspoken as ever, clearly thoroughly enjoying her first day out of Edinburgh since her father had hauled her home from Glasgow. She even spoke of her time with George Wickham quite frankly, much to her sisters' shock.
They were sitting at Lizzy's favorite cafe (which happened to also be Mary's favorite), at a small table by the window. Lydia's voice carried all-too-loudly around the room, but there seemed no way to hush the youngest girl's voice as she prattled on and on, clearly pleased to have a new audience, in the form of her oldest sister and two older cousins.
"Ooh, thanks! The panini is mine," Lydia said loudly to the waitress, before launching back into a detailed description of her adventures. "So, then, when they finally let us off staring at buildings, we had dinner at this adorable little place next door to the hotel -- but we were only allowed to order off of a limited menu, since there were so many of us! I thought that was rather unfair, don't you think? My first time to Glasgow, and I'm treated like a child. You heard about the curfew, I'm sure! Mom didn't even used to make me have a curfew! Though Dad has been enforcing one lately... can you believe it?"
"Lydia, you caused your family a great deal of worry," Jane said gently, braving to reason with Lydia. The other sisters had all been rebuffed already on previous attempts, especially Kitty, who was now sulking in her corner of the table, decidedly not happy to be spending the day with a particular one of her sisters.
"Oh, well, I already had the lecture," Lydia said rudely, taking a large bite out of her panini. "So you can give me a break. I know that I should have called... I knew it then, too, but I was having so much fun. You all don't get it, do you? You're all off at university or with jobs, but Mom and Dad would treat me like a child if I didn't show them that I'm not a kid anymore! So I have to take my own affairs into my own hands."
"And maybe they have a point," Mary whispered to Lizzy quietly. "She is just seventeen, and clearly doesn't have a great track record with making her own decisions!" Lizzy nodded grimly as Lydia continued her tirade, punctuated by swift bites of panini.
"Seeing the larks all of you get up to, traveling and boyfriends and sex and shopping and all, you really think that I just want to sit back at home? No! So what's the big deal about going off on a trip with a guy my parents know and like? I was going to come home!"
"George Wickham sent a ransom note," Kitty piped in, still annoyed with her younger sister. Though she lacked much more moral authority than Lydia, she knew that she wouldn't have run off without informing her parents, even if she had also thought Lizzy's ex-boyfriend very attractive and charming, and she was determined to rub this in Lydia's face. Lydia's description of her trip suddenly descended into an argument.
"I don't believe it," Lydia said. "I certainly never saw any such thing. We just went away together for a few days, is that so hard for any of you to believe? He liked me. He liked me better than you," she said, waving her sandwich at Lizzy, "he never took you on vacation -- and he said I was better in bed!"
Lizzy decided that silence was the better part of valor, and simply glared at Lydia, who would only have taken Lizzy's comments as jealousy.
"George was a cool guy, a hot guy, and I like his friends. Yeah, I know that he's a bit older than me, and it wasn't like we were going to get married or anything -- I'm so not ready for that! -- but we were having fun and I didn't want to go home so soon!" She stared defiantly at the others, and stole one of Kitty's french fries.
"If a minor goes missing, the police have to get involved," Mary pointed out. "So it's your own fault that you were hauled away from George by the police. I don't see how you can complain."
Lydia had no such scruples, and proceeded to complain further. "And I didn't even get the chance to say goodbye -- and no one told me that George was going to jail until he was already there! Pretty shabby, if you ask me! It would have taken about a minute -- but no, it was all 'Lydia you have to go home now, your family is anxious.' And I was all like 'what on earth is all this to you, Mr Stupid Darcy? You're not my dad'..."
"What?" cried Lizzy, suddenly, thoroughly shocked and confused by what she had just heard. "Darcy as in Darcy Charles Bingley's friend?"
"Yeah, Darcy, the toad who cost George his inheritance! He just shows up out of nowhere with the police and makes me come away with him to Glasgow, where I bet he put Dad up to that awful lecture. You know, that Darcy has a real problem, not being able to deal with George being happy!"
"Lydia!" Kitty cut in, seeing Lizzy's strange expression. "George kidnapped you! Don't you think you could give Darcy some credit for helping Dad find you?"
"Oh, go marry him if you think he's so great," Lydia said grumpily, eating off of Mary's plate. "Though, I grant you, he is really hot and that helicopter of his is pretty sweet... oh, crap, I wasn't supposed to mention anything about him being there." She quickly pulled a dessert menu out of the rack and held it up so that it hid her face.
There was no doubt about it, Lizzy thought as Jane and Kitty looked at one another and then at Lizzy. Darcy had helped rescue Lydia. But what did it mean? Yes, he hated Wickham, but was there more to this? Had he helped because he wanted to do something for Lizzy? ... But if that were the case, where was he now? And why hadn't he wanted her to know about it? Lizzy resolved to pester every person she could think of who might have Darcy's mobile phone number tomorrow; she needed to see him again, and she needed some answers.
And, in the meanwhile, she was going to give her uncle a call to see what he knew about Darcy's mysterious movements in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Some secrets were too important for her to respect
Continued In Next Section