An Unequalled Affection

Part 30

Dressed and waiting in the parlour for the most formal dinner he had attended in months, Darcy recalled why it was he only rarely made any effort to visit his aunt at Rosings. It was not that Darcy despised formality, he thought, as he tugged to loosen the cravat that suddenly felt so tight as to be choking him. I would ordinarily prefer it. Formality meant rules, and Darcy had always excelled at understanding and following rules. Alas, where Lady Catherine de Bourgh was concerned, formality meant more than mere obedience to a set of pre-arranged standards.

"Ah, Fitzwilliam! I was hoping we might, at last, be permitted a moment or two to talk together."

Darcy's heart sank but he obediently turned to greet his aunt with a short bow.

"Where is everybody else?" He meant Georgiana or Richard, of course, but Lady Catherine's eyes sparkled with a suspicion she knew better.

"Of course you would enquire after your cousin! Fear not, Fitzwilliam, Anne will join us in good time for our evening's enjoyments." Her lips quirked a little as if she was not entirely sure that enjoyment was a word that ought to be applied to dining with one's curate and his guests, but in the absence of a better, it would have to do.

Darcy opened his mouth to correct her but thought better of it, offering her nought but a wordless nod.

"Will you sit down?"

"I shall be sitting all evening. Here, Fitzwilliam, lend me your arm and I shall permit you to escort me on a turn about the room."

Darcy was obliged to do as she asked, and they walked a step or two in silence before Lady Catherine found her voice once more - she never lost it for very long - and began a long-rehearsed, oft-given lecture on the future that awaited Fitzwilliam Darcy, whenever he saw fit to take it up.

"Of course, when you and Anne marry -"

"We will not marry, Aunt," Darcy said, quietly, hoping to forestall the bulk of her lecture and make plain the truth he had been avoiding addressing all day. It must be faced before this evening, he knew that, and he supposed it was fate that had afforded him this last, private interview in which to do just that.

"Not right away," Lady Catherine conceded. "I know you wish for everything to be just so, but I assure you, Fitzwilliam, it can do more harm than good to delay such a marriage. When two young people care for one another as you and Anne do -"

"We don't." It was a blunt denial and made his aunt stop short. She turned an imperious eye on him, and that look alone was enough to force a retraction, a clarification. "I mean to say, of course I care for Anne, as I do for all of my cousins. She has my support and protection as long as I am alive to give it."

"What a pity your mother could not live to see this day," Lady Catherine continued, with a substantial sigh. "We cooed over you both as babies, planning for the future when you would be each other's best hope against this cruel world we inhabit."

"Aunt," Darcy said at last, realising that there would be no moving on from this moment without a plain declaration of the truth. Pausing by an open window, he worked his arm free and turned to face her, determined to say what must be said swiftly and survive the consequences as best he might.

"I will not marry Anne. Not soon, not later. I will not marry her. I cannot." He paused at the sharp intake of breath from his aunt and continued, undeterred. "We do not love one another, not in the way that people ought to love when they plan to marry. She wishes an eternity yoked to me about as much as I wish to spend it with her: which is to say, not at all. And last of all, I cannot marry Anne because - because I am engaged to another."

Silence descended on the room like a blanket, so suddenly and suffocatingly that Darcy even looked about him as if expecting to see it. It lasted only a moment, however, for Lady Catherine gasped and clutched at him.

"My chair!" she cried. "I need my chair!"

"Of course." Darcy steered her swiftly towards it, still helping her to sit when the door opened and the merry, conversational voices of Richard and Anne dissolved as they rushed forward to help.

"What is the matter, Mama?" Anne asked.

"Aunt? Shall I send for a doctor? Darcy, what -"

"I do not need a doctor!" Lady Catherine said, dismissively. "I have merely been shocked by some news I was very ill-prepared to receive. You!" She turned to glare at Richard. "This is your doing, I suppose. Who is she? What wretch of a woman has seduced my poor Anne's husband out from under her very nose?"

"Mama!" Anne blanched, swaying a little herself and Darcy saw Richard take a step closer to her in case she, too, needed to be helped to a chair. She regained her equilibrium almost immediately, though, turning on her mother with more fire in her gaze than Darcy could ever remember seeing before. "Mama, you are not right to speak so! I have told you before I have no desire to marry Fitzwilliam, nor he me! You persist in this nonsense even though you know that if we were to go ahead it would merely make both of us miserable."

"Oh!" Lady Catherine groaned again, turning back to Richard, the only one of the three not to take a stand against her and yet, to Darcy's miserable surprise, the one upon whom she levied the bulk of the blame. "You knew about this, I suppose? You were instrumental in bringing it about?"

"Hardly," Richard began. "In fact -"

"Ahem!"

Four heads swivelled towards the door, where a desperate servant stood, poised to bid a hasty retreat, revealing the shocked figures of Mr Collins, Mrs Collins, Elizabeth and Jane Bennet.

"Good - good evening, Lady Catherine," Mr Collins stammered, stumbling forward and urging the ladies to accompany him. His eyes widened. "Nothing the matter, I hope?" He chuckled, but the sound was not at all humorous.

Darcy straightened, seeing no other option than to reveal all at once. He strode forward, offering Elizabeth his arm and separating her a little from the rest of the group.

"This is the young lady I am to marry, Aunt Catherine. You must allow me to introduce her to you. Miss Elizabeth Bennet."