Page 20 of Infamous Relations

“Will you stay with Lizzy?”

“Of course I shall! We shall not leave her alone for a moment, between the two of us, Jane,” Charlotte vowed.

Jane smiled wearily and kissed her cheek before straightening her spine and descending the stairs again.

Mr. Darcy was hunched over in an armchair, hands pressed to his eyes, when Jane re-entered the parlour. A tall, handsome brown-haired man – who she recalled now had indeed been present before, he had given her his handkerchief, which she still held clutched tightly in her hand – rose from a kneeling position at Mr. Darcy’s side and made her a graceful bow.

“Miss Bennet.”

She glanced at Darcy, who seemed unaware of her presence, lost in his own distress, and shrugged mentally. Dropping a slight curtsy, she managed a small smile. “Colonel Fitzwilliam?”

“At your service, Miss Bennet. I regret our lack of formal introduction, but…” he gestured a little helplessly at his cousin. “I am afraid Darcy is in no fit state to be of assistance.”

“He seems uncommonly distressed, Colonel?” Jane could not help but say queryingly.

“Of course, he…” He stopped, peered at her. “You do not know,” he said, enlightened. “Darcy must have hidden his feelings very well while in Hertfordshire, but considering how much Miss Elizabeth told me of you and how close the two of you are, I would have thought that she would have written to you about their courtship here!”

“Their what?” Jane blanched with shock, found the colonel suddenly at her side, taking her elbow and guiding her to a chair clear across the room from the distraught, oblivious Darcy.

“Darcy has been courting Miss Elizabeth ever since we arrived in Kent some weeks hence,” the colonel explained quietly, kneeling before her. “In his own, inimitably useless way.”

“I do not understand,” Jane said plaintively. “Elizabeth…” glancing at Darcy, she lowered her voice to a whisper. “The very first time they saw each other, Mr. Darcy said to his friend that he found Lizzy tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt him. She overheard, and…”

“And she was thoroughly offended,” the colonel murmured, beginning to add things up in his head, “and being Miss Elizabeth, she probably said something pert and not a little rude to try and gain some measure of revenge. Darcy was intrigued… and has quite failed to realise that she has never forgiven him, even while he fell in love with her for the way she refused to swoon over him like every other woman he knows.”

Jane stared, her eyes wide as saucers.

“My cousin is an absolute idiot,” Fitzwilliam said with great feeling, and Jane had to clap her hand over her mouth in order not to laugh out loud. If she began, she felt that she might never stop.

“Perhaps – perhaps we might take a turn about the garden so that we can discuss – these developments without distressing him further?” she whispered at last. “I owe him a very great apology, but I do think that I would like to understand better what has gone on these last weeks.”

“It is never a hardship to escort a lady as lovely as yourself around a garden on a fine spring day,” Fitzwilliam said charmingly and not at all untruthfully, standing and offering his arm.

Chapter Fifteen

Jane collected her bonnet in the hall and they proceeded out into the garden. The colonel offered his arm gallantly and she accepted, weary from the panicked dash to Kent and the long night spent at Elizabeth’s side.

They walked for a few moments while Jane gathered her thoughts into some sort of order, Fitzwilliam remaining quiet while she mused, though he had a number of questions he dearly wished to ask her.

At last, Jane spoke. “You are quite certain of Mr. Darcy’s feelings, Colonel?”

“I could not be more so, Miss Bennet. Darcy and I are cousins, less than a year apart in age. He is my closest friend, and has been so for my entire life.” Fitzwilliam smiled. “I had not seen him in Miss Elizabeth’s presence for above five minutes before I was well aware of his feelings – his extraordinary jealousy that she laughed and smiled as I spoke with her, his…” he swallowed the word desire “very great admiration of her person and her wit.”

“I cannot fathom it,” Jane shook her head. “Lizzy is convinced he looks at her only to find fault, and he has made his opinion of our family quite clear! Why, Lizzy is so set against him that she is convinced that it was his persuasion that has kept Mr. Bingley away from Netherfield Park…”

Fitzwilliam started. Looked closely at Jane for a moment. “You are… acquainted with Mr. Bingley?”

“He is the reason for our acquaintance with your cousin, sir,” Jane gave him a puzzled glance. “Mr. Bingley leased Netherfield Park, a neighbouring estate to Longbourn, our home, this autumn past, and Mr. Darcy was his guest there for some weeks.”

“I… think I may have made a rather egregious error,” Fitzwilliam said faintly.

“Sir?” Jane stared up at him.

The only question was, which of the Bennet sisters had Bingley been in love with? Elizabeth? No, Fitzwilliam could not believe that Darcy would have stooped so low as to discourage Bingley’s courtship of Elizabeth solely because he wanted her for himself. Miss Bennet was the more likely prospect, and from what he knew of Bingley, very much the other man’s type.

There were objections to this beautiful, sweetly-mannered lady? Well, he had thought her a Valkyrie earlier, but she had just cause – Jane Bennet was unquestionably a gentlewoman, though, and given the Bingley family’s background in trade, she would be an excellent match. What was it Darcy had said, though, that there were serious objections to the Bennet family?

Elizabeth had talked of them with fondness a number of times, of her younger sisters ‘silly, but still growing yet’ and her father ‘buried in his books’, even her mother ‘sadly desperate to marry at least one of us off well, due to the unfortunate situation of the entail’! She had laughed at her own descriptions, but Fitzwilliam had heard the love in her voice, and could not believe that anyone who Elizabeth Bennet held in any esteem at all could be less than worthy of respect at the very least.