Page 45 of Pride, Prejudice & Wicked Pleasure

Lizzy was saved from having to answer by the entry of Mr. Collins, who, judging from his fast breathing, must have hurried home to deliver intelligence that Mr. Darcy had indeed arrived. On the following morning, he hastened to Rosings to pay his respects. There were two nephews of Lady Catherine to require them, for Mr. Darcy had brought with him a Colonel Fitzwilliam, and, to the great surprise of all the party, when Mr. Collins returned, the gentlemen accompanied him. Charlotte had seen them from her husband's room, crossing the road, and immediately running into the other, told the girls what an honour they might expect, adding,

“I may thank you, Eliza, for this piece of civility. Mr. Darcy would never have come so soon to wait upon me.”

Lizzy had scarcely time to disclaim all right to the compliment, before their approach was announced by the door-bell, and shortly afterwards the three gentlemen entered the room. Colonel Fitzwilliam, who led the way, was about thirty, not handsome, but in person and address most truly the gentleman. Mr. Darcy looked just as he had been used to look in Hertfordshire—paid his compliments, with his usual reserve, to Mrs. Collins, and whatever might be his feelings toward her friend, met her with every appearance of composure. Lizzy merely curtseyed to him without saying a word.

Colonel Fitzwilliam entered into conversation directly with the readiness and ease of a well-bred man, and talked very pleasantly; but his cousin, after having addressed a slight observation on the house and garden to Mrs. Collins, sat for some time without speaking to anybody. He seemed more awkward than ever before—troubled even. Lizzy thought he glanced at her with a reaction that appeared very much like dismay. At length, however, his civility was so far awakened as to inquire after the health of her family. She answered him in the usual way, and after a moment's pause, added:

"My eldest sister has been in town these three months. Have you never happened to see her there?"

She was perfectly sensible that he never had, but she wished to see whether he would betray any consciousness of what had passed between the Bingleys and Jane, and she thought he looked a little confused as he answered that he had never been so fortunate as to meet Miss Bennet. The subject was pursued no farther, and the gentlemen soon afterwards went away.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Darcy paced the rug of his bedchamber as if intending to wear it into the ground. His valet, a good man in his employ for over ten years, having never seen Mr. Darcy in such a state, seemed torn between letting the man alone or staying in the event his services should be required and could, by chance, alleviate some of the distress his master was clearly experiencing. But the intensity with which Mr. Darcy strode from one end of the room to the other had a silencing effect on the valet, who continued in his indecision by saying and doing nothing at all.

Too engrossed in his own thoughts, Darcy barely noticed the presence of another. Having left Trenwith House the other day with new hope that his interest for Miss Elizabeth had the prospect of diminishing, he had been dealt a set-back upon learning from Mr. Collins that she was staying at the Parsonage. Of course, within such proximity, he could not avoid paying her a visit and had all too keenly agreed to return with Mr. Collins that very morning, attributing part of his eagerness to curiosity whether the sight of her would enflame his feelings or whether they would remain the same. The latter he considered a minor victory, but he was prepared for either.

He was wholly unprepared for the shock of hearing her voice.

It couldn’t be her.

Stranger coincidences than two women suffering from a similar cold could occur easily enough, he reasoned to himself. And yet, with every word she spoke, he was thrown back into the Red Chamber. The huskiness of both voices, that of Miss Elizabeth and of the young woman at Trenwith House, would not allow for a perfect match, but there were other qualities of speech to regard: the cadence, the inflection, and the mannerisms. What and how she spoke. Had he not thought the woman in the Red Chamber familiar?

Preferring to leave the ease of conversation to his cousin, Darcy would not have talked much even had he not been in a state of disbelief and took the opportunity to make a comparison of Miss Elizabeth. The Red Chamber had been dark, certainly, but the posture, the breadth of the shoulders, the length of the neck, and general shape of the torso were all too similar. At one point, he had tried to picture Miss Elizabeth sans clothing to assist in his evaluation, but he had quickly ceased, silently berating himself for the impropriety of such an effort. He did not dwell on the irony. His mind had been thrown into a tumult at the notion that, if the two, Miss Elizabeth and the woman of the Red Chamber, were one and the same, then he had…

Good god.

The length of his legs up through his groin ached. He could recall only one other time in his life when he had felt such distress—when he had thought his sister to be eloping with Wickham. His agitation could wait no longer.

“My hat and gloves,” he called out without knowing whether his valet had stayed or left.

He could hardly wait for his horse to be saddled and rode to Trenwith House at as fast a gallop as could be had with the roads still wet. Once arrived, he perceived the relaxed pace of Mr. Singh’s speech and movements to be agonizingly slow and was tempted to announce himself, were he not in possession of better manners.

Abby was sitting at a writing table in her husband’s study, a room she had little altered since his passing as he had spent a great deal of time in it.

“My dear Fitzwilliam, you look positively pale!” she remarked as she looked over a pair of spectacles at him. “Are you unwell?”

“I am fine,” he answered of his health. “I came—but forgive my intrusion—if you’ve no wish to be disturbed, I hope you will send me away. I can call at a more opportune time.”

She appraised him more closely. “But why should I send you away now that you are here? Clearly something of an urgent nature brought you here.”

At her acceptance of his company, he sat down upon a sofa before the writing table, but, restless, he rose to his feet again. “The young woman—the Red Chamber—”

The air felt thin, and he had to take several breaths before continuing, “Who was she?”

Abby frowned. “Fitzwilliam, you know better than anyone I never reveal an identity.”

He took once more to pacing as he weighed the rules of engagement against his own desire for confirmation.

Dabbing her quill in ink, she continued penning the letter before her, asking, “Why such an interest in this young woman?”

He paced a bit more before sitting down. “Because I have reason to believe I know her.”

She paused but did not look up. “Perhaps you do. Perhaps you don’t. Really, it is inconsequential.”

She resumed her writing.

“I fear it is not,” he protested, a little surprised at her detachment. “I need to know—I need to know if she is Miss Elizabeth Bennet.”