Page 112 of The Matchmaker’s Mistake

“Not arranged it. But I am the reason you proposed without so much as an attempt at courting her.” His mother turned from the window. “I discouraged you from speaking with her. I invited Mr. Aldridge to our party. I encouraged his attentions instead. You believed he meant to offer for her, and so you did so yourself.”

“That is not why I asked her.”

“It is why you asked her then.”

He could not deny it. “She said the same thing.”

“And she was confronted with all of this still believing you would never turn to her at all, because I had already matched you with Miss Finch. Poor girl.” She shook her head. “What was she to conclude?” His mother returned to her chair but did not sit. “You told her that you loved her, but the proposal told another story. A man who loved her would have gone about this properly from the first.”

Darcy looked down at the catalogue beside his hand.

“She did not wish to be the woman you selected because another man had shown an interest,” his mother said. “Not the woman your mother made suddenly desirable by threatening to give her to someone else. She wanted to be loved before there was a rival. Now you shall have to prove to her that this is the kind of love you feel.” His mother’s gaze was steady. “That is, if you do.”

“Of course I do, but how? She will never allow me near her after this.”

“If Emmeline is correct, Miss Elizabeth must be suffering as much as you are. Now that things have been given a week to settle, perhaps it is time for the two of you to have an honest conversation.”

“And how am I to manage that?”

“Perhaps,” his mother said with a sigh, “I ought to send a note to Mrs. Gardiner. I would not interfere again, but you are not engaged and cannot write to Miss Elizabeth yourself.”

Hope rose so quickly that he immediately distrusted it. “No.” He stood. “If she suspects that you have arranged another meeting, she will refuse before she has read half the note.”

“I owe you an apology, Fitzwilliam. I have never been wrong in my advice before. Not all of my matches end in marriage, of course, for I am not perfect. But the advice itself has always been sound. I did not, however, account for Miss Elizabeth. She is different from the ladies of the ton, and I should not have expected her to act as they do.”

“It was not only her that you read wrongly, Mother.”

“Yes, I do see that. But I did ask you, Fitzwilliam, and you told me you were free.”

He had done that. And he had listened to his mother when his own good sense had told him to make his apologies the very first time he saw Miss Elizabeth at her relations’ home in Gracechurch Street.

“Very well, I ought to have told you. But what would you have done?”

“I would have invited her as your particular guest, of course. You might have spent the winter courting her. It would have saved all of us a good deal of time.”

“You would have managed it all?”

“Of course.”

He sighed. “If you had done that, Mother, Miss Elizabeth would only have fled a good deal sooner. Allow me to state this plainly. She does not want an arranged match, and I honour her for it. I do not want that either.”

For one moment, his mother looked offended, but in the very next, the expression was gone. “Emmeline had one last thing to tell me before she returned home. She said, ‘You have spent twenty years seeing matches before they are made. This time, you failed to see that the match had made itself.’” Her mouth moved into a fleeting smile. “She has been rehearsing that, I think. It was very well said.”

“Mother—”

“I am not finished. Nearly, but not yet.” She looked at him, and for once, Darcy saw no calculation or negotiation in her countenance. “Tell me what I may do.”

Darcy stepped around the desk, took his mother’s hands, and said, gently, “Stay out of the way.”

His mother looked at him.

“That is all. Do not explain, invite, hint, apologise on my behalf, or accidentally seat us beside one another.” He leaned forward. “If I am to have any chance of restoring my credibility, whatever I do next must be entirely my own. It must be only me, in my own words. Badly done if necessary, but mine.”

His mother was silent for a long moment. She opened her mouth, but whatever she had been about to suggest—Georgiana’s duet, an invitation to the theatre, or, heaven help him, a pair of hired ponies trained to shy on the Tuesday walk in the park so that he might seize the reins and play the hero before half the ton—she pressed her lips together on it instead. It was the first time in his life he had seen his mother withdraw in such a way.

“Then I shall do nothing,” she said, and sighed. “You will appreciate how difficult this will be for me.”

“I do appreciate it. How long will it last?”