Page 63 of One Night with Mr. Darcy
Richard eyed him. “No, not exactly, no. But I don’t know if you’ll want to speak to her about it.”
“Her?”
“Yes, your Mrs. Collins helped him along. He was half out the window already at that point. She gave him a little nudge.”
“Elizabeth killed him.” Mr. Darcy’s mouth was dry. This was… no… he couldn’t…
“No,” said Richard. “No, I did that. He was still alive after the fall. I think the fall might have killed him eventually. He was not in good shape, as you can see.” He pulled back the sheet.
Darcy grimaced.
“I did finish him off,” said Richard. “Be sure to tell her that if you speak to her about it. It may help her a bit.”
“I went to kill him myself,” said Darcy, shaking his head. “I went to do it, and… this.”
“Life is strange sometimes, don’t you think?” said the colonel. “But all’s well that ends well? Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. All that?”
Darcy’s nostrils flared.
“Don’t,” said Richard, giving him a warning look. “Please don’t make this about your fragile ego, Fitz.”
“I am not making it about—”
“You are. Did you want him dead or did you want to be the one who killed him?”
“Well, both, ideally.” Mr. Darcy squared his shoulders.
“I understand.” His cousin stepped closer. “Believe me, I do. Why do you think I went into the military in the first place? There’s my brother, good old Elden, with everything just given to him, and me? I have to earn it, earn any shred of notice that anyone wanted to give me? I thought… Anyway, I understand. But here’s the truth of it, it doesn’t work.”
“I don’t understand,” said Mr. Darcy. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re trying to prove yourself in some way,” said Richard. “Rescue your sister, be a man, Iunderstand.”
Mr. Darcy looked down at the ground. “I do need to. I have not proved myself in any way—”
“Stop,” said Richard. “No, you… what do you want? You run a bloody estate, man. You are the master of how many servants? You’ve increased the estate’s money since you took over—quite young, by the way—and you’ve got… You’re Mr. Darcy of Pemberley. Men dream of being you.”
“N-no they don’t.” Mr. Darcy shook himself. “Or if they do, it’s because of what I got for no reason, just by the accident of birth, not because I earned it, like you’re saying, about what you did—”
“Well, that’s just the thing, the earning it, the feeling, the notion of having become a man, whatever that even means, it never happens.”
Darcy furrowed his brow.
“I mean, we already are men, Darcy. It happened already, and there’s no earning or proving, it just is, and this is all that it feels like.”
Darcy simply stared at him.
“Never mind,” said Richard. “I wish I hadn’t spoken.” He stalked out of the shed, door banging behind him.
Darcy turned back to look at Mr. Wickham’s body. He was being frightfully selfish, wasn’t he? It wasn’t a manly thing to do, to worry about his honor or his satisfaction or his capacity to dispatch this man. It had happened. Now, he had people counting on him, and he needed to be there for them.
GEORGIANA WAS NOTwrapped in blankets at dinner. She was eating with gusto, simply stuffing her face full of meat and potatoes. She kept smiling, even though no one else was smiling.
Elizabeth watched her and wasn’t sure that what she’d done hadn’t been a very good thing in the end. She still didn’t understand exactly how it was that Mr. Wickham was dead when she’d been sure he was moaning, but perhaps it had been a death rattle.
She wasn’t proud of herself, and she felt wretched about her actions, but… well… perhaps sometimes a person had to do wretched things for the good of everyone.
They did not discuss the dead body at the dinner table. Such things were not done. Definitely not a proper topic of conversation. In fact, it likely would have been better if she’d canceled formal dinner, but the colonel wouldn’t hear of it.That man has disrupted our lives quite enough,he declared. Dinner went on.
