Page 74 of Knowing Mr. Darcy
“You can’t simply force your way inside!” cried Mrs. Younge.
“Oh, no?” said the colonel. “And yet, here I am, doing it.”
Bingley followed in the man’s wake, as the colonel opened every door he could open and banged on each locked one until the inhabitants presented themselves. They looked in each and every room in the entire place.
Wickham was nowhere to be found.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MR. DARCY WASrealizing that Elizabeth took after her father in a number of ways. He thought he and Mr. Bennet might have got on under different circumstances, but there were several things counting against an easiness between them, chiefly that he’d had his hand on the man’s daughter’s backside the evening before and that he was probably marrying her for reasons of lust and he was very sure that Mr. Bennet was going to realize this and condemn him for it.
Of course, Mrs. Bennet herself was a handsome woman, even at her age, so maybe Mr. Bennet knew about being drawn to a woman in that way.
It was disconcerting, however. Mr. Darcy had never been affected by a woman in this way before meeting Elizabeth. The fact that she felt it, too, well, that was gratifying, but he felt vaguely ashamed of himself. He knew, given everything, the only honorable thing to do in this situation was to marry her, but he had a feeling of trepidation about it all.
It was like that line fromRomeo and Juliet. “It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden, too like the lightning which doth cease to be ere one can say it lightens.”
He was no foolish adolescent like the boy-man in that play. He should know a better way to conduct himself. And furthermore, it didn’t turn out well for Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers, did it?
However, what was he to do? He didn’t think this sort ofattraction was commonplace. He had never wanted a woman so much that he wanted her against his better judgment. He must honor the violence of the allure. It was rare, and that meant it was worth experiencing.
He and Mr. Bennet drew up the papers, and they signed them, and the engagement was all right and proper. Mr. Bennet said that Mr. Darcy must stay and dine with the family, but Mr. Darcy was eager to get back to Elizabeth, and the ride was half-a-day’s journey, so he must set off now that his business was concluded. He was expecting to enter into an argument with Mrs. Bennet about it, who would say it was imprudent to travel so far in one day, and he was practicing his arguments against it, so as not to sound as though he simply wanted to get back and lust over their daughter within close proximity instead of from afar.
But when they encountered Mrs. Bennet in the hallway at Longbourn, she was in a state. She had a letter in one hand, which she had clutched in a fist she was shaking, and tears were leaking readily down her cheeks. She was letting out a noise that could only be termed a wail.
“I see,” said Mr. Bennet. “I imagine that she’s just found out that the sort of petticoat she likes to wear has gone out of fashion. My wife is given to extreme reactions, you see.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Bennet’s eyes fixed on her husband with a look of pure hatred. “Youwouldsay something like that, Mr. Bennet. I cannot abide you sometimes.”
“Well, my darling, abiding is what we have pledged to do, and it is what we both must attempt to do, forever and ever. This is what you’ve consigned yourself to, Mr. Darcy. This is marriage.”
“Here.” Mrs. Bennet held out the crumpled letter. “Here.”
“I thought, Mrs. Bennet, you’d be pleased to know that at least one of our daughters has been spoken for. I know you spend ever so much time worrying over their matrimonial statuses.” But he reached out to take the letter.
Mrs. Bennet slammed the bit of crumpled paper into his hand and stalked down the hallway and into the drawing room, still wailing.
Mr. Bennet gave Mr. Darcy an apologetic smile. “She does take on so. Not to worry. Lizzy is the least shrill of the women in the house. You chose well.” He smoothed out the letter, blinked at it, and then grimaced.
“Sir?” said Mr. Darcy. “Is it bad news?”
Mr. Bennet folded the letter up, nervous, obviously weighing what his next words should be. “A family matter, sir. Nothing to concern you. But I think I may need to ask for privacy.”
“Well, I am now to be part of this family,” said Mr. Darcy. “What concerns this family concerns me.” A spike of something sour was working its way down his spine.
Mr. Bennet hesitated, and Darcy understood that this was of such a serious nature that he worried that revealing it might make Darcy wish tonotbe connected with this family. It was on the tip of his tongue to say that he had trespassed too far against Elizabeth for there to be any thought of ever getting out of this engagement, that his honor would not allow it, and then he thought better of that.
Instead, Mr. Darcy simply held out his hand.
Mr. Bennet winced. He gestured with the folded-up piece of paper. “If it’s as my daughter presents it in this letter, we shall weather it, but I find it… unsettling.”
Mr. Darcy took the letter, pulled it right out of Mr. Bennet’s grasp.
Mr. Bennet let out a little noise, but he allowed it.
Mr. Darcy read the letter. It was from Lydia Bennet, who was the youngest. He sometimes got Mary and Catherine mixed up, but Lydia was distinctive. She said that she was on her way to marry Mr. Wickham, and that they were eloping, and that it was such a lark that she, the youngest, was to be the first married of all the sisters.
“He has been associated with the family, you see,” said Mr. Bennet. “But not with my youngest daughter, with my oldest, Jane. I would have had no objection if he’d come to me to ask for her hand—well, for Jane’s. This… switching the girls, taking her off to be married in secret… it doesn’t bode well.”
