Page 13 of Till Death Us Do Part: Book 2
Darcy nodded, already thinking about the things he still needed to do before his dawn ship. He would have days to sleep on board, so he could stay up as late as necessary; but to tell the truth, he was only verifying anyway. He had already done all he could to prepare.
A half hour later, Mrs Radcliff brought in the promised meal, and another bottle of laudanum. Darcy disliked it because it sometimes gave him nightmares, but in small doses, he thought it better than nothing. After double and triple checking his list of tasks, he decided what he really needed was a good night’s sleep.
With that thought, and keeping in mind that he might not get another bath for days or weeks, he called for water and retired upstairs.
As he sat in his bath, with the laudanum slowly taking effect, he reflected on his conversation with his wife in the carriage, and it was not with any satisfaction. The laudanum made his thinking too fuzzy to really make any sense of it, but he thought he would have a tough time claiming he had acted as a gentleman should.
Finally giving up the effort for the night, he fell into an exhausted slumber and let his problems with his wife wait for another day. He assumed she was sleeping comfortably in the inn and momentarily wondered how she would find Pemberley. She was an avid walker, so she would like the grounds. She knew someone from Lambton, so she would like the village, which was much like Meryton. She was a passionate reader, and the Pemberley library should offer years of amusement. The house would be free of the noisy screeching she must have endured all her life at Longbourn. She had little of which to complain.
His last thought before drifting off to sleep was that they had endured a difficult beginning, but it might eventually work out. She was a beautiful woman, very social and likeable, had a deft hand with the pianoforte, and was probably the most intelligent woman he knew. He couldcertainlyhave been much worse off. Once they both got over the anger and awkwardness of the compromise and marriage, who knew—they might make a go of it. He had seen worse beginnings.
With an inarticulate yell, Darcy woke from a restless sleep, with his mind screaming bloody murder, his heart pounding, and his nightshirt stuck to his body with sweat. He sat up, lit a candle, and examined the clock to see that it was four o’clock inthe morning and pitch-black outside. He sat up, trying to get his body to calm down through sheer force of will. He eventually got out of bed for a few minutes to see what was going wrong with his head.
As he put on his banyan and lit a second candle, he noticed his back teeth were sore, a sure sign that he was clenching his jaw. He did that at night when he was overly anxious, but it had not happened for some time, so he reckoned he was even more distressed than he thought.
He did not want to awaken any servants, so he found the banked fire still had some coals. He took some kindling, coerced it back to life, and sat in his favourite chair, trying his best to calm his mind and see what woke him so abruptly.
It did not take all that long to surmise his distress was caused by the most obvious cause in the world—his argument with his new wife. Their discussion in the coach as they entered Hatfield occurred with his head pounding and his anger in full bloom, so he felt he had notreallyheard all she said. He assumed the words were stuck in his head somewhere, but he had not really understood them or reacted properly.
He sat there quietly, staring at the flames, drinking slowly from a glass of wine, thinking over the conversation, and found it coming back in bits and pieces. The first fragment to come back hit him like a hammer blow: ‘Your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others.’
Hearing the words repeat in his mind felt like being slapped all over again. Not a single person had ever spoken to him like that in his entire life. The worst argument he ever had with Richard or Wickham would have come to fists with far less provocation. Wasthatthe woman he was doomed to spend his life with?
Was that truly how his wife saw him? He could not credit it. He had, all his life, tried to act the gentleman. For certain, he didnot mix well with new people, but that hardly counted asselfish disdain.His best friend was Bingley, and, next to him, any ordinary man would seem like a plodder. No, he did not really believe himself to be at fault.
Try as he might, he could think ofnothinghe ever said to the former Miss Bennet that could produce such a level of animosity. It was beyond certain that Wickham had found fertile ground for his lies, something his uncle promised to do something about finally—but he could not think of a single disparaging or arrogant thing he had ever said within his wife’s hearing. Hehadsaid some things privately, but he felt certain those remained private, so where did her animosity come from?
On that subject, if he was ‘the last man in the world whom she could ever be prevailed on to marry,’ then how did she end up compromising him? He was just chewing on that thought, when he got his next near-fatal blow of memory, and this one made him blush in shame.
He sat in concentration, trying to recall, until he thought he had the exact words:
‘Let us have this out once and for all!I did not compromise you!I will freely admit thatmy motherdid, but I had no part in it. I remind you of the sequence.Youasked me to dance, and I reluctantly accepted.Youpulled me over to the corner where my mother performed her evil.Yougrabbed my arm hard enough when she started screeching to leave a bruise that took over a week to heal.Youreturned to Hertfordshire of your own volition to askmy fatherfor my hand, without even bothering to ask my opinion. I can assure you, sir, that I had no part in this debacle and did all I could to escape it.’
His mind repeated the sentence over and over like a mantra, getting angrier and angrier as he went along. If she had not been involved in the compromise, and he had nothing to prove her word incorrect, theneverythinghe had thought and done sincethat blasted ball was built on quicksand. All his actions were based on his understanding of the world, which now seemed like it mightbe tragically in error. It was unfathomable. It was inconceivable. It was so wrong that he could not entirely wrap his head around it. He sat there for an hour, with her most critical words repeating over and over and over:
‘I can assure you, sir, that I had no part in this debacle and did all I could to escape it.’
He found the phrases circling his head, none of it provable, or even truly believable; but all of it disturbing if true: ‘all I could to escape it… all I could to escape it… all I could to escape it.’
If that was true, he had dug himself a much deeper hole than expected.
In his mind, he had accepted his wife’s anger as a consequence of his failure to fall at her feet after being compromised—that he did not allow her to enjoy the early fruits of her marriage, nor show off her husband to the neighbourhood. If what she said was true, thenshe had ample cause for anger.
The very idea of his wife being blameless in the entire affair had never occurred to him. He still did not know what was true and what was not, but it was for blasted certain he aimed to find out. He would be gone for months, but there were ways for the investigation to continue in his absence, and it seemed unlikely anything terrible would happen to her at Pemberley while he was gone. She would be fine, and perhaps less angry when he returned.
He thought about writing her a letter, then thought better of it. He had less than two hours before he must dress and begin his journey. He still felt exhausted, feverish, and slightly ill—as well as potentially disgusted with himself. If his wife was telling the truth, he hadnotacted the gentleman. He still had a tough time crediting her words, but the most basic duty of a gentleman wasto find the truth and administer justice. If culpable, it was his responsibility to make amends—not to mention, his only slim hope of surviving the next fifty years with anything remotely approaching contentment. He would never acquiesce to his uncle’s suggestion of an annulment, so one way or another, he had to make things work with the wife he had.
Feeling the exhaustion that came from the effort, but thinking he could finally sleep now that he had a plan, Darcy wrote a short note for his valet to be certain he had laudanum in his trunk, then fell back into bed, asleep almost before his head hit the pillow.
6.HMSManilla
“Welcome aboard, sir. I understand I am not to use your name publicly.”
“Thank you, Captain Seymour. I suspect that restriction is a bit silly, but I would prefer to remain anonymous as long as I can.”
“That will cause no issue, Mr ah… Mason?”
Darcy laughed at the ridiculousness of the disguise, but gamely bowed to the captain, who was to escort him to a place where a French ship would take him safely into port; or as safe as these things could be during a war. His new home for a few days was the HMS Manilla, an Apollo-class frigate with thirty-six guns, launched only a few years earlier in 1809.
