A Chance at Happiness Page 7

  A faint smile crept onto her face, at last, and Charlotte was forced to admit that, whatever her faults, Lady Catherine de Bourgh had been right to recommend this volume of poetry to her. It was beautiful, the words conjuring all the images of romance and adventure that Charlotte had determined were not available to her in life. She had never been bent on marrying for love, as Elizabeth had been. She would make the best of her situation, and save her romances for the pages of books, and that would be enough.

  IF THERE WAS ONE THING Darcy was grateful for at Rosings, it was the type and quantity of brandy Lady Catherine de Bourgh kept in stock, ready for her nephews’ arrival. Considering his aunt’s habit of temperance, and her lack of interest in the preferences of gentlemen, it was an extravagance that defied logic. Until, Darcy pondered, one considered the comment such a well-stocked liquor cabinet offered on Lady Catherine’s wealth. She was nothing if not a genial host, and Darcy was certain that she kept things stocked as she did purely to act as a lure to her nephews, ensuring that, were she and their cousin not enticement enough for the two young gentlemen to be found often at Rosings, the promise of good brandy might be.

  “There! I have not tasted such a fine elixir in many a month,” Richard remarked, with a contented sigh The two gentlemen were squired away in their late uncle’s former study, kept as he had preferred it, and used only when Darcy or Colonel Fitzwilliam, alone or together, were resident at Rosings. Their aunt enjoyed seeing the old room well used again, and relished the reminder of her dear departed husband, or so she claimed. Darcy privately wondered if she surrendered the old room to their pursuits solely that she might be sure to keep the reminder of her husband out of the rest of the house, and ensure that neither she nor Anne need be scandalised by their conversation, although he wondered what she thought of her nephews if this was indeed her motivation. For whilst Richard talked a good talk of adventure, Darcy knew him to be sensible at heart, upstanding and gentlemanly in his behaviour on almost all occasions. He should not like him half so well if he were not.

  “You certainly seem to have won a few friends this evening,” he remarked, taking a warming sip of his own drink and nursing the glass carefully.

  “A few more than Mr Collins, you mean?” Richard snorted. “Poor fellow must be rather unaccustomed to drink if so small an amount can make him so careless in his behaviour.”

  “I wager he is none so careful even when he is sober,” Darcy remarked, recalling, with a grimace, the few conversations he had shared with his aunt’s Curate in Hertfordshire when the man seemed quick to claim an association through Rosings that was scarcely worth acknowledging. He had irritated Darcy then, and his behaviour this evening had done little to win back his regard. Darcy paused, wondering if he ought not to be a little more generous. The man had looked so utterly bereft at his wife’s disappearance and clearly lacked the wisdom or self-awareness to know how to remedy the situation. Darcy’s frown became a grim smile, as he acknowledged, with some degree of disappointment, that William Collins was not the only man to fall foul of feminine tempers and feel mystified at the cause or cure for such a state.

  “What is on your mind, Darcy?” Richard asked, and Darcy straightened, realising that his cousin had, for some moments, been observing him and feeling a little anxious that his feelings had been displayed so freely and obviously in his usually stoical features.

  “Nothing of consequence,” he said, hiding his anxieties by taking another swift sip of his drink. His cousin had posed this question multiple times that day and so far, Darcy congratulated himself on his ability to avoid providing a real answer.

  “I find that hard to believe.” Richard downed the contents of his glass, and eyed his cousin with suspicion. “Has there ever been a day when Fitzwilliam Darcy did not devote his thoughts to matters of consequence?”

  “And what of you?” Darcy shot back, turning his cousin’s inquiry back upon him. “You have hardly been still since your arrival here, or in any case since mine. What plagues you such that you cannot possibly care to spend more than a moment still and silent without always filling it with activity, with conversation?”

  “Do I?” Richard seemed amused to hear himself described thus, and Darcy felt the strangest sensation that his cousin was withholding something from him, some intelligence or information that might explain his seemingly boundless energy.

  “Perhaps it is because I was summoned here on account of the quiet, and bid keep you company, yet here I am and we are forever surrounded by other people.”

  “It has been one day, Darcy, and we chanced upon acquaintances quite by accident.” He raised his eyebrows, saluting his cousin with his empty glass. “Your acquaintances, in point of fact. You cannot mean to tell me that you did not wish to see Miss Bennet again, nor that you regret the opportunity to renew your acquaintance with her.”

  Darcy opened his mouth to say that was precisely his feeling on the matter but found he could not summon the words. His cheeks flushed, and he turned once more to his drink as if it by doing so he might hide himself entirely from his cousin’s unwelcome, and strangely perceptive, scrutiny.

  “Aha, then it seems I am not the only one pierced by cupid’s arrow.” Richard’s words were scarcely more than muttered, yet they reached Darcy’s ears nonetheless. He intended to counter the assertion, however much he began to question his own honesty in doing so when the implications of Richard’s words registered with him.

  “Then you -” He frowned, setting his drink down so that he might regard his cousin more carefully. “Who is she?”

  “Ah, that I’ll not be pressed on,” Richard said, quietly. “So do not attempt it. Recall, William, I am as able as you to keep a secret when I must.”

  The two cousins exchanged a glance, each one recalling the business that had occurred between Georgiana and George Wickham, and the endeavour, shared between Darcy and Fitzwilliam, to keep the matter from reaching Lady Catherine’s ears.

  “Well,” Darcy said, allowing the matter to drop and hoping that, in showing Richard mercy in this matter, his cousin would do him the same courtesy and not press him on his opinion of Elizabeth Bennet. Particularly when I hardly know it myself! “Then it seems we are both eager for a distraction. Perhaps tomorrow will be fine enough for another ride unless you prefer to remain at Rosings?”

  Richard did not respond straight away, and it seemed to Darcy as if he were giving the matter undue concern.

  “Perhaps we might call on our new friends, Darcy?” he said, at length. “Ensure for ourselves that both Mrs Collins, and her husband, are recovered after the evening’s entertainments?”

  A brief smile played about Richard’s lips, and Darcy was poised to return it, until a dark thought formed at the edge of his consciousness. Richard cared for a young lady, he had all but admitted as much. And now he insisted upon calling at the very house where one such young lady lived, in effect seeing her three times in but two days. He was all too familiar with such behaviour. Had Charles Bingley not been impossible to keep from calling at Longbourn almost daily once his affections for Jane Bennet were assured? Darcy frowned. Could it be that his cousin cared for Elizabeth Bennet? Perhaps, then, he refused to be drawn on the name of the object of his affection precisely because he assumed Darcy was likewise enamoured?

  I am not, Darcy thought, attempting to wrestle his features into a smile of agreement. If Richard think himself in love with her - after but one day’s acquaintance! - then he is more a fool than I am. This soothed Darcy, for he struggled to recognise the feelings that began within him at the mention of Elizabeth’s name. Yet the notion that she might prefer her cousin to him rankled. It was not an unlikely supposition: for had she not been less than friendly to Darcy that very evening, all the while more than happy to speak with Colonel Fitzwilliam and listen to his war stories?

  Tiredness swept over Darcy, then, and he stood, bidding his cousin good night.

  “Tomorrow, then, William,” Richard remarked, helping h
imself to a final drink and smiling. “We shall oblige ourselves of a visit to Hunsford.”

  “Very well,” Darcy said, his step heavy as he began the ascent to his quarters. He did not relish the thought of encouraging Richard in his quest for Elizabeth Bennet’s heart, but perhaps, in observing the two together, he might deduce where her own heart lay. If she preferred his cousin, Darcy would step aside. He had hardly given her cause to consider him, and yet, the thought that her good opinion was neither his to expect nor even to earn, was strangely sobering, and he retired to bed an unhappy man indeed.

  Chapter Nine

  William Collins had never known a morning like it. The sun, pale and wintry though it might be, nonetheless streamed through the window to his study with viciousness brightness, jabbing at his eyes so that they stung, and making his head, already weak and foggy, flare with pain.

  What possessed me to sleep in my study? he thought, staring about him groggily, as if he was surprised to find himself there, and not in his bed, where he ought to have awoken. His shoulders and back attested to the truth of the fact that he had, indeed, chosen to sleep hunched over his desk, rather than in the usual manner, and he struggled to recall if he had been busy at work on a sermon the night before. Occasionally his work, or his attempt to appease Lady Catherine and meet all of her editorial recommendations had caused him to work late into the night, but no, his desk was clear.

  The previous evening came back to him in pictures, flashes of memory that caused him almost as much pain as the sunlight when he strove once more to open his eyes. They had dined at Rosings, he and Charlotte, and Elizabeth Bennet. Of course, his cousin was come to stay with them. Well, that was hardly a reason for him to vacate his own room: they had plenty of accommodations for guests, particularly one who travelled as modestly as Elizabeth had.

  He recalled, then, his irritation at Colonel Fitzwilliam’s apparent good-terms with Charlotte, and how he had reached for the brandy not once, not twice...

  With a groan, he fell back in his seat. He was a fool and a-a drunkard! It was hardly worth crediting. He, William Collins, who had lectured more than one man on the vices of liquor had fallen prey to it himself, and in the presence of his friends and - worse still - Lady Catherine.

  His eyes fluttered shut, as if he might block out his remembrances with his vision, but alas, they came after him still. His twittering about Miss de Bourgh’s playing, and his nominating Charlotte for her turn and then - his crowning glory - bullying his poor wife into the piano seat, and causing her so much anxiety that the only path open to her was to flee in tears. Shame coursed through his veins and he felt a sharp prick of something that might, in a weaker man, have been tears. You were a bully, sir! he lectured himself. He, who had so often been on the receiving end of such treatment: from his father, from his so-called friends at school. He had now done the same to his own wife, who was so dear and sweet always, and deserved far better treatment than to be put on display in a manner she did not wish to be. He knew Charlotte to enjoy music as much as any other woman, but she had never professed a particular fondness for playing other than for her own amusement. She had never before shown any interest in playing for Lady Catherine, nor had he ever felt the urge to encourage her to.

  “I shall apologise,” he whispered, launching himself upright with such determination that the room spun and it was all he could do to plonk unceremoniously back down in his seat, raising a hand to his head and waiting for the spinning to subside. “In a little while. I shall apologise in a little while.” He raised himself up again, more slowly this time, and shuffled out into the corridor, calling for his valet in a voice that was scratchy and hoarse, another personal penance for his foolishness.

  Once he had drunk the entirety of his water jug, washed and dressed, he felt a fraction more like himself, but could not abide the notion of breakfasting on anything more substantial than a crust of bread.

  “Please advise Mrs Collins that I shall not be at breakfast this morning,” he said to the servant who attended him with a tray in his room. “She and Miss Bennet must not wait on my account.”

  “They did not, sir,” his servant said, with a brief bow. “I believe the ladies breakfasted early, in Mrs Collins’ parlour. They are there at present, I believe.”

  “They have?” Mr Collins hoped his disappointment was not as evident to his servant as it seemed to be to his own ear. He had thought himself magnanimous, had hoped his encouragement to his wife might be the first step on the road to the apology he was still busy forming. “I mean, it is good that they have. Yes. Good.” He cleared his throat and pushed his plate to one side. “Perhaps I will make my way down and call on them there in a little while. I think I may sit here a little longer and attend to some writing if you would be so good as to fetch me my pen and a few sheets of paper.”

  The man did as instructed, and Mr Collins fell to work. He always felt better with his pen in his hand and found his thoughts, usually a jumble of all that he wished to and all he ought to say or do, found some measure of organisation when written out in the elegant cursive he prided himself on having learnt.

  My dear Charlotte, he began, before pausing, shaking his head (a motion he regretted almost as soon as he had done it) and crumpling the sheet of paper and discarding it. He had never been one for overly flowery professions of love, and he doubted his wife, pragmatic as he knew her to be, would care for them, particularly in the form of an apology. How best, then, to begin? My wife? My dear wife? Neither seemed quite right. Eventually, contenting himself that the perfect was the enemy of the good, he settled for the simplest option. Mrs Collins, he began. I must apologise for my ill-judged actions of this previous evening...

  ELIZABETH HURRIED BACK down to Charlotte’s parlour. She had only been gone a few moments, just as long as it had taken her to hurry up to her room and collect a book that she had been speaking of to her friend, but she was reluctant to leave Charlotte alone for any longer than necessary. She could tell that her friend was still a little upset after what had happened the previous evening, and she could see dark circles etched beneath Charlotte’s eyes, suggesting she had slept little that night. She would not be pressed on her feelings, though, at least, not yet, and so Elizabeth determined that they would speak on happier things, and allow many times of quiet between them, so that Charlotte might feel free to speak of what she wished, when she wished. Lizzy pursed her lips. But she would only do so if she, Elizabeth, were in the room.

  So intent was she on keeping her footing on the steep staircase that she did not spot Mr Collins until she had almost barrelled directly into him, and with her speed and momentum it was a miracle she did not, stopping at the last moment and exclaiming,

  “Oh! Mr Collins, forgive me!”

  He had winced and stepped aside, raising a hand to his head as if in surprise. His features, too, betrayed his discomfort, and there was a faint grey tinge to his cheeks, his usually ruddy complexion pale.

  “Are you -” Lizzy swallowed the urge to laugh, feeling a wave of surprising sympathy at Mr Collins’ plight, however self-inflicted it might be. “Are you quite well, sir?”

  “Yes,” he said, his voice weakly betraying his assertion. “I am quite...quite well, thank you, Elizabeth.”

  “Good.” Lizzy folded her arms around the book she had run to fetch, hugging it into her chest and regarding her host with curiosity. “Did you wish to speak to us, Mr Collins? Your wife is within, I am sure she will not object to your joining us.” This was not entirely true, but Lizzy knew that, if presented with her husband, Charlotte would not prevent his entrance, and she might somehow engineer to broker a peace between the two spouses.

  “Oh, no!” Mr Collins laughed, but the response seemed to have been a challenge. “I would not dream of imposing on her personal space - that is, I do not wish to prevent you enjoying your time together...ladies...discussing...things...” He struggled for words to effectively illustrate his point, and in the end, abandoned it altog
ether. “I wonder, though, Elizabeth, if you might be willing to do me a small favour. I have this note.” He thrust his hand forward, clutching a thin piece of paper so tightly that it creased. “I wonder if you would be good enough to pass it on to my - to Mrs Collins.”

  Can you not give it to her yourself? Lizzy felt the urge to ask, but instead, she nodded, and took the scrap of paper, promising that it would progress straight to Charlotte’s hand this very moment. She mustered the effort to once again invite Mr Collins to come in with her, but before she had laid her hand on the doorknob, he turned and scurried away, so that she was left regarding nought but the empty corridor. Once more I cannot begin to think you deserving of the affections of my friend, Mr Collins, she silently told the retreating figure of her cousin, and it was this sigh of frustration that was on her lips as she entered the sitting room.

  “Here it is!” Lizzy said, brandishing the book with a smile, as Charlotte glanced up at her. “And -” she paused, her eyes falling upon the note as she strove to smooth out its creases. Almost before she had realised it she had read its first few lines and her heart sank. Why, it was so formal! So dry! More like a letter one might write to a servant than to one’s own wife. Lizzy’s resolve returned to her twice as strong as it had the previous evening, and she determined to act, and act now, before Mr Collins could contrive to make matters worse between he and his wife than they already were.

  “And what?” Charlotte asked, with a laugh of faint amusement. “Do not leave me on tenterhooks, Lizzy, what else besides the book?”

  “I found - I found this note,” Elizabeth said, reaching into her sleeve with an expert sleight of hand and retrieving the note she herself had penned the previous evening, having slipped into this very room unnoticed and consulted Charlotte’s poetry book for a particularly pretty verse to use as a template. It was this note, and not Mr Collins’ formal sermon of apology that she passed to the unsuspecting Mrs Collins. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “I think it is from your husband, who I believe is most apologetic over his behaviour last evening.”