Fitzwilliam’s countenance, already strained from their arduous journey, deflated. He likewise muted his voice. “Is Anne well?”
“I believe her welfare might be better determined without Mr. Crawford in attendance.”
“I will escort him downstairs to settle his account with the innkeeper. If Anne’s health can support further travel, shall we depart as soon as the postilions can provide horses?”
Though they were all in need of rest, remaining in Gretna Green was insupportable. “Make the arrangements, but let us journey no farther than Carlisle today.” Carlisle was not ten miles distant; there they could overnight at a proper inn. “Assuming Mr. Crawford’s post-chaise accommodates four, we require horses for only one carriage. He is hardly in a position to object to conveying us.”
“On the contrary, he needs to court our goodwill. Surely they both realize Lady Catherine will not receive them kindly — if she receives them at all.”
“You know our aunt. She will be waiting with her solicitor to attempt to settle some sort of marriage articles with Mr. Crawford the moment we produce the couple at Riveton.”
“Shall I send word to her that we have discovered them?”
“I will write her from Carlisle. Riding in a closed carriage with Mr. Crawford might expose additional information we ought to include.”
“Riding in a closed carriage with Mr. Crawford might reveal more about him than we care to know. This escapade has hardly disposed me well toward him.”
Mr. Crawford called from within. “Mr. Darcy, if you and the colonel have finished talking about us, we have finished dressing.”
“He is unrepentant?” Colonel Fitzwilliam asked.
“Utterly.”
“That will change.”
Mr. Crawford departed with the colonel, whose military bearing clearly communicated no tolerance for brash behavior. The pistols he carried at his side brooked no foolishness, either.
Left to themselves, Anne regarded Darcy like a convicted felon awaiting sentencing, or a child anticipating a thorough scolding. Were Lady Catherine here, she would deliver both with vehemence, and he could see Anne bracing herself for a tirade rehearsed over several hundred miles. Rather than face him, she crossed to the window and drew aside its cheap, tattered curtain. A light rain indeed began to fall.
Despite his impatience, he spoke gently. “Did Mr. Crawford coerce you?”
Several raindrops struck the glass. “I expect that is the only explanation that could possibly make sense to you.”
“One of few. You are not a silly young girl. I cannot believe you were so overcome by infatuation that you ran away with a stranger on impulse.”
“It was no impulse, and he is not a stranger. I have known Mr. Crawford nearly a year.”
“How?”
“We met last autumn in Bath.”
“Why, then, was your mother unacquainted with him when we discovered your note?”
“We were introduced after she departed Bath for Pemberley.”
Anne had wintered in Bath while Lady Catherine assisted the Darcys with fraudulent legal charges that had taken five months to resolve. He recalled that she had written her mother several times during that period requesting permission to extend her stay in the city, citing its steady benefit to her health. Lady Catherine had consented, congratulating herself on selecting Bath as the most salubrious of England’s spa towns, and believing her daughter safe under Mrs. Jenkinson’s supervision.
“Did Mrs. Jenkinson approve the acquaintance?”
“Yes, though she did not realize its extent. Mr. Crawford was in and out of town, and when we did encounter each other he seldom paid me particular attention in her presence. He never called at our lodgings, and when we saw him in public he would include Mrs. Jenkinson equally in our exchange of pleasantries. He and I conversed more freely on occasions when other matters, such as retrieving my shawl or procuring a glass of water, occupied her. At assemblies, we sometimes danced whilst she played at cards. She could not have foreseen this turn of events — pray, do not blame her for it.”
“So Mr. Crawford courted you surreptitiously. And you were a willing party to the deception?”
“For most of our time in Bath, I did not think of his attention as courtship, though I confess that as our acquaintance improved I occasionally indulged in the daydream that one might develop. I was simply gratified that a gentleman as charming as Mr. Crawford desired my conversation.”
“Did you never question why?”
She turned. Something like spirit lit her expression. “Is there a reason he should not? Because you never showed interest, am I unworthy of any gentleman’s notice?”
The question so startled Darcy that he could not respond.
“There I was, in Bath, for the first time since your wedding. Can you comprehend the humiliation of returning to a scene where my mother had, since my coming-out, discouraged suitors with the explanation that I was reserved for my cousin by an ‘understanding’? A cousin who had just married someone of significantly lesser status in the eyes of Society? Not only did I bear the stigma of having been rejected by my own kin as a desirable wife, but I was essentially entering the marriage market for the first time at eight-and-twenty: a decade older than most of the girls around me. I was painfully aware that my inheritance constituted my primary, if not sole, attraction to any suitor.
“Believe it or not, there
“While Mr. Crawford was protecting you from the avaricious addresses of other gentlemen, did you or Mrs. Jenkinson enquire into his own reputation?”
“Upon his initial arrival in town, word circulated that he had recently ended an affair with a married lady who had pursued him most shamefully. Early in our acquaintance, he acknowledged the truth of the reports, as well as sincere regret at ever having entered into the liaison. That was the only ill I ever heard spoken of him. Details about his estate and income were easily verified, which put to rest any misgivings I might have harbored about his motives for cultivating my regard. His situation is quite secure without need of my inheritance.
“In addressing me, he courted my friendship, not my fortune. We engaged in agreeable discourse on any number of subjects. Always, when he spoke, I felt he spoke to me — Anne de Bourgh, not Lady Catherine’s daughter or Sir Lewis de Bourgh’s heir. It was the first time in my life that someone took genuine interest in anything I had to say. When his interest developed into something more, I am uncertain. Any hint of partiality I ascribed to my own vanity, for he never declared himself whilst I remained in Bath. For my own part, by the time my mother summoned me home in March, my affections were engaged. I mourned the loss of his companionship, for he had brought diversion to a very dull existence.”
“How was this ‘friendship’ sustained after you returned to Rosings?”
“It was not; communication between us ceased. I was in Kent, he was at Everingham or in any number of other places — York, London, Richmond — he delights in travel and is never in one place for long. We could not correspond; even had propriety permitted it, my mother would not have. To this day, I do not know what transpired during her time at Pemberley, but she returned absolutely determined to arrange a marriage for me with a man of the highest consequence possible. Nothing short of a future lord would do, better if the gentleman already possessed a title. I was to be bound over to the highest bidder as soon as an impressive enough bridegroom could be procured and the marriage articles drawn up.”
“And you rebelled at her plan?”
“Quite the contrary. I am conscious of my duty, Darcy, and I had no reason to hope for better situation than what my mother sought for me. I never expected to marry for affection, and at this point in my life, I realized that was an unlikely luxury.”
“Then how came you to elope with Mr. Crawford?”
“I would have borne a
