After dinner the gentlemen retired to the study. Darcy poured out two glasses of port. Colonel Fitzwilliam sipped it appreciatively. “Now I remember why I come here: your wine cellar.”
“Well, I would hate to think that it was for the company,” Darcy replied.
“Unlikely. I have been told by a number of people that you have been rather poor company of late.”
Darcy shot him a suspicious glance. “I’m honored to know that I am so popular.”
“Something is obviously on your mind, Darcy. What is it?”
“Don’t tell me Georgiana has you started on this, too. She has somehow decided that I am upset about something, and she has been like a bulldog about it. Pay no attention to her.”
“You have always been a terrible liar. Now, tell Cousin Richard what the problem is.”
“There is no problem, Fitzwilliam!” snapped Darcy.
“I am not an idiot, Darcy,” he said amiably. “People are worried about you. I am worried about you. For God’s sake, even you admit that it has affected Georgiana!”
Darcy, seeing the inquisitorial light in his cousin’s eye, started to feel sympathy for cornered animals. He sighed. “Richard, leave it. There are some things that need to be private.”
“There are some times when you need to turn to your family and friends. And stop guzzling that port as if it were water; it deserves better treatment than that.” Silence was his only response. “Do not let your damned pride get in the way, Darcy. Pride goeth before a fall, and all that.”
Darcy gave a harsh laugh. “Believe me, that is one lesson I have down very well, thank you.”
“You cannot distract me that easily. Now, as your cousin, and your friend, and Georgiana’s guardian, I am asking you to tell me what is wrong.”
“For God’s sake, stop it! If I need to talk, I promise, I will come to you.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam stood up. For a moment Darcy thought that he had won the point, but then he saw his cousin was only going as far as the side table. Bringing the decanter of port and an unopened bottle of wine back to the desk, he refilled Darcy’s glass. “If you want to do this the hard way, we will do it the hard way,” he said in a voice the officers under his command would recognize instantly.
“And what exactly does that mean?”
“It means I plan to drink you under the table, cousin, and sooner or later you will be drunk enough to talk. Waste of good port, though.”
“What makes you think you can out drink me?”
“I’m a soldier. It’s one of the few useful skills we learn. Drink up, now.”
Darcy, exhausted, rested his head in his hands. “Look, Richard, if I tell you what it is, will you leave me alone?”
In a somewhat gentler voice, Colonel Fitzwilliam replied, “Probably not.”
They were silent for some minutes. Finally Darcy said, “It is the oldest story known to man. I fell in love with a woman, and she refused me. Are you satisfied?”
“She refused you? Darcy, I can’t think of one woman in the world who would refuse you. Well, maybe the Duchess of ____, she has enough money and lands of her own, and no use for handsome young men, or so I hear. Of course, she is also old enough to be your mother.”
“Very amusing, Fitzwilliam. Yes, there is a woman out there who would and did refuse me, for the very simple reason that she could not like or respect me.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam sat back and pondered this information. Recalling his cousin’s unusual behavior at Rosings, an idea began to form in his mind. “Darcy, is it possible that we are speaking of the lovely Miss Bennet?”
Darcy drained his glass. “Touche, my friend. I applaud your deductive reasoning,” he said with some bitterness.
“Well, I applaud your taste. If she only had money, I might have offered for her myself. I am surprised she refused you, though; I would have thought her more practical than that.”
“I know she found you high-handed. Are there other sins besides that?”
“It was
“I thought she was indifferent to him, and apparently I was wrong.”
“What did she say when you explained it to her?”
Darcy stared into his wineglass. “I was too angry to explain at the time. I wrote her a letter afterwards, telling her the truth about Wickham, and my reasons for separating Bingley from her sister. If she believed it, if she did not tear it up without reading it, then perhaps she no longer thinks quite so ill of me, though that does me little good now.”
“What—do you mean to tell me that you are giving up on her so easily?” asked Colonel Fitzwilliam.
“What other choice do I have? I have told her everything I can say in my own defense, and as for the rest, I can try to change my behavior, but she will never see the results. I hardly think it likely that our paths will cross again.”
“You could go to her and let her see you as you really are. Perhaps your letter did change her opinion, but you will never know unless you make the effort. It is not as if she can write to you, nor can she call on you or attempt to move into your social circles. You cannot expect her just to appear on your doorstep one day.”
“You do not understand. I am quite resigned to never seeing her again,” Darcy said wearily, his words causing a wrenching pain inside him. “She made it quite clear that she dislikes me, and frankly, I think she is right to do so. I do not deserve her love.”
“Good God, if your father had thought the way you do, you would never have been born! How many times did he propose to your mother before she accepted him?”
“That is hardly the same. When she refused him, it was because she was already promised to another, not because he was the last man on earth that she could ever be prevailed upon to marry!”
“I still say your father would have told you to keep trying, if you love her that much.”
Darcy ran his fingers through his hair. “I cannot,” he said grimly. “She holds too much against me.”
“You have defended yourself against whatever Wickham charged you with, and presumably Bingley and her sister have their chance to work things out now. Do you think she will not be able to see what you have done?” he challenged, increasingly frustrated with Darcy’s self-pity.
“Bingley knows nothing of this.”
“You haven’t told him that you were mistaken? Why ever not?”
“Fitzwilliam, he would be justifiably furious with me.”
“So you leave him suffering?” he said with some incredulity. “My apologies; you were right all along, and you should give up now. You certainly do not deserve her.” He set his glass down carefully, and stood to leave. “And be careful with that port; you haven’t the head for it. Good night, cousin.”
Darcy reflected bleakly that he had not even told him his most dishonorable reason for not talking to Bingley. If Bingley married Jane Bennet, Darcy would perforce have at least occasional contact with her family, and would someday be subjected to the agony of seeing Elizabeth married to another man. He cradled his head in his hands, wondering if it were indeed possible to feel any worse than he did now.
Georgiana anxiously awaited the arrival of Colonel Fitzwilliam in the breakfast room the next morning,
