The Strange Marriage of Anne de Bourgh

by Skylar Hamilton Burris

  “He never made any particular promise to me. My mother gave me to understand . . . No, I cannot be so harsh as to say that I despise him.”

  “I would not blame you, Miss de Bourgh, though, if you did. I would not blame you at all. He used you abominably, and he was quite the fool, I can assure you, to abandon such an eminent jewel for a mere. . . forgive me, I am too critical of Mrs. Darcy.”

  “I do not dislike her.”

  “No, of course you do not. You are far too generous for that. And yet I would not blame you, Miss de Bourgh, if you did. I would not blame you in the least.”

  “Perhaps I do dislike her. . . just a little. Just a very little.”

  “They have both made life very difficult for you, I daresay. You have always considered yourself spoken for—for years you have thought it so. Think of all the time you have lost!”

  “It was rather a setback,” she admitted quietly.

  “And more than a setback. A veritable blow, Miss de Bourgh. If I had had occasion to exchange words with Mr. Darcy on the subject. . . well, I can assure you he would not have left my company unaffected.”

  Anne smiled weakly at him. She was feeling the closest thing to happiness she had ever experienced. She had a protector now, a knight in clergyman’s collar.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Darcys stood in the courtyard of Pemberley, reluctantly exchanging their farewells. Mr. Darcy was compelled to travel to London to meet with a gentleman on a matter of business. The man, whom he had never met, was a certain Dr. Roberts, and he was an investor in land. Dr. Roberts also, it so happened, worked as a titular head of the London Evangelical Mission Society, which was where Mr. Darcy was scheduled to meet him. Mr. Darcy had, some time ago, helped an indebted friend by purchasing some lands, but he did not want the responsibility of managing them, as they were too distant from Pemberley. Dr. Roberts, he hoped, would take them off his hands. He should have sent his steward to manage the business, but he wanted to see for himself if the man to whom he was relinquishing this property would make a good landlord.

  Elizabeth now pretended to straighten his coat because she desired an excuse to keep him a moment longer. She had considered joining her husband on the trip, but she had chosen instead to stay behind to serve as a companion to Georgiana.

  Although Elizabeth was content to remain behind with her sister-in-law, she nevertheless regretted the necessary parting from her husband. That fact alone accounted for her present failure to release his coat.

  “I must depart now, my love,” he said.

  “I know,” Elizabeth replied.

  “Elizabeth?”

  “I know you must go,” she said quietly, “but I will miss you.”

  He placed a finger underneath her chin and tilted her head upwards so that their eyes could meet. “I do not think it will take me much longer than a fortnight to resolve this.” He kissed her softly. One of the servants, who had approached thinking Mr. Darcy was ready to leave, stepped back and respectfully averted his eyes.

  “You will hasten your return?” Elizabeth asked when at length their lips parted.

  “I will.”

  “Goodbye then, Fitzwilliam.”

  The second kiss was more lingering than the first, but this time, when they parted, Mr. Darcy actually did leave.

  *

  Fitzwilliam Darcy looked up at the numbers that were set, crookedly, against the soot-caked cobblestone of a London edifice. He then looked down at the address written on the note he carried and back up at the numbers once again. It was a match.

  Still, he glanced suspiciously up and down the street and back at the door until he discovered in the grime-laced window a tiny sign reading, “The London Evangelical Mission Society.” Mr. Darcy had not set foot in such a derelict establishment in some time, not since his quest to seek out Mr. Wickham, who had absconded to London with Elizabeth’s sister. He frowned. The memory of their confrontation was a bitter one, and he preferred not to recall it. He steeled himself and prepared to knock upon the door.

  His fist slipped, failing to meet its mark, because he was startled by the sound of a voice behind him. “Mr. Darcy?”

  He turned to observe the speaker. The stranger before him was not short, but he was somewhat less than tall. He was scarcely pudgy, and yet one could not call him thin. His hair was not quite brown, and not quite blonde. He was as common and nondescript as the earth.

  “You have come to see me,” said the man. “Dr. Roberts.”

  “Yes, I have,” replied Mr. Darcy, looking back toward the Mission Society’s door. He could not reconcile the dress of Dr. Roberts, who looked a perfect gentleman, with the ramshackle appearance of his offices.

  “Pardon me,” said the gentleman, as he reached into his pocket to pull out a set of keys. He inserted one into the lock and jiggled it with the utmost patience, until the door at long last gave way. “Please, follow me,” he said, walking through a narrow hall, drawing open shades and letting in the light as he went.

  Soon they reached a small room containing precisely two chairs. Dr. Roberts directed Mr. Darcy to one seat, and he took the other opposite him, behind an uncluttered desk.

  “I apologize for not being here in anticipation of your visit,” said Dr. Roberts. “I have just returned from the country. I am something of a figurehead here at the Society, and I do not spend much time at the headquarters, but I did have some business to attend to in London this week, so I thought it convenient for us to meet here.”

  “I can see,” said Mr. Darcy, glancing about the spartan room, “why you might prefer the country.”

  “Ah, yes, well the office is unfortunate,” said Dr. Roberts, leaning back in his chair. The furniture creaked out a withering whine, as if it, too, agreed with the pronouncement. Dr. Roberts laced his fingers together and tried to suppress a chuckle by directing his eyes to the corner of the room. When the chair had settled down into silence and the gentleman had regained his composure, he looked back at Mr. Darcy. “We used to have very nice quarters in the fashionable side of London,” he said, “before I became President.”

  Mr. Darcy’s eyebrows rose inquisitively. Had the change in location been meant as a personal insult to the new President?

  “Oh no,” said Dr. Roberts, answering the unasked question. “I was the one who suggested we move the office. It seemed preposterous to me to spend so much money on rooms we rarely used. The real work of the Society is not done in an office, but on the mission field.”

  This brought great relief to Mr. Darcy. If the man were a good manager of the Society's funds, then he would probably be a good manager of his lands. He could entrust his land, and its inhabitants, to the care of Dr. Roberts.

  They discussed finances for a while and settled on a reasonable arrangement for both, agreeing to have the stewards and the attorneys work out the remaining details. The gentlemen exchanged handshakes, and Darcy rose to leave. He wanted nothing more than to return to his townhome for a good night's sleep and then be on his way back to Elizabeth in the morning.

  *

  “I did not expect you so soon, Fitzwilliam,” Mrs. Darcy said. “I just got your letter this afternoon.”

  “And did the letter not say I would follow in half a day?”

  “How could I know? I could hardly manage to struggle through the entire text. It was a bit prosaic, Fitzwilliiam, don't you think?”

  “Expecting a love letter?” he asked, with a half-smile. He walked gracefully to her side and almost simpered down at her.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I was,” she said, rising.

  “Didn't I do that for you already, the last time I was away on business?”

  “Fitzwilliam, it is possible to repeat the feat, is it not?”

  “Perhaps not without being redundant.”

  Mrs. Darcy’s eyes flashed with the light of mock indignation. That incendiary look was quite attractive, he thought. “I have been away for some days now, Elizabeth. Let us not tangle, even
in jest. Why don't we withdraw to my bedchamber?”

  Elizabeth walked haughtily away from him, or at least, as haughtily as she could make herself appear without looking too ridiculous. “I do not think so,” she pronounced with a decisive air. And then, melodramatically, she added, “We must not risk redundancy.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “I saw that man again,” said Miss de Bourgh, during one of her routine walks with the rector. She was relying upon the support of Mr. Jonson’s arm, a liberty that had become commonplace these past few weeks. “He must have walked up to Rosings looking for you, because when I saw him, he was walking down the lane toward your parsonage. Did he find you?”

  “No,” said Mr. Jonson, looking off in the direction of a distant hedge and sounding vastly disinterested. “We must have missed one another.” The rector looked back at Miss de Bourgh, and a new tone entered his voice as he spoke. “You look lovely today, Anne,” he said. There was some truth to his words. Anne’s sickly constitution had been much improved by the regular exercise she was now receiving. Her murky eyes had regained some semblance of their original color, which was a very distinctive shade of green.

  “Miss de Bourgh,” she corrected him hesitantly.

  “Pardon?”

  “You called me Anne.”

  “Did I?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “My heartfelt apologies, madam. I suppose. . . I suppose…I feel we have grown familiar these past few weeks. Do you not?”

  She blushed. They had spent a great deal of time together. She had told him things she had not told anyone . . . and yet, she had begun to think that in some respects, he was becoming too familiar. She had never spent any time alone in the company of a man; she did not know what to expect, but she felt as though the bounds of propriety were perhaps being crossed. Yet she was flattered by Mr. Jonson’s attentions to her, and she could not deny that his appearance was very pleasant to behold. He was her only real friend; she did not wish to lose him by taking offense. “You may call me Anne,” she conceded.

  “And you may call me Simon,” he replied. “When we are on our walks. Not in Rosings, of course.”

  “Of course,” Anne returned, but for a dreadful moment she wondered why. Why “of course”? If his familiarity were not wrong, why must he hide it from her mother? And hide it he did. When they were all together in the drawing room in Rosings, or at dinner, Mr. Jonson hardly looked in Anne’s direction. He rarely spoke to her at all.

  He had explained that, however, she reminded herself. Her mother would not understand his friendly attentions. “I am a mere clergyman,” he had told her. “Do you disdain me for that, Miss de Bourgh?”

  “Oh, no,” she had quickly replied.

  “Ah,” he had sighed, “but your mother does, I fear. At least she believes we should not be friends. It would be better, therefore, if she did not know of our friendship. And you understand, do you not, that because your mother has recently fallen ill, it is necessary that I concentrate all of my attentions upon her? As a clergyman, of course, I must give her succor in her time of need. That is primarily why I do not speak to you in her company. I must focus my energies on that poor, ailing woman. You would not have me abandon your mother in her time of want, have me withhold from her the spiritual meat on which her soul must feast before her body may be revived?”

  Anne had accepted the explanation then, when it had seemed reasonable, and she accepted it still, even though fresh doubts had arisen. She accepted it not because she believed it, but because she feared another truth.

  She would not, she persuaded herself, continue to skirmish with these haunting suspicions. He had assured her that he expected a very great inheritance, and when he had it, everything would change. Her mother would approve of their friendship then. And once Lady Catherine had recovered from her sickness, and Mr. Jonson was elevated by his wealth, then, perhaps then, she would finally know what it was like—

  “Anne,” Mr. Jonson said, suddenly seizing her hand and disrupting her thoughts, “I do not know how much longer I can wait to tell you this.”

  “Mr. Jonson—”

  “—I love you, my dear Anne. And I know that you must love me in return. But I fear that our love cannot be consummated until that sad day when your mother goes to her eternal peace. Will you promise me that when that day comes, and your mourning is past, will you promise to be my—”

  “—Jonson!” came a voice from behind them. Had Mr. Jonson taken care to witness Anne’s reaction to his address, he would have seen shock succeeded by pleasure, pleasure yielded to disappointment, and disappointment swallowed by self-deception, so that pleasure was born again.

  “Jonson!” cried the man again, fast approaching them. It was the same man Anne had seen earlier that day and some weeks before.

  Mr. Jonson walked forward and cut off the stranger. He gripped his arm and led him some distance away from Anne. They began to converse, Mr. Jonson speaking in hushed tones. Anne could not hear a word the clergyman said, but the stranger’s voice rose from time to time, and she could make out “I have been too generous in the past” and “No, absolutely not. You will not see a shilling from the estate.” After some time, the stranger quit Mr. Jonson’s company and walked angrily down the pathway, digging his staff forcefully into the ground.

  When Mr. Jonson returned to Anne’s side, she said, “That gentleman certainly assumed great liberties of address with you, especially considering that he is soliciting donations from you.” That had been Mr. Jonson’s explanation for his visit, had it not?

  “Yes, he did, and I reprimanded him for it. I will not tolerate it again, I can assure you.”

  “He said something about an estate. Is that the inheritance you are expecting? Because he said you would not see a shilling.”

  “No, no, Anne, that is an entirely unrelated matter. Do not trouble yourself over any of this. I have quite resolved things with the gentleman.”

  “He looks like you.”

  “Does he?”

  “Yes,” Anne said, “He is not a handsome man, nor is his stature great or distinct in any obvious way, and yet he does look very much like you, at least about the mouth and eyes.”

  “An odd coincidence, to be sure,” he replied.

  Mr. Jonson did not renew his addresses. Instead, he merely offered her his arm and said, “Let us finish our walk.”

  Anne eyed the outstretched limb with caution, but then he smiled at her—that smile she believed was reserved for her alone. Her doubts were abandoned resolutely, and she linked her arm in his.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The door to Mr. Darcy’s study was entirely open. He generally left it so, in case Elizabeth should feel inspired to interrupt his labors. He did not want her to think him unwilling to suffer diversion.

  Today, however, his concentration was fierce. Although he had already been home from London for weeks, sweet distractions had prevented him from addressing his accumulated business. He was determined to dedicate the greater portion of the day to answering his letters. He started with the most recent letters first, which he had not yet even read, opening one that had arrived that very morning. The knuckles of one hand grew white as he gripped the pages, while with the other he stabbed the point of his letter-opener angrily into the desk.

  It was this action Mrs. Darcy witnessed as she entered the room. “Fitzwilliam?” she asked tensely, for she recognized that look of thinly controlled rage. She had seen it but once before, when her sister Lydia and her husband Mr. Wickham had arrived, uninvited, on the steps of Pemberley. They had quickly departed again. “Fitzwilliam, what is wrong?”

  He plucked the blade from his desk and laid it down. He dropped likewise the letter. “My aunt is dead.”

  “I am sorry,” said Elizabeth, not sure if those were the right words. Was he angry that his aunt was dead? She knew it would happen one day; the infancy of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, after all, lay in a rather distant past. Elizabeth had always assumed
that when his aunt’s time here on this rough globe had drawn to a measured close, Mr. Darcy would show the appropriate outward signs of mourning and feel a sincere if short-lived pang of loss. She did not expect him to be deeply touched, however, and she certainly did not expect him to be enraged.

  He saw her confusion and held out a hand to take hers. “There is more news. We will not arrive in time for the funeral, but my cousin Miss de Bourgh tells me we may still be able to arrive in time for the wedding.”

  “The wedding?”

  “In this letter, Miss de Bourgh informs me she will be wed to the new rector, on Saturday next.”

  “That...that ignominious man?”

  “That master of deception,” he grumbled.

  “Hardly a master. I saw right through him.”

  “Yes, my dear. You would.”

  “No, even I have been deceived by the appearance of men before, as you well know.”

  Mr. Darcy could not know whether she was speaking of her initial disdain for him, of her ill-conceived regard for George Wickham, or of both. Whatever her implication, she had struck a truth. People, he thought, even very clever ones, will often believe what they wish to believe. “My cousin has been isolated,” he said. “It would not take much for Mr. Jonson to win her heart. Yet I thought her somewhat wiser than this.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I think I had better leave at once to see if I can put a stop to this before it goes any farther...before it reaches the altar.”

  “Then I will send for the carriage.”

  “No, love. I will ride alone. The carriage will be too slow. I need to reach her as soon as possible, in order to give her time to call off the wedding. You and Georgiana may follow, but I hope by the time you arrive, she will have abandoned this insane attachment.”

  “Do you think you will be able to convince her of Mr. Jonson’s true designs?”