“I believe a great philosopher once said, ‘One does not die of a cold,’” Mr. Bennet reminded her, and Elizabeth smiled.
***
The food business was just an excuse, of course. Not that Elizabeth was wont to engage an exhausted Darcy in a long conversation that would not be to his liking, but she did want dearly to at least poke her head in. With the servant bearing the tray behind her, she knocked on the door and was allowed entrance by the servant after he announced her and she heard Darcy mutter something in approval.
He was still mostly dressed, but he did not rise to greet her for obvious reasons. He was seated on the chaise lounge, and a servant was pulling off his boots. She curtseyed to him.
“Elizabeth,” he said softly, “there is no reason to be alarmed. I am in quite good health, though I will be very happy if I do not see the back of a horse for a few days at least.”
“I see you have not lost your sense of humour. That is the best sign. Well, I will bother you no longer—”
“It is good to see you,” he interrupted. “I apologise again for my lateness. It was an important errand.”
“Was it?”
“Yes, but I am not inclined to divulge it yet,” he said, somehow managing a twinkle in his eye despite sheer exhaustion.
“Very well then,” she said with a smirk. “I will wait until morn.”
He held out his hand as some kind of invitation, and she took it briefly and leaned over, kissing him on the top of his still-wet head. “Good night, Mr. Darcy.”
“Good night, Miss Bennet.” He said the name strangely, as if he was tired of it.
Yes, they were both ready for a change of names.
Chapter 4
The Book
In the morning, the weather had cleared, and the various unintended guests were off in a hurry, far too much for Elizabeth’s comfort. Darcy was still sleeping soundly, even through a noisy breakfast, which was not like him at all, and Elizabeth was eager to invent an excuse to remain at Netherfield at least until he woke, even though she had plenty to do at home on her last day as Elizabeth Bennet.
Fortunately, Mr. Bennet in his wisdom said kindly, “Lizzy, I have some business with Mr. Darcy, and I must stay until he is up and about. Perhaps you would take time from your busy schedule to spend a morning with your father before he gives you away?”
She gladly obliged. Fortunately, she had done most of her packing already, for Mr. Darcy had insisted that most of his wife’s possessions be sent on ahead to Pemberley so that she would not be waiting for their arrival when they got there, after a brief stay in Town to break up the travelling. She saw her sisters off and then retreated with her father to the library of Netherfield.
“And what business do you have with Mr. Darcy?—if it is something you can divulge,” she said, as he wandered the impressive library, glancing at the titles.
“Just some matters involving your inheritance, of course—purely legal nonsense that forces men to vex themselves on behalf of their wives and daughters.”
“Papa, I have no desire to vex my husband!”
“Certainly not, but he is a proud man, and if anyone is to give him an occasional ribbing about it, I think it ought to be you, for he is so in much love with you that he would forgive you if you called him a donkey,” Mr. Bennet said.
“Oh, Papa,” she said, embracing him. “Sometimes I cannot bear the thought of the distance to be between us because of this marriage. If I were to be an old maid, you would at least have my company until the end of your days.”
“But I would not be nearly as happy as I am to see you happy with a husband such as yours,” he said. “I will miss you dearly, but it does not come as a complete surprise to me that my daughters would eventually leave me for other men. It is just a pain fathers must bear—mothers, too.”
“You will visit me at Pemberley, as often as you like.”
“In time. When I was a newlywed, I was not much inclined to visitors for the first few months.”
Before she could comprehend his meaning, there was a knock on the door, and a servant entered and bowed to them both. “Mr. Bennet, Miss Bennet, I am to inform you that Mr. Darcy is recovering quite well. The master has gone to see to him now, and he will report back to you.”
“He is not sick?”
“No, marm, just very tired.”
“Then let him rest all he wants,” said Mr. Bennet. “He has enough to do tomorrow, I should say.”
***
Mr. Bingley was a bundle of nerves for too many reasons to count without throwing himself into a fit, but the top thing on his mind was the health of his good friend. In the years they had known each other, Darcy had never failed to rise before Bingley, and yet today he slept well until noon. A local doctor was called, and he made his assessment as soon as Darcy showed signs of rousing.
“He is not ill,” said the doctor, and Bingley was quite prepared to wring his arm in thanks. “He is suffering from minor exhaustion. With some rest and plenty of food he should be fine for the celebrations tomorrow.”
“Thank goodness. Thank you, Doctor,” he said, and gave orders to his servants to inform the waiting Bennets before hurrying up the stairs.
Finally, Bingley knocked on the door to Darcy’s bedchamber. He felt a bit guilty about cornering him by means of Darcy’s ill health, but the situation was rather desperate in his opinion. The servant answered, carrying an empty platter.
“Is Mr. Darcy well?” asked Bingley.
“He is recovering, Mr. Bingley.”
“Good, very good. Is he awake? Would he stand a visitor?”
“He is indeed at awares, sir.” He bowed and quickly left, leaving the door open in his wake.
Bingley peered in and knocked again. “Darcy?”
A moan issued from inside the room. “Come in.”
Bingley entered and found Darcy alone, quite dishevelled in his undershirt and propped up on a copious amount of pillows. “I came to see how you are doing.”
“Yes, how delightfully obvious,” Darcy said, his mood excusably lowered by the fact that he looked exhausted despite sleeping most of the morning. “I am not sick. I am just very, very tired.”
“And it was raining.”
“Only for the last hour or so,” Darcy said, the memory dragging his voice down into a lower and angrier octave. “Very tired and sore. I will be fine for tomorrow.”
“Of course.” Bingley seated himself on the chair beside the bed. “Did you ride—”
“The entire way from Town, yes,” Darcy said. “The carriage wheel broke but two miles on the road. I would do to point out, in my defence, at the time I took to the horse, it was not raining.” He put his head back and shut his eyes. “This is, of course, your fault.”
“My fault? Are you serious?”
Darcy merely pointed to the dressing table, where there was a small package wrapped in paper and string. “A wedding present—though it would be better for you to see it now, as opposed to after the wedding. So perhaps we shall call it a betrothal present.”
“For me?”
“Bingley, just because I am not dying of a cold does not mean I am willing to listen to you stating the obvious all morning.” He corrected himself, “Afternoon. Is it afternoon? I have an appointment in Meryton.”
“We called for the tailor and he is coming to Netherfield. It is being handled.”
“And I am grateful for it. Now, do me the honour and make my miserable trip worthwhile.”
Bingley cautiously approached the package, square, but not a box. He lifted it, and it was obviously a book from the weight and shape. He cut the string with his pocket knife and removed the wrapper, and what he saw vexed him greatly. It was an old book, not ancient but certainly dusty and well-travelled, and its title was in a script he had never seen. There was no picture on the cover, but on the bottom he found in English, “Translation by M. L. Watts.” He opened the cover and found the first page in English, to his great relief. “Well,
I’m sure Netherfield’s library will certainly be enhanced by this rare—” And then his voice stopped. His brain just stopped when he flipped the page and saw the first illustration. He was educated enough to recognise the style of artwork, but this was not the type of subject matter he had studied in Cambridge. Terrified, he flipped quickly through the thick book and found page after page of foreign script titles, English explanations, and illustrations that . . . well, he was fairly sure his ears were so hot that they were at any moment to burn off.
Darcy—in whatever state of self-amusement, Bingley had no time for, so . . . taken unawares as he was—finally broke the silence. “It is from India, I am told. Or, it says so in the translator’s notes. I do not know the man. I imagine such a man, who is obviously well-educated from the breadth of his research, would use a pseudonym. I believe it was published in Bombay.”
When Bingley had recovered enough to speak—which was quite a while—he merely stuttered, “You went to London to look for such a book?”
“Not such a book, Bingley—the book. And believe me, I had to go to a number of shops before I located a copy. If bookshop owners are inclined to gossip, the Pemberley honour will never recover from my attempts to aid your marriage.”
“The book.” Bingley’s mind was not totally centred on the conversation, being immensely distracted by the fascinating . . . content. “So you knew of it?”
“Yes, my father owned a copy, and like everything else at Pemberley, it passed to my guardianship after his death. Sadly, I could not have it sent for in time because I am the only one who knows where to look for it.”
“You—you keep this—this work—in the hallowed libraries of Pemberley?”
“Certainly not! I keep it where my father left it, in a false bottom to a locked drawer in the desk in his study. You may wish to exercise the same discretion.”
“Of . . . of course,” he said, feeling like his hand was going to burn from just holding it. But on the other hand, he was perversely fascinated by its contents.
And perversely was definitely the right word.
“So—you are familiar with it?” Bingley said.
“I cannot say I have mastered it,” Darcy answered. “I cannot even pronounce the title. But let us say that the copy at Pemberley has been . . . much perused.”
“In privacy, I’m assuming.”
“I have gone through great lengths to keep it from Georgiana and the servants, and I will go through even greater lengths to render you crippled in some fashion if you ever reveal a word of this to any of them.”
Bingley didn’t doubt it. Darcy made no further comment, apparently falling back into a more resting state, and Bingley found himself ignoring his ailing friend entirely, utterly fascinated as he was. There was no way . . . there was no way he could ever . . . that Jane would ever . . . were these just flights of savage Indian fantasy? He could not think, despite his athleticism, of a way to even get in most of those positions. And surely the church would frown on this. Surely he was damned to hell for just reading this book right now in Darcy’s room. He imagined John Calvin descending from heaven, with his black robes and long beard like the picture in his father’s study, to point at him and scream about the unholy hellfire that awaited him.
“Darcy—”
Apparently brought out of a mild sleep, Darcy did not hide his annoyance. “What?”
“Please forgive my intrusion on your ill health, but . . . um, is this even possible?”
“Is what even possible?”
Bingley was obligated to bring the book forward, sitting down on the edge of the bed and holding up the very graphic and bizarre picture. Darcy squinted. “Oh, yes. Very difficult, though. Takes some practice.”
And now, Bingley was quite sure, they were both going to hell. Well, if that notion entered Darcy’s mind, it didn’t seem to perturb him, and there was a mind inside that tired head so full of knowledge Bingley was desperate to mine.
“How about this?”
“Give it here.” Darcy took the book into his hands. “I confess I do not believe every method proposed in this book is physically possible, unless the Indian locals are somehow differently built than us.”
“I did suspect such a thing.”
“Perhaps if I were double-jointed,” Darcy mumbled, flipping casually through the tome as if it were a local newspaper. There was something almost . . . studious about his posture, as if he were looking at a very uncomfortable subject very academically, weighing options and opinions. “Here we go. This one.” He passed the book back.
There were so many; Bingley had not seen them all. He was flummoxed by the illustration and read the description several times before finally saying, “This cannot be very gentlemanly.”
“But it does work—quite well.” Darcy was so at ease. Was he basking in the glory of watching Bingley squirm and blush so hard he might pop out of his skin at any moment? Or was he recalling fond memories of the past? “There is even a Latin name for it, I believe.”
“I cannot possibly—”
“You asked for my advice, Bingley, on the very delicate matter of pleasing your wife. I have gone to great lengths to make sure that you at least have some source of reference to do so beyond the wisdom you received from tavern chatter. It is your turn to use it wisely—and, of course, to never speak of it with me again.”
“Of course,” Bingley said, trying to recover. “Of course. You are truly a wonderful friend, and I am grateful for it. Now, I cannot inconvenience you further by having you ill for the wedding.” He stood and bowed.
“You sound like our mother-in-law,” Darcy merely said, and rolled over, presumably to go back to sleep.
“I am afraid to remind you that you have some business with Mr. Bennet this afternoon, and Miss Elizabeth is eager to see you.”
At “Elizabeth,” Darcy sat up and said, “Please have a servant bring me some decent clothes at once.” Bingley nodded in complete understanding.
As Bingley left, he took a great effort to hide the book within the inner folds of his jacket until he could dash into his room, where he dismissed the servant and then was free to fret about the best hiding place for his wedding present. When he felt that it was thoroughly hidden under the mattress, he heard the bell for lunch and quickly collected himself, splashing water on his still-hot face. Only when his normal natural paleness (due to a partial Irish ancestry no one would admit to) had returned was he willing to make an appearance. At the top of the stairs, he looked down and saw at the bottom Miss Elizabeth Bennet, clearly waiting for some news of Darcy’s health.
This of course caused him to blush entirely anew. By the time he got down the steps, he must have been beet red, because he could not help but think that if Mr. Darcy was as scholarly on a certain Indian subject as he seemed to be, the future Mrs. Darcy was perhaps the luckiest woman in England.
And she had no idea as to why.
***
After some waiting, Elizabeth was permitted entry into Darcy’s bedchambers. For reasons of propriety, the servant would not be dismissed, at least not until Darcy insisted. He was dressed properly, but he came unsteadily to his feet to greet her.
“Do not,” she insisted, and pushed him down on the bed. It occurred to her that this was the first time they were ever on a bed together. “You need your rest.”
“I am sorry to keep your father waiting.”
“Do not worry for a moment. He is entranced with the library and will be happy for some time. It is I who must return quickly to Longbourn—but I could not, before seeing you.”
“I am not ill,” he said, sounding like he was tired of saying it.
“You did ride to Hertfordshire from Town on horseback. Though, I heard, it was not your wildest ride, even if it was raining.”
Darcy blinked, clearly having no idea as to the reference, so she went ahead and filled him in. “Your cousin told me last night of an adventure to Liverpool, but very strangely, he would not give me the partic
ulars.”
A look confirmed that he would have to tell this story, so he sighed and went ahead with it. “It was a foolish thing to do. I suffered a great deal from it for weeks, I suppose, as punishment for the reason. I assure you it was not scandalous, but it was rather stupid.”
“Then you will tell me?”
“I would tell you anything,” he said. “The reason Colonel Fitzwilliam perhaps did not engage the specifics is because it involved Wickham, if in a rather harmless way for Wickham to be involved in anything.”
“Of course,” she concluded. “Georgiana was present.”
“Yes. Well, it does not reflect well on my character, or at least on my intelligence. I was stupid, and Wickham was . . . being himself. At the time, I was seventeen, and he was sixteen, I believe, and we were in competition over everything, not always the friendliest kind, as when we were boys. At that particular time, it was in the area of riding. So it was that my father had a document waiting for him in Liverpool and mentioned it in some conversation, and Wickham, ever looking to get in father’s good graces, told me he would ride to Liverpool overnight to fetch this document instead of making a servant do it because he was such an accomplished rider that his method would be most expedient. Being the headstrong beast that I was—”
“And still may, on occasion, be—”
He did not get angry. Instead, he sort of smiled at her. So her father’s theory was correct. “I immediately challenged him that I could make it to Liverpool and back with greater urgency. And so it became a private challenge, for we told my father nothing of it, intending it to be a surprise. We took slightly different routes, I suppose to not be on edge at constantly seeing each other, and I arrived in Liverpool with little idea of where Wickham was. I was grateful that he had not overtaken me, but I had to wait until sunrise for the clerk’s office to open and for me to obtain the document, and I dared not to sleep. When I did obtain it, I thought nothing better than to return home as quickly as possible, I suppose to drive the point home, so to speak. I was there and back in nearly the cycle of a day.
The Darcys and the Bingleys Page 5
