A Touch of Night (9 page)

* * * *

Out in the garden, she walked about for a while, keeping -- for she had learned her lesson -- to the well lighted paths, the ones ornamented with fountains and statues. Which was why, as she rounded a massive fountain in classical style, she was shocked to hear voices from the shrubbery.

To be exact, she was surprised to hear Anne de Bourgh's seldom-raised voice saying with some feeling, "Oh, how I wish that Darcy were married!"

She was answered by the colonel's amused laughter.

"No, only listen to me. Until he's married, my mother will not give up the ridiculous idea that I should marry him."

The colonel sighed. "She would change it fast enough if she knew what he was."

"Yes," Anne said. "But I don't hate Darcy. I merely do not wish to enter into what must be, perforce, a loveless match." She was silent a while. "Only I wish he didn't spend quite so much time with Mr. Bingley."

"No," the Colonel said. "Bingley and Darcy shouldn't spend so much time together. It can't be good for either of them."

They were silent a while longer and... was that the sound of kisses? Elizabeth started retracing her steps to the house, her cheeks burning, but the voices recommenced.

"You procured the replacement for the tonic, right?" Anne asked.

"Of course, and the exact same color."

"Thank you. If it weren't for you I'd still be taking the horrible stuff mama gives me. I don't know if it retarded my womanhood, but it made me sick enough."

"What I don't understand," the Colonel said, "is why she wished to retard your womanhood. And still does."

Anne sighed. "Can you not? She's afraid I'll become a
were
. And it's no use telling her that at twenty-two I'd already have become one, if it were to happen. She thinks she's stopping it with her awful tonic." Another pause. "She never forgave papa for being a bear, you know?"

Elizabeth could not believe it. Had she heard it right? Had Mr. De Bourgh been a bear? She ran all the way to the house as silently as she could, vowing to never walk near shrubbery again.

Chapter Eight

Elizabeth didn't give any more thought to what she'd heard in the shrubbery. She'd decided that the whole Darcy family and connections were very odd and there was no point at all dwelling on it. And she felt only a slight needle of annoyance that Mr. Darcy could be so sympathetic in his grief for Lord Sevrin. And had he really meant to betroth his sister to Sevrin? Surely, at the time, he could not have known what the lord was.

On this conviction she slept soundly and woke up rested the next morning, before any of the household was up. She dressed and went for a walk, and when she came back, she found that everyone in the household was still asleep, except for the servants. Elizabeth repaired to the parlor, where she started a letter to Jane.

"Miss," the parlor maid said, bobbing a curtsey. "Mr. Darcy, to see you."

Elizabeth thought the visit was odd at such a time, but what could she do but assent to it? "Pray tell him that Mr. and Mrs. Collins are not yet up."

"I have, ma'am, but he wishes to see you."

"Oh, very well, send him in," Elizabeth replied with ill-grace.

Mr. Darcy came in, perfectly attired in his morning coat, holding hat and gloves in hand. He bowed to her. "I pray you forgive me, Miss Bennet," he said, "for calling on you so early in the morning. But surely you must understand that I... It is sometimes safer if I don't sleep... If I don't let my guard down during the night at Rosings. My aunt being as she is. And therefore, I thought... Well, it must be clear to you I've been doing a lot of thinking."

Clear as the blackest mud, thought Elizabeth, but she nodded, in any case.

Instead of responding, the very odd man then started pacing back and forth across the room. Since the room was not nearly wide enough for the length of his legs, this meant he took three steps one way, ducked around Charlotte's ridiculous little table with the ornate vase of dubious Chinese design upon it, then took another three steps, stopping just short of running into the mirror, and then did an about face and paced the other way again.

"Mr. Darcy..." Elizabeth said, thinking to make some excuse about having to go upstairs or possibly being needed in the kitchen to help with breakfast.

But he turned to her, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips and his jade-green eyes filled with an unfathomable expression that -- in anyone else -- she would have said was sweetness.

"Please, forgive me, Miss Bennet," he said. "This is not a question I ever thought I would be asking, nor believed I would ever have occasion to ask." He resumed pacing and looked decidedly above her head as he spoke. "You see, I had long ago resigned myself to the idea that Georgiana's children would one day inherit Pemberley."

Was the man truly about to tell her that he had no interest in women? "Mr. Darcy," she said, again, in a tone that she hoped was of warning.

"No, please listen to me. Please listen, for I have to speak. My cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam, told me already that it is most risky for a... for one like me to confide in anyone, least of all a woman. But indeed, ever since the ball at Netherfield, when you penetrated my secret and did not in any way... And did not denounce me..." As he spoke, Darcy continued to pace about the room -- three long steps -- detour around the vase -- three long steps. "I've known since then that you are the best of all women and that I can rely upon your kindness and goodness as in no other. As, indeed, I thought I could never rely on anyone, male or female, who was not similarly afflicted." He paused and directed an uncertain look at her, before staring at a point above her head, straightening his shoulders and putting his hands -- still holding gloves and hat -- behind his back, as if he were on parade upon some martial ground. "Please, don't make me wait for an answer. Please, I beg you to relieve my suffering."

Elizabeth stared, trying to prevent her mouth from opening into an unbecoming look of bewilderment. She ran his words through her head, but she could not make head or tail of what he meant. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Darcy," she said. "But I have not the pleasure of understanding you."

He looked startled, and chuckled a little to himself. "It is possible I am not expressing myself very clearly," he said. And to her everlasting horror, he knelt at her feet, and set his hat and gloves aside and struggled to capture her hand.

"Kindest, loveliest Elizabeth, will you do me the honor of being my wife and the mistress of Pemberley?"

She could not have been more shocked had Mr. Darcy actually changed shape into a lion -- or perhaps a dog -- right before her eyes. For many minutes she was unable to utter a word.

He looked up, in confusion, and finally stood and resumed his pacing. "Oh, I know what the world will say. The inequality of our connections. Your family's occasional total lack of propriety. Even perhaps the difference in our fortunes. But you must understand all that is as nothing to me. Nothing, compared to having a wife who understands me and who is willing to overlook my... eccentricity."

At this she could contain herself no longer. "I would not call it an eccentricity, sir. In fact, I would call it something very much more to the point. Something in fact, which could mar any attempt at a married life."

He blinked at her. "Hardly," he said. "Really, I have great control over myself. Oh, I know it might not have looked like that in Hertfordshire. Something about your proximity, perhaps..." He shook his head. "For I have to admit that my feelings for you were of the most violent even then. But once..." He swallowed. "Once we are settled, I presume that it will resolve back into the pattern it has followed since my adolescence. In fact, it should bother me two or three nights a month, no more. The rest of the time, I should be a perfectly normal husband to you."

"Normal?" Was he truly telling her that his disgraceful behavior with Mr. Bingley had been instigated by his feelings towards her? It was too much. Even in all her reading, Elizabeth had never come across anything quite that strange.

He sighed. "Well, you must know it doesn't transmit to the children. Or not that way. Oh, our great-grandchild might show it, but it is highly unlikely our child would. Both my parents were perfectly normal. As were my grandparents and great grandparents. But if you truly would object to children, if you'd truly be afraid of their inheriting my defect, there are ways... I beg you to believe, Miss Bennet, that I, of all people, am perfectly aware of the phases of the moon."

Elizabeth managed to find her voice. "And you think Mr. Bingley wouldn't object to this arrangement?"

Mr. Darcy paused in his pacing and stared at her. "What has Bingley to do with it?"

"Well, while I realize it is not a formal connection, as your lover, he might think himself entitled to having a say in your nearest concerns."

"As my..." Mr. Darcy frowned. His hand went back to hold onto the table. "Miss Bennet... did I hear you quite well? Did you say that Charles is my... lover?"

"Oh, Mr. Darcy. It is hardly worth your dissembling. While I was staying at Netherfield, I saw you holding him, in the most affectionate of embraces, in the library and telling him -- very commendably -- to control his urges. However, your fortitude must have eluded you, as I found you both naked in the rhubarb on the night of the ball."

"Naked. Rhubarb," he said. And his lips were twitching most alarmingly, in such a fashion that she thought at any minute the man might start crying. He blinked at her. "You thought..." He cleared his throat, and his voice had a strained quality. "Pardon my asking, Miss Bennet, but how did a delicately brought up young lady come to know of the possibility of such connections?"

She felt a blush climb to her cheeks but she answered, nonetheless, "My father has an excellent library and has never limited my reading. I have read the works of Greek philosophers and the history of Rome."

"I see," Mr. Darcy said. He moved his hand backward, as if to seek better support upon the table. "Greek philosophers. And did you perhaps wonder, Miss Bennet, why in a house with several good beds, even the most desperate and lost of men would resort to a bed of... rhubarb?"

"I... I thought not on it," Elizabeth said, blushing. "But if I did I'd have presumed you'd have thought the risk of discovery smaller upon... the rhubarb."

He straightened himself. His lips were now twisting in a mad rictus that she couldn't quite read. "I see. You are indeed right, we did think that, fools that we were."

Elizabeth's look of shock increased. Why, he was laughing at her! "First you make me an offer designed to offend and insult me, and then you laugh in my face whilst supporting your base behavior! And if this was not enough, if you had not insulted myself and my family in the worst way possible, there is still your treatment of Mr. Wickham to answer for!"

"You take an eager interest in that gentleman," said Darcy, trembling, as his hand gripped the table ever harder.

"Anyone who knows his history would. Mr. Wickham has been forced into a career that he has no liking for, and all because of you. Can you refute that you not only denied him the set of colors that had been bequeathed to him in your father's will, but you also made it so no regiment in the King's army would have him? He was even witness to your shocking behavior while at Cambridge. And still, you have the audacity to ask me to marry you, though you are such a man! Your arrogance and depravity have forged the groundwork of so deep and immovable a dislike for your person that I can honestly say you are the last man in the world I could ever be prevailed upon to marry."

"And this is what you think of me," Mr. Darcy said. "And I... fool that I am..." He bowed to her. "I beg your pardon for having taken up your time. You've made your feelings quite clear to me, madam. Now I have only to be ashamed of what mine have been." A final flourish with his hand, backward, sent the Chinese vase crashing and failed to so much as make him flinch. "I beg your pardon. Please accept my wishes for your health and happiness."

He stepped out of the room, banging the door behind him with such force that the house shook to its foundations. From upstairs, Elizabeth heard startled screams, and stunned, she scrambled blindly up from her seat, grabbed her bonnet and was out the door, running.

* * * *

Darcy walked away quickly without giving any thought to his direction. He went through the parsonage gate to the park and was soon deep in Rosings' home woods. His initial laugher at the ludicrous accusation that he and Bingley were lovers had died a death so terrible that he was finding it difficult to breathe. The reality of the situation now weighed heavy upon him. She believed him debased, depraved, debauched -- disgusting. And he had thought . . . how could he have been so wrong!

There were times when Darcy truly loved his were capabilities -- loved soaring through the sky upon his dragon wings and playing on air currents in the beautiful silver light of the full moon -- but at all other times he believed himself cursed. Now, after suffering such a scathing rejection, he knew he was thrice cursed. He would never live a day without some fear for his life in the back of his mind, he would never have the love of the one woman in the world he had lost his heart to, and he would never live a normal life -- father a child -- have grandchildren. Would that he had died at birth! It would have been more humane than to be forced to live a life without hope.

She did not love him. Could never love him. She had not, as he had believed, kept the secret of his lycanthrope existence. She had not protected him. Instead she had hidden what she considered a secret too vile to name. His face burned in remembrance of that night and the thought that she could have entertained such . . . outrageous an idea about himself and Bingley.

His heart burned. He was foolish indeed to have fallen in love with her. Her upbringing must have been sadly lacking. How could her father have introduced books with such perverse ideas to his own daughter? That she should see him and Bingley together, admittedly naked, and jump to such a conclusion, when the natural conclusion would be . . . Darcy shook his head. What would the natural conclusion be? Even for a delicately nurtured female. Why, dogs in the street . . . but still, he was a gentleman, not an animal. And so too was Bingley. Surely the thought of
weres
would come first?

Darcy sat at the base of a great oak and leaned back against the trunk, barely resisting the urge to bang his head against it. He sighed. There was more to his hurt and anger than Elizabeth's rejection of him. He had to admit that it pained him deeply she would think such a thing about him. That he was attracted to men, and not women. It was a cruel blow to his pride, and his manhood. Oh, he knew that in some circles such activities were not frowned upon at all, and he had acquaintances in the peerage who took lovers of their own sex. But he had never had such inclinations, and had never before been taken for a person who would.

But his despair went much deeper than that. He surmised that Elizabeth had believed the worst she could of him -- did this mean that the idea of shape shifting was so incredibly distasteful to her that she had not even considered him quite that degenerate? He had previously thought her sympathetic to his plight as a
were
, but that, obviously, was an illusion. He threw his head in his hands and ravaged his hair as waves of self-pity washed over him.

And then he realized how pointless all his wallowing was.

She had rejected him, yes. She hated him, yes. But did it have to end there? Was there not a way he could at least reclaim himself in her eyes, so that she did not think poorly of him? Could he not find some means to assure her that he and Bingley were simply friends and that there was a logical explanation for their unorthodox attire that evening. If rhubarb leaves could be called attire. Could he not appeal to her sense of justice that she trust his word in this?

And could he not tell her some small part of his history with Wickham so that she would not be taken in by any more of his lies? She was too poor for Wickham to be interested in marriage, but he knew Wickham usually had something other than marriage in mind and had no compunction when it came to compromising young ladies of virtue. He had to put aside his pride, his dreams and desires and protect Elizabeth from such an outcome.

Darcy took a healing breath and stood up, looking around to get his bearings. He knew not how he had come to be so deep in the woods, but at least he was familiar enough with his aunt's estate to have no problem finding his way back to the house. The pain of unrequited love still burned through his veins but at least now he once again had purpose and direction. He ran his hand through his hair to tidy it, set his shoulders, and strode back in the direction from which he had come.