“My dear aunt!” he exclaimed at her worn countenance as she sank onto the settee. “What can be the matter!”
“Never, never in my life have I been subject to the sort of ill usage and ingratitude I have encountered today. I cannot think to what the world is coming!” Her Ladyship pronounced these words forcefully. “I was never put to such pains and trouble only to be so insulted!”
“Aunt!” Darcy looked down at her with a mixture of relief and consternation. If it was not news of Anne, what could have set her off so and then sent her here?
She fixed her gaze upon him. “It was on your behalf, Nephew, that I exhausted myself. Yes,” she replied to his expression of surprise. “And on behalf of the entire family! Someone must see to these things before it is too late, and as I have always been attentive to the demands of propriety and decorum, the disagreeable task fell to me. If all of the family stands together, we may yet contrive to stop this vicious and scandalous falsehood from spreading further.”
A knock sounded at the door, interrupting for the moment his aunt’s astonishing charge. At Darcy’s call to enter, Witcher and a footman walked into the room with the tea. As it was being laid out, Darcy rose from his seat to escape his aunt’s sharp eye and afford himself an opportunity to think. A scandalous falsehood? His thoughts had immediately gone to Georgiana at the words, but then his aunt had laid it at his door. Could it be something to do with the business at Norwycke or Lady Monmouth? It seemed improbable, but what else was there?
Their tasks completed, the servants withdrew, and Darcy turned back to his aunt. “I do not take your meaning, Ma’am. What falsehood is this?”
“You have not heard it?” A small smile escaped Lady Catherine’s pursed lips and then was briskly packed away. “But then, it is too incredible for anyone of sense to repeat.” She leveled a censorious countenance upon him. “Nevertheless, Nephew, it must be vigorously denied, especially on your part, and its originator proved a fraud.”
Never one to leap at his aunt’s willful commands, Darcy felt his patience with her odd reluctance to come to the point vanish. “Perhaps, Ma’am, I could more easily put this and your mind to rest if I knew what it is that has excited your apprehension.”
Lady Catherine’s eyes widened disapprovingly at his tone, but he could see she was not checked. Rather, she appeared on the verge of apoplexy. “That young person…toward whom I extended my interest last spring…the friend of my rector’s new wife —”
“Miss Elizabeth Bennet?” Darcy was incredulous. Good Lord, had his assistance on behalf of Lydia Bennet been made public?
“The same! She has shown herself to be in every way undeserving of the notice she received from me. That woman has industriously set about the rumor that she is shortly to become Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy!” At the last, Lady Catherine pounded the tip of her walking stick on the floor and sat back, her eyes trained upon his face.
The shock of her words could in nowise excuse the need to maintain the utmost self-control, Darcy knew, as his heart jumped faster, blood and ice running crazily through his veins. “I see,” he managed to reply in an even tone and quickly turned away to the settee across the low table from the one his aunt occupied. He sat down.
“Do you, indeed, Darcy? The tale is already spread in Hertfordshire and came to me in Kent not three days ago. I acted upon it immediately, of course, and have done what could be done.” What had his aunt done? Elizabeth…oh, he was wild to know! Yet if he hoped to wrest all he needed from his aunt’s iron grasp on these events, he must disguise his own emotions and play upon her prejudices with care.
“What I see,” he enlightened her, “is that you are quite overset by a report concerning Miss Elizabeth Bennet. From whence has it come? Is the source reliable?”
His aunt relaxed her grip on her walking stick and then set it aside. “Upon two counts, it is from the best authority. My rector, Mr. Collins, brought it to my attention, and besides being my clergyman, he is related to the woman. Also, she is his wife’s intimate friend. There can be no mistake, Nephew.”
“Perhaps.” Darcy drew out the word as he leaned forward to avail himself of the shield of a cup of tea. From Collins, was it? In truth, it must have been from his wife. A letter from Elizabeth? Or from Lucas Lodge? “In what form did the report arrive, Ma’am?”
“In what form? I had it from Collins’s own lips, Darcy!” She bridled a little at his raised brow but then relented. “A letter, evidently, from his wife’s family imparting the news of the engagement of the eldest Bennet daughter to your friend.” Her voice rose. “Soon to be followed, it was supposed, by your own nuptials with the next daughter. This vicious rumormongering is not to be borne!” The walking stick she’d picked up in her passion came down again with a resounding thud.
Darcy shook his head. “My dear aunt, my name has been coupled with those of any number of young ladies over the years. Rumors all. Complete fabrications. Why should you be distressed by this latest?”
“Because,” she retorted, “you…or rather, she” her mouth snapped shut, and for a moment she could only glare at him. He returned the favor with as much innocence as he could contrive, but in fact her answer to his question was essential. There had to be something more than an idle report to have put Her Ladyship in such a state.
“Please, continue, Ma’am.”
“Oh!” she burst forth. “If you would just have allowed your engagement to your cousin to be published, this could not have happened! The girl could not have presumed to begin with, or lacking that, I would have her promise —”
“Her promise!” Darcy shot to his feet. “What have you done? Have you communicated with Miss Elizabeth Bennet?”
“Do not imagine, Darcy, that a letter is sufficient to put an end to matters such as this. I confronted that person to her face with her —”
Everything in Darcy went cold. “When?” he demanded, “when did you speak with her? What did you say?”
“This very morning, sir, and was met with an obscene impertinence and ingratitude the like of which I pray I never encounter again!”
Darcy walked slowly away to the window, the better to overcome the horror her words had engendered. Horror soon gave way to a caldron of indignation for himself, but more so for Elizabeth. By the time he faced his aunt again, his rioting emotions had coalesced into a rigid anger that could not be hidden. “Am I to understand,” he began in a precise, demanding tone, “that you traveled to Hertfordshire to tax Miss Elizabeth Bennet with this rumor and then required some sort of promise of her? Good God, Madam! To what purpose and by what right do you interfere in a matter that is properly mine to resolve?”
A martial light glinted in Lady Catherine’s eye. She straightened and, grasping her walking stick, stamped it again on the floor. “By right of your closest relative and in your best interest!” She rose and addressed him scathingly. “Yes, your interest! Oh, I saw your weakness when she was about Rosings last spring, but I could not credit that you would so lose yourself to her arts and allurements — and under my own roof! — as to encourage any pretensions! Should I have put this into your hands, what might have come of it? If she will not be moved by claims of duty, honor, and gratitude, how else shall she be worked on save by the truth of what would await her presumption? And that I am entirely within my right to tell her! She shall not stand in the way of your duty to your family or my daughter’s rightful happiness!”