I felt sickened, his tone impassive as he continued his revelations, and could only stroke his broad chest in a small attempt at comfort.
“I was disgusted, as you might imagine. I attempted, at first, to simply end the conversation, but she was determined to press on, until I was roused to such resentment as I could hardly bear. Incredibly enough, I could easily see that she had no doubt of a favourable answer. She spoke of wishing forgiveness for her past indiscretions—and anxiety lest I could not give it—but her countenance expressed real security, so certain was she that I longed for a child of my own. She did not understand that I had discarded any such dreams years before.”
“How did you respond?”
He sighed again. “I thought it most likely that she was already with child. Believe me, I had considered the possibility a thousand times. And despite her denunciation of his birth and station, I thought it even odds it was Wickham’s get—I had heard rumours he was in the area, and I had no doubt she had been with him. But one cannot possess a faithless wife and fail to plan for such an outcome. I had already determined what I would do years before. To tell you the truth, it was almost a relief that the day had finally come, I had dreaded it for so long. And it was not so bad, truly, as I had once believed it would be. My feelings towards her had ceased to be full of hurt or hatred—mostly indifference.”
“What had you decided?” I asked, curious. “There are probably not a dozen men in the kingdom who could greet such news with apathy.”
“Not apathy, not really. Only a sort of fatalistic acceptance. I told her that I would welcome a child, but it would never be my own. I had already made my will. Pemberley would go to Georgiana and her heirs, if any, but I promised I would not openly repudiate any children she brought to me, that I would see to their education and careers, and if female, their settlements. That I would protect them from her choices and lack of character to the extent that I could, that she could live at Pemberley, or any other Darcy property, for my lifetime only—and never in the same home as they would live. That she would be left with everything she brought to the marriage, less those settlements, but nothing more. I could not think it right that either she or her children inherit the Darcy fortune. I still had some hope, you see, that Georgiana’s marriage could, eventually, be salvaged, that perhaps this legacy might even motivate them to resolve their difficulties.”
This was all very astonishing to me, for while ruining her, it also would completely ruin the discretion he had hitherto fought so hard to maintain. How it must have infuriated her, to have the tables turned and to find herself a victim of her own scheming! I hardly knew how to respond. “Her settlement allowed for that outcome?”
“Her settlement was poorly written and my attorneys, whom I trusted, took advantage. I did not mean for it to be so, but by the time I was searching for possibilities, I saw them easily enough.”
“She was angry, I take it.”
“Oh, quite. I had believed, when I planned for this very conversation, that I would feel revenged at best, satisfaction at least. But I felt nothing at all. Resignation, I suppose, while she railed at me. I told her that if I could feel gratitude for a single word she uttered, I would thank her for her opinion of my character—but that I had long since ceased to care. I succeeded only in enraging her. Sometimes I hear her furious words echoing in my dreams.
“‘This, then, is your opinion of me!’ she said. ‘This is the estimation in which you hold your own wife! I thank you for explaining it so fully. My faults, according to your calculation, are heavy indeed! However, my offences might have been overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by my honest confessions. These bitter accusations might have been suppressed, had I with greater policy concealed my desires, my needs, instead flattering you into the belief of my being impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination—by reason, by reflection, by everything. But I am unashamed of my feelings, when you threaten to rob me of my future. They are natural and just.’”
His voice, even in the retelling, rang with her remembered passion.
“I do not understand her expectations,” I admitted. “Most men would have thrown her out.”
“Why should she have expected anything except my compliance? Our history together had proven to her that she would have her way, no matter the provocation. What did I do when she lay with my own sister’s husband? Nothing. Nothing at all. Had I expelled her in the past, she might not have grown so vain and heedless. I was completely emasculated in her eyes. I cannot even blame her for her conclusions. It is only with time that I have been able to see it all.”
Protests rose to my tongue—she had manipulated him and abused him. Perhaps, legally, he held all the power, yet emotionally she had managed to entangle and entrap him until he was under her thumb. But he would not like for me to point out how he had been vulnerable and maltreated. “You did what you thought was best at the time, and tried to honour your vows and your moral code irrespective of hers. Did you tell her to leave then?”
“No. Only that she could not have made me the offer of bearing a child in any possible way that would have tempted me to give her one of my own. Even then, I reassured her that I would certainly do my best to care well for any children were she to bear someone else’s. Even then.”
There was so much self-reproach in his words. I lifted my head again to look at him, but he would not meet my eyes, so I raised my hand to his cheek and moved him so he would have to. “Listen to me: at one of the worst times of your life, your thoughts were of innocent children for whom you would be legally responsible. Why do you castigate yourself for it?”
He only sighed again. “It all sounds so impossible now, to say these words aloud. Impossible and shameful. I ought not to have burdened you with them, when they are like poisonous water in my belly. It makes me ill to remember.”
“Then I shall ask Mr Donavan for a poultice. They do not render me ill. I am as fit as I ever was, except for knowing that your first wife was an even greater dunderhead than I first thought.”
He shook his head at my impertinence, for it was nothing less, but something lightened in his expression as he told me the rest of it. “At last she played her final card. If I would not give her the Darcy child she required, there would be a scandal to end all scandals. I would be known as an impotent weakling before the world. She would destroy my sister’s marriage, finish her work of destroying my reputation. She threatened everything I had feared since first beginning to learn of her character. She promised complete and utter humiliation, for me, for Georgiana and Bingley, for the earl and his family.”
I did not interrupt; his words were coming faster now, as those poisonous betrayals slipped from his soul.
“But she had waited too long. Of what had I to be proud? My life was a lie. Pemberley and its happiness, its advantages, were lies. I truly was a weakling. Too many already believed me to be an abuser. The earl would still be an earl, and could weather any storm. Georgiana’s marriage was in ruins regardless. I, to whom disguise of every sort was an abhorrence, had participated in, even encouraged, one of massive proportions. I would no longer.” He took a deep breath, and slowly exhaled.
“I told her that I would take Georgiana travelling for a time. We would do our own Grand Tour, and if Anne wished to ruin herself, her name, her reputation and standing amongst the ton while we were away, it was entirely up to her.”
I nodded. In my opinion, he had hardly exercised an eighth of the authority he had over her, but it simply was not in his nature. He did not understand her, had never loved her, had grieved that he could not make her happy to the point of allowing great personal mistreatment, and, finally, allowed her to become irrelevant—leaving her to her own destruction, while attending to the sister he believed to be hurt by his mistakes.
“It sounds like an excellent plan,” I agreed. “I can hardly imagine a different solution, truthfully. Her lies, obviously, had taken on some peculiar sort of reality—she appears to have learnt to believe them. I suppose she did not care for your decision, though.”
“An understatement. She erupted in fury—that is when she told me that she had first betrayed our marriage vows on our wedding day, and gave me multiple particulars regarding her proclivities and many paramours that I wish I did not know. But something happened within me, as she spewed her threats and filth. Instead of alarming or destroying me, she only became more weak and wretched in my eyes.”
“She was pitiful,” I agreed. “I suppose it proves the old adage, ‘Wickedness never was happiness’.”
“Indeed,” he concurred. “I once saw her as a force to be reckoned with, as a woman of great charisma and talents. I do not understand why she tossed away those gifts, but they had become illusory. I advised her that she was growing too old to maintain the sham by outward appearances alone, and if she did not take great care, all her charms would vanish with her youth and beauty.” He appeared thoughtful for a moment. “You know, I believed myself perfectly calm and cool at the time, but I revealed a dreadful bitterness of spirit.”
“I hardly think anyone could be blamed for a little bitterness, in such a situation,” I offered.
“Perhaps not. But at any rate, that was when she turned, picked up a sharpened fire-iron, and attempted to run me through with it.”