Chapter Twenty-Eight
Iwas uncertain when, exactly, Mr Darcy would see fit to speak with Mr Williams—but I was not overly surprised when it happened within a few days. When Mr Darcy decided to act, he seldom delayed.
I had received a letter from Jane—a thick one by the feel of it—and was anxious to read news of her and her little daughter, her boys, and Mr Tilney. I wished to savour it, however, so I forced myself to wait until after I attended to the daily duties, inspections, menus, and business of the mistress of Pemberley before finally retiring to the library to read it.
But the library proved occupied. Mr Darcy and Mr Williams stood as I paused in the doorway.
“Oh,” I said. “I did not realise you were still busy in here. I will go elsewhere.”
“No, please enter,” my husband said. “Mr Williams wishes to speak to you.”
“To me?” I asked, surprised. Mr Williams seldom had a direct word to say in my company.
“I wish to apologise,” he said in his usual diffident voice.
Shutting the door behind me, I took a seat upon the leather couch. Mr Darcy sat down beside me, with Mr Williams in the chair across from us both.
“I am certain you have nothing to apologise for,” I said, after an awkward moment.
“Oh, but I do,” he said. “I have known Mr Darcy all my life. Never have I seen him behave in any manner except as a gentleman ought, and yet I was mistaken, sorely mistaken in his character. Oftentimes, I decided that she must be wrong, that she must misunderstand. It seemed impossible, the things she said.”
I did not have to ask who ‘she’ was.
“Oh, she never accused him of anything outright. It was all subtleties and subterfuge, hints and then retractions. There was nothing to confront him about, really—and all of the time, I was ashamed of my feelings and what they were. I knew it was wrong, to covet another man’s wife as I did.” He looked up at his employer. “If I had understood you knew, I would have resigned my post. I thought I hid it. I tried to hide it. I tried not to feel it.”
“That is one of the many reasons I said nothing,” my husband explained. “She wanted you to leave me. Estranging me from those I cared for was her first object, always. I simply said nothing for…too long. It has become rather a habit with me.”
I took his hand in mine, and squeezed.
Mr Williams cleared his throat before resuming. “Mrs Darcy, you spoke to me about a subject of some significance shortly after your arrival at Pemberley. At the time, I was grieving and resentful of Darcy’s new marriage, angry at him for so quickly replacing Anne as mistress. I want you to know, before I say anything else, that by the time your husband spoke with me this morning upon those other painful subjects, I had already decided that I was mistaken. Not only are you better to our tenants than she ever was, but Darcy is so much improved in spirits. I wondered, you see, if he would treat you with the same disdain Anne accused him of—instead, I saw the difference in how you treated him. I did not want to see it, I suppose. I wanted to believe her perfect and perfectly justified.” His soft voice was bitter.
“If there is any apology needed, please render it to my husband. I would hope, if ever a female at Pemberley were to come to you with tales of abuse, you would go to him immediately—even if he was the one thus accused.”
Mr Darcy demurred. “You did not know her, darling. Her manipulations were masterfully performed.”
But Mr Williams shook his head, firmly. “You are correct, Mrs Darcy. It was only complicated in my mind—with shame, fear of losing my place, fear of losing what little connexion I had with her. I have already apologised, and will continue to feel self-reproach over my part in such deceit. Mr Darcy has rejected my offer to resign, wishing me to stay on. However, if you desire me gone, he has promised me that he will not object.”
“Me? Why would I wish you to leave?”
“The day when you asked me if I believed he killed his first wife, I turned away from you rather than answering. I ought to have reassured you of his fine character, which I knew to be true and honourable. Instead, in my bitterness and grief, I justified frightening you, when I knew you were safe—would always be safe with him.”
Mr Darcy sighed. “Oh for heaven’s sake, Richard, tell her what you saw. Tell her what happened on the day she died.”
There was an uncomfortable pause while the steward collected his emotions. When he spoke, it was his feet he addressed. “Late one afternoon last September, Mr Darcy informed me there had been an accident, that Mrs Darcy had fallen from the balustrade and was hurt. I went as quickly as I could to her side; to say she was hurt was to put it mildly. She was pale as a ghost and more dead than alive, I thought. I-I wept, to see her so broken. She opened her eyes to look at me, and then begged me to push her the rest of the way off the cliff, saying she could not live thus injured, that she could not feel her-her limbs. I told her I couldn’t, I couldn’t, that I would love her as she was, that I would care for her myself, if Darcy wouldn’t.”
The man was not sparing himself in the slightest in this candid retelling. I could see the memories deeply embarrassed him, and confessing them all before his employer—and, I thought, dearest friend—was a penance for his pride.
“That was very kind of you,” I said gently. Mr Darcy squeezed my hand.
“She did not want my kindness,” he said, a little of acrimony in his tone. “She told me to go away, that she did not want me there, that Darcy had promised to finish what he’d started and she would hold him to it. Those were her very words, ‘finish what he’d started’.
“‘He did this to you?’ I cried. ‘Surely he never would!’ But she screamed at me to go, to get away, and I was afraid of further distressing her, that she would exacerbate her injuries. I climbed back up the ropes, re-entering Darcy’s chamber and this time I noticed what I had missed before.”
He hesitated, and Mr Darcy said to me, “The blood.”
“Ohh,” I replied. “You saw the results of her attack upon him.”
“Except I did not ask him,” Mr Williams cried. “Instead, I imagined multiple scenarios of violence gone amiss, of her guilt and his, mutually.”