“No; you wish to know whether I was happy with Mr Cooper.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I lived two cheerful years with him. He was a man who loved amusement, though I do not believe he loved me. He desired a family, an heir; I gave him both, and then he departed before Violet’s birth, never seeing his daughter. He died of a fever in Antigua, but his affairs had been so well conducted that a considerable fortune remained to me. I sold everything in Antigua, the businesses here continue to prosper, and I manage them through my solicitors.”
Elizabeth looked at her with admiration. She had appeared fragile as porcelain, yet Mrs Cooper seemed, in truth, a woman of steel.
“And as for sorrow…I shall not deceive you. I was grieved, but I recovered quickly. Nothing compares to your situation.”
Elizabeth inclined her head slightly. Indeed, the circumstances were entirely different.
“Listen to me, Elizabeth. I wish you to understand that here you shall always have a home,” said Mrs Cooper. “But perhaps it is time to consider that changing oneself is not necessarily a misfortune.”
Chapter 12
“What is it? Have you lost Pemberley?” asked the colonel with humour, holding Darcy’s horse as he dismounted. He knew that he had been to his solicitors in Derby; he had excused himself that morning at breakfast, saying he would leave him for a few hours, though his cousin had come only for a week.
Darcy looked at him with amused reproach, but his presence cheered him in any circumstance.
“A lesser catastrophe,” he said, inviting him into the library, their preferred room, where they could be alone, since the centre of Pemberley was the drawing room on the ground floor, where the friends who visited them throughout the summer were accustomed to gather.
“All that occurred last summer at Ramsgate, with that scoundrel Wickham, had one unexpected advantage—Georgiana has matured, and has become the mistress of this house, which has long been without one.”
“Leave that,” said the colonel, with a half-laugh that did not conceal his curiosity. “What has happened?”
“What could I call a lesser catastrophe than losing Pemberley, and still…a catastrophe?”
“You have met Miss Elizabeth,” said the colonel, without reflection, not believing such a thing possible; but the astonishment on Darcy’s face stopped him almost in the middle of the word. “What? You have met her, indeed?”
Darcy nodded and made a slight motion for him to be silent, fearing that someone might enter and summon them to the drawing room. He needed a moment to breathe, to understand what had passed.
“Yes, I met her in Derby, with a lady at whose house she is, I believe, staying…I do not know the particulars, when I asked whether she was visiting, she answered me in the sharpest tone—‘I am here in a capacity which renders me accountable for more than my own comfort.’”
“What does that mean?” The colonel looked at him with a half-smile, though his interest was far from slight.
“I do not know—”
“And you did not enquire?”
“No,” said Darcy.
“Of course you did not,” returned the colonel, with mock gravity. “Why should you enquire what brings, within a few miles of your own house, the woman you love?”
“The woman I loved,” Darcy corrected, but the colonel’s look made him smile, almost guiltily. “The woman I love…or loved…I still love. Spare me your theories.”
“My theories? My dear Darcy, you have at last found a woman worth the trouble. England does not abound in those who would refuse you.”
“And for you, that is the supreme proof that she is extraordinary!”
“It is proof enough,” the colonel replied, with an ease that carried more truth than argument. “I thought her remarkable soon after I met her; but when she refused you, after that mostunfortunate proposal, I understood that you, Fitzwilliam Darcy, had at last met your equal.”
Darcy laughed heartily at his words.
“You are both right and wrong.”
“In what respect?”
“In the matter of the love I may not feel. I believe she attracted me from the first moment, which, I admit, has never happened to me before. Still, I do not know any lady who has provoked me, vexed me, and frustrated me as she has. And now, if you ask me what I feel, after seeing her again…I do not know.”