After a brief struggle, Darcy's good breeding reasserted itself. "Lady Westhampton," he began, "to what do we owe this pleasure?"
She drew herself up to her full five feet of height (including the towering wig) and pronounced, "You can be at no loss, Mr Darcy, to understand the reason of my journey hither. Your own heart, your own conscience, must tell you why I come."
Lady Catherine looked at the other woman incredulously. "I have never seen such a lamentable display of ill-breeding in all my life!" declared she. "To come to my nephew's home and speak to him in such a manner -- your impudence, madam, is quite beyond the pale!" She was flushed with righteous fury, and Darcy sighed. Lady Catherine had many faults, but disloyalty was not among them.
"My impudence?" exclaimed the elder lady. "You speak to me, Catherine Fitzwilliam, of impudence? You, whose nearest relation ruined my son's life?"
Darcy coughed.
"My cousin did nothing of the sort," returned Lady Catherine indignantly. "Really, your conduct to-day is nothing short of abhorrent, Lady Westhampton. I should think you an imposter -- no true lady would ever behave in such a fashion -- "
"As your precious Helen behaved to my dear boy -- "
"-- if I was not familiar enough with such depraved behaviour, since that dreadful day when my sister married that vile nephew of yours -- "
"Aunt Catherine, you're talking about my father!" Darcy protested.
" -- to know that such a way of carrying is nothing extraordinary, for your sort," she finished triumphantly, utterly ignoring him.
Cecily, looking slightly alarmed, slipped over to Darcy's side. "Do you suppose we should just give them a pair of foils and leave them to it?"
"No -- this way there's no blood," he replied philosophically, still rather annoyed about the slight to his father. Lady Westhampton briefly paused, rage evidently silencing her for a few blessed seconds, before she returned to the fray.
"How dare you speak of my nephew in such a way?" she cried. "And under his own roof, no less! I told him, when he told us he intended to marry your sister -- I said, 'mark my words, George Alexander, marry a Fitzwilliam and you shall regret it.' I am no stranger to the particulars of your brother's conception. I know it all -- that he brought his mistress into his house, that the year abroad was a patched-up business to cover your mother's barrenness and your brother's parentage --"
"Why, you -- you --" Lady Catherine said furiously, "you presume to insinuate -- my brother is the most respectable, honourable -- and my sister -- "
"Your sister was the daughter of a libertine and a trollop," Lady Westhampton pronounced, clearly enunciating each word. "The shades of Pemberley were forever polluted by her presence."
"I beg your pardon." Darcy stepped forward, face white and eyes blazing. "Lady Westhampton, you can now have nothing farther to say. You have insulted me and mine by every possible method. If you cannot keep a civil tongue in your head, you will leave this instant."
Lady Westhampton sniffed disdainfully, then re-evaluated her great-nephew's implacable expression and took several steps backward. "Do not deceive yourself into a belief that I will ever recede," she threatened.
"Do you doubt that I can have you sent from Pemberley in an instant? That when I give it as my firmest opinion that you should be sent from Aincourt as well, that that is precisely what shall happen? My brother and sister place the firmest reliance on my advice -- I assure you, Lady Westhampton, that if you ever speak of my mother in such a manner again, I shall do all this and anything else that occurs to me between now and then."
"You have no regard, then, for the honour and credit of your nephew? Unfeeling, selfish young man!"
"Madam," Darcy said icily, "I have nothing further to say -- to you. Roberts! Please escort her ladyship back to her carriage and inform the other servants that she is not to set foot on my property again."
Roberts, a tall, heavily-built man of about Darcy's own age, complied with rather more enthusiasm and less finesse than usual.
"I shall know how to act!" Lady Westhampton shrieked, as Roberts half-pulled, half-dragged her out of the room. Darcy sighed, anger and energy draining out of him together. Nothing would keep the servants from gossiping about this. Thank heavens she's no blood of mine. I don't know if I could ever hold my head up again, if she were.
He spared a brief sympathetic thought for his brother-in-law as Lady Catherine tossed her head and snapped, "Good riddance!"
---
"What was she here about, anyway?" Cecily wondered aloud.
"I hardly care," Darcy said curtly. Lady Catherine gave a sharp nod of agreement. "Now what were you saying about that curate?"
Lady Catherine opened her mouth, apparently fuelled by endless reserves of energy. He cut her off. "Cecily. Please finish what you were saying, before Lady Westhampton graced us with her presence."
"I knew he would never dare ask me himself," Cecily confessed, lowering her eyes slightly, "so I kissed him. After -- a bit -- he pushed me away and said that we had to be married. I agreed -- I'd been trying to get a proposal out of him for weeks." She looked at his implacable face, and sighed. "Fitzwilliam, I don't expect you to understand -- I wouldn't suppose you've ever felt anything like that -- "
"You'd be wrong, then," he replied thoughtlessly, and instantly felt Lady Catherine's piercing eyes settle on him.
"Really?" Cecily inquired curiously. "How did -- when -- you were in love, cousin? Really? How did it happen? Do I know her? Is she -- "
Darcy, a thundering headache pounding away at both temples, hesitated, then took the coward's way out. "I'm a widower, Cecilia," he said tetchily. "Did you think we found Anne underneath mamma's roses?"
She wilted a little, and he promised himself that he would give her a more straightforward hint once the other Lady was disposed of.
"Then you walked in, aunt?" he asked, turning to Lady Catherine. As she drew herself up, clearly fully prepared to deliver a scathing rebuke, he quickly added, "I'll take that as a 'yes.' Well, frankly, I fail to see what the difficulty is."
Lady Catherine deflated slightly, unconsciously mimicking her niece's reaction of a few seconds before. "Fitzwilliam," she said in horror, "this -- this person is a curate! Cecily may not have a splendid fortune, but her connections are good enough to win her a fine place in society -- she could marry into an ancient, respectable, honourable family, such as your own, or a newer peer's! And instead -- Mr Collins' curate? Heaven and earth -- of what are you thinking?"
The cousins looked at one another. Then Cecily clasped her hands and stepped towards him. "Fitzwilliam, please," she said pleadingly.
Darcy felt a distinct foreboding. "I fail to see what I have to do with the matter," said he. "I am not the head of this family, my un -- oh. Cecily -- "
Near tears, she said, "He will not give his consent." Then, fiercely, she cried, "If I am neither by honour nor inclination confined to one of my aunt's imaginary peers, why am I not to make another choice? And if he is that choice, why may I not accept him?"
"Because honour, decorum, prudence -- nay, interest , forbid it. Yes, Cecilia, interest; for do not expect him to be noticed by your family or friends if you wilfully act against the inclinations of all. You will be censured, slighted, and despised by every one connected with you. Your alliance will be a disgrace; your name will never even be mentioned by any of us."
"You have said so before," Darcy interjected coolly, "and I must ask, yet again, that you do not speak for me without leave. May I make a suggestion?"
"Of course," Lady Catherine said approvingly. Cecily simply looked, her dark eyes intense on his face.
"Cecily may stay here, with me -- now that Georgiana is gone, Pemberley tends to be rather too large for me. I would be glad of her company. You, aunt, return to Rosings after you have rested; I will take care of this matter as I see fit."
After a moment of silence, each woman considering from her own unique perspective, Lady Catherine nodded agreement. "I am no longer as young as I was," she conceded. "I trust you to judge as rightly as you always have, nephew."
"Thank you, aunt." She offered her cheek up, and he bent down to kiss it, his conscience eating at him.
---
anon: If you cannot write civil reviews, please don't bother. I reply to reviews as a courtesy to my readers; and as that is a completely separate process from writing the story, shortening them will not make the chapters any longer. If it bothers you that much, just don't read my stuff.
Sharon Y: Yes, he can understand sympathise -- but he still considers it wrong and has no intentions of behaving such a way himself. Well, to be honest, I've heard that Darcy's family is just as bad as the Bennets, but I can't really see it. Darcy's issue with the Bennets is not their dysfunctionality but impropriety -- basically, bad behaviour in public. Lady Catherine, Lady Westhampton -- the entire family, pretty much, may behave very badly in private, but even when Lady C attacks Elizabeth (in P&P), she is very careful to make sure there is no-one around to hear them. But even if you consider Lady Catherine and Mrs Bennet as about equal embarrassing-wise, there's Mr Collins, Mary, Kitty, and best of all, the Wickhams. Lady W (who as Darcy gratefully notes, is not a blood relation) is nasty but she's neither depraved nor immoral. But what Darcy might consider is that -- okay, the Bennets are awful, but even his family has some colourful characters that simply must be endured because they're family, so he might again feel sympathy without excusing them, just as he does not excuse Lady C but simply endures her. Glad you like it -- although actually we are never told what Lady W has to say! Well, we're getting closer to Elizabeth's side (obviously, but I mean, closer to that than the beginning).
Teresa: Hi! Oh, now I get it. Yes, he was being immature and insensitive. Of course, he was terribly hurt that Georgiana had kept her pregnancy from him, and obstinate man that he is, was determined to wait until she wrote. The thing with Darcy is that while there are many richer and more liberal men in Regency romance novels, in the context of literature of the time and actual contemporaries, his stated beliefs and opinions are liberal veering towards radical. There are a few occasions where he takes the most liberal stance of any character in the novel -- his main criterion for what makes a woman accomplished (or a desirable marriage partner) is that she be well-read. Even today that's not exactly the usual choice (how many men are attracted to a woman's intelligence, even if they do not find her particularly attractive physically?). He's defending Elizabeth against the charge of being a bluestocking; Elizabeth in effect says "I am not a bluestocking" -- Darcy says "there's nothing wrong with being one." The most notable example, though, is that he tries to convince Lydia not to marry Wickham and to return to her family, undoubtedly because her life will be such a misery as Lydia Wickham that almost anything will be preferable. That this path does not occur to anyone, including the Gardiners, Elizabeth, and Jane, who all reiterate the position, "She must be married," I think shows just how liberal it is. Darcy's duties -- okay, as a bachelor he spent about half the year at Pemberley; but as a widowed father, he spends a great deal more. London was tremendously unhealthy for children; Darcy avoids it when at all possible with Anne. And he cannot just take a three-year-old wherever he goes. His "duties" are not simply his duties to Pemberley; there are other estates, there are social and familial duties. If he was determined he could set things aside and pursue a more active social life, but er, he's not too into that these days. I'm glad you like the story -- we'll see about Cecily and her curate next chapter.