Dear Sunday friends, thank you for the lovely comments. Some of you are spot on. Lizzy will feel the full force of Darcy's frustration. I hope you are ready for his "assembly" insult. Happy reading!
Chapter Four
Fitzwilliam got into the carriage without saying a word to anyone else, except the servants traveling with him and the coachmen. Mr. Darcy stood in the stable yard with a stony expression. Fitzwilliam could feel his father's eyes on him and he hoped his father understood how it felt when he had left similarly. Plus, for the sake of his sanity, Fitzwilliam had to go. He knew that he would lose his temper and lash out at his father if he spent more time at Darcy House.
Fitzwilliam tried to shift his thoughts to other directions, anything that wasn't about his father. He had looked into the mirror earlier, and he was unpleasantly surprised to see that he was looking older than he was supposed to, thanks to all the stress he had to undergo.
After a quarter of an hour, the carriage began to slow down. Fitzwilliam stuck his head and asked, "Why have we slowed down?"
"Wagons ahead unloading, sir." Was the prompt reply.
Cursing under his breath, Fitzwilliam leaned out of the window even further. The person causing the hold up was not a rude tradesman or a pompous wealthy gentleman. There was no one for him to unleash his fury on. A flurry of servants worked hard to unload the wagons, carrying a lot of heavy looking trunks into a fashionable townhouse. He had to do nothing but sit back and wait impatiently.
Perfect timing to move. Fitzwilliam muttered sarcastically to himself. Then stopping to think about the date, he let out a long groan. 'Of course, the season is starting soon. It feels like it gets earlier every year, as impossible as that may seem.'
Eager to get to town before the heavy rains made travelling impossible, or almost impossible, families took up residence in town every season. The chaos the rental townhouses and their new residents caused was despicable to him. Even more so was the endless rounds of invitations, concerts, unnecessary dinners and balls. Fitzwilliam would decline most of the time, content to hide out in Wales and only venture into London on business if it was absolutely necessary. He would spend most of his spare time in the gentlemen's club he was a member of. Unfortunately, he could not bear to stay in the house with his father any longer. So his visit to Bingley could not be avoided any more than the queues of wagons and carriages ahead.
After another quarter of an hour, the driver urged the horses forward and they managed to ease through the chaotic scene. Fitzwilliam made a mental note to tell his coachman to use a different route on their way back.
He only hoped that things would go on smoothly, and as soon as he calmed down, he would head back to London to settle a few business matters and then back home to Pemberley. Hopefully, he would accomplish this without running into any acquaintances. He really could not afford to meet anyone in the foul mood he was in.
He drifted off into the land of dreams for a while. Then he woke up to the carriage slowing down. They had arrived at Netherfield Park. He got down after the carriage door was opened.
"To what do I owe this fine visit? Fitzwilliam Darcy of Aberteifi Park and Pemberley decided to visit? My good friend, I am overjoyed to see you." Charles Bingley said with a grin, pulling Darcy into a brotherly hug, like they always did back in Cambridge.
"Did you not receive my note of accepting your invitation?" Fitzwilliam asked with a frown.
"Got you there, Darcy! Just teasing you, old man!" Bingley said with a laugh.
Darcy shook his head at Bingley's youthful exuberance.
"Well, you initially declined my invitation, stating a matter with your father and then suddenly accepted it. I can't let you get away with such a milksop-like manner, can I? Now, King of England, I feel honoured." Charles bowed with a flourish. "Father had some urgent matters to attend to, and Mother decided to go with him, so I would have to host you today, Fitzwilliam." Charles continued.
"I hope there is nothing bad going on," Darcy asked, frowning.
"I don't think it is. The urgency seems to be on Mother's side. I don't understand them anyway," Charles shrugged his shoulders. Then he said, "But the best part, I omitted to tell Caroline you are visiting, so she and Louisa are off to stay with a sweet dear friend in London for a few days. Good riddance! I am free from hearing her daily complaints! Hertfordshire's air suddenly feels so much fresher! My friend, go and freshen up and join me downstairs for dinner, won't you?"
Darcy gave Charles a big smile. A stay without Charles's parents, the strange conversationalists, and his sisters, the fawning and pretentious duos? What more could Darcy want? "Thank you."
Dinner was excellent. He was so immersed in chatting with Charles that he had temporarily forgotten about his father and his worries, until Charles called him out with reason.
"So, tell me, Darcy. What brings you here?" A slight pause. "We know you are too busy handling matters of the estates to just drop in for a short vacation."
"You've got me there, Charles." Darcy sighed as he raised the wine glass to his lips. "I just wanted to get away from my father. He constantly speaks of meeting with psychics. It's all driving me mad."
"Psychics?"
"Aye, Charles."
"And pray tell, what does he want to meet with them for?" Charles asked, temporarily abandoning his meal to listen.
"He wants to meet with my dead mother. He wants to apologise and have a good conversation for past time's sake."
"Okay. Has Mr. Darcy been able to fulfil this wish?" Charles asked again. I looked at him strangely.
"What do you mean?"
"Meeting your mother, of course! Has he done it?"
"No—we know that that is not possible, Charles," Darcy said with an exasperated look and continued to eat.
"But it is! Don't you know?"
"Charles, my mother is dead and long gone. Don't tell me you share the belief in this malady!" Darcy exclaimed. Charles looked at him like he was the strange one before laughing it off.
"Since you don't believe in it, my friend, there is no use anyway. We are here to eat, drink and be merry, and eat and drink, we shall!"
Darcy frowned. Charles brought his glass forward. "To the reunion of two great friends!" He announced in a loud voice.
Darcy finally smiled at this. "To our reunion!" And they clinked glasses.
While it was apparent that Bingley believed in these psychics, he understood Darcy enough to know that he did not share the belief and didn't want to discuss it. That was what Darcy would have wanted from his father. If Mr. Darcy senior had listened to him too, he wouldn't have had to leave him. He could have been back in London comforting his father.
Darcy downed his glass and got a refill. Hopefully, his father would understand him too, soon.
~P&P~~P&P~~P&P~
The following morning, Bingley took Darcy on a tour of the house and the estate. He was interrupted by a servant when they were in the garden. Darcy waved Bingley away and walked on himself. He was examining the soil on a field when he heard voices.
Darcy couldn't help but overhear the conversation of a few servants as they walked passed, not noticing his presence due to him behind some bushes.
"I heard the psychic is very good too!"
"And she doesn't even charge! Not a farthing!"
"If I had such a gift, I'd use it to get some money and visit the tavern every day!"
"Nah, I'd get some money and tell Miss high and mighty Caroline where to shove her bony arse!" The servants laughed.
"How does she fend for herself then?"
"She doesn't need to. Rumour has it she's a gentle…"
"The people she had helped to contact their dead send her gifts. Oh, how much I envy her!" Another servant jumped in.
"Shut up, Maggie! You just want free food and whatnot."
"Yes, I do! Think of what the master would give her if she helped him talk to his dead mistress!"
"You are right. Could be more than a pound! Anyway, let us go."
Darcy called out from behind the bushes. "All of you, don't go."
The servants, three of them, turned around in surprise and greeted him with "Mr. Darcy!" immediately. Darcy recognised them as the Bingley's servants from Scarborough. He was irked to know that a female psychic was in such proximity to Netherfield. Here was a woman so shameless as to extort money and gifts from people while deceiving them and playing with their emotions.
Darcy forced a pleasant expression on his face. "Did I hear that there is a psychic near here? Do you know where one can find her?"
The three servants flinched. "Maybe, sir. We are new in the area. We heard she has been working around this area for many years and lives around here somewhere." Maggie said, her voice shaky.
"And that's enough description to find her?" Darcy said with impatience.
"Sir." One of the male servants said, "We heard she occasionally works out of a small cottage in the woods between Netherfield and Longbourn."
"Y-yes." The third servant offered more detail. "Longbourn is the next largest estate here. The psychic, her name is Zeath." Then he muttered in a low voice, "could be a sister of death!"
Darcy nodded and dismissed the servants. He didn't want to interrogate them more. Bingley's servants were not as trustworthy as the Darcy's. He didn't want his interest in a female psychic back to Miss Bingley or even to the gossipmongers in town. Darcy wondered and felt anger at this elderly psychic for the people she had defrauded. Why would one be involved in something so shameless?
Charles decided to appear at that time. "Sorry! Now, would you like to have a look at the horses?"
Although Darcy's mind was on other matters, he stood by his friend. He nodded and commented about the horses the Bingley acquired recently, until he could not keep his curiosity in any longer.
"Charles, where is Longbourn?" Darcy asked, mentally kicking himself as soon as he said those words.
"So that's what you've had in mind all this while. I noticed you seemed somewhat distracted." Charles grinned. "You've heard about the beautiful ladies at Longbourn?"
"How did you guess?" Visiting Longbourn was far from Darcy's mind, but he wanted to get the direction to the wood. So he agreed with Charles.
"Mind you, I am quite in love with the eldest Miss Bennet, such an angel, the most beautiful creature I have ever met! But I am sure her sister Miss Elizabeth would suit you very well. A bookish lady with a very sharp mind and tongue."
Darcy scrunched his nose. He was in no humour to give consequences to another harpy like Miss Bingley. He had a fraud to unmask! But he agreed to Charles introducing him to the Bennets when the next opportunity arose. After a few more minutes of singing the praise of Miss Jane Bennet, Charles finally pointed out the direction of Longbourn.
That evening, Darcy asked his valet to learn more about this psychic. Two days later, Darcy excused himself for a ride in the late afternoon. He borrowed the clothes from his valet, after words went round that the next reading was soon, and only a few people with great needs to talk to their dead loved ones would be allowed in.
What did this Zeath think she was putting up? A circus act, maybe?
Darcy made sure to be among the few to enter the cottage and watch. The so-called psychic, Zeath sat on a chair and had a few hush-hush words with two of the family members. She wore a plain dress and had a veil to cover her hair and face. Darcy guessed that she must be a servant from around this area, trying to disguise as a great psychic, and that she was not as old as Bingley's servants had said.
The low murmur between the psychic and her 'clients' all moved quickly and suddenly.
The young woman then focused on her cards as if they were the best things at that moment. A few minutes later, with her eyes closed, she murmured some unknown words. She looked mysterious. Darcy folded his arm as he watched. Anger boiled in his chest. He knew what people like her were capable of and the embarrassment they could cause to different families. They would deceive susceptible people, using the dead members of their families against them. And when they could no longer get money from them, they would resort to the use of force against them.
The more Darcy thought about what those psychics or criminals did to his father, the more his blood boiled. His father's only wanted to apologise to his dead wife and speak to her just one more time. Still, these unscrupulous people saw his grief as an opportunity to milk out the money from him. People like Zeath were one of the reasons things became strained between his father and him, the cause of the tension between them and the reason he had to go away for some time.
Darcy watched Zeath sit by the table and it riled him up a lot. And his character would not allow him to watch as other people get deceived, just as his father was. The pain, the anger, the stress, everything he had been through got to his head. Suddenly, he pulled a chair and threw it across the room with all the force he could muster, sending everything flying in different directions on one of the walls. The people in the room gasped and looked at Darcy as if he was a rampaging madman. Most of them fled the cottage. Darcy wasn't done with the psychic yet, and he promised himself to make sure that nobody would ever visit her ever again.
Zeath's blinked open her eyes, which had turned from green to an eerie-looking shade of emerald. The two remaining persons, the family she had been giving a reading, stared at her in awe.
They looked at Zeath like she was a kind of deity, and their naïvety provoked Darcy even further. These people were even more delusional than his father!
Elizabeth Bennet, by the name of Zeath when she gave reading, wondered why this strange man was trashing her cottage, like someone who just lost his senses. It was hard to focus now. The dead, Miss Rachel, whom she had been trying to summon, would not be able to be called. Elizabeth tried to think about what could have made this man act so violently. For a moment, she felt this urge to stand up and give him a slap. Taking quick short breaths, she tried to calm herself down so that she wouldn't do something rash. Then he began to speak again. Elizabeth was surprised. The man looked like a fine servant, with more arrogance than many. She didn't expect such vile things to come out of his mouth.
"How can you stoop so low as to fool these innocent people? How could you pretend to serve as a link of communication between them and their dead ones, draining them of everything they worked hard for! Have you no shame? You lazy women, can you not work? Would you rather steal from them? Putting others through pain for your own good? You are despicable!" The man exclaimed. Elizabeth had no idea of what she had done to this young man, and she was very sure that she had never taken something that did not belong to her. Elizabeth had been a psychic for years and she never accepted payment. She had spent long years of her life helping people summon their loved ones and finding joy because she knew that they would finally be at peace, the dead and the living, both. The man before her did not know anything about Elizabeth or about anything she had done. Yet, he felt confident talking about her in such a manner. How dare he!
"Excuse me, sir, but who are you? Do I know you? Have we perhaps met before and I do not remember?" Elizabeth asked the man. It took her a lot of willpower to call that man a 'sir' because what he had done was not a gentleman at all. He certainly didn't dress like one. If Elizabeth's mother was here, she would have called him a vile young man. She would have given him a proper scolding. He had a good looking face but a nasty tongue.
The man looked at Elizabeth as if he was trying to be intimidating before he scoffed. Miss Rachel's sister Lily came to Elizabeth and squeezed her hand, telling her to ignore the madman. Lily's brother raised his voice at the man and Elizabeth tried to calm them down.
"You do not need to try to pretend like you are sweet and innocent," Darcy barked at Elizabeth. "You are obviously fooling people, but I won't let you continue with your acts of foolery. Nobody can talk to the dead. They are dead and gone. Once they are buried, it is all over. Stop lying to them! Stop stealing from them! Do not give them high hopes, making them believe that you can speak to those who passed away. Your look and form look tolerable, even though they are covered in plain clothes and veil," the man looked at Elizabeth from head to toe with a disgusting expression. "You are handsome enough to tempt many men. If you wanted to do something demeaning, why not be a whore? Many masters will give consequence to women like you sitting on their laps. You could get a big reward for being one of their pets, so why not do that? At least before one of your victims gets free from your clutch and comes after you angrily, with revenge in his mind." The man cried out.
