Sons and Daughters, page 20
“Because he couldn’t wipe his bottom without a map – he’d need actual written instructions. He’s very nearly addlepated.”
She tried to appear affronted only to end up pressing her fingers to her mouth, stifling a laugh. “That is revolting. What a disgusting thing to say.”
“And yet sadly true. Don’t tell me you have a tender for that oaf? Aw, Kath, he’s not half worthy of you. You can be such an imbecile at times.”
She arched a brow. “There was a compliment somewhere in there, wasn’t there?”
“I believe there was. Good lord, hard to believe, that.” George suddenly turned to look at her. “Did he kiss you?” Her answer somehow meant the world to him.
“No! Made a rather feeble attempt once, however, so I kicked him in back of his knees. He went down like an elm. Said I was fortunate he condescended to even speak with me, seeing as my mother was part red skinned savage. So I kicked him again. I boxed his ears too.”
Relief flooded his chest and his heart beat once more. “Good for you, old girl, well done. That’s my Kath.”
They lapsed into silence once again then, enjoying each other’s presence and the crisp cool air, their hands resting side by side on the ground. After a while though, somehow, George’s hand found its way to Kathy’s – then slid across it – then gently enclosed it within his own. Her heart raced wildly, she turned to find George already watching her.
His gaze dropped from her eyes to her lips and the whole world stood still.
When their mouths finally met it was the gentlest of touches, a tender pat, a bare caress of a kiss; she was beaming outrageously when they separated – the only encouragement George needed.
Their second kiss followed instantly and deepened with new passion. Their mouths opened, tongues hesitantly began to explore. After several moments they separated once again and now George was beaming, outrageously.
It was the third kiss that sealed their fates. Their mouths slanted and opened wider, hungry now; fingers stroked faces, gripped hair, hands began to explore and fondle whatever crisp, clean muslin and wool they could find.
He pulled back first, finding his continued breathing becoming more and more difficult; he gazed intently into her eyes. “I’ve been waiting for you for such a while, Katherine Marie Fitzwilliam; such a long, long, while.”
“You – waiting for me?” she sounded wondrous and a little breathless herself. “How very odd, since I’ve been thinking the same thing, that I’ve been waiting forever for you, George Bennet Darcy.”
Chapter Twenty- Nine
Darcy and his son George glared at each other over what had, at one time, promised to be a delectable breakfast. When Elizabeth entered the room, later than usual that morning, she immediately sensed the tension.
“Whatever has happened?”
“You son has lost his mind, that’s what has happened. Of all the dim witted, nonsensical…”
“I knew you’d take on like this, go against me! I knew you wouldn’t understand!”
“Understand! What is there to understand? That you are a spoiled child?”
“Oh my…” Elizabeth looked first to her oldest daughter for enlightenment; however, Anne Marie’s head was deeply bowed and her eyes averted. Her daughter Alice, on the other hand, watched with rapt excitement. She finally returned her gaze to her husband and son.
“I should appreciate very much if there were no more rash and angry statements made. Now, George, be still for a moment and let your father speak. William, what has happened?”
“George wants us to give him permission to marry! This young buck of ten and seven fancies that he’s in love!”
“I beg your pardon. In love? But with whom?”
“Kathy Fitzwilliam.”
“Don’t you say her name like that; in fact don’t you ever say her name again!”
“Oh be quiet and sit down. He keeps jumping up and down as if this was a rabbit’s warren. Of all the absurd, ridiculous… has she spoken to her parents yet? Why in heavens name would you…?” Darcy paled suddenly with his next logical leap in thought. “Anne Marie, Alice, go to your rooms at once. Give your brother and mother and me some privacy here.”
Anne Marie stood quickly, her eyes filling with tears; and, as she passed behind her brother she gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze of alliance.
Alice took this opportunity to secure the remaining sausage from her sister’s half eaten breakfast then merely piled more food onto her own plate. “I can’t go yet, Papa. I’ve not finished.” She began to shovel food into her mouth at an alarming pace.
“Alice. Out.”
“But I’m still very hungry, Papa. I am much too skinny, everyone says so. I may fall over in a dead faint if I don’t… Oh, I never get to hear anything! You always keep me in the dark and I am so ignorant I don’t even know what I am supposed to be missing! It’s not fair!”
“Out!”
Alice pouted and grumbled as she stomped her way to the door, following her sister from the room.
Elizabeth placed a hand on Darcy’s arm then took her seat. “Calm yourself, dear.”
“Whatever is wrong with these children of ours – oh, for heavens sake! Alice! I know you’re hiding behind the door, I can see your foot! Go! No, not you, George, you sit down. You and I need to speak… Alice Go!”
The door to the breakfast room finally slammed shut. “I never get to hear anything!” were the muffled final words they heard, fading into the distance.
“Where have we gone wrong with our eldest and our youngest child, can you tell me, Elizabeth? Thank heaven for our middle child, Anne Marie. At the very least I know I’ve nothing to fear from that quarter. She’s a dutiful, respectful – George why are you smiling like that? What is the meaning of that smirk?”
“Not a thing, father. May I leave the table now?”
“No! Of course you may not leave the table! I want to know how long this…whatever it is…has been going on between you and Katherine Marie. I thought you two were like sister and brother, that you detested each other like any other normal siblings. How in the world did it go from that to lovers?”
“William! What a thing to say? Lovers; really, William. George? Oh good heavens, George, why aren’t you challenging your father over that remark? George, say something, quickly.”
“Why do I need to say anything? He knows all there is to know, so let my father explain the whole thing. He is the all powerful King of Pemberley, the man who defies the Duke of Devonshire and always has his way, the man who is grooming his favorite, his hand chosen, Mr. Robert ‘Perfect’ Wentworth, for the House of Commons. He has the world in his pocket and now he wants me! Well, he can’t have me! I am my own man!”
“You can’t even have a proper shave yet! I would never have spoken to my father thusly, with this sort of disrespect! You tell me right now, George Darcy, have you compromised that girl? Have you?”
“How dare you speak of the woman I love in that manner!”
“Sit down! Woman he loves – do you hear him? A callow youth such as himself proclaiming an undying love!”
“Both of you stop this instant. Nothing will be served with this shouting. Now, we will discuss this in a calm, rational manner, like adults. George, please dear, when did you discover your feelings for Kathy had changed? Was it recently?”
Glowering and sullen, George stared at his father with the same intense emotion experienced by generations of other adolescent young men before him; a resentment borne through the hunger for respect, a growing sexual frustration and the impotency to finally take command of their own lives.
“Kathy and I have always been close and our true feelings revealed themselves this year; well, all right, actually it was three weeks ago, after Teddy was born. I am willing to wait until she turns sixteen. That will be in two months.”
“Very big of you.”
“William, stop, please. This is a serious subject; we must remain calm and rational. George, you are to leave for university in a few days. Perhaps, when you’ve finished with your education, and if you both still feel the same, we can discuss a marriage.”
“I will not be attending university either.”
“Are you insane!” Elizabeth, a woman who had always yearned for a university education, leapt to her feet.
“I take it that we are no longer to remain calm and rational!” Darcy drove his fists into the table and stood, leaning over his son. “Bennet George, hear me and hear me well. You will go to university and you will be properly educated. I will not have some ignorant oaf taking over the responsibilities of Pemberley. I will not turn over my family’s legacy to an illiterate. In the future…”
“Pemberley, Pemberley – that’s all I’ve ever heard from you my whole life. Well, did you ever consider that I may not want to take over Pemberley? No, I can see you never did, because you are so in love with that pile of...of bricks and dirt you think everyone else is – well I am not!” George pushed himself back from the table. “I’ve decided to join the cavalry, the 9 Light Dragoons. I can secure the rank of Captain for little more than three thousand pounds and that will provide me with a private room and an adequate monthly pay. It’s all I want – it’s all I’ve ever wanted and if you’d bothered to ask me just once you would have known. Kathy and I will be married and she’ll come with me. We’ll travel the world together.”
Darcy plopped down onto his chair, stunned. “You really are insane. Just how do you propose securing this commission without me, George? I certainly shan’t pay for such nonsense. Are you prepared to enlist along with the wife beaters and the horse thieves?”
“I have money set aside, a little anyway. I’ll get the rest somewhere – Uncle Fitz! He will understand; he’ll help us.”
“You’ll be lucky if ‘Uncle Fitz’ doesn’t rip your head off!”
“George, think – Kathy’s parents will never allow this.” Elizabeth was bewildered and growing more and more alarmed by this first open rebellion among her children. Why, George had always been such a wonderful, thoughtful, loving child. What in heavens name had caused him to change so; why was he so desperately pulling away? She had seen it happen in other families, but never expected it to happen in her own. She looked pleadingly at her husband to make sense of it.
Her husband was only furious.
“Do you honestly believe my cousin stupid enough to allow his daughter to marry at sixteen; that his hopes and dreams for her future could ever – ever – entertain the notion of living in the squalor of following the drum? You’re smarter than this! You would need to pay a good deal more than five thousand pounds for a commission that provided separate and private living quarters, especially ones decent enough for a respectable woman to live in; then there is food, clothing, necessities, medicine – forget servants. Kathy will need to be prepared to cook and clean, mend…and then children! The Fitzwilliam’s are a prolific lot, George; she’ll be with child before the door closes. And by God, you had better have been truthful with me. The two of you had better not have anticipated your marriage vows!”
“I have already given you my word on that yet now you impugn not only my honor but hers as well. How dare you! Blast both you and Pemberley! I am sick to death of this place and sick to death of this conversation. And sick to death of you!”
“Well, at present, I am not very thrilled by the sight of you either!”
George turned on his heel, stormed angrily from the room, and slammed the door in his wake.
A pale and shaken Lizzy turned to her husband, tears welling in her eyes. “He could not have meant what he said, could he?”
“That he is sick of the sight of me; that he hates Pemberley? I have no doubt he meant that in the heat of the moment as much as I meant whatever I said. Lizzy, I don’t think I know my own son any longer.” Darcy’s hand trembled when he reached for his coffee so instead he placed his palms flat atop the table and closed his eyes. “Blast. I never thought to see this day. My own dear father must be laughing up in heaven right now; I remember fighting with him like this, being so angry at times that I wanted to put my fist through the walls.”
“He mentioned Robert Wentworth. I always did fear that he would become resentful of the time and trust you place in that man, he never could understand what you were trying to accomplish, poor boy. Oh, William, he has no idea how many sacrifices you’ve made for him.”
“He has no idea how many sacrifices we’ve both made, Lizzy. None of the children do; but that’s as it should be. They have no reason to know – any sacrifices made were made for love of him, for love of all three of them; not for show, nor for gratitude. It still stings, however, doesn’t it? I thought I could avoid damaging my family by refusing the Commons seat myself years ago, but it seems I was deluding myself.”
“William, do not second guess your actions. You chose the best path for our family back then, I have absolutely no doubt of that. And, I begin to have a suspicion that conflict between parents and children is simply unavoidable. Perhaps, we’ve just been fortunate up till now.”
“Lizzy, do you think he and Kathy have…?”
“No, I don’t think so, they’re so young; but who can say? And is it really so far fetched that they could be truly in love? Kathy would do very well for him. She has a fire in her I’ve always admired, feels true joy in merely being alive; and, they are great friends already, too – the best of friends really.”
“Elizabeth. You cannot approve of them marrying at so young an age.”
“No, of course not; but, love is irrational by its very nature and bewildering to the young and innocent.”
“It’s just as bewildering to the old and sated.” They smiled briefly at each other but the humor faded quickly. “God, I only pray they still are innocent.”
“He always was eager for you to see him as a man, with respect; with trust.”
“Well, he certainly got my attention; however, respect and trust are still apparently waiting to be achieved. I’d best go up and speak with him, clear the air. Did you ever envision, Elizabeth, that being a parent would require so very much talking? It never seems to end.
“I’ll have to go to Fitz about this, too. I don’t look forward to that conversation in the least.” Darcy stood to leave then stopped and turned. “By the way, do you know why George was smirking so when I said we had nothing to fear from Anne Marie? I thought that very odd as well. Do you know, Lizzy, I am beginning to believe we don’t know half of what our children do.”
Chapter Thirty
It was late morning and the house was quiet for once, his wife was shopping, he surmised with his daughters, his sons probably terrorizing their tutors somewhere in the house. Solitude such as this was indeed a rare gift to a father of nine and Fitzwilliam was determined to make the most of it. He sat before the wide opened window, relishing his pipe and watered down port, and carefully perused the agony column from the Morning Post. As he puffed away he would occasionally lean his chair back on its two legs to glance at the door to his library or he would listen for her footsteps. Women! Bah! Since he had that episode two years prior, a slight chest pain really – could have been a digestion problem – she had become completely irrational about his smoking, and his drinking. The idiot doctors had agreed with her and wasn’t that always the case? It was so bloody aggravating when she was right.
“Pardon me, your lordship.”
“Yes, Bates.”
“Mister Fitzwilliam Darcy is here to see you, sir. Are you receiving visitors today?”
Old Mr. Bates insisted upon always announcing Darcy, even though the families were in and out of each other’s homes a dozen times daily; and, no matter how many times Fitzwilliam had told the man he needn’t announce his cousin, the butler stuck to his duty, refused to lower the standards of a better age. Most days Darcy would come and go through a side door without notice; evidently however, today was not one of those occasions. Fitzwilliam could see Darcy in the hallway, strolling to and fro, picking up the odd knick knack or studying portraits that lined the walls.
“Mister…? Whom exactly did you say it was?”
“Fitz, I am in no mood for this,” Darcy muttered out loud while examining the silver imprint on an ancient plate.
“Mister Fitzwilliam Darcy, sir,” repeated the butler, apparently unmoved by the tetchy figure drifting about the hall.
“Darcy you say. Well, well, well. Let me think on this….”
“And, why do I never remember to bring a gun with me?”
“Ah, yes – Darcy! Tall fellow, bit of a rag-mannered dandy, a coxcomb actually, if I remember rightly; fusses all the time about his neck scarves and his expensive boots. Do I really wish to encourage an association with him? What do you think, Bates?”
“About what, your lordship?”
“About my shoving this expensive boot up his…” Darcy’s voice faded to a rough cough as he examined a particularly odd miniature of one of their mutual relatives.
“Shall we allow him entrance?”
“I am certain I shouldn’t presume to offer an opinion, your lordship. This decision is yours entirely.”
“Tell him I’ve brought along that rare bottle of French brandy he’s been attempting to steal from my cellars.” Darcy was now leaning against the doorframe, directly behind the butler. “Go ahead, tell him.”
“He says he has brought liquid refreshments of a particular sort.”
“Eureka! Show the rascal in.”
As Darcy entered the room he laughed outright at his cousin, sitting like a bird perched upon a chair before the open window, waving pipe smoke outside. “How absolutely pathetic you are. You don’t really believe Amanda doesn’t know you’re still smoking, do you?”
“Ha! She doesn’t suspect a thing; I have this down to a fine science. I even wear the old banyon robe to prevent the tobacco smell from permeating my clothes.”
Selecting one of the more comfortable nearby chairs, Darcy set it next to his cousin’s, then reached into his pocket for his own pipe. He snatched Fitzwilliam’s tobacco pouch from the table. “Give me that, it’s evidence.”
