Page 73 of A Most Favourable Match

“My own family was so relieved at the engagement,” he continued with a sad, weary smile. “My mother and sisters must know, or at least suspect, what is between Matthew and I, and they fear for me on account of it. Their feelings also influenced me, but I never intended to hurt Jane. She is truly the sweetest-natured and most beautiful woman I have ever met.”

“Jane is someone who needs to love and to be loved,” Elizabeth told him. “She deserves to be loved, as you and Lord Keeble love. These society marriages that are not marriages might be enough for some people, but my sister could never be happy in such an arrangement.”

“I came to see that,” Lord Grantchester acknowledged. “I could not go through with it once this became clear to me. It was not right. If I am to marry, and would be safer for me to do so, it must be to a very different kind of woman.”

“It would have been very wrong indeed for you to marry Jane and presumably continue your life with Lord Keeble,” Elizabeth told him soberly. “There are many other ladies who are not seeking love in marriage, only security, social position, or companionship. Some of them would surely understand and accept you.”

To his credit, Lord Grantchester owned his actions and accepted the fairness of her reproaches. “There were other roads I might have taken,” he agreed. “Other roads I should have taken, if I had not let my liking for your sister sway my better judgement.”

Now that the harms to Jane had been exposed to the light and acknowledged, Elizabeth’s mind looked further afield and turned quickly to Fitzwilliam Darcy, the only person to have warned against the match from the first.

Every one of Mr Darcy’s infuriating past statements and warnings came back to Elizabeth in a new light, and she groaned at how badly she had misunderstood and mistreated him.

“Oh, how unfairly I judged Mr Darcy on your account, Lord Grantchester!” Elizabeth groaned.

“It was Darcy’s intervention that finally made me see sense and end the engagement,” he admitted. “I might otherwise have fooled myself, and your sister, for several months longer. No one else would have challenged me.”

“Others knew,” Elizabeth reflected aloud with deepening dismay as she realised the breadth of the deception Jane had almost been trapped in. “Oh my, your other friends, your family, they all knew, and none would have spoken. Only Mr Darcy.”

Lord Grantchester nodded, his expression slightly ashamed, although in this moment Elizabeth found herself blaming him less than she blamed others around him. While nothing could have justified deceivingJane in so dreadful a manner, Elizabeth could understand the fears and pressures that had driven Lord Grantchester. But what excuse had everyone else? Had no one but Mr Darcy seen the wrongness of the match?

“Darcy can only speak the truth as he finds it, even if he makes himself seem objectionable,” Lord Grantchester said then, giving words to Elizabeth’s thoughts.

This was true, and Elizabeth’s heart swelled with pride for Mr Darcy, although she knew she had no right to such emotions on his behalf. He was going away tomorrow, and they might never meet again.

“Mr Darcy has been a good friend indeed, both to you and to my family, if they only knew it,” she said ruefully.

“Fitzwilliam Darcy is one of the best men I know. If other men could be half so upright, the world would be a better place, but some are rogues and the rest of us are…only human and fallible.”

Elizabeth smiled and patted Lord Grantchester’s arm. “Yes, most of us are human and fallible, including Mr Darcy, for all his excellent qualities. He is not always right, although he was in this case, and might believe himself so in all others. He needs good friends like you and I to remind him of his humanity, I think.”

“And what of you and I? Can we still be friends after all this?” Lord Grantchester asked her. “I shall understand if you do not wish it so, but I would be sorry for it, just as I am sorry to lose Jane’s company.”

Pausing in the road and removing her hand fromhis arm, Elizabeth held it out to him and shook his hand as though they were two gentlemen concluding a deal. “Yes, we are still friends, John,” she told him. “You must thank Mr Darcy for that.”

Lord Grantchester smiled and gave a long sigh of relief, tension visibly lifting from his shoulders and jaw as they continued walking together. “Thank you. Can I ask that you tell Jane the full story one day, but not yet? I should like the dust to settle on our engagement and for Jane to forget me, if she can.”

“Jane is moving on,” Elizabeth assured him, thinking of her sister smiling happily into the face of Charles Bingley at the Meryton assembly rooms. “She too feels that it was right to break the engagement, although she cannot say why. Yes, I will tell her the truth when the time is right.”

“Thank you.”

The time would certainly not be right today with such scandal falling on the Bingley family and Miss Bingley’s whole future hanging in the balance. Across the fields, Netherfield Park came into view, and Lord Grantchester stopped to look at that estate.

“I shall not detain you further,” Elizabeth told him, her own eyes turning down the path towards Longbourn. “If we go any closer, there is a chance you might be seen and dragged inside for luncheon by my mother.”

“Of course. Before you go, may I beg your view on another question of propriety? Given what your sisters have told us, do you think Matthew and I ought togo over to Netherfield Park and offer our assistance? Or would our presence be useless and unwelcome at such a delicate hour?”

Elizabeth considered the question and nodded slowly. “It is worth making the offer,” she said. “I am sure that Mr Bingley needs as many friends as he can get in the neighbourhood today. Mr Darcy is still at Netherfield Park too, and he might know better than I what can be done.”

“Then we shall,” her companion determined. “I hate judgement by gossip and rule of the mob. A man like me knows the dangers of such things better than most. If there is any help I can give the Bingleys in escaping this scandal, I should like to do it.”

With these words from Lord Grantchester, a new and peculiar idea struck Elizabeth like lightning.

“Do take counsel with Lord Keeble and Mr Darcy before you act,” Elizabeth said hesitantly, “but there may be something you can do for the Bingleys, Lord Grantchester. You may be able to make yourself very useful indeed, and perhaps to your own advantage too.”

With that, Elizabeth leaned closer still to Lord Grantchester and explained the first inklings of a plan in a low, careful undertone. A curious succession of emotions played over his face as he listened. There was first surprise, then caution, and then something not entirely dissimilar from affront, but followed quickly by dawning agreement.

And then, Lord Grantchester laughed aloud.