Chapter 32

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

M rs Gardiner waited with Elizabeth in the blue drawing room—chosen, Elizabeth knew, for its soothing colours. Elizabeth had chosen likewise easy colours for the stitchery on the handkerchief she embroidered as a gift for her uncle. Unfortunately, she seemed incapable of making a single stitch in its blank whiteness.

Mr Darcy would be here at any moment, and Elizabeth’s fingers would not comply with her brain’s chosen design, resisting any such quieting. She might as well have chosen red thread, for an embroidery of flames.

“Lizzy,” her aunt said, softly, “you are too sensible a girl to refuse a man simply because you have been warned against him by your father and uncle, I know.”

“Aunt! My reasons for refusing Mr Darcy have nothing at all to do with them , and you know it. How could any consideration tempt me to look favourably upon a man who has destroyed the hopes and broken the heart of my beloved sister?”

“I do not doubt Jane’s feelings for Mr Bingley. However, that gentleman has allowed, practically required his friends to influence him. Such a man, one who does not know his own mind, may not have been the ideal she believed him to be.”

“He is young, to be sure,” Elizabeth argued, “but also too modest to doubt the opinions of his older, more successful, and supposedly wiser friend. You did not see Jane with him at Netherfield as I did. I never saw a more promising match, on both sides.”

“Do you not believe that, were you to agree to marry Mr Darcy, you could set that particular situation to rights?”

“That is the whole point, I think,” Elizabeth said sadly. “How did he mean to keep them separate? I have thought of little else. He said nothing at all of our expected marriage to the Bingleys. He intended that we should collect Georgiana and go directly to Pemberley. I believe he had some idea of removing me from Longbourn and leaving it all behind—everything he hates about who I am and where I come from—including Jane, and all my family. I believe it never occurred to him that I might object. He does not know me, not really. I did not know him, not at all. We narrowly escaped a match of the worst sort of convenience, one that would have made us both miserable.”

Mrs Gardiner took Elizabeth’s cold fingers in hers. “No one ever really knows the man they marry, not until one lives with him, day in and day out. Every female who has ever married is due the surprises—not always delightful—of learning to intimately live with and love a man. It is the same for men. With loyalty and forgiveness as a binding glue, that living and learning can become an adventure. As free-thinking humans, we are never doomed to remain the same man or the same woman we were yesterday.”

“Aunt Gardiner, are you suggesting I should disregard all his opinions, including his prejudice against my family—which is actually a prejudice against me ?” Elizabeth was shocked at this notion, but her aunt smiled.

“Perhaps Mr Darcy did err, even greatly. However, he has now imperilled his very reputation and all his dignity, in trade for a few minutes of your time.” She gave Elizabeth’s fingers a final squeeze. “Use it well.”

Elizabeth was surprised when her aunt shut the door behind her, closing her in with Mr Darcy. But perhaps she should not have been; he had required privacy, and she was hardly in any danger from him—she had no doubt that Mrs Gardiner was just beyond the door, alert and attentive.

For a few moments there were no words between them.

She would not lie to herself—she was thirsty for the sight of him, memorising his face, his features. Then he seated himself beside her on the settee, sighing once, deeply. It seemed he struggled with what to say, but she had no such trouble.

“Miss Bingley wrote to Jane after they closed Netherfield. It was quite clear that she had no idea of there being any marriage between us. You did not tell them, any of them, anything about it, did you.” It was not a question, but a tiny part of her still hoped he would deny it.

“I did not,” he replied stiffly. “I could see that Bingley’s partiality for Miss Bennet was beyond anything I have ever witnessed in him, but she remained clearly unaffected.”

“And you know this how?” Elizabeth demanded, astonished. “You have not been acquainted with my sister for long, and half your acquaintance, she was very ill.”

“If I have been mistaken in her disinterest, I apologise. It was not obvious to me.”

For a moment, Elizabeth wanted to protest. How dare he make such assumptions! But her conscience raised objections. “Perhaps it would not have been, to you. Jane is always very careful, very ladylike. Some of that, as you must be able to guess, is to avoid comparison to our mother, and my younger sisters as well.”

“Yes,” he acceded, and there was something in his tone which added a silent ‘Amen’ to that agreement.

“Still, it was not just that you did not see it—also, you did not want to see it. You did not try to see it. You could have, simply, asked me regarding Jane’s feelings. You did not want to hear my answer. You did not want to face the snide remarks of the Bingley sisters upon learning of our engagement. You have judged my family unworthy of the connexion—and yet, for yourself, you think I should be happy to have a man such as your cousin consider me the dirt beneath his shoe. I can imagine how his father would regard me.”

“Neither of us was anxious to listen to the Bingley sisters. You do not trust that I can protect you from the earl?”

She gave a little huff of frustration. “Can you not hear yourself? You hate my family, who has never done anything at all requiring you to be ‘protected’—but I am to overlook yours, because—why? They are my betters? Even Mr Collins, who?—”

Darcy reared back. “Oh, Mr Collins, yes, do let us discuss him. Has he asked you to marry him?”

For a moment, she could not process what seemed to her a complete non sequitur. “What has that to do with anything?”

“He has, then?”

“Yes. But that has nothing to do with why I will not marry you.”

“I think it has everything to do with it. You wish for someone perfectly safe, whose feelings would never stir yours. You would remain in control, always. There would be no risk, no gamble, and you would become the heroine of your family in doing it.”

Elizabeth stood, unable to stay still in the face of his wild assumptions. “You are being perfectly ridiculous. Tell me truthfully—did you expect that I would sever all of my family ties once I married you?”

He would not meet her gaze, not even when he stood as well, facing her, and her last hopes sank. When he spoke, his tone was laced with sarcasm. “Should I bring your mother to the earl, and listen to her explain where her wedding ring has been? However?—”

“You have said quite enough, sir.” She could not continue listening to his excuses. It was all as Colonel Fitzwilliam had asserted; she might call the colonel cruel, but she could never label him wrong .

“Is this a dismissal?” Mr Darcy asked, pacing away from her. “Will you not listen to me? Are you going to marry him?”

Sorrow speared her, but she clung to dignity. “Please accept my best wishes for your health and happiness.”

He whirled back around to face her again. “Elizabeth! That is all you have to say? Truly?”

She took a deep, shuddering breath. In a few moments, it will be over. She nodded, unflinching.

His eyes narrowed, boring into hers, his gaze piercing her, as he moved within inches of her, his very presence overwhelming. She could see the intricate folds of his cravat, the glistening of the jewel at its centre. He was furious, and yet, she was not at all intimidated; instead, she felt powerful, that she had been able to provoke him so thoroughly.

“Then know this,” he said, “if you will instead choose your ham-handed cousin as husband: whenever he kisses you, when he clumsily touches you, each time he leaves you, perfectly content himself whilst you lie awake, unsatisfied, wondering why you feel nothing except impatience—remember then. You could have had me.”

Her anger returned then, and it helped. The sheer, unmitigated arrogance! How dare he! He does not know me at all!

“Know this!” she retorted. “When you take to wife some diamond of the first water, celebrated in the papers for her ice-cold perfections, when you leave her frigid bed—remember then: you could not have had me.”

He stared at her, fury and frustration fighting for dominance in his handsome visage.

“If I had known the day I met you that you would rip my heart, nay, my life in half, destroy my plans, my very peace of mind, if I had known that day…” He shook his head as if he could not think of barbs vindictive enough to hurl at her, and it was with effort that Elizabeth stifled the sobs wanting to break free.

But his expression smoothed, and turned suddenly bleak.

“If I had known the day we met of the havoc you would wreak upon my life…yet, I would not change it—not one minute of it. I shall never be sorry to have loved you, Elizabeth. Only sorry that I failed to show you how much.” He reached out, and she thought he might take her into his arms, while she stood frozen. Instead, he gently pushed aside a strand of her hair fallen across her cheek, the tips of his fingers barely grazing her skin.

He leant closer; his lips grazed her forehead, then her cheeks.

Her anger disappeared, and all that remained was despair. A tear slipped out, and then another. He kissed those, too, taking the droplets into himself.

Their mouths met, softly, reverently. She could not help it, would not stop it—it was to be her final kiss, hers alone, from the last man she would ever love. Although her lips clung to his, she would not reach out in an embrace. Although she tasted his sorrow, his misery, he did not move his body any closer to hers.

At length she forced herself to take a step back, before she forgot everything she knew to be true. “I know you cannot like or respect my family, but they love me, and at my lowest moments, they have rallied round me. I understand your feelings, for I can neither like nor respect your family. I am trying, as hard as I can, to do what is right for both of us.” She did not bother to correct his assumptions about Mr Collins. What did it matter? He had a beam in his eye when it came to his own family, and a prejudice when it came to hers. It was a mismatch, plain and simple. Still, a silly part of her wished he would argue.

He only looked at her. Then he nodded once, bowed low, and turned away, leaving her alone in the blue parlour—a colour that she would now forever hate.