Suggesting

Suggesting

“ How about me?” Darcy blurted out, shocking even himself. “ I may or may not be a particular idiot, but could I perhaps qualify as the best of a bad lot?”

Elizabeth startled so much she jumped out of the chair to stare at him from a few feet away, then turned toward the door and even took a few steps before halting and slowly turning around to face him.

She stared at him long and hard enough to make him squirm. “Pray, repeat that… in the King’s English!”

He stood up and halved the distance between them, so they were separated by a pace or two.

“ Would you accept me … or at least consider it? You said earlier we dislike each other, but I can assure you any dislike is one-sided. I like you a great deal. I may even be in love with you; but I have been too much of a lunkhead to act on my feelings, or even fully acknowledge them to myself until the moment of panic when I thought it might be too late.”

She stared at him, and after trying to speak several times, asked in a squeaky voice, “Are you in earnest? You are not toying with me?”

“I would never do that, to you or any woman. In fact, that question uncovers part of our basic problem.”

She stared a few more minutes in confusion, and finally said, “Explain yourself.”

He thought about trying to get them back to the chairs but abandoned the effort when he found she was slowly and probably unconsciously inching towards the door.

“It will be my privilege. I imagine my behaviour at the assembly gave you a dislike of me. Those kind of marriage marts where all I hear are whispers of ‘10,000 a year and probably more’ , or ‘noble connections’ practically give me hives. I feel the walls closing in on me and see enemies at the gate. I get so nervous I occasionally do or say something incredibly stupid. I believe I even slighted you, but I always hoped you did not hear it.”

She stared at him, frowned ferociously, and lowered her voice to a rumble. “ Tolerable, I suppose but not handsome enough to tempt me ,” then resumed her normal voice. “Sound familiar?”

He stared at his feet in shame. “You must have hated me! Probably still do, I imagine.”

“The comment did you no favours. You cannot imagine how incredibly hurtful it is to hear the most handsome man I ever saw repeat the things my mother says every day. I tried to laugh it off, but it stung a bit.”

She sighed again and spoke softly. “More than a bit, I suppose. That first month, I never said anything to you without trying to draw blood. My dislike even made me implicitly believe Mr Wickham, though his story is full of holes. That is why I asked about him at the ball. He started spreading his poison about you to all and sundry after you left, even though he told me he would not, so I became more sceptical. When he attached himself to Mary King days after she came into money, I concluded he is just as much of an idiot as your Mr Bingley. At this point, I really know nothing.”

Darcy sighed. “He has one lone skill. He is the best and most prolific liar I ever met, and I say that after being intimates with several members of Parliament.”

Elizabeth laughed slightly, which relieved some of the tension.

She finally looked at the floor for quite some time. “You were not staring to find fault?”

“No man does that. If they did, I would expect you to spend your time examining Mr Collins minutely,” he said with a chuckle that did not really catch on. “I was not aware I was noticeably staring, but I can assure you that I was not looking for faults. Even if I had been, I never found any. ”

She thought about that for quite some time, and finally asked, “Were you just humouring Sir William when he tried to foist me off on you at Lucas Lodge?”

“Yes and no,” he said, realizing scrupulous honesty was needed. “At the time, I was only beginning to become interested. Sir William took me by surprise, but I would have happily danced with you. Your refusal did you no harm, though. I hope this does not sound too conceited, but I do not believe I have ever been refused; and you did so twice. I even unwisely said something about ‘fine eyes on the face of a pretty woman’ to Miss Bingley, which is probably why she was so abominably hostile when you visited Netherfield to take care of your sister.”

Elizabeth gave a weak grin. “I did not believe you truly wanted to dance either time.”

Darcy shook his head in confusion. “I suppose I thought… well… I do not actually know what I thought. I suppose part of me thought you were flirting, and part of me was just confused.”

“I was most certainly not flirting, I assure you. I would have rejected you a third time at the ball if I could have thought up an excuse fast enough. I did not like you… still do not, for that matter.”

“Perhaps I can change that?” he asked sheepishly.

“How?”

“By showing you my best side instead of the worst side you have seen thus far.”

She frowned a bit. “I have three days before I owe Mr Collins an answer, and you have six weeks of bad behaviour and more weeks of neglect to overcome. Can it be done?”

Darcy chuckled. “That recalls something they say about bears in the Americas. There are no bears left in England of course, but I think the saying apropos.”

“What do they say?” she asked in some curiosity, quite happy to be discussing something at least seemingly less fraught than her current marital difficulties .

Darcy gave her a smile that she may have had to admit (if only to herself), made him look quite handsome (particularly compared to Mr Collins).

“When you are being chased by a bear, you need not outrun the bear—only the man running next to you.”

Elizabeth burst into laughter, feeling for the first time that the conversation was not an unmitigated disaster. “Are you asserting you need not beat every man in the world… only Mr Collins?”

Darcy smiled, reached out to take her hand and squeezed it briefly. “Not exactly. While that logically is the minimum bar, it is not a standard I aspire to. I said it mostly to make you laugh.”

“In that you were successful, much to my surprise.”

“I remembered you said that you love to laugh and took a chance.”

“What is the standard you wish to set? How fast is the bear chasing you?”

“I want a love match on both sides. Why do you think one of the most eligible men in England remains unwed after a decade of having handsome, rich, connected ladies thrown at him from all sides? I have been looking for that which I could not find for the longest time,” he said with a rueful sigh.

“Naturally, I compounded the problem by failing to even recognize it when I finally at long last found it. You said earlier that you and Miss Bennet always aspired for love matches. Since I aspire to the same thing, could we be the solution to each other’s problem?”

“I imagine if I was going to fall in love with you for anything aside from your vastly superior situation in life, I would already feel some slight bit of affection,” she said, looking thoroughly confused by his assertion.

“How?” he asked emphatically. “I slighted you before we were even introduced. We were associated for six weeks, but what did that amount to? A dozen or two hours in each other’s company and a few thousand words, mostly talking around Miss Bingley’s incessant fawning and carping? Probably those first ungentlemanly and untrue words at the assembly are all that truly counted.”

“I suppose that sounds right. Those words certainly coloured the rest we shared.”

“We have three days and all the privacy we could ask for. We have spoken more honest words since you entered this room than most couples have on their wedding day. Your father seems like we could ignore him for the rest of the week so long as my staff keeps him fed, watered, and brandied, while he finds my library adequate.”

“The rest of the year,” she quipped with a small smile.

He chuckled along with her. “Nobody in Hertfordshire knows you are here, and nobody will ever know unless you choose to disclose it. No gossip will escape this house, so our reputations will remain pristine. We have the time to fall in love given the inclination. We have far more time available to us between now and Saturday than Bingley spent with your sister in the entire six weeks.”

Elizabeth stared at him for a moment. “What happens if I move past disliking you to being barely willing to tolerate you more than my other choice? What if you only outrun Mr Collins by a foot?”

“A foot is as good as a mile,” he said with a disarming smile. “I will take the win, and you will give me years to make you love me. Perhaps my pride is not under good regulation—but I will assert that I am up to the challenge.”

She stared at him for a moment more before replying, “Shall we glance back to assess the bear’s progress.”

“Let us,” he said with a slight smile.

“How shall we proceed?”

Darcy glanced back at the chairs, but then had a better idea. “Let us start with my observation that Mr Collins would not in a hundred years work out that, after a carriage ride of several hours and a rather fraught conversation, you are in desperate need of a walk in Hyde Park, which is less than half a mile away.”

She laughed. “You gained an inch on the bear right there—perhaps even two.”

Darcy laughed, feeling slightly more optimistic. “That is two twelfths of my goal, and we have not even left the room.”

Darcy did not feel up to dealing with Mr Bennet, and Elizabeth also lacked enthusiasm, so she wrote him a note and asked a footman to deliver it—to the man who was less than thirty feet away. That task complete, they gathered their outer clothing and exited the house.

Darcy offered his arm, and she took it with only slight hesitation.

As they approached the park, he said, “I assume you prefer not to be introduced to my acquaintances. If you have no objection, I know several wilder paths that are unlikely to be occupied, and if they are, it will be by people even more taciturn than me, if you can imagine such a creature.”

Elizabeth laughed a bit, wondering where he kept his sense of humour when not in use, but then just squeezed his arm to indicate her acceptance of the plan.