Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

Darcy could scarcely believe what he was hearing. Jane Bennet? A broken heart? Surely not! Everything he had seen, everything he had heard, had convinced him that Jane Bennet, Elizabeth's older sister, was not possessed of a heart easily touched. She was the very picture of serene complacence, her ubiquitous smile no warmer for his friend Bingley than for Mrs Long, or Sir William's twelve-year-old son, or himself, for that matter.

He saw in his mind's eye Mrs Bennet, pushing Jane at Bingley, with his five thousand a year, encouraging her, crowing about Jane's success, and about how their union would throw her younger girls in the paths of other wealthy gentlemen. And all through it, Jane Bennet herself, gracing everybody with her cold, serene smile.

"…really loved him." Elizabeth had been speaking whilst his mind wandered, and it took him a moment to catch up with her words.

"I never saw the first intimation of real affection," he heard himself say. "I have seen Bingley in love before, but his partiality for Miss Bennet was beyond what I ever witnessed in him. Yet, in her, I noticed no such affection. I believed, on impartial conviction, that she was indifferent to him. Can you blame me for not wishing my friend to be forever united with a wife who did not truly love him?"

Elizabeth's indignation seemed softened by this speech, and her eyelids fluttered.

"I do not believe, sir, that I have ever heard so warm a defence issue from your lips. Can this be true? That you believed her merely to be seeking a fortune from whatever man would take her as his wife?"

Darcy nodded, still stunned by his recent oration. He was not a verbose man. "If you believed my actions were conducted in malice, I can only understand your resentment, although I had no notion of such existing."

This occasioned another bitter laugh. "Not existing? Why, we have been battling since nigh on the day we first met. You have never looked at me, except to find fault!"

This accusation, a light parry of words, struck him with the force of a sabre.

"Find fault? In you? Impossible! It is your family who vex me, your connections who are the concern. Not you!"

"My family? My connections? What have they to do with anything?"

Oh no! This was not the reception he had expected. This was not at all how he had imagined his proposal would go.

He felt like a fox, trapped by a pack of hounds. He had cornered himself in the underbrush, with no clear way of getting free. Could he gnaw off a foot? The one in his mouth, maybe? Perhaps the best way was to push on and hope!

"I was raised with expectations. From my parents, my relations, and yes, myself. I was not taught to… to associate with those they deemed below my rank and station. My grandfather, as you know, was an earl, and I have always moved in the first circles." Not that anybody from this supposed elite had ever appealed to him like she did.

The set of Elizabeth's jaw suggested that this was not, perhaps, the wisest path to have taken .

"And my family is so far below you that my sister—who is the daughter of a gentleman and therefore of your own station—is not suitable for your friend, who is the son of a mere tradesman? This is what you have come to tell me?"

No, not going well at all.

"Furthermore," beautiful, loveliest, furious Elizabeth spat out, "you deem yourself to be so superior that you have forsaken a friend of your childhood, stripped him of all prospects, and forced him into the life of a militia officer?"

Darcy could not have been more stunned if she had hit him on the head with a frying pan. What on earth was she…?

Oh, heavens. No! Not that.

"Wickham? Are you talking about George Wickham?" Now, unaccountably, it was he who began to laugh. It started as a trickle of incredulity, and grew into a notion so completely absurd that it had no way of escaping other than through a guffaw right from his gut.

He laughed until he thought he would split the seams on his waistcoat, until he noticed Elizabeth's face once more. She was not amused.

"Do you deny what you did to him… I have never seen you laugh before. I do not believe I have even seen you smile."

Still trying to rein in the remnants of his mirth, he coughed and faced her. "I am not the cold man I am often taken to be. I know…" he took a deep breath. This was going to be a day for many confessions, it seemed. "I know I seem arrogant on first impressions; this I have been told on countless occasions. I am proud, yes, but of what I have accomplished, as we have discussed before?—"

"At Netherfield," Elizabeth interjected.

She recalled that conversation. Perhaps not all was lost.

"I am not without humour. I merely need to be at ease with my company. I… I am at ease with you." The confession came more easily than he had expected.

"But why did you laugh about poor Mr Wickham? It seems you do take pleasure in his misfortunes! Surely, you are not so cruel a person as to do that!"

Darcy settled himself into the chair at her side once more and allowed his head to fall back against the cushions. His eyes flickered closed, and he pushed that ever-present lock of hair off his forehead.

Then, steeling himself for an unpleasant conversation, he straightened his posture to explain everything he knew about George Wickham.