Chapter 24

Elizabeth remembered that night in sharp relief, as if it had happened yesterday. How difficult it had been to leave Jane, sobbing quietly by candlelight. How awful to be a thief in one’s own girlhood home! Elizabeth could not permit herself tears—she had only allowed herself to think of one step at a time. Obtain the money. Procure as many of her belongings as she could, so that she did not appear on Uncle’s doorstep with nothing. Walk to Meryton—which was difficult enough, because her ankle had barely recovered from her fall and now she would be carrying a heavy sack of belongings. Buy a ticket at the inn, somehow convincing Mr Lloyd at The George to sell it to her without sending immediate word to Longbourn—and also without giving him any adequate explanations—so that she might take the early post to town. Fear chased her every footstep. By the time Mama caught her, she had nearly shrieked in terror.

“What did she do?” Mr Darcy asked, his tone sombre.

“It was dark, but there was a moon and we stood there, staring at each other. I waited for her to shout, to betray my presence, but she never did. She only stared. Finally, she simply let go. She turned around and walked the other way, and I stood there like a statue until I heard her bedroom door shut.” She looked over at him. “That was something, was it not? Had she truly despised me, I think she might have wakened the household.”

She knew it was something. Precious little, she thought, but something.

He merely nodded.

Then she grinned up at him. “That was before Jane escaped too, however. She slipped out early the next morning with as many of our clothes as she could stuff into a valise, and joined me just before the post departed. I was never so happy to see someone in all my life.”

Mr Darcy smiled back at her, and her heart accelerated—just as if he were her beau, and she was riding for Hyde Park during the fashionable hour.

Thosevehicles, she reminded herself, trotted towards the park from Mayfair, not Cheapside. Those vehicles were driven by matched men and women as formed for each other as their matched pairs of horses. The conversation of those couples would not have been disgusting stories of one’s family, so personal and so ugly, they ought never to have been shared.

A friend only, she reminded herself, especially once he lifted the comforting hand from hers and returned it to the reins. You will be lucky to still have friendship, after your foolish confidences.

“You do yourself no service, Mr Darcy, by being such a good listener,” she said, struggling to lighten the conversation. “I do not usually carry on about what is past and done, I promise.”

“I do not mind,” he replied. “It is refreshing to hear someone with something to say.”

“Even if what they have to say is better left unsaid?” she asked. “I have spoken long enough. What was it like as a boy, growing up at Pemberley?”

Mr Darcy might not be an avid conversationalist, but he had plenty to say about the right topics. His happy childhood was one of them; his sister, another. Elizabeth was charmed by his devotion to her, his pride in her accomplishments, hardly noticing when he redirected their exchange again towards herself.

“Georgiana said that you taught languages at her seminary,” he said.

“Only French. I did not teach her, you understand, although she was my student. Her accent was already flawless, her vocabulary extensive for one so young. Quite the reverse, she could have instructed me. We simply chatted in the language, as I tried to help her be more comfortable in company.”

“Bingley says that he has heard of your uncle—Gardiner, I think his name? He has earned a distinguished reputation amongst other older and better-known solicitors. I am surprised at the necessity of your taking employment.”

She bristled at his thinly disguised criticism. “We arrived on my uncle’s doorstep with what we could carry, and the news that I could never return home. I have no settlement, although Jane will get something. He has four children of his own. Why should he be responsible for my life? He invited us to visit, not to take up permanent residence.”

“He resented the change? You told me he was the best of men.”

“No, he did not! He is!”

“Your sister did not also take up employment?”

“No. Jane is a perfect lady. She would never.”

“And you are not?”

“No.” She lifted her chin. “I intend to be one of those rarest amongst womankind: an independent creature.” She had tried for a light tone, but the vehemence of her feelings came through.

“Independent? But why?”

She glanced over at him; he, a man, who had complete and utter control of his life, with a vast fortune, would never understand it, and though she had revealed some, she certainly had omitted much more.

“Because anything else is mere illusion,” she said. “I thought my home was a place of safety. It was not, because it did not belong to me. Its owner held all the safety in the palm of his hand, and there he clutches it. My mother had none, and is forced to live with the edicts of a fool. My younger sister married the fool, trying to capture security, and now waits upon tenterhooks to become with child in order, again, to gain his thoughtless approval. My uncle supports us, yes, but what if something happens to him? My aunt could hardly maintain her current life, much less ours.”

“If you were to marry?—”

“Never. It is my life’s goal to rely upon no one for my support. Not ever.”

He glanced over at her, his expression incredulous. “But why? There are such things as settlements to provide for a wife should a husband die.”

“In your circles, perhaps. It is not done so much in my uncle’s. However, I intend to buy a piece of property and live in it, safely and independently, for the rest of my life. If I were to marry, any property I have becomes my husband’s. How do I know he will not sell it, or use it foolishly, or gamble it away? The answer is, I do not. Instead, I will be the master of my own destiny, my own future.”

Her heart beat harder, at the feelings in words just expressed. She felt, even now, the comfort in them, the rightness of them. It was her life’s goal, one that had seemed almost impossible in the beginning, until ‘Mr Pennywithers’ had shown her the way. She expected his argument; her uncle certainly had many, despite the way he assisted her. Of course, she did not presume that Mr Darcy would truly care about her own silly aspirations, but she was surprised when he did not trot out the usual objections to female independence.

“Will you be?” Mr Darcy only asked. “Or might you in fact be unconsciously beholden to the past, clinging to it out of fear rather than freedom?”

Elizabeth only shrugged. “That is one way to look at it. Perhaps once you have wandered the woods, hungry, homeless and practically friendless, not knowing any means by which you might rescue yourself because you have relied, all your life, upon others to do the rescuing for you… well, perhaps then you could understand.”

Instead of arguing, he voiced a question.

“You no longer teach at the seminary, I believe. How will you earn enough to purchase this property? Or will your uncle buy it for you?”

“Absolutely not,” she objected, but then realised she could not say anything further on the subject. How had she so forgotten herself as to possibly leave this part of her life open to examination? She scrambled to change topics, managing a grin. “There are—will be…other opportunities. Including a certain treasure hunt on the last day of your party. I shall simply have to earn more clues.”