Ask her to marry you.
No.
I swore not to marry again, out of respect for Anne. This is my passion trying, once more, to run away with me, and I’ll not reward myself.
“You have an easy life,” Elizabeth said. “There is no need for you to worry about your independence. You have great wealth, and even if you had none, you are a man, and a capable man. You could always find a respectable occupation for yourself. I am awoman.” Elizabeth wiped her eyes suddenly. “My father is dead. There is no man who loves me in a way—” She wiped at her eyes again. “I apologize, Mr. Darcy. I have no happy options. I must choose amongst the unhappy paths that lie before me. Which course has the least evil, since none are filled with good.”
“I am worried for you.” Darcy’s stomach ached as he said that.
You can ask her to marry her. Do it.
“If you cannot help me, and you can only tell me that you are worried — I thank you for what you told me of Mr. Sykes’s reputation. But it only confirms what I already knew from his words and general behaviour here. Please do not bother me with your useless anxieties. I alreadyknowI shall hurt my family. Iknowthat Mama will be angry with me. And that — I do not need you to tell me.”
She pulled her handkerchief out and dabbed at her eyes and walked away, exclaiming in forced cheer, “Do save a piece of toast for me!”
Darcy felt stupid.
He observed the room. Mr. Sykes approached Elizabeth and took her arm. She gave him a flat, polite smile as she ate. Mr. Bingley and Mrs. Collins sat together talking, while Mr. Collins cheerfully spoke to Mrs. Bennet and Mrs. Phillips. It seemed to him that all three of them were observing Mr. Sykes and Elizabeth.
Lydia Bennet was hugging one of her friends.
The room was crowded, had a slight stench from too many people, sweaty, too warm, and he missed Emily.
He damned himself.
Darcy went to the window and opened it up, and he let the cold air cover his face, feeling much better.
“No, no, no. We’ll all catch our deaths. You know how much ill health is caused by cold air hitting sweaty skin.” Mrs. Phillips shut the window and latched it.
Darcy considered making a sharp retort, but he was not certain that this medical commonplace was nonsense. Perhaps it was unhealthful, that seemed not greatly more unlikely than anything else doctors said. This was Mrs. Phillips’s house, and it was her right to keep the window closed if she so wished.
Rather than going off, Mrs. Phillips looked towards Elizabeth, where Darcy as well was looking. “Fine girl, my niece. Whatever Collins says, I think she can do better than a widower who already has five children, four of them boys. Even if he is rich enough. I always liked Lizzy as much as all my other nieces, even if Fanny liked Jane and Lydia far more.”
“She is a fine woman.”
“Almost as pretty as Fanny was at that age. She was always the pretty one.”
“Was Mrs. Bennet more…” Darcy hesitated. “Was her character much the same when she was young?”
Mrs. Phillips laughed. “We were all confident pretty girls. It was a lovely time. Why, I remember those days… What I would give to be young again — you do not realize when you are young. Mr. Darcy, I hope… oh well, let me simply say this—” She gestured at the black armband he always wore round his coat sleeve. “If you refuse every chance of happiness now because of that, in twenty or five and twenty years, you may wonder at what sort of a fool you were.”
Darcy grimaced and did not reply.
Mrs. Phillips flushed. Darcy suspected that she thought she had offended him, but Darcy could not quite decide if hewasoffended. His emotions had been tossed too much back and forth, and there was a voice in his head that was quietlyconvinced he was in the process of making a terrible mistake, by not telling Elizabeth… by not asking Elizabeth…
After an awkward silence, Mrs. Phillips said, “We’ve eaten all the toast, but I’ll have the kitchen make more for you. You did not have any, did you?”
“No, no. That is not necessary.”
“Tea? Brandy? I’ll have my best bottle brought out.”
“Thank you, but I beg you no. My stomach is unsettled tonight.”
“Hope it’s not an illness.” Mrs. Phillips flushed again.
Darcy added, wondering if this might have been the source of the woman’s sudden reaction, “I assure you it is not due to your food, nor an illness. Unpleasant thoughts have preoccupied me.”
“Oh.” A pause. Elizabeth’s aunt then said, “You haven’t forgotten that black armband, have you?”
