“You loved her.”
“I… did not…”
“You did.” Elizabeth said, “Sit down, sit down. You are overcome.”
Darcy stumbled to a tree stump. He could barely see.
“I did not wish for her to die. I did not.”
“Shhhh, shhhh.” Elizabeth put her arm around his shoulders and pressed him to sit. “Shhhhh, shhhhh, shhhh. Let yourself cry. You never let yourself cry?”
He had not.
“Let yourself remember the ways she was happy with you. Think about how happy she would be if she could see Emily, think about the ways you loved her, what you admired in her, and how she was worthy…”
Sitting across the breakfast table. Reading books together. When they shared the conjugal bed together. Her happiness the first time she had become with child, and her tears after she had lost the child. Holding her as she wept. When she became snappish and shrewish and difficult. The kindness she always showed to servants, no matter what disappointments she had recently suffered.
Her delight at her work with orphans. The way she always remembered how he liked his coffee and tea. Her happiness as the final pregnancy became advanced, and his anxiety. The way she had begged him to be present in the birthing room.
I won’t be so frightened if you are there.
“I’m not supposed to cry,” Darcy stuttered out. “Papa always said—”
“Shhhh. Shhhhh. Everyone should cry. When they are very sad.”
“I do miss her. I wish… I wish she could see Emily.”
“She watches her, with the rest of the angels.”
Darcy took Elizabeth’s hand, and he gripped it tightly. “I always meant to do right by her.”
“You did.”
“I… I wanted things to be different. I had never… not been able to manage myself and my own feelings.”
Elizabeth squeezed his hand back tightly.
The passage of tears ended, more slowly than it had come.
Darcy felt different. There was an odd feeling around his eyes, of released tension. His nose was stuffed up, and he blew it into his handkerchief. His was soaked, and like that time she’d cried, and he’d given her his handkerchief, she gave him hers.
He wiped at his eyes, rubbing around the sides.
Darcy took a deep shaky breath.
“Poor, poor Anne.”
Elizabeth nodded.
They stood, and then Darcy suddenly laughed. “I’d sought you out to make an offer of marriage.”
“You did.”
He took a deep breath. He remembered what Elizabeth had said. “I must… think. What you said. Your refusal was not exactly conditional, but, ah — I mean…”
He wiped at his face. The whole orbs of his eyes felt tired and achy, but also somehow good. He could not recall the last time he had cried. It had been a long time.
“You mean to ask whether my reply may have been different,” Elizabeth smiled softly at him, “had you been able to say that your request for my hand was endorsed by your judgement and character, and not the result of an impulse that you had failed, after a desperate struggle, to repress?”
