“When you express the situation in such a manner, the answer you gave me seems eminently reasonable.”
“Women can be rational creatures. We established that last night.” Elizabeth then raised her hand to forestall him saying anything additional and frowned. “I do not want to… Mr. Darcy, I admire you enormously. You have defects, pride, a tendency to think lowly of those who are not part of your circles, and above all a tendency to hate yourself when you fail to meet your own expectations of yourself. But despite that, I do admire you. I do. I like you very much, I—” She sucked in her breath. Pressed her hands against her face. “I truly was unhappy, for a long time. You must think. Do so. I will not… oh, heavens, I shall go as distracted as my mother. This is so difficult to say.”
“What is?” Darcy replied quietly. But he was smiling once more.
“Determine what you truly want. Think about it. If I am truly your choice, without hesitation, then tell me that — not today. But soon. You must think. If I were to believe that you would find yourself happy, if married to me, I am likely to reply favourably, but I will make no promise at present. You must ask again. And… and do not delay overlong. I have once been heartbroken, and I am determined to not feel so sad again due to your choices, no matter what you choose.”
Chapter Fifteen
Darcy took a long walk the next morning with Emily.
He carried her on his shoulders for a while and put the girl down whenever she wished to run about. Emily played with flowers, dug at stones, and found several used wads of tobacco that someone had spat out onto the ground.
His mistake had not been one of action, but one of how he thought about himself. Why exactly would not marrying another woman have honoured Anne?
It certainly did not honour her wishes.
There had been features of his marriage which he had not liked. It had been a marriage of family duty, and the parties in such marriages were frequently not so attracted to each other as occurred in a freely chosen companionate marriage.
The simple fact was — Darcy’s thoughts were interrupted when Emily climbed onto a bench they walked past and tried to rapidly walk back and forth on it. He went over to take her hand, so she would not fall, and then stood ready to grab her if she fell after the aid of that hand was refused with a shout of “Baby!”
At last, she turned to the less frightening entertainment of climbing off the bench, and then back onto it, again and again.
Slowly Darcy began to realize, and to truly believe that he had nothing with regards to his marriage to be deeply ashamed of.
Feelings were impossible to control, though they could be influenced.
It had likely been a mistake to contract the marriage in the first place. As much as it had been beneficial to Anne to be removed from Lady Catherine’s control, he had not felt towards her then what a man ought to feel towards his wife. Further, by marrying her, he had prevented her from ever forming anattachment to a gentleman who would love her as much as she loved him.
Though, Lady Catherine would have still done her best to managethattask.
Nothing of the situation had been the way things ought to be, or the way that they would be in Thomas More’sUtopia, where the bride and groom were presented to each other naked before they married, so that they could see if the other had any undesirable defects covered by clothes. But Anne’s life while married to him had been happy for her.
And what of his guilt that it had been his seed that spawned the child which killed her?
Anne had chosen that risk also. She had wanted a child. And Elizabeth had been correct again, Anne did look down on Emily from heaven, and she was happy to see her daughter.
Oh, but it would have been better had she lived, and had Emily been able to know her mother.
The clouds that had been blowing in from morning had become quite threatening, and Emily had become tired. Darcy picked her up and carried her in his arms back to the mansion. She babbled at him, and he replied distractedly, but half way back Emily quieted and fell asleep on his shoulder.
Elizabeth thought that he tended to self-flagellation.
But would he do wrong things if he did not feel guilt?
In any case… things seemed easier.
Colonel Fitzwilliam caught him staring out the window when he went to the drawing room, and said, “You look like a moonstruck calf. And you’ve barely said a word since yesterday. Come, man, you dragged me here. Entertain me.”
“Had you not said that your father insisted that someone from the family show attention to Lady Catherine?”
“It amounts to the same.”
“No, not at all.”
“Come, I require conversation. At least a game of billiards.” Colonel Fitzwilliam changed his voice to make a very bad imitation of Emily’s, and he said, “Play, play. Dar make play — hahahaha! I see your grin, you are amused.”
“You have no sense of shame.”
