She continued forward, her half boots squishing through the muck, her curls blowing loose in the stiff autumn breeze. With naught but a bobbed curtsy and a hasty “Mr. Darcy,” she looked as though she would speed by me without another word.
Her foot slid as she passed, and I reached out to hold her. “Careful!” I cautioned.
She jerked her arm away from me and spun around. There was fire in her eyes.
Wishing to reassure her of my goodwill, I explained my warning. “It is slippery. You might fall.”
It was, apparently, the wrong thing to say. Her fingers tightened into a fist, and she looked heavenward as though she were begging God for patience… or to strike me with lightning.
The sooner I apologized the better. Then she would have no reason to disapprove of me.
“Might I walk with you?” I asked, pulling my hand down the reins to hold my horse at a greater distance.
“Do I have a choice?” she snapped.
“I would never force my company on you if you did not wish it.”
She looked at me, her eyebrows arched in disbelief.
My hackles rose, but I reminded myself I had no right to expect anything else. I had acted abominably. Of course she would wish to avoid my company.
“If my company istolerableenough, you may accompany me a little way, Mr. Darcy.”
I took a deep breath and began. “About that…I wish to apologize for my unfortunate speech the night of the Meryton Assembly.”
She stopped again, turning to face me. “Unfortunate speech? Whatever do you mean, sir?” Every angle of her tense body uttered a challenge, an unsettling contrast to the innocence of her tone.
I swallowed hard, not wishing to repeat what I had said. I suspected she asked me to repeat it to increase my discomfort. It was impertinent, but I had been a brute to speak as I had. I wished I could claim to have forgotten the exact words I had uttered, but I remembered every one. At the time, I had meant them. I had looked directly at her, knowing she would hear me, and I had not cared how she would feel about it so long as she left me alone.
I cared very much now.
Clearing my throat, I met her eyes as boldly as I had that night. “I told Bingley you were not handsome enough to tempt me.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You cannot apologize for my face, Mr. Darcy. That is my burden to bear.”
“I would not call your face a burden.”
“Oh, so you were lying?”
My tongue quit functioning.
She resumed walking, and I had to follow. While words failed me, they flowed rapidly for Miss Elizabeth. “It is not a difficult question, sir. I only inquire because it is one thing to accept an apology from an honest man, but it is quite another to consider accepting one from a liar.”
Never in my lifetime had I met someone so determined to think the worst of me. Summoning my fractured dignity, I said firmly, “I pride myself in my reputation as an honest gentleman.”
This she received with another arch of her eyebrows. Her disbelief scorched my esteem. Much as I would have loved to blame Wickham, I knew better. I must accept the consequences of my own rudeness.
Nevertheless, I would prove to her that her first impression of me, while understandable at the moment, was faulty. “No lady, no matter how handsome, could have tempted me to dance that night.”
“Do you only dance with handsome ladies, Mr. Darcy? How pleasant it must be to only be surrounded by beautiful people in the first circles.”
It seemed there was nothing I could say to which she would not take offense. Still, I kept trying. “I wished to convince Bingley of the futility of convincing me to dance when I was determined not to.”
She scoffed. “And yet you came to an assembly? Why bother to attend if you had no intention of dancing and meeting people?”
She had a point.
“Tell me, sir, do you intend to apologize to all the ladies with whom you refused to dance, or am I to feel the honor of your singular apology?”
