“She lacks…she lacks the birth, the…the…town bronze, if you will. You have seen all her finest gowns, you know! The ladies in town would never accept her as one of their own.”
“Darcy.” Fitzwilliam shook his head. “I admit I had some reservations about coming to you with this, but everything you have just said verily proves what I believe.”
“Which is what, precisely?”
“That youthinkyou love her more than you actually do.”
It was such a shocking thing to say that Darcy laughed. “What?”
“I think what you are really upset about is the injustice of it all. How dare she refuse the great Fitzwilliam Darcy something he wants!”
Never before had Darcy so wished to punch his cousin right in his smug face, but he restrained himself. “You are wrong.”
“Am I? You met her when? Last autumn?”
Darcy did not reply.
“If my memory serves me, it was October, nine months or so ago, at an assembly during which you refused to stand up with her and insulted her in front of her friends and relations.”
“I told you why I?—”
“And you certainly have never had any good to speak of her since then. Even in this conversation, you have only disparaged her and insulted her family. Not much the look of love, from my angle.”
“My reservations with regard to her connexions and upbringing?—”
“Have been detailed at length,” Fitzwilliam replied with a roll of his eyes. “Your inclination for the lady was rather easily conquered by your pretensions. Forgive me but that, sir, is not love.”
Darcy restrained his fist, but he did hurl a few curse words at his cousin.
Fitzwilliam chuckled. “Speak as you like, Darcy, but to all of that I shall add that when presented with a challenge, your response was to curl up in your den for a few weeks and then run off to marry your cousin. I am afraid you have a very sorry idea of love.”
“It was a scathing, painful rejection—not merely a challenge!”
“Either way,” Fitzwilliam continued, “it is done. You have said yourself that any future intercourse is impossible, so I thought, ‘Why not?’”
“Fie on that!” Darcy interrupted angrily. “Not impossible, not at all. Pursue her if you wish, but you will need to go through me.”
“What?” Fitzwilliam stared at him in an exaggeratedly disbelieving way. “You told Saye yesterday that you were on your way to Kent to propose to Anne, and now?—”
“I have had a change in plans,” Darcy retorted tightly. “I intend to win Miss Bennet instead.”
“You would not stoop to paying court to her simply to outdo me?”
“I shall outdo you, because I love her and you do not, and thus do not deserve her.”
“I am certain I could make Miss Bennet fall in love with me ten times over before she would grant you the slightest measure of her affection, Darcy. Indeed, she might be in love with me already, for it was I, and only I, who dedicated myself to her amusement at Rosings.”
“You did, that is true. I think it very likely she considers you a finefriend.”
Fitzwilliam crossed his arms over his chest. “She will not think of me merely as a friend for long, not once I set my mindto it. Do recall, in matters of courtship, I am far and above your master. I spend most of my time warning womenagainstfalling in love with me.”
Darcy returned to his chair. “You think far too much of yourself.”
“It does a man good to know poverty and hardship. I have been required to develop other means by which I might draw the attention of the fairer sex. Forgive my boasting, but in such arts, I am unequalled.”
“Certainly at Rosings you were unequalled. I doubt there is another bachelor under the age of sixty in the whole county,” Darcy countered drily.
“Save foryou,” said Fitzwilliam. “And yet she spent her time withme.”
