He rubbed his thumbs across her knuckles and spoke softly.“Dearest, is this what has overset you?That you were wrong about Wickham?”She looked at him with wide eyes.He seemed to take this as agreement.“He has fooled many before you and will likely continue to do so.He cannot open his mouth without a lie falling out.It is his way, and he is very practiced at it.Even my father was taken in by him, and he was a man of the world and decades your senior.”
This seemed to mollify her somewhat and he squeezed her hands in his before releasing one and moving to sit next to her.
Elizabeth’s eyes widened as she saw him moving closer and settling her right hand on his knee, clasped in his.What was happening?
She edged away from him, into the far corner of the sofa, and half-turned to face him.“Mr.Darcy,” she said uneasily.
“Yes?”He smiled gently at her, his expression soft and kind, his eyes dark and full of understanding.
She looked at him then and was struck anew with how little she understood him.She felt as if she had lived weeks since this morning, not hours.
“I am afraid I do not know you at all,” she said, her voice filled with dismayed wonder, her brow creased in confusion.
“Pardon me?”
“Mr.Darcy, pray forgive me.I must ask you to apply to your cousin for more details.Coherent speech is quite beyond me at the moment.”
He frowned, and she found his confused expression inconveniently attractive.
“I do not understand.”
She sighed.“Neither do I,” she muttered.She took a deep breath and sat up straight.“Mr.Darcy, I must apologize.I believed spurious things about you in Hertfordshire, with absolutely no evidence to support them and plenty to dispute them if I had but opened my eyes.Charlotte told me not to believe him, but I did not listen.Even Jane thought there must have been some misunderstanding, that it could not be true.Mr.Bingley would not be such a close friend if such things were true.But I was so confident in my own abilities.”She had not the energy to berate herself as fully as she had done that afternoon with Charlotte, and her words came out in a dejected tone.“I assure you I was much more stringent with myself earlier.”
Darcy was moved by her suffering.“Do not fret over Wickham, my dear.He is not worth your distress.”
“He has made a great fool of me.”
“You are not the first, I am afraid.”
She met his eyes and inexplicably felt tears rising to her own.“I do not like feeling foolish.”
He nearly smiled.“Neither do I.”He patted her cheeks dry with his handkerchief.
“I am a vain and ridiculous creature.”
“We are none of us perfect.”
She laughed at that, as he had intended her to do, and he smiled at her.
“You should smile more often, Mr.Darcy.You are quite handsome when you do.”
He flushed.“Am I not handsome when I am not smiling?”
She appeared to consider this for a moment, then grinned at him, looking almost like her old self.“It requires further study.”
“I dare not suspend any pleasure of yours.”
She smiled softly at him, then yawned and tried to hide it, but he was sitting too closely to miss it.
“You are tired.”
“Yes, but it is early yet.It must be the tea,” she said absently.“Charlotte put something in it.”
He saw her teacup on the table beside him and leaned down to smell its contents.Brandy.“Ah, I see.You should retire, Miss Bennet.We can continue our conversation another time.May I walk with you tomorrow morning?”
She nodded regally.“You may.”
He grinned at her, thinking her delightful, if a little volatile, under the influence of brandy.“I will await you in the grove.”He kissed her hand and held it to his lips a little longer than propriety would normally allow.“Until tomorrow, my sweet.”
