Truly, there was no reason for her to have concealed these things from her sister. It was only that now there were so many of them that it was onerous to try to find some way to reveal them all. She would have to start at the beginning and talk unceasingly for the better part of hours, she thought. Now, she kept it all to herself because it was easier than explaining it.
Or… she didn’t know.
Perhaps it was something else.
Perhaps, when she’d discovered that she and Jane were not, in fact, sisters, a rift had seemed to open up between them. She knew Jane didn’t wish it to be true, but Elizabeth could not help but feel it. She was not who she had always thought herself to be. It smote her, deep in the center of herself, and it changed her.
She did not feel like herself anymore.
She did not think she ever would, ever again.
She was someone else now, and she had no notion of how to evenbethis new person.
“He merely wished to inquire why I was going by Bennet instead of Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” Elizabeth told Jane, and this was not a lie, she assured herself. This was, indeed, why he had taken them aside.
“Perhaps you should reveal your marriage,” said Jane.
It would, truly, make her comings and goings much easier if she were married. She could even conceivably serve as a chaperone for her sister, if so. Elizabeth sighed.
“You know,” said Jane, “it is not only Mr. Darcy who makes little sense, I think. You, Lizzy, have made very little sense to me either. Your behavior seems strange and somewhat nonsensical.”
“Well, how would I go about revealing that I am married now, when I have been introduced to positively everyone as not married?” said Elizabeth.
“I don’t know, I suppose,” said Jane, sighing. “But it would not have been necessary if you hadn’t insisted upon it.” She eyed her sister. “I don’t think you trust your husband, that’s what I think. You don’t believe that he will honor your marriage when he comes back, and so, you are acting as if you are not married to lessen the blow of all that when it happens.”
Elizabeth only shook her head. “Don’t be foolish. I have the marriage certificate. I can prove it.”
“Yes, but you have thought about having to prove it,” said Jane. “I don’t know if you should have married that man. I wonder about Colonel Fitzwilliam’s character, in the end.”
MR. FITZWILLIAM DARCYwas not entirely sure when it was he knew he was ruinously and irrevocably in love with Elizabeth, but he was afraid that it was rather later than he would like to think it was.
He did not think he was that in love with her when he proposed.
Somehow, her refusing him strengthened his feelings, which was perverse, and he knew it. Everything about this fascination he had with her had proved to be perverse, however, truly.
Seeing her here, at Barralds, it had been a blow. He had felt it, truly, as if he had been struck.
He had not come here to get away from her.
Well, not nominally. He would profess he had come here because he wished to introduce his sister to a varied society so that when she came out in the following spring, she would have become accustomed to many of the members of the ton they would be associating with. He would have said that he had to gosomewherefor the summer, because no one stayed in London, and he’d simply chosen this country house because it seemed the brightest social scene.
However, he would be lying if he didn’t admit that getting away from the specter of Elizabeth Bennet had been part of the allure of being here. He could have gone to Rosings, after all, had thought about it.
He had all but decided that he was going to marry his cousin Miss Anne de Bourgh. His aunt, Lady Catherine, wished it, and his mother had professed to like the idea, and it was all very tidy and neat and kept the family money and property together, and he didn’t have any good reason not to do it.
But something about being at Rosings, remembering Elizabeth at Rosings, it was unbearable.
And anyway, he did not wish to marry his cousin, not least because she was sickly and it seemed unconscionable to get children on her and expect her to bear them and bring them into the world. He had no desire to kill Anne. He had no desire to bed her either.
If pressed, he would claim that his desire for Elizabeth had little to do with bedding her. He wouldn’t deny he thought of her as an attractive and desirable woman. She was very pretty and her body was shaped pleasingly. There was nothing about Elizabeth that would put a man off the idea of having her in that way and much that would entice him.
Anyway, of course it wasn’t about that. That would be beneath him.
Certainly, the first time he remembered finding her attractive, it was after she had walked three miles to Netherfield and her face was flushed and her eyes were bright and her hair had been wind-swept, and he had thought of her flushed from some other kind of exertion, and that was the first of his perverse moments with this woman.
He would own that. He hadn’t even done much to conceal it at the time. She was pretty, Elizabeth was.
Of course, this was not the reason a man like him married a woman. Certainly, yes, you were permitted to do that with your wife, but it wasn’t as if you were supposed to do it a lot. Well, depending on the way the scriptures were interpreted, you weren’t supposed to do it a lot, period. There was a whole great deal about how sexual intercourse was this sort of necessary evil that was only permitted within the bounds of marriage and all of that.
