“Let’s get someone to find him, I suppose,” said Sulles. “We’ll bring him here and we’ll sort it all out.”
MR. DARCY WAStoo drunk to be locked in a room. He spent what he thought was a reasonable amount of time at the door, trying to get it open. He tried the knob a number of times and then drove his shoulder into it and then spent a bit of time looking at the hinges, which were painted over a number of times with ever so many layers of paint, and therefore likely not easily removable.
During all this, Elizabeth seemed to have gone rightly out of her mind. She laughed about it for too long, saying rather loudly that being stuck together in a room was exactly what would happen to them, that it was just like the sense of humor of fate to have done this to them, and they shouldn’t be surprised.
When he tried to knock the door down with his shoulder, she gently scolded him not to do that. “You’ll only hurt yourself, Fitz.”
Then, as he was examining the hinges, she said, “Oh, look, a drink cart. Would you like something?”
Eventually, he turned away from the door to find her seated on the couch in the room, staring out the window at the distant light on the lawn of the ball, sipping at a glass of something.
He sat down next to her. “What are you drinking?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “It’s dark in here, is it not? I sniffed it and it smelled strong.” She laughed again. “I would have poured you one, but you didn’t say anything.”
He got up and went to the drink cart. He opened the bottles and sniffed them too. He poured himself something he was fairly sure was brandy. “We should not be drinking anything. We’ve both already drunk too much.”
“Yes,” she said. Then she laughed again.
He brought his drink and sat down next to her. “Lizzy, this is not funny,” he said gruffly.
“No, I know,” she said, and she was laughing again. “I know, it’s tragic and awful, really. The worst is that we don’t knowwhere Georgiana went off to, or why, but I suppose it does bode well for Neithern, in the end, though will she even want Neithern if he’s not a real duke? Would you let her marry him, knowing what you know?”
“I only want her happiness,” Darcy said. “After the business with Mr. Wickham, I wish her nothing but ease and goodness where men are concerned.” He paused. “I wish that for you, too.”
“Well, too late for that,” said Elizabeth, laughing again. She drank even more of her drink.
“I am sorry, Lizzy,” he breathed.
She set her drink down on an end table next to the couch and turned to him. “He is dead. We are trapped together. How long before you and I give in to whatever this is between us, do you think? I give us twenty minutes of banter.”
He got up from the couch, bringing his drink with him. He went to the window and put his fingers against the panes of glass.
“Don’t wish to marry me anymore, Fitz, now that you can?”
A lump rose in his throat. “I…”
Her voice was different. “Oh, you really don’t.”
He turned around to look at her. “I loved him. You loved him. Why would you—”
“Ah, yes,” she said, her voice bitter. “Now, it would be wrong, would it, Fitz? And you? You only dorighteousthings.”
His mouth was dry. “I’ve never wanted you for righteous reasons.”
“No,” she said, “you have not.” She picked her drink up again and looked into it, pensive. “And to be fair, I have never liked you when you were righteous, only when you were not. You have wanted me against your good sense, and I have wanted you only when you went against your nature.”
He went back to the couch and looked down at her. “It would not be wrong now,” he said softly. “Or, anyway, in a year—”
“A year?” she breathed.
“You must be in mourning for—”
“Yes, I know.”
Then it was quiet.
He sat down again. He drank. She drank.
