The look she turned upon me then was frankly incredulous. “My happiness would be your business? How cold you are.” Her arms crossed over her chest, as though holding her own warmth close. “I thank you for the honour of your proposal, sir, but I must respectfully decline.” She turned and slipped back into the sitting room, and I had no words to arrest her departure.
CHAPTER17
ELIZABETH BENNET
I returned to find my sister and Mr Bingley holding hands and staring at each other in the most besotted manner. They were quick to inform me that they were engaged, though they wished it to remain between us until they had secured my uncle’s blessing. Jane was two and twenty and required no one’s permission, not that I believed for a moment that either my uncle or my father would have refused it in the face of her transparent happiness.
It was not until late that night, alone in my bed with Jane dreaming blissfully in hers mere feet away, that I had a chance to think over that encounter at the foot of the stairs. Mr Darcy had proposed marriage! Or near enough, I thought wryly. It had been more a statement of fact: he, an unmarried gentleman, could marry me, an unmarried woman who was no relation of his, if we were both inclined. I did not really think he was any more enamoured of the notion than I had been. Rather, I felt he was trying to atone for the insult which had, as it were, separated me from the flock and left me vulnerable to such wolves of society as I had then encountered. A lifetime was a heavy price to pay for a moment of incivility, however, and I did not think that being married to a man who did not really want me would be a congenial fate, either.
Once my anger had cooled, I had begun to see Mr Darcy differently from before that fateful evening. For all his arrogant conceit, I had come to accept that he was likely a good man, perhaps even a very good man. I did not for a moment allow that he, who had surely been pursued by fortune hunters for years, would have entered a darkened balcony which he believed to be deserted. It would have created too delicious an opportunity for just the sort of trap he surely wished to avoid. Therefore he must have gone out there for a purpose, and as Sir John and I were the only people there, it was logical to conclude that he knew or suspected as much and had followed us. Given his earlier warning about the man, he may even have done so out of concern for me.
When confronted with such a scene as had been enacted there, most people would have simply retreated back inside rather than become involved, and most of those would have immediately begun to gossip about it. Not Mr Darcy. He had involved himself, to my benefit, and I had seen him return to the ballroom with his cousin—how he had come to be there was a mystery to me—some minutes later. What had transpired in those minutes I could not know, but I expect he and Sir John argued, as men will do when their tempers are roused.
As for gossip, there had been none. My relations assured me of this every time they returned from an outing—not a word was being said of me or Sir John, except that he had abruptly closed his house in town and there was some speculation that our ‘romance’ had ended in a quarrel. Mr Darcy, it seemed, had said nothing, and whatever the viscount knew, he had been likewise silent.
That is, Mr Darcy had said nothing until today. My aunt had got me alone for ten minutes and delivered a thorough scolding on concealing from her and my uncle that the knave had dared to lay hands upon me. To be fair to Mr Darcy—and I was trying to do so, though I had not yet released all of my resentment—he likely assumed that they already knew. My aunt certainly believed that I should have informed them, and perhaps she was correct. I had been wrong about so much of late, why not this?
The next day after dinner, my uncle summoned me to his study, where he sat contemplating a letter. He regarded me gravely over the top of it before folding it up and setting it on the desk between us. “I was astonished to receive today a letter within a letter, from Mr Darcy.” He studied my reaction to this cryptic comment for a moment before continuing. “The first page was addressed to me, and in it he requested that I give you this, after reading it myself if I wished.” He tapped the pages he had set between us with a fingertip.
“Mr Darcy has written me a letter?” I said rather stupidly.
“He has. And I have read it, and will allow you to have it, but only because I recently learnt of his actions in removing you from a desperate situation—which you ought to have told me of yourself.”
I opened my mouth to defend my secrecy, but what could I say? I said nothing.
He stood, nudging the letter towards me. “I suspect you remained silent from humiliation as much as any other motive. But in the future, you must inform the man in whose charge your protection rests of any such events.” He gazed sternly down upon me until I nodded my acquiescence. “I shall leave you to read your letter, then.”
Alone, I hesitated to take up the missive. What could Mr Darcy have to communicate to me that was so important as to involve my uncle, with whom he had no good relationship? The only way to find out was to read, and so at last I opened it.
Miss Elizabeth Bennet,
I do not know why I always seem to say precisely the wrong thing to or about you. I have begun to suspect it is not a problem unique to you, and that you have merely been the unfortunate person to finally bring a lifetime of gaffes to my attention. But whatever the case may be, if I cannot trust my tongue to convey my meaning, I will give my pen a chance.
Please, allow me to apologise for my outrageous suggestion yesterday. I was so eager to make amends that I did not consider to what sort of amends you would be receptive. What is the point of trying to atone for one’s mistakes if one does not take the wishes of those one has wronged into the highest consideration?
I ought to have said: I am so desperately sorry for what I said of you the night we met. It was done in a moment of childish petulance of which I am deeply ashamed. I had not even looked at you closely enough to form an opinion of your attractions, and since that night I have come to consider you one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance, and one of the most admirable. I have never been able to laugh at the vagaries of society, or at offences against myself, as I have so often seen you do. Your spirit humbles me.
I wish I had followed my friend’s advice and asked you to dance that night. How much sooner I would have known you for the estimable lady you are. We might even have become friends, and I sincerely mourn the loss of that opportunity, almost as much as I mourn the price you have paid for my insolence.
There is yet more I should have said yesterday. I ought to have told you of my sister. She will be sixteen in February, and despite her youth I think you and she would be great friends. You are both able musicians and lovers of books. Her temperament is not unlike Miss Bennet’s—self-effacing and kind. And she was only months ago, at her tender age, importuned by the slyest sort of fortune hunter, who injured her confidence and her vulnerable heart in cold-blooded pursuit of her dowry. You and she both know what it is to be deceived for a man’s selfish purposes.
Despite everything I have done amiss, regardless of all my missteps, I will dare now to ask: Will you agree to be introduced to my sister’s acquaintance? I am certain it may be managed in such a way as to require you to tolerate my presence only rarely. I pray you will consider the notion, and will demand no more of your attention, though I remain,
Your servant,
Fitzwilliam Darcy
CHAPTER18
FITZWILLIAM DARCY
The shock of being refused had carried me home and into my study with hardly a thought in my head. There, free of the need to pretend that all was well, I became angry. To be so quickly dismissed by one whose condition in life was decidedly beneath my own was appalling. I had offered her more than she could ever rightly expect in marriage—status, connexions, wealth, a fine estate. What further sources of happiness could she require?
Although...
I had possessed those very things all my life, and I was not happy, was I?
She had been raised on an obscure estate, in a family of no note and little wealth, but she was by her own account and my observation ‘a happy sort of person’. Or she had been, until the chain of events I set in motion had brought her low.
