Staring at him, she said, “We are taking a very big chance. Is it possible for two people to go from such wildly differentfeelings to being in love without even once being in each other’s presence? Without a single word being spoken? When you found me this morning, Iknewwhat I wanted, though I was still afraid to admit it to myself. We have spent far less than two hours together since that debacle in Kent. Is that enough time to know our hearts? Is it enough time to be sure? Are we being brave or foolish trusting in our relatives to teach us our own hearts?”
Fitzwilliam looked intently at her lovely face. “In truth, my heart has battled my darker nature for five months, ever since you appeared with mud on your petticoats and the wind in your hair to tend your sister. My heart has won… definitively. As you said, that awful, prideful, insulting man you met in Hertfordshire and again in Kent may be a part of me, but he is a part I hope is dead, or at least leashed.I love you, Elizabeth Bennet.Whether you accept or reject me, I will still love you until my dying breath.”
A rush of tenderness, such as Elizabeth could not have imagined even a week before, ran through her. She took a moment to gather her thoughts, and to be honest, to play with his hair, which was so conveniently situated.
Finally, she spoke from the heart. “Youhurtme at that first assembly. I assume Jane has made you aware of that, and we need not discuss it again. However, I very spitefully used that one exchange to form a prejudice against you, and never gave you a chance for your good twin to emerge. I took the word of a scoundrel, merely because he flattered my vanity. You were awkward and silent in Rosings, but… but—”
She ran out of words, so Fitzwilliam leaned down, kissed her cheek, and asked, “but?”
“But to be truthful, I must say I both despised and was fascinated by you in Kent. Parts of me—my senses, perhaps, or my passion—were strongly drawn to you. My prejudice… my first impression… my stubbornness did not allow for anyamendment to my opinion. At Netherfield, you treated me with respect… except for your failure to even attempt to check that horrid woman who shared the house. In Rosings, your cousin seemed to take delight in stealing my attention, but—”
She paused a moment, blew out a deep breath, and added, “I could see it hurt you, and I… I revelled in the injury. I had no idea what you did to Jane; I was still just feeding my vanity at your expense. Then, in your proposal, you pointed out all my defects, all my inferiority, all the things that would make a ‘degradation’ of a ‘reprehensible connection’—all the things that could have made me forgive you immediately, because I can tell you this.”
She stared at his face, as if memorising it to make a marble bust from memory later.
“I left that day because youhurtme a second time. You hurt me more than I would admit to anybody, even myself. However, if I had not already felt some sort of strong, innate attraction to you, I would have taken you down a peg. You said your cousin took you down a peg or two… well, I would not have been satisfied with two. I would not have stopped until I injured you as badly as you injured me. I would have been vindictive, malicious, and cruel. I would not have stopped until every possible spark of affection was lost. I would have done that, because Iknew, somewhere deep inside, somewhere in the darkness where no light ever penetrates…I knew I could love you if I simply allowed myself to, and the very idea of loving a man who might come to regret me terrified me.”
He ran his knuckles over her hair, cupping her ear with his thumb resting on her chin, and whispered,‘Could have loved me?’
She nodded. “Things happen in life. Couples quarrel, sometimes badly. They make up, sometimes incompletely. Children and troubles and fortune and death visit eventually. Asmuch as I esteem my parents, they have a marriage where the two together are weaker than they would be apart. I do not want that. I want a union where we are more than twice as strong together as we would be apart. I—”
He only gazed at her.
“I need you to promise me that you will continue torespectme. You can even hate me from time to time, but if you respect me, matters will be set to rights sooner or later.”
He thought of all manner of things he could say, but eventually settled on the simplest.
“I promise!”
“And will you promise to love me until one of us is dead, and then continue tolive, even if it is without me? Promise you will not take the coward’s way out, like your father, because that makesmeresponsible foryourlife even after death, which is tremendously unfair.”
“I promise!”
She sighed, and smiled ruefully. “Well then, I should probably tell you that somehow, you found your way into my heart. I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun. But make no mistake, Fitzwilliam Darcy. Idolove you with all my heart! I will be your wife. I will be your mistress. I will make the same promises I demand of you.”
With that, the couple sealed their bargain with a kiss for the ages. Elizabeth thought it would be a shame to burn down such a pretty orchard, but it would be worth it.
Sometime later, the nervously happy couple talked of all the things newly engaged and mostly senseless couples talk about, but finally they sheepishly admitted it was time to return to practicalities.
Elizabeth looked up. A vision of her maternal grandfather rose before her, sitting in his favourite rocking chair, smoking his pipe, reading a newspaper. She had asked him if the paper always told the whole story of an important person, and he had laughed uproariously. She vividly described the scene to Fitzwilliam until he seemed to stand beside her seven-year-old self, listening to the old man.
Lizzy Bee, let me tell you something. All our lives are stories. There are stories we tell ourselves, those we tell others, stories learned men piece together from evidence, the story of our lives, and the story of our loves. No story is complete, nor is any story accurate.
Stories are always made of the most interesting bits of truth, mixed with the most interesting bits of fiction. It is your job, when you want others to understand the story of your life, to judiciously make sure the ‘most interesting’ pieces are the ones you want them to be.
Fitzwilliam looked confused, so Elizabeth elaborated.
“Do you know what I am frightfully tired of, Fitzwilliam?”
“I have no idea.”
“I am tired of being in themiddle, neither here nor there. For five years I have been ‘out,’ neither child nor grown woman. For the length of our rather odd courtship, I have been caught between loathing you and loving you; between an inferior spinster and your wildest dream. For the past fortnight, I have been caught between being a visitor, being the mistress, being the sister Georgie is desperate for, being the niece your aunt is desperate for… but always in the middle… always neither fish nor fowl. If I return to Hertfordshire to marry, I will be neither the properly courted daughter to be fêted, nor the wife who captured the wealthy gentleman. If we elope, I will always be in the middle between properly courted mistress and slightly scandalous love affair.”
Fitzwilliam had never considered this, no more than a condemned man on the way to the gallows thinks about how clean his jacket was. There were always bigger concerns.
At a loss, he simply raised an eyebrow. “Lydia warned me you have this gesture and I would need a new twitch of my own.”
The rather silly joke eased her tension, and she laughed far more than the jest was worth before continuing.
