Elizabeth gave a despairing and utterly humourless laugh. “I told nobody anything. They heard me call youMrDarcy when we arrived, then I attended to you all through that first night, and by the next morning, they had begun calling meMrsDarcy. What was I supposed to do—tell them we arenotmarried? Frankly, sir, I was too busy trying to keep you alive to trouble myself with what anybody thought.”
He gritted his teeth, vexed beyond measure that every attempt to justify himself only made him sound more churlish. He opened his mouth to apologise, but Elizabeth spoke first, and her words silenced him far more effectively than the horse who kicked him had.
“You must not be anxious, though. You are quite safe from me. You had almost convinced me, this week, that my first impression of you was wrong—that the arrogance, the conceit, and the selfish disdain of the feelings of others that you displayed in Hertfordshire were not a true reflection of your character. But one foray out of your sick bed, and you have betrayed all the same pride and contempt as you did then…and I begin once again to think it must be true.”
Each accusation hit him harder, winded him more. “That what must be true?”
“Mr Wickham’s account of your dealings with him.”
Darcy did go cold then, though inside, not out. Wickham! “What has he told you?”
“Everything.”
“I doubt that.”
“He told me that you have reduced him to his present state of poverty. Withheld the advantages designed for him, deprived the best years of his life of that independence which was no less his due than his desert. But if there is more, pray enlighten me!”
Darcy could only stare. There was too much to feel for him to settle on anything; his head and his heart both reeled. He knew, from their many and intimate conversations that week, that Elizabeth was familiar with the worst of his faults. Nonetheless, he had thought she understood him. She had allowed him, encouraged him even, to believe she admired those other parts of him he had revealed. Now she told himthiswas the estimation in which she held him!
“This is your opinion of me? After all we have discussed this week, how could you think it of me?”
She wilted a little. He might even have thought her expression was one of concern, had she not just emphatically renounced any possibility of regard for him.
“I do not wish to believe it, for I truly had begun to think better of you. But when I observe you with my own eyes behaving in this way towards people—goodpeople, undeserving of your contempt—when you are so imperious in your manner towards me, it is difficultnotto believe you could have behaved similarly towards Mr Wickham. Even if you have then justified it to yourself under some imaginary act of friendship, as you did when you separated Mr Bingley and Jane.”
Furious words he wished to hurl at her wedged instead against the constriction in Darcy’s gullet. He choked on them, noisily and painfully, for several moments before he was able to gasp a breath. Elizabeth stepped forwards with her hands out towards him, but her conflicted expression only provoked Darcy to wave her away. He had never asked for herassistance, and if she meant to bestow it so unwillingly, he would have no more of it. “Save your attentions for Wickham,” he mouthed resentfully. “With misfortunes as great as you describe, he will have more need of your compassion.”
All the concern vanished from Elizabeth’s countenance, replaced with outrage. “There, you see? What am I to conclude when you treat the mention of his misfortunes with contempt and ridicule?”
“That you are a far worse studier of character than you believe.”
“Lizzy! Mr Darcy! Do come inside. Lieutenant Carver has rustled up some soup with the bits Lizzy brought from the village.” A woman whose acquaintance Darcy had yet to make waved as she picked her way through the snow towards them.
Go away!Darcy wished to rail at her, but Elizabeth was watching him, the severe line of her mouth and single raised eyebrow leaving him in no doubt that she waited, without much hope of a good performance, for his response, and he was loath to oblige her.
“Oh, but you are not well, sir!” the woman said upon reaching them. “Take him upstairs directly, Lizzy. I shall send John up with a tray for you both.”
“There is no need, Mrs Stratton,” Elizabeth replied with forced gaiety. “He sounds awful, I know, but Mr Darcy is recovered enough to have come all this way in search of me and hold a remarkablylivelyconversation. I am quite sure he is up to sitting on a chair in the parlour for a short while, and I daresay he will benefit from the society.”
Despite everything, the look of challenge she then threw him still stole Darcy’s breath away. Mrs Stratton said something about the evils of being confined to one place for too long, but he could scarcely concentrate on it past the combined distractions of his simmering indignation, the ringing in hisears, the cold in his feet, and Elizabeth’s expectant stare. Doing his utmost to remain vertical, he offered Mrs Stratton his arm. A heartbeat or two after he set out towards the inn with her, he heard Elizabeth’s feet crunching in the snow as she fell in behind them.
Chapter 14
A Lesson, Hard Indeed
Wickham! As though he had not caused enough damage already, the malingerer had now set his sights on Elizabeth? The cur’s purpose, Darcy was convinced, could only have been to causehimthe utmost pain, for Elizabeth was too poor ever to be of real interest to such a man. Damn him—and damn her, too, for believing him!
“Here you are, Mr Darcy, warm yourself on this.” A steaming bowl of soup was pushed into his field of view, and a small roll dropped next to it, which shed a faint cloud of flour as it bounced on the table.
How strong was their attachment? It galled Darcy to consider what nature of sentiment Wickham must have created to inspire such loyalty, for Elizabeth had spent this entire week inhiscompany, discussing all manner of personal confidences, yet was still persuaded to believe whatever version of events the fiend had related.
“Pray, be not offended, Lieutenant Carver,” Elizabeth said testily. “I believe we may infer Mr Darcy’s gratitude from the manner in which he is staring at the food.”
“’Tis well, madam. We all know your husband cannot speak.”
Darcy looked up to discover himself the cynosure of all eyes in the room. Most were only curious; Elizabeth’s were accusing. He swore to himself, for it had been his intention to prove her wrong about his manners, not make the damned case for her.
“Thank you, sir,” he mouthed to the lieutenant.
