“My daughter is well now,” Mr Bennet said. “And I intend that she remain so.” He frowned and drew in a long sigh before finishing, calmly and without heat.
“You will marry her. Youmust.That is the only way to save her.”
Darcy did not answer at once.
For a moment, he stood as though the words had struck him somewhere deeper than offence—somewhere dangerously close to desire. The proposal Mr Bennet had set before him was, in another shape, the very thing his mind had reached for again and again since Elizabeth Bennet first entered his house: order restored, obligation satisfied, her presence made permanent and unquestioned.
Marriage.
Safety.
An end to uncertainty.
He drew a careful breath. “You believe,” Darcy said at last, “that such a union would preserve her.”
Mr Bennet’s expression did not change. “I believe it has done so before. But… never in circumstances quite like these.”
“No,” Darcy said quietly. “And it will not serve now.”
He moved a little nearer—not in challenge, but as one compelled to speak plainly where evasion would be a kind of dishonesty. “She showed me the express you sent. You think me dangerous to her.”
Mr Bennet did not deny it. “I think,” he said, “that my daughter began to fail when she met you, and that her failing worsened as your proximity remained… and then for whatever reason, she began finding a sort of relief whenever your name—or your presence—pressed too closely upon her.”
Darcy paced across the room again. “I assure you, sir, it was not done with any intent of—”
“Have you ever known a man with a debilitating affinity for drink, Mr Darcy?”
Darcy’s cheek twitched, and he regarded Mr Bennet in some askance. “Many. But that is a rather strange twisting of the topic at hand, sir.”
Mr Bennet shook his head. “No, for the drink ruins some men. Consumes them from the first moment. They lose their way, lose themselves, until it comes to a place where theyarethe drink. They cannot manage without it. Some only seem rational after they have had four or five glasses.”
He drew out his handkerchief and wiped it across a brow that appeared suddenly strained. “That, Mr Darcy, is what I am beginning to wonder about you and my daughter.”
Darcy’s jaw tightened. “And yet you ask me to marry her.”
“I ask,” Mr Bennet replied, “to see how you receive the question.”
Darcy let out a slow breath. “Then allow me to answer it with equal frankness.”
Mr Bennet inclined his head.
“There is nothing I should wish more than to secure Miss Elizabeth’s future—her comfort, her protection, her happiness—by every means honour permits. And not for duty, but for my own… pleasure as well. If such a word is permitted me.”
Mr Bennet watched him closely now.
“If marriage were assurance,” Darcy went on, “if constancy alone were sufficient to quiet whatever afflicts her, I would not hesitate. I would welcome it.”
“But you do hesitate,” Mr Bennet said.
“Yes.”
“Because you fear her?”
“No,” Darcy said at once. “Because I fear myself.”
Bennet’s eyes narrowed. “Then perhaps I was correct. You are a sort of poison to her.”
Darcy paused to frame his thoughts. “Not in the way you imagine. You believe that my proximity restores her. And in a narrow sense, you are correct. You have seen the effect. Others have seen it, too.”
