There was an abrupt and utter stillness from the pairbelow her. Her shock and outrage were such that she did not care about embarrassing anyone, least of all herself.
“Perhaps in your circles, it is not ugly and coarse to publicly jeer at a guest and her family. I was raised differently; thus I wish to provide fair warning—you two are not nearly as private as you had hoped.”
She dashed down the stairs, racing to nowhere or anywhere that they were not.
11
YOU HAVE A FRIEND IN ME
Guilt ate like acid at Darcy’s gut.
“Well!” Miss Bingley’s chest heaved in outrage. “An eavesdropper never hears well of himself! It only goes to show that she?—”
“Oh, shut it,” he said, disgusted with himself as well as his companion. “Elizabeth!” he shouted, shoving foliage away to try and see beyond it. He caught sight of the hem of her dark gown disappearing beyond the marble structure of the fountain. Away from the house, not towards. If he were going to hell for failing to act as a gentleman ought, he might as well go out with a blaze.
“I never wish to hear another unkindhintof a thought about Mrs Ashwood, about her relations, or anything else to do with her. You have embarrassed me for the last time.”
“But you were the one who said?—”
“Never mind what I said. We are both to blame. Just know this: If it happens once more, you will never again be welcomed at Pemberley.”
He left her standing there, gaping, fish-like, as he hurried off in a direction he hoped would intercept Elizabeth.
He found her in the grotto, a cavern-like folly constructed at the edge of the wilder part of the park, abutting onto forested acres. Thankfully she had taken shelter there, for dark clouds had moved in as he tore through the gardens, shouting her name, aided a few times by hints from various gardeners. He had made an utter cake of himself, but he did not care. The showers began as he entered the darkened space; his relief was vast as he spotted her huddled in one corner, her arms wrapped around her knees and chin resting on them.
He sat down on the grotto’s floor beside her.
“I apologise,” he said at once.
She gave a nod; it seemed that was all the response he would get. A wave of frustration rose, but he quelled it. Just what else was she supposed to say? She was a lady; she had witnessed bad behaviour, and had been applied to for forgiveness. As civility demanded, she had accepted his application with as much effort as he had put into making it. Explanations were required. But how to do it?
“Is my sister Lydia making a fool of herself with the officers?” she asked, much to his surprise, believing she was done speaking to him forever.
He hesitated, then decided that only truth would do. “I do not know, but it is what I have heard—not only from Miss Bingley.”
She nodded once more.
“I truly am sorry,” he apologised again.
This time she looked at him. “I understand. It is not yourusual manner, to encourage taunting and mockery. However, I—along with my family, evidently—made too easy a target to resist. You need not repeat yourself. You are not the first, nor will you be the last. I do appreciate the intelligence that Lydia requires restraint. I will see what can be done about that.”
“You plainly understand nothing, nothing about a man’s desires for a beautiful woman. I simply cannot stop thinking about you, and wanting to know everything about you. I realise you are not interested in remarriage, and I have reasons…personal reasons why I should not pursue you, which have nothing to do with your appeal. Allowing, even encouraging Miss Bingley’s derision was a vulgar and tasteless attempt at a return to a sanity I seem to lose when you are near. I am ashamed.”
There was astonishment now in those wide, captivating eyes, and he was struck once again with her sheer beauty—the perfect cheekbones, the arch of her brow, the fullness of her lips, the delicate curves. His voice dropped an octave, and he reached to touch her bottom lip, hating the glove that separated his flesh from hers. “You were made to kiss—you have the most perfect mouth I have ever seen.” He knew he ought not to have said it, but he could not force himself to voice another apology, not over something so perfectly true.
She looked away. “How ironic,” she said with an almost-laugh, soft and bitter, “that I have never been kissed by a man in my entire life.”
Darcy said the first thing that struck him at this absolutely unbelievable statement. “Was your husband blind? No, with skin so soft as yours, sightlessness would not stop me. He must have been a dead man, dead inside, yet still somehow upright.”
She shrugged, still not looking at him, seeming embarrassed now at what she had revealed. “Everyone in the neighbourhood knew my father was dying. Mr Ashwood had been a widow for a decade—and he had never had a child who lived past infancy. He saw an opportunity to gain a second wife, a second chance at fatherhood. He brought an offer to my father on the same day that Papa received a reply to the letter he had written to his cousin, Mr Collins, who also offered to marry one of his daughters. Neither man cared, particularly, which daughter. Jane and I were the only ones old enough to accept.”
He removed his hat, wondering how to tell her of his shock and sympathy, staring into it as if answers were to be found beneath its brim. “I know that love is not a requisite to marriage. However, there can be affection. Comfort. Human touch.”
She seemed to tremble, just a little. “It was probably as well. I do not think…I believe it was much better as it was. Within a few months, I became as a daughter to him, especially as his health declined. I made him comfortable for his last years. I am not sorry I did it. Nursing him gave my life meaning and purpose, particularly after losing my father.”
Darcy had been surrounded by family when his father died. Elizabeth had been the youthful bride of a man who thought to use her as a prop in his old age, and then died too soon—and at least according to Sir William, she had subsequently broken with both her sister and the new mistress of Stoke. Her pride was at fault, he had been told.
But he had met both her sister and Stoke’s new mistress; neither had impressed him as particularly saintly. “Your sister has Longbourn. Fanny Ashwood has Stoke. Both are affluent and comfortable while you appear to have nothingat all. Everyone is supposed to believe this is your own choice.”
