Darcy snapped shut the lid. “I cannot accept this on the condition that I present it to Anne.”
“It is already yours; your mother had it made for your sake. I have kept it long enough.”
For the sake of familial relations, he reluctantly took it.
“You will do what you must when the time is right,” she added.
He started, and since it appeared no other member of the household was going to enter and save him from a conversation he could not stop, he rose. “I am going for a walk, madam.”
As Darcy left the house, the ring felt like a lead weight in his pocket. It might have been a more romantic emblem had Bonaparte not divorced his wife two years ago for not giving him an heir. Darcy would give the ring to his sister and tell her their mother had designed it. Maybe he would put it in a drawer where no one would find it until after he was dead. Or maybe he would leave it in his pocket in the hopes that it fell out and got lost.
Although he had not set out for this purpose, his feet carried him to the part of the park that he knew to be Elizabeth’s favourite.
I cannot keep putting off leaving Kent just to spend more time with her.
He and Fitzwilliam were supposed to have left the Monday after Easter, and it was now the eighth of April and they were still here. Elizabeth boasted beauty, cleverness, kindness, and he was as bewitched by her now as he had been in Hertfordshire last autumn.
He loved her, he knew. He had known it since he had spoken to her over the instrument at Rosings on Easter. What he had now to decide was whether he was being weak by marrying her. She could bring him no fortune. Her connexions were embarrassing and far beneath his, and his own relations would baulk at him marrying someone of no importance in the world and who was unallied to the family.
He considered the great regard he held for a woman everyone would tell him was a terrible match. They would only see inferior connexions and no fortune. They would not see Elizabeth’s amiable disposition, or her lively spirit, or any of her other admirable qualities.
While he considered what to do, Darcy saw ahead of him that Elizabeth was walking the grove. He smiled and called her name.
“What brings you here again?” she asked after their formal enquiries as he turned back to walk with her.
He could not tell her he had to escape Lady Catherine’s complaints about expenses, or about his frustration that she would never accept his help, or about the hints that he marry Anne and the expectation that her ladyship would save money by living with them at Pemberley.
“I only wanted a walk,” he said.
He asked about her pleasure in being at Hunsford, her love of solitary walks, and her opinion of Mr and Mrs Collins’s happiness, and she answered directly. On the whole, it was a companionably quiet walk.It was pleasant not to be forced to talk if neither had anything particular to say. She talked little, and he supposed she must enjoy nature. He felt Elizabeth would enjoy the dales, rocks, and mountains of Derbyshire.
When they were near to one of the gates, Darcy noticed a man by the park paling, close to the turnpike road, enter the grounds. He had the look of a prizefighter, and the sort who would hit a downed fighter or grasp below the waist. Darcy saw the man watching them as he leant against the fence and smoked a pipe.
“Do you often see anyone while you enjoy your favourite walk?” he asked Elizabeth, tilting his head in the man’s direction.
She followed his gaze and shook her head. “I saw that man yesterday, but I typically see no one, except you,” she added in a low voice.
His heart beat a little faster at her being glad to walk with him, but as the stranger watched them, there was something in his insolent stare that Darcy could not like. If someone wanted to take a footpath through the grounds, they would not stand there, glaring into the park. He was not a gardener, and Darcy couldthink of no reason for a tenant or villager to be loitering by the gate.
“Hallo,” Darcy called. “Do you need to see someone at Rosings?”
“No, sir,” he said through a white pipe in his teeth, and the man left through the gate to the turnpike road without another word.
He and Elizabeth walked in silence for a little longer, and he strove to find something to talk of. “Has the cherry brandy been eagerly passed round at the parsonage?”
“Your aunt is too generous for words.”
He smiled at her tactful answer. “Lady Catherine is prodigiously proud of it, and talks of it being good enough to sell. Somehow, the tart-sweetness of the cherries is lost, and the only flavour that remains is a woody taste that is further ruined by it being watered-down brandy.”
“Let me assure you, it is no better when made into ratafia. I suppose you and your cousin must drink port or madeira after dinner, and her ladyship cannot understand how she never runs out of brandy in the dining room.”
“Oh, no, she always runs out.” She looked at him askance. “I told you, you must pour it out the window at every opportunity because no one should ever drink it.”
She laughed involuntarily and covered her mouth. He felt an absurd delight at amusing her, but they were at the gate, and Elizabeth took her leave before he could say anything else.
“What doyou mean Miss Bennet has a headache?” cried Lady Catherine. “When does that ever prevent a lady from keeping her evening engagement? I am very displeased by her staying home.”
“She really was unwell, your ladyship,” said Mrs Collins. “I am certain a lie-down is all she needed.”
