She insisted the entire honey cake be put before him, refusing to let him take only a slice, and took all the bread and butter for herself. As they ate and drank, their silent and comfortable camaraderie felt different to him. He felt Elizabeth’s lightness and playfulness fade, and a stillness replaced it. He wondered if it was real or if his insecurities played with his perceptions. Should he speak into the silence, to ask her what her sudden pensiveness meant, or was he only imagining that her mind had gone some place far from the bed they had just shared?
“Well,” she said, setting down her napkin and pushing aside her plate. “I think I have gathered my courage enough to ask you something.”
She wanted his assurances after what they had done. He felt a little relieved. Her feelings were only natural, and he was eager to offer himself again.
“My dear, I promise you that my?—”
“Please, please let me speak.” She idly twisted the sapphire and diamond ring round her finger. “I know you are not on friendly terms with him, but you must tell me what happened with Mr Wickham.”
Darcy sat quite overwhelmed by surprise to hear mention of that man’s name.
“Fitzwilliam, would you tell me why you did what you did?”
“What I did?” he repeated as his heart rate rose.
Elizabeth gave him a pained look. “I know your father bequeathed him the best living in his gift. He meant to providefor Mr Wickham, but when the living fell, for some reason, you gave it elsewhere.”
“Why do you need to know?” He felt extremely shocked. Did she think him capable of some sort of malicious revenge?
“I know you are resolved to act better by those outside your circle, and Idobelieve you.” She said this with emphatic entreaty. “But I need to know why because”—she gave a tremulous smile—“my feelings are changed from what they were on Thursday. But Mr Wickham expected your patronage, and you left him with no money and no prospects. Can you imagine how alarming that is to me, as a woman choosing her future partner?” She searched his eyes, but he was still so confused that he could not give her whatever it was she was looking for. “You disapprove of my family, my connexions, my lack of fortune, and you regret having an affection for someone who brings you nothing.”
“I was wrong to say all of that,” he said, struggling to keep his patience, “and to even feel it in the first place, but what has that to do?—”
“I don’t want you to resent me,” she cried. “I give up everything to become a wife; my very personhood is forfeit. You will have absolute control over me.”
Darcy rose quickly, knocking the table and clattering the dishes. “And you think I would do, what? Cut you off from your family? Allow you no money of your own? Abandon you?” His voice raised in grievous anguish as he realised what Elizabeth was afraid of. “You think I am capable of committing some shocking and unheard cruelty to the person I am supposed to love best on earth?”
“No! At least, not any longer. After these past two days, I cannot imagine it at all,” she pleaded. “You are generous and kind and, and everything that I could want. So, explain to me why you mistreated a man who expected your support. It wouldassure me that your wife”—her voice broke—“if she was poor and unconnected, with embarrassing relations, would never be neglected the way Mr Wickham was.”
For a moment, he was incapable of articulating a single thought. All he was aware of was an indescribable agitation. At her, at Wickham, at himself, at this entire situation.
“What do you feel for me?” he asked as calmly as he could manage. Her mouth fell open in surprise, and she closed and opened it a few more times. “Tell me,” he demanded, louder than he ought to have. He needed her to put a name to it.
Elizabeth had gone pale. “I feel a lively esteem for you, a deep affection. As well as gratitude and respect.”
“The last thing in the world I want is your gratitude,” he retorted. “And what we have experienced together in this terrible situation should not be what makes you admire me.”
“I love you on your own merits!” she cried. It should have made him happy beyond measure to hear those words. “How could you think I would love you only because we were locked in a room together? By that estimation, I might have gone to bed with Colonel Fitzwilliam or Mr Bingley if they had been present instead of you!”
She glared at him with a cold fury. It sounded foolish to his own ears. “Do you even want me to ask you again to marry me?”
She now looked on the verge of tears. If she said yes, he would do it in his next breath.
“Not before you explain your history with Mr Wickham.”
Darcy scoffed and shook his head, an unfamiliar bitterness filling him. “You love me, or feel that you could, but if you think me capable of cruelty toward him, then you do not know me any better than you did on Thursday.”
“I do know younow. But before, you were proud, selfish—I just want to know your reasoning for doing such an awful thing to an amiable man.”
“That man you trust deceived my sister!” The words hurt to say. His chest actually hurt as the words left his lips.
“Deceived?”
“Deceived, persuaded, cajoled, coaxed, duped. Pick a name,” he ground out.
Elizabeth had the same look of shock in her eyes as when she had fallen to the ground after Steamer struck her face. “Seduced?” she whispered.
“No,” he said, forcing into his voice a calmness he did not feel. “No, but only by the barest stroke of luck.”
