Elizabeth lifted her hand to touch him, likely in a comforting gesture. He stood painfully still, hoping that she would. She stopped, probably remembering the boundaries he had inadvertently imposed. It was necessary, but the restraint was excruciating. He did not offer his arm, and she did not move to take his, and they walked through Meryton in uncomfortable silence.
They passed a crowd of boys throwing a ball on their way toward the pedestrian path alongside the toll gate.
“Mr Darcy, was your father the sort to play at ball with you?” Elizabeth’s voice was full of false enthusiasm. She must have felt the same awkwardness and been desperate for them to return to some pleasant conversation.
“Certainly.” His father had been a little older than he was now at the time of the crayfish incident. He looked at Elizabeth and felt it was unlikely that, after she was dead, he would consider marrying again, let alone have children of his own to play with. Under her gaze, he finally said, “Although not since my father cropped his hair short and stopped using hair powder.”
“What year was that?”
“Seventeen ninety-five.”
“Goodness, my father still paid the tax until he died in the year ten!” She tilted her head, raised an eyebrow, and gave him a knowing smile. “But I, too, have not played at ball since my father stopped powdering his hair.”
“Oh, yes, nineteen seems an appropriate age for a girl to give upher tomboy play.” As they neared the toll gate at the edge of Meryton he remembered their first meeting with Sir William Lucas. “I recollect you saying you climbed trees, raced the boys, and played on the toll gate, but I had thought that perhaps those were scrapes from your first decade, not from the end of your second.”
“You think that you have a sense of humour, I see. Well, perhaps we will wager on who can run to the toll gate and climb over it first.” Elizabeth turned and took two large backward steps away from him.
“I am not racing you to the turnpike road!” he said with a laugh.
“Not just to it, but to the gateandover it.” She hopped back another few steps with a smile. “Unless you need the advantage of an early start?”
He grew alarmed that she was not joking. A passionate embrace set her heart beating wildly, and a half-hour minuet sent her into paroxysms of heart pain. “You shall do no such thing.”
“You fear for our reputations? You need not worry: your marriage to a Bennet girl and your membership in the whist club guarantees your respectability, even if your wife scampers over a toll gate.” She took two more quick steps out of his reach and leant back as though about to sprint away. “Unless it is because you are afraid that I shall win?”
“I am not worried about our being thought eccentric. I am worried that running and climbing over it will stop your heart!”
Her bright expression shuttered, and she stopped walking. Elizabeth glared at him with barely restrained fury. “I was only sporting with you.”
“I am sorry.” His spirits sank to see disdain for him in her eyes.How hatefully would she look on me if I told her I deceived her about my income?“You cannot blame me for thinking of your health.”
Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say to a woman who always wondered if the breath she drew was to be her last. “That gate is only as tall as I am. You cannot think that climbing over it is any more strenuous than climbing a staircase.” She gave him a disappointed look. “Youpromisednot to speak of my heart, to let me live as?—”
“Damn it, youlookwell, but you know you are not as hearty as you have deceived everyone else into believing.”
“I want a little freedom before I die. Is that too much to ask for?”
“You are perfectly free from your oppressive family, but you are not free from using the good sense you have, nor are you free frommycare and concern.”
She exhaled loudly through her nose, and her eyes blazed. “I could climb over the gate. And I could run to get there!”
Elizabeth may be a stubborn woman, but she was not reckless. Her desire for control was making her say unreasonable things. “Whether youcouldor not, you would not climb the gate. It is hardly what is expected of the character and conduct of a married woman. You think too well of yourself to act unexpectedly in public where everyone knows you.”
“Why should I not? We both know once I go to the Lakes, I am never coming back. I will die there, or perhaps even on the way there. Who cares what the Meryton gossips say about me?” Elizabeth turned to look at the gate. “Be grateful the only reckless thing I shall do is swing on the toll gate.”
“Do not bother. It must be locked.”
They shared a long, furious look, and the argument continued in silence with their eyes. “How can you tell at so great a distance? I shall see for myself!”
With that Elizabeth turned and ran toward the gate, with one hand on her bonnet and her reticule swinging from her wrist.
God damn it!
The tollhouse was on one side of the street that led into the turnpike road. The wooden gate stretched from the house toward a low stone wall on the other side of the road, with a narrow pedestrian path between the wall and gate. Two posts in the path blocked any small cart or horse from passing without paying the toll.
Darcy tugged his hat down and stalked after her. Elizabeth braced a foot on the bottom rail of the gate, held the top rail with one hand, and put her other arm over a middle rail, likely to clasp a picket. The gate was locked; it did not swing at all when she leant against it.
By the time he got near, he expected she would have cleared it,even considering her skirts and the gate being five and a half feet high. But when he reached Elizabeth, her feet were now off the rail, and she dropped one hand from the gate, with her head down and one arm resting across one of the centre rails.
