Lord above, why had Isaidthose things to her?
This was all I was thinking as I raided the kitchens at Rosings for tea and the kind of container that could go over a fire and boil water. It was easier for me to get these things than her, because I had the run of Rosings and because there were better resources here.
We were going to meet that night, after everyone had gone to sleep, in a spot on the grounds that we both remembered from the times we had walked together.
Richard was correct. I had been meeting up with her accidentally, but on purpose, and walking with her.
The truth was, before she turned down my marriage proposal, I thought she told me that she walked that way every morning because she wanted me to meet up with her. I thought she liked me. I told myself that she didn’t mind my presence, that she even welcomed it.
All along, however, it had been the other way around.
I was the one who had wished to be in her company. I was the one who was drawn to her. I was the one who thought she was beautiful.
I really wasn’t that sort of man.
But I don’t know what I had thought, truly, when I concocted that plan to ask her to marry me. I said it was on a lark. It was. But I had asked Anne to marry me only four times before it progressed to kissing.
Had I thought Miss Bennet would say yes?
Had I thought she’d let me kiss her?
How many times of kissing her would it have been before I convinced myself to take further liberties?
I was not that sort of man.
But this situation I had found myself in, I could not say it was bringing out the best in me. I barely recognized myself, truly. I had lost all sense of anything meaning anything at all, and that had happened quicker than I might have thought. One month, well, forty days, perhaps, now? Forty days of repeating the same day over and over, one suicide attempt, and I had gotten lost.
I supposed I’d said the things to warn her.
Maybe if she would simply be on guard, it would take some of the pressure off me. Because, here was the truth of it. This business of staying up all night was not going to work. I knew it wasn’t.
So, as long as she could recognize that my worser nature, the part of me that was not so noble, was out to take advantage of her, then she and I couldbothmake a stand against it.
Yes, that must be why I had said it to her.
It couldn’t be because I was so lost that I had lost sight of the fact that one did not say those sorts of things to young, unmarried, and very pretty maidens with whom one was planning on spending the entire night with.
Damnation.
But nothing was going to happen.
We were simply going to drink tea.
CHAPTER FIVE
elizabeth
“You know, I am sorry about your sister and Mr. Bingley,” he was saying.
The fire was burning brightly and we were sitting opposite each other, both with cups of strong tea. It was after midnight.
“You are only saying that,” I said. “I know you’re not sorry. The great and mighty Mr. Darcy never apologizes.”
He groaned. “That’s what you think of me? No wonder you don’t like me.”
I huddled into the blankets that I was wrapped up in and gazed into the fire. “Why are you sorry, then?”
“Because, you know, I am,” he said.
