“If I do not, though,” I said, “I shall have nothing and nowhere—”
“I am certain Mr. Collins is not going to throw you out on the streets!”
“But the indignity of it, sir,” I said in a low voice. “You will never have to lower yourself in such a way. How many houses do you own?”
He was quiet.
I looked up at him over the fire. “Well?”
“Oh, that was a true question? I am to answer? Very well. Four, if you count the house in town.”
“Four,” I breathed. “Four.”
“Miss Bennet, you don’t go about asking people these sorts of things. This is why Richard and I were saying you’d make an intolerable sort of wife, anyway. You have apparently no ability to keep yourself from saying things like this, and people will be offended—”
“You and the colonel were discussing marrying me?” I said in a strangled voice. Certainly, I had thought that perhaps the colonel had meant that one little comment for me, but that had been wishful thinking as much as anything. A man like Colonel Fitzwilliam would never marry someone like me.
“Of course, in a way, the fact that you’re like that, it’s why I am so drawn to you.”
“You aren’t drawn to me!”
“I am, though,” he muttered. “Heaven only knows why, I must say.”
I finished my tea and set about filling a tea ball with some tea leaves. “You are not, and I don’t know why you keep insisting such things.”
“I wonder why you won’t believe me,” he said. “I think it’s because you’re frightened that you’ll have to feel guilty about how rude you are to me if you come to understand that we do not have a mutual dislike. You don’t like me, but I don’t know how to make you understand that I like you. I’ve said it rather often, haven’t I?”
“I said I would attempt to like you,” I said with a sigh. I had to admit I wasn’t attempting it very successfully, was I?
“But then, that’s part of it, too,” he said with a little wondering laugh. “I suppose I hadn’t quite conceived of being refused if I proposed marriage, you know. I mean, if I asked a princess or the daughter of a duke or something, she’d say no. But most people are lower than me socially, and so most people would say yes. They would flatter me. They would fall all overthemselves trying to secure me. Not you, though, Miss Bennet. Not you.”
I lifted the ladle out of the pot on the fire and poured boiling water over the tea ball in the tea pot. It would need to steep. “You like me because it’s rare that anyone dislikes you? That’s what you’re saying?”
“Sort of.”
“The truth is, Mr. Darcy, lots of people dislike you. They are just afraid to show you.”
“Yes!” He barked out a laugh.
“Why is that funny?”
“Well, I like your honesty,” he said. “And I can trust you, do you see? Other people hide their negative impressions of me, but you don’t, so I know you’re telling me the truth.”
“Oh, yes, I suppose I see that.” I nodded. “And my sister Jane, she is not the sort of girl who would pretend either. She wouldn’t pretend to care about Mr. Bingley simply to get a marriage proposal.”
“No, I’m saying—”
“Well, aren’t you?”
“I’m saying that I think your mother would,” he said.
I winced again and I could not find the voice to contradict this.
“And I think your mother might put pressure on her daughters to do it as well. And your sister, Miss Jane, she doesn’t seem to have nearly the backbone you do.”
“Well, I suppose she doesn’t,” I admitted. “Yes, I suppose I could see why you would think that. My mother was a bit horrid, especially at the ball at Netherfield.”
“Only a bit?”
