“That there was no point in waiting,” I said, and I was feeling furious right now.
“I know this!” Her voice was rising. Tears were starting to spill out of her bright eyes.
“If I’d wanted it, I could have convinced you to find some room at Tiewater and just divested you of your virtue right then and there. You were all butaskingfor it.”
“And this is what you think of me, in the end,” she said, dashing at her tears. “You shouldn’t have wished on the stupid pocket watch, Mr. Darcy. You should have just asked me to be your mistress. After all, I must have a man if I am to survive, andyou could have convinced me it was worth the ignominy since I had no other choice.”
I gasped. “That isappalling. How dare you? I am not that sort of man.”
“Yes,” she breathed in disgust, “yes, you are.”
And then she fled from me, running wildly through the trees.
I should have gone after her, but her words seemed to pin me to the spot. I could hardly breathe, let alone move.
When I finally got myself together, there were tears in my eyes, too.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
fitzwilliam
It was late when I dragged myself back to my room in Rosings. I had to contend with Richard, who often accosted me if I came back late. He was angry.
He would rail at me on these evenings, irate, lit up with rage.
Where had I been all day, everyone had been worried about me, they had started a search party, it seemed that Miss Elizabeth Bennet was missing, they were certain they must send word to her family, and why didn’t I find any of this concerning?
I was used to it, and I had concocted all manner of answers, things that I learned to say by trial and error, to soothe him.
That night, I shut the door in his face and ignored him as he pounded on the door.
I sat down on my bed and pulled the pocket watch out.
I stared at it in my palm. “I never made any kind of wish,” I said to the watch.
The watch was silent and golden and gleaming.
I closed my fist around it.
“This is not a life I wish for myself,” I said, and the tears were coming again. “I would never have wished away myresponsibilities. God knows, without them, I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
Clinging to the elopement, to the ceremony, it wasn’t as she thought.
It wasn’t because I wanted to wash myself clean of the sin of loving her, of wanting her, of wanting in that way. I did not think her a secret or anything shameful.
She made me a better man. I was happier when I was with her. She was the only thing that made living in this sham of an existence remotely bearable. If it had only been me, living the day again and again on my own, I should have gone mad. I should have thrown myself into that forge, again and again andagain.
If I had taken her, if I had thrown all of it to the wind and lost myself in the wonder of her body, which I wanted to do—Christ, thethoughtof it!—if I had done that, it would have shattered the last piece of me, changed me irrevocably into something unrecognizable.
One of my tears fell on the pocket watch.
“How can a man be a man of honor in a world where honor is meaningless?” I said to the watch. “How can a man live a life of meaning in a world devoid of it?”
The watch said nothing.
I got up from the bed.
I stalked over to the door.
