I bit down on my bottom lip. My eyes stung.
He was still rubbing his jaw, still looking at me. “Have I spent all this time, all of it, thinking about you as some extension of me? How have I not thought of what you wanted, what you needed, how—”
“Oh, I am not important, Mr. Darcy,” I burst out with.
He raised his eyebrows. “Miss Bennet, you are—”
“I’m not saying that women are never important, but men are always more important, are they not? Men make all the decisions. And that is why I have to get married, obviously, if I want to survive. For what will I be otherwise except an imposition, a bothersome aging spinster who must be shuffled here, there, and everywhere?”
“I suppose I can see why you would say that, but—”
“A unmarried girl is important precisely for one moment in her life, in that moment where she gets to make the one important decision given to her,” I went on, somehow unable to stop the words coming out of my mouth, “and that is to decide who she will marry. She gets to decide that. But I am aging out of it, sir, and there is no decision to be made if no one is interested—”
“I am interested, for God’s sake, Elizabeth!”
“No, I know you are, of course you are, but don’t you see, that’s it, that’s the end. I make that decision, that one decision, and then my decision-making days are over and I spend the rest of my life catering to my husband’s decisions and doing as he asks and seeing to whatever makes him happy—”
“I won’t do that to you. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“No, I think it does, I think it does, actually—”
“Elizabeth, you have this view of it, of marriage from the perspective of your means and your social circle, but amongst people in my social circle, women have the capacity to do all sorts of things. As my wife, you will have agency. You will make decisions. You will have freedom—”
“No, I’m not saying I become some slave or something. Anyone could see from my own parents’ marriage that my mother does not serve her husband in all things,” I said, clenching my hands into fists.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Just so. I’m confused.”
I drew in a breath. “But she complains about my father, anyway, doesn’t she? And here we are, Will, here we are, with no expectations set down upon us and no reason to do what is expected and no reason to follow any strictures of any kind, and you wish to lock us up in some house without servants and live our endless days out in succession—”
“Oh, no, I see entirely what you’re saying,” he said.
I folded my arms over my chest again. “You do?”
“What do you want, Elizabeth?” he said softly. “Do you want to go on an adventure? Is that what you want?”
“No,” I said. “Not alone.”
“With me?”
“Well, not if you don’t want to,” I said. “Not if you just want it all settled.”
“I want to make you happy, actually,” he said. “I want to protect you and care for you and please you. If I don’t havesomeone to do these things for, there’s no point in life, and you’re everything to me, now. So, whatever you want.”
I twisted my hands together. “Oh.”
“That wasn’t the right thing to say?”
“It’s only that I…” I drew in a breath. “I have never had the opportunity to let my happiness be the driving force behind anything at all. I don’t matter, Will, not that much. I never have.”
“What are you saying? You matter quite a lot.”
“No, I don’t! Or, I haven’t. Never has anyone said to me, ‘We shall do whatever Elizabeth wants today.’ It is always that we must do whatever is best for the family or the group or the people at the dinner party or society at large or…” I let out a breath. “Do you see?”
He nodded. “Yes, I think so. But you mustn’t think my life is really like that either.”
“No, I know, that’s why I said the thing about your being happy that you had no responsibility, I suppose.” I considered. “But you’re right. It’s me who’s happy to have no responsibility. And if I agree to be your wife, it’s… responsibility.”
“All right,” he said with a shrug.
