Something in the way the footsteps faltered told me it was not Caroline behind me.
I stopped and turned.
Elizabeth was there, still with that wide-eyed expression on her face. “Oh, apologies, I… I ought not have come after you. They called after me to stop, and I did not heed them, for I felt I needed to…” She twisted her hands together, gaping at me.
I ran a hand through my hair, speechless.
“Why would you say that?” she burst out with.
I cleared my throat. “Caroline—that is, Miss Bingley—she has a sharp tongue in her head. She has taken to teasing me mercilessly that I am… that I wish to…”
“Wish to what?”
“T-to marry you.” I gestured. “She thinks it is quite funny.”
“Oh,” said Elizabeth, nodding. “I see. And you do not wish to, and you think the opposite of the idea that I am beautiful or whatever you said, and it was—”
“I am sorry you heard it,” I said. “I am very sorry.”
She shook her head at me. “You are not sorry. You are not a sorry sort of person. You are the sort of person who thinks of people like me as very much beneath you, and you do not care about how you make any of us feel.”
“Now, that is not true, not at all. I can see why you may have thought it of me, and I don’t know if I have anything to say in my own defense, but it is only that…” I looked up at the afternoon sky above, a gray sky, a gloomy sky, a sky of the late autumn. “This is not like me, none of this. Being here with these people, attending these sorts of social functions, having these conversations about pen mending, none of it.”
“Right, you’d be amongst other proper people, I suppose, having conversations aboutAn Essay on Manad infinitum.”
I hung my head. She thought I was some sort of snob.
WasI some sort of snob?
I met her gaze. “I have been out of sorts as of late, that is all. But I should tell you, Miss Bennet, that you are one of the most fascinating people I have met in quite some time. And while I obviously would never ask you for your hand in marriage, Caroline has been teasing me because I made comments about… well, you are pleasing to look upon, that is all, something that likely comes as no surprise to you, seeing as you—all of your sisters—”
“You cad!” she cried.
I furrowed my brow.
She threw her hands up in the air, uttered a frustrated cry, and then she pushed past me and hurried off down the path.
“Wait, where are you going?” I called after her.
She did not answer, so I went after her.
She heard me, and she called to me, without turning round, “Mr. Darcy, I should like to be alone. I am on the verge of tears, and I would rather you did not witness it.”
Verge of tears?
Was this my fault?
“Well, don’t cry, Miss Bennet,” I said, rushing to catch up with her. “I am so very confused right now. Did I say something that—”
“Leave me alone,” she cried, turning on me.
“I feel that I oughtn’t,” I said. “You are running off deeper into the gardens here—well, it’s going to give way to the fields and forest soon, actually—and I do not think it would be the right thing to leave you out here all alone. Let me escort you back to the house and you may shut yourself up in your bedchamber all alone for as long as you like.”
She scoffed.
“Allow me to apologize for whatever it was that I said—”
“Stop talking,” she said.
