“Who is going to wish to marry me?” she broke in. “I have no dowry, or at least, no dowry to speak of, and I ambarely tolerableto look upon, and I am not exceedingly proper, and I’m afraid I speak my mind too often when it would be wiser to keep my own counsel. And none of these things are the sorts of things that attract a man, you see.”
I had looked away after she put the emphasis on the words “barely tolerable.” Ah, I had been wrong, had I not? It was not my opinion of her mother that had made her hate me. No, it was all the wrong way round. I had said that thing about Elizabeth at the ball, she had heard me, she had told her mother, and the whole family likely hated me.
Oh, what irony that I had mocked Mrs. Bennet for speaking too loudly. Here I was, the same sort of fool.
“Well,” said Elizabeth, “you’re very quiet now. I suppose you’ve nothing to say to that. I prefer it, though. I should muchrather have silence than others saying things to me that are patently untrue, that I shall somehow meet a man who wants me despite all that, things of that nature. I am not saying it’s impossible, mind you. It could happen, and I do have a sliver of hope for it. I should like to be married. I should like to be a wife and mother and to have my own household. But it is improbable such a thing shall come to pass, so I do not live and die on that hope. I have determined to be happy with things as they are. I am the sort of person who can find contentment anywhere, so long as my basic needs are met, you see. So, there it is.”
She fell silent, too.
I sorted through a number of things to say to her. All of them sounded like excuses. Finally, I said, “I can’t deny I said it, of course, Miss Bennet.”
“What?” she said.
“The dreadful pronouncement, obviously, about your being tolerable.”
“Oh,” she said. “I did not mean to—”
“I don’t think it anymore,” I broke in. “Perhaps I meant it when I said it, but I hadn’t gotten a good look at you.”
“But—” She broke off, then. A long pause. “Oh,” she said, quite stunned. Then another long pause. “Oh, so when you say Caroline is jealous, you mean…oh.”
Now, I felt awfully embarrassed. My face was even heating up. I could not bring myself to look at her.
“That can’t be true,” she said, still sounding stunned. “But you would not say it unless… would you?”
“Of course not. I wish I had not said it now,” I muttered. “I think I shall leap down just to be shut of this conversation. It’s mortifying.”
“Is it? Why is that? Do you wish me to say that I find you pleasing to look at as well, for I do. Everyone does. It’s only thateveryone in town thinks you’re conceited and arrogant and this has a mitigating factor on how handsome you are.”
I let out a laugh.
She laughed too. “Oh, apologies, I shouldn’t have said that. I’m all a flutter. No one has ever thought I was fetching before.”
This made me look at her. “That can’t be true.”
Her cheeks were red, and it made her look frankly adorable. She blushed and hid her face, and I wanted, rather badly, to take her cheeks between my palms and cup it and kiss her lips and—
I looked down, clearing my throat. “There is an image of you, Miss Bennet, burned in my brain, when you appeared in the breakfast parlor with your hair in these careless, wild tendrils, all round your head, hanging over your forehead, and your eyes, so bright, so alert, so… you’re more than fetching, Miss Bennet, you’re breathtaking.”
She made a noise in the back of her throat.
What was I doing? Why was I heaping compliments on this woman’s head? Obviously, I could not marry her. Considering her situation, it was a little cruel of me to dangle any hope in front of her in that manner.
“I think your eyes must be faulty, sir,” she said in a tiny voice. “I had just walked miles. I had mud all over my skirts and my hair had fallen out from where it had been pinned. I looked a fright.”
“Perhaps,” I allowed. “Perhaps my eyes are faulty. Whatever the case, Miss Bennet, it was one moment, and Caroline has made it into more than what it is, and…” I trailed off, thinking. It was true that Caroline should have come after us, because she would not have been able to bear the idea of Elizabeth chasing after me on the path, of myself and Elizabeth all alone.
But the last thing I’d said to her had been intentionally quite mean. I had intended to make Caroline feel as if she must stop teasing me about marrying Elizabeth and also to make her feelas if she must understand that I would never feel that way about her—about Caroline. I had seen her expression. I had succeeded.
That was why she didn’t come after us.
She also didn’t much like either of us, myself or Elizabeth, so what were the odds that she had gone back into Netherfield and raised the alarm about us?
Low, actually.
No, Caroline was likely still talking to her sister about her own feelings, even now. It would be hours before anyone even worried much about us being missing, likely when we didn’t arrive for dinner.
“I have to jump down,” I said.
