“Alone, all alone, for however many miles,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, nodding. “But there was no one else there.”
“Well, so you say,” I said. “You can see, however, if a man was going to marry you, it might give him pause.”
“Why?” she said.
“Because that’s not proper,” I said.
She nodded slowly.
“But honestly, I think it’s rather nonsense,” I said. “Clearly, you were simply walking, alone, and you weren’t doing anything else and no one was with you.”
“What could I have been doing?” she said.
I shook my head at her. “No, we needn’t discuss that.”
“I think I should like to discuss it, because I suppose I need to understand what it is, exactly, that is putting men off me.”
“I don’t think you’re doing anything that is putting men off you,” I countered.
“You said that I was.”
“No, I said—” I lifted a hand. “I take it all back. Your behavior is not the problem, truly. You’ve done nothing untoward. It’s really your family. Your mother, your sisters.”
She furrowed her brow.
“Not Miss Jane,” I said. “She is a pleasure.”
“Yes, and the only pretty girl in the room,” said Elizabeth softly.
“All right, but when I said that, as I say, I had not gotten a good look at you, and you are definitely prettier than she is.”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “I most certainly am not.”
“Well, perhaps others would not agree with me,” I said, unsure of why I was even telling her this, “but there is something about your beauty that is arresting, that sort of stops me, halts something in my chest.”
She swallowed visibly, simply gazing at me.
I cleared my throat. “I think we should cease talking of this.”
“Yes, you should leave off the compliments, I suppose,” she said. “For both our sakes.”
“Just so,” I said, nodding.
“But you could explain to me more about my family, I suppose, though I must say that I rather know what you mean. My mother, she can be…” She sighed. “As for my sisters, they are simply young, I think, though Lydia is the baby as she has been coddled and is quite used to getting her way in anything and everything. I know she was dreadful, demanding that Mr. Bingley give a ball, but she has rarely been told, ‘no,’ I am afraid, and she has also learned that if she is refused, that pesteringoften leads to a reversal of the selfsame refusal. So, she has learned to be a bit annoying.”
I smiled. “Well, I can’t say that’s not unlike my own sister. When my parents both died, rather suddenly, she was quite young. I was young, too, but my sister is more than ten years my junior, and she was extremely young. So, everyone coddled her in the wake of it, everyone. We all simply gave her everything she wanted. I worry it has… affected her, perhaps badly, but I think, if it happened again, I’d do the same. There was something about gratifying her, about making her smile, that made it easier formeto smile.”
“I can quite see that,” said Elizabeth. “I’m not sure if there is as good an excuse in the Bennet family, however. No great grief to get through, I’m afraid.”
“I did not mean it as an excuse, but I can see why you would take it that way,” I said. “Truly, Miss Bennet, any man that would reject you because of your family is foolish anyway. There is no reason that, after marrying you, he might not locate you both elsewhere.”
“Oh, quite true,” she said. “A woman can be settled too closely to her family after marriage, I think. The near and the far must be relative, and it all depends on a great many variables, I should think. I should not like to never see my family again, but—” She smirked. “Well, some days I think I should rather glory in not seeing them again, but they are my family, of course.”
“Of course,” he said.
“I am sorry about the loss of your parents,” she said. “That must have been quite difficult, especially because you are young, as you say. Was it an illness?”
