I shrugged, smiling a small smile. “You, obviously, can you doubt it? You are all I think of.”
She flushed, becoming very interested in her plate. “But why did you need to speak alone? What did you say about me?”
“I…” Should I tell her? Well, lying to her thus far had not gone well, and I wished to be able to be honest with her. “I was jealous.”
She looked up at me. “What do you mean?”
“He… you laugh with him in such a way. I had never seen you laugh thus, I suppose.” I shrugged. “But it was foolish. He set me straight.”
“He is… I could never… you would not think…”
“No,” I said.
But now she would not meet my gaze and she seemed flustered.
I did not know if I liked that very much, for some reason.
“I married you,” she said, using her fork to sort through her green beans. “You are the only man I want.”
The words were the right words, but I felt as if she was trying too hard to convince us both of them.
“I am sorry,” I said. “I had no right to be insecure, truly, not after the business with the letters and my aunt and the dinner. You must have felt hurt that I had behaved in that manner.”
“Well, yes,” she said. “And then, you just ordered me about, saying that I had no choice except to welcome Georgiana into the household. And then, you said she wasn’t coming, and I wondered if that was because of me, and if you would be angry with me later, as if you thought I did not wish her to be here, and I never said that!”
I regarded her over the table. This was all unraveling rather quickly. “I am not entirely sure I followed all of what you havejust said, but I am not angry with you. I have never been angry with you. I do not know if I could be.”
“You could,” she said softly. “Obviously, you could.”
“You have been angry with me, and rather often, too,” I said with a little smile. “You have been angry with me at a number of points since the beginning of our association.”
“It is common for husbands and wives to feel anger with each other, I suppose,” she said. “But it is different if I am angry with you than it is if you are angry with me, because you control everything, which was something you illustrated to me on the carriage ride back from your aunt and uncle.”
I was not certain what I should say back to this.
“I am sorry, Fitzwilliam,” she said, spearing a green bean. “I think I have some perverse element within myself, but the truth is, when I realized it, when I realized that if I displeased you, you could take such revenge on me, and I should have nothing to say about it, it made me wish to buck against all of it, to displease you on purpose.”
“What?” I said, drawing back.
“Not because I want you to be displeased, but just because it is maddening to feel everything chafe so.” She sighed. “This is why, you see, this is why I am not proper. I know how I should behave, but I do not like being forced to do things.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” I said.
“No, you wouldn’t, because you are so very good at doing everything that is expected of you,” she said. “I am not.”
“I am not either,” I said. “I try very hard, and I always seem to fall short.”
“Yes, I suppose. But it is because you simply have misunderstood it all or because you have interpreted it incorrectly or because it is too difficult for you in some other way. You are not like me. You do not take a bit of delight in willfully pushing against it all.”
“Willfully,” I said, nodding. “Perhaps you are that way, Elizabeth, at least a bit.” I thought of the way she contradicted me at Netherfield, or the way she fiercely came after her sister, or the fact she had given me a knowing smile and said that I liked her because she was scandalous. “But you are not so very rebellious. You are not pushing that hard against anything.”
“Harder than you are, though. And you dislike it about me.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “It is why I married you. I very much like it about you. I envy it. I covet it. I wish I could be as brave as you are. I have always wanted to willfully push back at it. I married you because I wanted to do exactly that.”
She raised her eyebrows. “But, ever since we’ve been in London, you have hidden me.”
“Yes, I want to push back, but I’m afraid. It is only that if I cannot summon my courage for my flawless and perfect wife, when else shall I ever summon it? I have been afraid, but I must face that fear.”
