“Yes, that’s a bit of a pointless distinction.” I coughed into my chocolate cup. Then, thinking better of it, I pushed it towards her. “Would you like the chocolate, then?”
She shook her head. “I’ll wait for the fresh pot with the foam.”
“Oh, of course.” I took my cup back.
“And you prevented me from sending letters to anyone and you looked at me in such a way, as if I were a Jezebel temptress, something you feared and hated and wanted to possess all at the same time, and that is not something I quite know how to forgive, you see. I know now that this is what you think of me.”
“I do not think that of you,” I said. Perhaps there was truth in it. The way I wanted her, it did unnerve me. Perhaps the force of my attraction to her, perhaps I did feel some fear of it, but it was more a sort of awe, like the way one feels when one watches the sun rise on a cold morning in the winter and the trees are all covered in ice, and everything is glittering and dazzling. “At any rate, no matter what it is that I thought then, it does not mean I think it now.”
“Perhaps not,” she said.
“Also,” I said, “is not forgiveness about recognizing that poor behavior was poor and telling the person you will still care for them anyway, not saying the behavior itself wasn’t poor?”
“Perhaps,” she said.
“I suppose I cannot talk you into forgiving me.”
“I do not forgive you, Fitzwilliam,” she said, but she gave me a little impish smile.
I could not help but smile back. “All right, well, I suppose I do not deserve your forgiveness.”
“You do not,” she said.
A servant brought in another chocolate pot. “With extra foam,” he told Elizabeth, “just as my mistress likes it.”
“Thank you ever so,” said Elizabeth, beaming at him.
“You know,” I said to her, “I am sorry. So very, very sorry. I should never have believed that about you. I should have known that you would never have behaved in that manner. I should have taken you at your word, and thought of your character as steadfast. I should never have tried to keep you in your room or prevented your writing letters or any of that.”
She sipped at her chocolate, biting down on her bottom lip.
I said I was sorry again.
I said it a number of times, in a number of ways.
At first, these all came about rather spontaneously, as I would rub up against something that would remind me of all that we had gone through, and I would turn to her and apologize, and she would listen and then tell me she was not going to forgive me.
Eventually, this had the effect of my not apologizing anymore, though I did apologize quite a bit.
The thing about apologies, I suppose, is that they are cheap. They are only words. Anyone can craft one, and a prettily-crafted one sounds very well, but the proof of it all comes with time, and it cannot be rushed.
I could never be quite sure why it was that Elizabeth stayed.
Perhaps it did not make any real sense that she did. Perhaps a man like me should not have been trusted after all I had done. But she did stay, and time did pass. Even if I stopped apologizing, I did behave differently.
I did not attempt to control my wife. She had made it plain to me that she did not care for such behavior in a husband, and it was as her father had said. One could not get in her way, for she would find a way around.
This, too, was gratifying. I knew that if she was staying with me, it was because she wished to, for she was not one who was easily coerced.
I had not married a woman I wished to cow, or one I wished to fear me. I had married a woman I wished to free me, quite truly. I had wished for her bravery to light me the path out of my own prison of societal expectations.
And this was exactly what she did.
She improved my life drastically. She made me happy and she made me brave and she gave me someone to fight for.
I have told her this on numerous occasions, that she has quite improved every aspect of my life. And she always smiles and tilts her head to one side and tells me that I have bought her ever so many very nice dresses.
So, in the end, we are quite clear on our usefulness to each other, I should think.
