I swallowed the permanent lump in my throat. “Yes, it is true. Everything I did, and you are right to be angry.”
“I am not angry.” Her tone had softened. “I am wounded, disappointed, and frightened, because I have spent the last several weeks allowing myself to feel something I was not prepared to feel, and now I do not know whether the man in front of me or the man who performed for me is one and the same.”
“He is the same man,” I said, and my voice was not steady. I had given up pretending it could be.
“Is he? Because the man who brings strawberries, kneels on carpets, and speaks to four-year-olds about tortoise dreams is not the same man who told his friend that my sister’s heart was empty. Those are not the same person, Mr. Darcy. And I need to understand which one is real before I can—” She stopped. “Before I can trust either of them.”
“Both are real. That is the difficulty.” I leaned forward, and for the first time in the conversation, I allowed myself tolook at her without defense—without the careful management of expression that I had deployed since the day we met. “I misjudged you, your sister, and I acted cruelly and arrogantly. I did not consider Bingley’s feelings but told him what to do. I saw myself as noble and just, and when I recognized the error, I tried to repair it on my own. I brought Bertram to gain entrance; I sought leave to call on Jane so that I might ascertain her feelings for Bingley, and then, only after I was assured she still held him in regard, did I proceed to pave the way—but you, Elizabeth, you were never part of the plan. I had no plans for you because you hated me—justifiably by the atrocious way I behaved in Meryton.”
“But you did charm me with kindness, because you knew I could be an impediment for Jane’s feelings.”
“No, Elizabeth, I did not set out to charm you.” I held her gaze, as watery as mine, although a man did not show his weakness. “In the course of repairing the breach, I met the reason I kept returning to Gracechurch Street. A woman whom I had never truly dismissed in Meryton—one I watched and argued with myself, and I could not look away. You are the woman who argues with marble and wears various shades of green for a man she has decided not to dislike. I fell in love with you. And I could not stop to tell the truth because?—”
My sentence collapsed. I stopped, hoping Elizabeth would relent, would trust, would believe me. I sat across from her in that lending library, hands clenched, chest split wide, searching for the words that a feeling with no edges, no name, and no mercy refused to give me.
She bit her lower lip, holding back either her fury or her sorrow, possibly both, and so I let the admission scrape from my throat.
“I was afraid, because you spent months despising me, and when you softened toward me, and you smiled at me and lookedup at me, I could not…could not risk—” I took a shuddering breath and soldiered on because she had given me the floor, and I had little left to hope. “I wanted to give us a chance. And I knew that the truth, delivered too soon, would end us before we had begun.”
Elizabeth sat very still. The elderly gentleman turned another page of Gibbon. The light from the window fell across her face, and I saw her jaw tighten—the same tightening, the same effort to hold—and I wanted to reach across the space between us and touch her hand, just her hand, just the backs of her fingers, but I could not move, because my body had gone without me and left only the ache behind.
“I need time,” she said.
“I understand.”
“I am not saying no, Mr. Darcy. I am saying that I cannot—” She stopped. Started again. “I cannot revise my opinion a third time in the space of a month. You have asked me to see you as a villain, then as a hero, and now as a man who is both, and I need to determine whether I can live with both.”
She stood, and I rose after her, and she regarded me with those fine eyes, which were wet, but she would not let them spill.
“May I call on you again?” I reached for her hand, not willing she should leave.
But she did, turning away from the table of unread books and away from my offer.
Pressing her lips firmly, she nodded once, a small controlled movement that contained more emotion than any word she had spoken. Then she picked up her reticule from the chair, straightened her green dress, and walked to the door.
She paused at the threshold and looked back at me over her shoulder. Not a farewell—something harder, and sadder, a look that held everything she had not said and was not yet ready to say, and I received it standing by the window with my hands atmy sides and gave her back the only thing I had left: the truth of my face, undefended, wrecked, and entirely hers.
CHAPTER NINE
OF DRAGONS AND PRIDE
Elizabeth
The Darcy-shaped holegrew larger with each passing day. I did not expect him to call, and he did not darken our door. Charles, however, came every day, bringing treats for the children, smiles for me, and news for the Gardiners. For Jane, he was all devotion and unfeigned adoration. Bingley never hid behind protocol, and he saw no reason to wallow in the four months of misunderstanding.
A week slipped by, and March limped to its finish. I had not expected a man’s absence to be so much louder than his presence, but Darcy had left a gap in Gracechurch Street that none of us could patch. His chair by the window sat with its cold, untouched tea. The garden corner where he knelt with Rose and Samuel was quieter, as if even the birds had lost interest. The strawberry basket, now pitifully empty, sat inside the larger one, because no one dared break the news to Sir Bertram. Alice had stuck a tiny paper flag in it—“Reserved for Mr. Darcy”—and there it drooped, as limp as my spirits.
I helped Mrs. Gardiner around the house, read to the children, and wandered the garden, sometimes sitting for ages beside Sir Bertram’s enclosure, watching the old beast sun himself on his rock. I had not yet stooped to confiding in a tortoise. Not yet.
Samuel tugged my sleeve, “Is Mr. Darcy cross with us?”
“No, sweetheart. He is merely busy.”
“He is always busy when he is not here. Rose says he is sulking because Sir Bertram bit him.”
“Sir Bertram does not bite.”
“Rose says he does. She says he bit Mr. Darcy on the thumb and that is why he went away, and if he comes back, she will kiss his thumb better.”
