Page 12 of The Marriage Articles

He was quiet for a moment. When he answered, he answered carefully, as a man steps on ice he is not sure of.

“We might both have fared far worse, Miss Bennet. You secure stability, and protection for your family, whose credit the present rumours have put in no small danger. I acquire a wife whom I respect. Every lady my aunt or half the matrons in London have brought to my notice these past five years offered nothing to engage my heart or my judgement. You are the first woman I have respected and sought in equal measure. I certainly did not anticipate finding my future wife in Hertfordshire, but I am not so blind to my own happiness as to resign her simply because you will not acknowledge what is reasonable, or what is necessary for us both.”

Elizabeth faced him squarely, her hands still cold, her chin up. “I will not marry you, Mr Darcy. Not for the rumour, not for my family, not because my father has given a blessing he had no business giving before he spoke to his daughter. I would rather be ruined in fact than rescued in name by a man who counts me the better of two evils.”

He looked at her for a long moment. She thought he would answer, and she braced herself for it, and could not have said whether she wanted it to come. Instead he bowed, correct and complete, as though they were at the end of a dance and not at the end of everything.

“Good morning, Miss Bennet,” he said, and went out, and closed the door behind him as softly as her father had done.

Chapter Six

Elizabeth set her needle into the muslin and resigned herself to a quiet morning. Three days had passed since she had refused Mr Darcy in her father’s study, and two since he had taken himself off to London. She had decided, with the confidence of a woman who very much required it to be true, that Meryton’s memory was short. A story required constant nourishment. Starved of fresh scandal, it grew thin and died, and hers had received no addition since Tuesday. The wind had turned raw in the night and was worrying at the drawing-room windows, and she persuaded herself that by the time it blew itself out, the neighbourhood would have found some other family’s misfortune to feed upon.

Jane sat opposite with her own work, saying little. Mary read aloud a passage on the resignation due to affliction, which nobody had requested. Lydia had claimed the best chair and was employing it to complain that there was nothing to do and nobody to see. Mrs Bennet, who had not yet decided whether the day permitted her to be comfortable, was measuring her nerves against the weather.

It was into this domestic calm that Kitty came through the door without bonnet or ceremony, her hair blown flat by the wind and her face wet with more than the cold.

“Maria Lucas is forbidden to enter our doors,” she said, quite breathless as though she had run the entire mile from Meryton. “Lady Lucas has forbidden her to call here, or to walk with us, or to speak to any of us beyond what bare civility requires. Maria told me herself, at the church-yard gate, and she was crying, and then her mother made her go home.”

Mrs Bennet’s hand went instantly to her heart. “Well, upon my word, I should never have thought it of Lady Lucas!”

“She made me stand in the lane,” Kitty said, and her voice broke on it. “She would not even walk with me to the turn. Maria said her mother had been particular.”

Elizabeth looked down at her needlework. The certainty she had laid out so carefully that morning was shaken.

“There is more,” Kitty said, her voice growing smaller. “After Maria left me, I thought a turn among the shops might raise my spirits, so I went to the draper’s. Mrs Holmes kept me waiting until every other customer was served, though I was there before half of them, and looked through me as if I had been transparent. Nobody troubles to hide it now.”

“A family of our consequence, to be served last at the draper’s!” Mrs Bennet declared, addressing the room at large. “I shall send word tomorrow that our account is closed, and then we shall see how Mrs Holmes likes the loss of our custom!”

“I do not think closing the account will grieve her, Mama,” Lydia said, examining her nails. “She has plenty of other customers, and none of them compromised in gardens.”

Jane set down her work. “Lydia!”

“Well, it is true. And very diverting, I think, that Lizzy should be the ruin of us all by refusing the richest man in Derbyshire. I should have said yes in a moment, and ordered a bonnet to celebrate.”

Elizabeth discovered that her needle had gone into her finger. The pain was useful. It gave her something exact to attend to while the room rearranged itself around what Kitty had said, and she was composed again by the time she looked up, which was a small victory and the only one the morning was likely to offer.

It was then that Hill appeared at the drawing room door. “Miss Lucas,” she said, and Charlotte came in past her, wind-flushed, her cloak damp at the hem, before Mrs Bennet had decided whether the family was at home to anyone.

“Charlotte.” Elizabeth rose.

Charlotte took the chair Jane drew nearer the fire and accepted, with thanks. She looked around the room with her usual unhurried attention, taking in Kitty’s red eyes, Mrs Bennet’s handkerchief, and the general arrangement of a family under siege, then she looked at Elizabeth. “I gather you have heard about Maria.”

“Kitty has just told us.”

“My mother has forbidden her the house.” Charlotte folded her hands in her lap. “She has forbidden me as well. But a woman of seven and twenty is past being governed in small matters, and I do not intend to have my acquaintance chosen for me.”

Elizabeth found she could not answer, but took Charlotte’s hand and pressed it.

“Dear Miss Lucas,” Mrs Bennet said into the silence, “you are very good, I am sure, very good indeed, though what your lady mother will say when she hears of it I cannot imagine. My nerves are in no state for another family’s displeasure.”

“My mother’s displeasure is a well-established institution,” Charlotte said. “It has survived everything I have done since I was fifteen, and I daresay it will survive this.” She turned back to Elizabeth. “The world will talk. It was always going to. That is not the same as being believed.”

“It feels remarkably like believing when one is served last at the draper’s,” Elizabeth said, and was pleased with the steadiness of it.

Charlotte considered her. “Yes,” she said, and did not soften it. “It does.”

The post came while Charlotte was still drinking her tea, and with it a letter for Jane in a hand Elizabeth knew at once. Miss Bingley wrote an insincere hand, and there was a great deal of it on the direction. Jane took the letter to the window, where the light was better, and Elizabeth watched her read it with the close attention one gives to a wound one intends to hide.