Mrs. Bingley’s Sister (The Austen Novels)

Chapter 36

"Miss, I am sure it is not as bad as you say," Sarah said, "He surely has eyes for only you, does he not?"

"If you had seen his agony when Miss Llewellyn took that fall—if you had seen how he was rejoicing with relief upon her not being seriously injured—no, no, I am quite sure of it. He has no eyes for me, only for Miss Llewellyn. And it is rightfully so. She is a sweet girl, young and beautiful. What am I? I am too old, I am not as beautiful as anyone else here, and I come from a much lower background than Mr. Darcy. After all, Sarah, that was one of the hurdles he had to force himself to overcome when he proposed to me all those many years ago, did you not know? He told me then, in quite plain language, that marriage to me would be a degradation."

Elizabeth let all this roll off her tongue, bitterness, sadness, and biting meanness toward the end. She glanced up and saw Sarah looked quite forlorn at hearing such a passionate speech—her lips pursed, her brows furrowed, but she made no utterance back to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth realized that she had been holding on to a fading dream, something conjured up from the ashes of nearly nothing—what was it, his letter? The letter he wrote her so many years ago—that was the basis for her entire change of heart, and perhaps she let herself get carried away with the romantic dream of Darcy, not the reality of the man himself. The fantasy she had been entertaining in her mind these last many years, of some sort of "love" she convinced herself she had for the man, it was all just the stuff of dreams, a resistance against the cold, hard reality: a man like Darcy would never deign to offer for a woman like Elizabeth ever again.

Elizabeth had been beginning to possibly believe Darcy had wanted her still, even after all these years. She had thought that was why there was such ease between them now. She had thought they had grown in their comfort around one another because he was endeared to her, even more now than ever before.

But no.

The longer she lingered upon it, the more she started to realize that his comfort and ease around her must have been merely because he had completely moved on from what had happened between then so many years ago. He could look back on his folly and laugh at it, because he was now about to be settled with a wife of his own.

Sarah left. Elizabeth was alone, and she was finally able to let her tears fall. She knew Bingley wanted to leave, now that the house party had come to an abrupt end. She knew Bingley felt they were intruding on the man, now that the woman who was all but his betrothed was lying in a bed some ten miles away, injured and in need of recovery. Elizabeth knew Bingley's design was to depart so that Darcy could go and stay at Faringwell Abbey until Miss Llewellyn healed. It was perfectly sensible and perfectly considerate.

So leave, they would. Elizabeth knew they were departing early in the morning; she saw Bingley send an express to Netherfield to alert the staff of their early return. Elizabeth sighed. Soon she would leave Pemberley, and she would likely never return. She doubted that when Miss Llewellyn became Mrs. Darcy, they would ever be welcome back, especially if Darcy ever disclosed to her his once failed proposal to a one Miss Elizabeth Bennet.

She let the tears fall silently down her cheeks as she lay in bed that final night. She cried for what she most certainly had lost and lost, completely.