Chapter 28 #2
A quick look at the mantel clock showed it was after ten. The dinner some maid had brought lay cold and untouched nearby. He wondered whether she slept already.
He silently opened her door and peered into the room. She was asleep and did not rouse when he entered. He left his letter on her dressing table and then returned to his own bedchamber.
When Elizabeth awoke the next morning, she immediately saw the letter on her dressing table. So, it was I to whom he wrote with such vigour last night. Having little time until she was due to see her son, she resolved to save it for later.
Two hours later, she held it in her hand.
She felt strangely flattered by the letter, remembering how passionately he had seemed in writing it and the evident zeal with which he had devoted himself to it.
She passed her fingertips over her name lightly, thinking of their argument about Caroline Bingley.
He had been violently angry and excessively hurt, yet he did not grow cold.
He did not remove himself from her. He came to her, and he tried to explain the problem despite all her efforts to resist him.
Nevertheless, she had closed herself off from him and had grown cold to him. Then when that did not work, he wrote a letter to her. Would the letter be an expression of his anger? Somehow she thought not.
She thought of how much she must have pushed him since her return.
Always keeping him at arms-length, many times toying with his emotions—not intentionally of course, but she did realise it had happened nevertheless—and refusing to give him what he wanted for months now.
He had shown great constancy and forbearance in it all, she acknowledged.
As much as it was not easy for her to live with him, neither had it been felicitous for him to live with her.
With a slight tremble in her fingers, she opened her letter, realising at once that it was made even thicker by the inclusion of the dreaded letter she had written before she was sent away.
Seeing that caused her to bite her lip with a frisson of nervousness, so she set it aside and began to peruse Darcy’s words.
My Dearest Elizabeth,
I know you are not happy, and I see your unhappiness drowning you.
I cannot stand by and watch you suffer any longer.
I wish to rescue you from a life of misery, as bold as such a claim might sound.
I have put it upon you, I cannot deny that, but now I shall do all I can to take it from you, to rescue you from the fear and pain that binds you.
If I truly thought you were satisfied in our life here, I would desist, but you are not, and so I shall not rest until you are joyful once more.
I do not wish to cause you more pain by forcing you to revisit these painful recollections.
However, as you left me this evening, I realised those remembrances were yet alive in the form of your letters.
I wish admittance to your pain, my love, not for you to relive it, but that I might rid you of it—that in sharing it, we might conquer it together.
To begin, I charged myself with the task of reading, in its entirety, the letter you gave to me the day before I sent you away. My hope was that I could read it, not with my eyes, but rather, with yours.
I see now how I have caused you to be afraid of me, how I was so very cold and spiteful to you.
I see your loneliness and your uncertainty, put onto you by me, the man who was supposed to protect and cherish you.
Although these many years I have long thought on the sin of casting you out, I should have considered likewise how poorly I treated you before that.
I think of how differently this might have been if only just once I had asked you whether the things I believed of you were true.
If only I had spoken of it with you, just one of the many times you came to me!
My pride and my absurd jealousy stood before me, and I wilfully misunderstood the situation and I am deeply ashamed of it.
An apology is so insufficient and weak for such a grave offence, yet it is all that I am able to offer.
I am sorry I did not trust in you, and I am sorry I condemned you when you did not even know you were on trial.
I am sorry I believed in the lies I was told, and I am sorry I sent you away.
I am sorry you were afraid, sad, and bereft, and I did not see it.
I am sorry you were alone and increasing, and that you missed your family and believed you were unloved.
Most of all, however, I am sorry I failed to be a man worthy of you.
I know there can be no apology sufficient to redress the manner in which I have wronged you, but please know that I shall regret my actions to the end of my days.
Each and every day I see the wall mounted between us. I have tried to take it down myself, but its removal can only be for you to decide. I pray that day will come soon. I long for the return of what we once had, and I do believe we can have it again.
Please entrust me with your heart as you hold mine.
Until then, I remain your adoring husband,
Fitzwilliam
Elizabeth absently dabbed at the tears that had risen into her eyes. Somehow the letter did make her feel…something. Relief? Pleasure? Anxiety? If nothing else, it was surprisingly gratifying to know that he had at least seen and acknowledged the agony she had faced.
But what now? What should she do in reply, if anything?
Slowly, she opened the letter she had written to him. Although she well remembered the sorrow, the fear, and the terror she had experienced knowing she was being sent away, she did not recall precisely what she had written.
Several times, she winced as she read, feeling a particularly sensitive passage that summoned how she had felt as she penned it.
Even though she had tried, quite definitely, to avoid thinking of those days, the letter roused those feelings of despair and rejection within her, and she began to weep.
The fright of her uncertainty and her shame could still hurt.
The tears flowed freely as a seemingly endless well of sorrow emptied itself in her, and it was some time before she could regain her equanimity.
As she sat drying her face and rubbing her head, wishing to ward off a headache, a strange notion came to her. It can be done.
It was over, was it not? Those months were over and long gone.
Years had passed since that sad, frightened girl had gone off on her husband’s order.
That girl had become a mother and a person who knew what it was to fear, but she had conquered that fear and carried on.
A person who did what needed to be done, whether it was to birth a child, to care for herself in the wilderness, or to run an estate.
This is up to me now. I had no choice but to be sent away. No choice but to return. No choice but to live with him and do as he wanted—but this, this is my choice. I can hold this and remain apart from him. Or…or I can let go. I can forgive, and we can be happy again. It is up to me.
She considered her letter for several long minutes.
Taking the pages, she slowly and carefully folded them into their original, well-creased shape.
Darcy’s letter was left on her table as she rose from her chair and walked towards the fireplace, where a recently stoked fire crackled merrily.
She paused for several minutes, staring into the flames, her mind locked on the image of her husband busily writing to her in the middle of the night.
She held out her hand, releasing the papers into the fire, which consumed them rapidly and greedily.
She watched as her letter caught fire and began to disintegrate, her gaze unwavering until every last morsel of the paper had been devoured and its ashes mixed with the wood ashes in a manner that was inextricable.