Chapter 30 #2
The problem was, and always had been, that she loved and needed him far too much.
The only way she had survived those years without him was by trying to forget that need, as a starving man would avoid thinking of food.
She had tossed herself into her marriage with her heart wide open, holding nothing back from him.
Her entire being had been dependent on him, and he had failed her.
She was terrified of making the same mistake again.
Promises were in vain. The promise had already been made before any of this had ever happened—a solemn promise, a vow before God and family—and that had been set aside and discarded like it was a mere nothing. How could another promise ever matter when such a thing had happened under that vow?
Yet one could not deny that his more recent actions had proved his constancy.
She had run from him, she had hidden from him both in deed and in thought, yet he had pursued her.
In every particular, he had proved that he wished to repair their marriage even though she had rebuffed him constantly.
Still, he had not faltered. He had been true to her.
Rising, she went to his desk, seeing on it many papers, some with only a single line written on them, lying discarded and useless. She read them all, wondering whether it was wrong to do so but unable to resist nevertheless.
There was one particular page that struck her. It could not be called a letter for it was only a few sentences written in the middle of the paper and then crossed over with one firm line that did not prevent her from reading them.
Elizabeth, you were correct. I should not have forced this from you but, instead, allowed you to maintain this farce of contentment that you have upheld thus far. Perhaps in time, it might have become our reality. I am sorry.
Did she regret that he had forced his way past her barriers and extracted these violent emotions from her? In truth, no, she did not.
She could see now that she had been hiding.
She hid from their love, hid from her grief and her anger, but in her defence, hiding was all she had been able to do at that time.
It was what she needed to do to keep herself from being overwhelmed by her sadness and fear.
Yet now, she felt differently. She felt as though she might be able to come out of hiding and at last accept some of these things before her.
The choice was clear: to take a chance and risk another failure for the opportunity for love and true happiness or to continue on in dispassionate, sedate amiability, never again to know the fire of life and love and passion.
The disagreement and discussion for which he had pressed her, although painful and sad, was having some effect.
She was spent from her tears and her screaming, but now with it behind her, she felt better.
Something akin to true forgiveness was awakening in her, though with all she had said and done to him, she would not be surprised if Darcy no longer wished to go forth in this manner.
He had surely not wished to suffer such abuse, and it was selfish of her to wish to inflict it upon him.
Looking at the papers, she decided she would write him another letter—not the angry ramblings she had penned before, but a letter of truth.
She would explain how she felt and why she so often would vacillate between tenderness and feigned indifference towards him.
Then she would tell him that she was willing to try to discuss in an amicable way all that had happened in the past two years.
She looked over at him, sleeping so deeply on the chaise.
For a moment, she sat, musing on the issue of the mistrust between them. She could not trust him, she simply could not, nor could she imagine that he would trust her. She knew he still feared she might leave him, but she would not.
She had often, in the time since they had reunited, reflected on how different things might have been if she had remained in Yorkshire.
He would have come to retrieve her, and he would have then admitted his mistake.
They might have argued, but it would not have lasted for two years.
Her son would have been born at Pemberley.
She had not given any of them that chance.
Darcy had started this, she knew that, but it was she who had continued it.
In many ways, they were equal. Darcy had doubted her just as she now doubted him.
He had borne her absence and the fact that she had run away from him just as she had borne his rejection and dismissal over two years ago.
Now, Darcy believed they could love again and hoped for the restoration of their marriage. Did she?
She realised that a choice must be made: a civil marriage or a loving one. In Weymouth when she had agreed to go back to Pemberley with Darcy, she had determined that civility was the most she could offer. Loving him was too frightening.
Now she knew it was impossible. Whether she wished to or not, she loved him.
Each and every day, a bit more of her heart was given over to him no matter how she tried to resist it.
Her ‘farce of contentment’ as he had termed it, was not the sum total of her hopes.
Her hopes were for the love they shared before, but that hope had been obscured by her fear of him.
Could she believe in him enough to risk being wrong again?
She decided to stop this endless debate in her mind. Moving quickly, she wrote and sealed the letter and placed it on the desk where she hoped he would find it among the other papers.
The fire had died down when she was set to leave, so she went to it, adding some wood and building it up a bit. With one last look at him, she departed.