Chapter Three
MR. DARCY ARRIVED in the parsonage that evening and asked if he could see Elizabeth alone, which was a herald to anyone who was listening that he intended to ask for her hand. Of course, he already had, and she had said no.
This was new, too, Wickham poisoning women against him.
But then, before, it had always been a game, and this was serious now. It was marriage. It was a respectable woman like Elizabeth Bennet. It was all manner of things it had never been before.
Darcy intended only to keep one element of the game the same, and that was to include Wickham for spectacle, and that, well, that was only because it was his weakness, his fantasy.
Perhaps it could have been accomplished with some other man who wasn’t Wickham, but Darcy didn’t want to bring someone else into all of it at this point.
Besides, she’d already known Wickham’s touch.
Elizabeth joined him in the sitting room in the parsonage, but she did not sit down.
He had stood upon her entry, so he remained standing.
She went over to the mantel and took down a brass figurine of a dog and began to turn it over and over in her hands. “There are things about it that don’t make sense to me, sir,” she said.
He wasn’t sure what “it” was, maybe the marriage proposal, maybe him, maybe anything, but he didn’t clarify that. He clasped his hands in front of him and said, “What things?”
“You wrote me a letter telling me every awful thing he has ever done. You seem to hate him. Whenever his name comes up, your face reddens and you cannot speak.”
“Do I react that strongly to a mention of his name?” said Darcy, who had thought he was hiding that better.
She set the figurine on the mantel again. “It isn’t hatred, then? It isn’t anger?”
“It is,” said Darcy. “He has given me much cause to be angry with him.”
“But there is something else? You said he marked me. What do you mean?”
Darcy shifted on his feet. Should he tell her this?
At some point, he had thought to conceal it from her, but that was before, when he had convinced himself that Wickham had not ever touched her and that he could marry her and whisk her away from Wickham entirely, keep her to himself.
“Mr. Wickham came to me to ask me for money to marry you.”
She was shocked. She fumbled around behind herself until she found a chair and she collapsed into it.
Darcy sat down, too. “I don’t know if it was before or after he put his hands all over you in the woods, but he did. He’d never done that before. Never come to me and asked for a woman for himself.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Sorry, that was…” Darcy needed to be more careful about how he worded things.
“Anyway, I was not, just then, inclined to give him any more money. And I knew you, obviously, because we had been all together in Netherfield while your sister was sick. I had noticed you, I suppose, though I had not thought of you as someone I could marry.”
“No, you have made that part quite plain, how very inappropriate a match I am for you,” she said bitterly.
“But you are too good for him, madam,” said Darcy.
“Because he is the son of a servant?” said Elizabeth.
“That and because…” Darcy swallowed. Because he fell in love with me, a man, and a woman like you needs to be a man’s first choice.
“Well, I could not give my blessing to it all straightaway, so I did not give him money, and I did not do anything at all of that nature. I began to… notice you, I suppose.”
“So, you are saying you wanted to marry me because he wanted to marry me,” said Elizabeth, her voice a little shrill. “I am something the two of you are fighting over, like dogs fighting over scraps?”
“Not at all,” said Darcy. “He can’t compete in this arena.”
“You are fighting with each other!”
“We fell out,” said Darcy. “But we didn’t ever entirely stop being whatever we are with each other.”
“Which is what, exactly? You’re the sort of man who likes to give women away to other men or something, treat them like property, to be handed about for pleasure?”
He noted that her tone changed when she said that. He might be insane, but he thought that idea sort of aroused her. He tilted his head to one side, taking her in. “Not exactly.”
“Then what?”
He only eyed her.
“Mr. Darcy, you cannot expect me to agree to this marriage if I don’t know what I am agreeing to.”
“And you cannot expect me to tell you every dark and secret thing about me if you are not going to agree to be my wife,” he said. “What other choice do you have at this point? Tell me your answer, if you please.”
She sighed heavily, casting her gaze up over his head.
“Not exactly,” she said, echoing his words from earlier.
“But you said that you would give me to him and you would wish to watch, so what is it that is different? What else shall I have to do? Will it just be him, or will there be a number of other men I shall have to service? Will you choose them, or will I have any say—”
“It’s not like that,” he interrupted.
“No?” she said.
“Just him,” he said. “If you don’t wish to do that, you shan’t. I would not force you into it. I thought…” He chuckled, looking away. “I thought you liked him better than me.”
“Well, I’m ever so confused, am I not!” She was back on her feet.
“You hate him. He tried to elope with your sister. He lied to me that you swindled him out of an inheritance. Or so you say, anyway. You write all of that in a letter, designed, I suppose, to make me dislike him and to look favorably on you. But then, the next day, you say that if I marry you, I can be with him, too, as if that’s supposed to be some sort of enticement to me, and what do you take me for? ”
He stood up, too, raising both of his hands carefully.
“I see my error,” he murmured. He wasn’t good with women.
Wickham was much better with women than he was.
Darcy did not know why he had thought he could do this with her.
Even so, it would not do to let her slip away.
He swallowed, trying to think of what he should say to her.
She spoke again. “Oh, sir, you have made a number of errors thus far.”
“So I have,” he said ruefully.
“So, you want me because Wickham wants me,” she said, wringing out her hands.
“Maybe at first,” said Mr. Darcy, “but not anymore. I want you for a great deal of reasons, and most of them are simply because you are brilliant and funny and beautiful. I have never felt as in love as I did when you went toe-to-toe with my aunt, Lady Catherine, for instance. I have admired the way you speak for a very long time. You are witty, razor sharp at times, and you are not afraid to say what you think. You’re self-possessed and confident. You’re… remarkable, truly.”
She toyed with the button at the top of her bodice. “You could have said something like that during your proposal the other day, you know.”
“Yes, you made it plain how badly I botched that,” he said. “But also, I suppose I said that if I had worded it differently, you would have said something different, and you said that it wasn’t true.”
“You said,” she said, her voice rising, “that you could have flattered me into thinking you were ‘impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination.’”
He winced. Did he sound like that, truly? “All right, I am sorry.”
“We have done this already, sir,” she said.
“The facts of the matter remain thus. You have said that if I marry elsewhere, I shall have to conceal from my future husband what liberties Mr. Wickham took with me, and that it will bother me that I am lying. Perhaps you are right about that, I have no real notion either way. Whatever the case, I know that the last man to propose to me told me I was unlikely to get another marriage proposal, and you have made it plain that yours is an extraordinary occurrence, as I am not the sort of woman you are supposed to marry. So, I think it is likely that my options are to marry you or to not get married at all.”
“You were quite happy to make that decision two days ago,” Mr. Darcy said, realizing that his ploy here might be hopeless. This woman did not like him, and whatever he had done since then had not done anything to make her like him. It had only made her confused.
“Yes,” she said.
“And nothing has changed since then.”
“Well, that letter, sir!”
“You seem to think that letter is a pack of lies.”
“Well, I am trying to understand the truth, and you will not tell me all of your dark and secret things!”
He sighed. “All right, all right. I shall tell you what you wish to know. But I shall ask you to please not share these things with others.”
“Obviously not,” she said, affronted.
“Well?” he said. “What do you wish to know?”
“You said it was not exactly that,” she said.
“Ah, well, it is only that, erm, it is the other way round. It is not my giving women to Wickham, it is Wickham giving women to me.”
“But I am not his!”
“Are you not?” He raised his eyebrows at her.
She sat back in her chair, thinking about that. “You have done this with him before.”
“A number of times,” he said. “But you’re different. It’s never been about marriage before. It’s never been a woman like you. And you are… I’ve never known a woman like you, Miss Bennet.”
“Except you didn’t notice me until he brought me to your notice, so it really is the same as before, just that he wanted to marry me.”
Mr. Darcy wasn’t certain what to say to that.
“No wonder you are so dead set against it all, sir,” she breathed.
“You are playing some odd and wretched game with Mr. Wickham, and he has just elevated it to some higher level. You do not wish to marry me, obviously, but you wish to take me from Wickham.” She furrowed her brow.
“But if you take me from him, why am I going to be doing… things with him for you to watch?”
He felt himself flush. “I don’t know. That’s just part of it.”
She regarded him. “And it’s only him.”
“Only him.”
“And I am allowed to refuse?”