Chapter 10 #2
The ache in that remembrance still held her, and I wanted to fold her in my arms and comfort her, let her know I had noticed her, that I had been planning an introduction, and that I had felt drawn to her, but all of that was too late.
She would never believe me, and so I could only understand the position of a second daughter, born in the shadow of her beautiful sister and like a tender shoot poking its head from the frost, trying to find her way to the light.
“I did not know,” I said, and my voice was hoarse.
“You could not have. I buried it so deep that I forgot it was there, until you started being kind to me and the kindness disturbed the soil, and up it came, green and furious, and I could not understand why a man’s attentions would make me angry until I realized that the anger was not at you—it was at the version of myself who cared what you thought, because she was the girl behind the potted fern, and the girl behind the potted fern had never been enough. ”
“Elizabeth—”
“I have not finished, and I fear that if I stop now, the courage will desert me, and I shall retreat behind something clever and never say any of this again, and it needs to be said, because you were brave enough to fall apart in a lending library, and the least I can do is fall apart in a garden.” She pressed her palms harder against her knees, blinking furiously.
I thought about offering her another strawberry, but decided she would interpret that as managing or strategizing. Sir Bertram shifted on his stone, a slow, deliberate rotation toward the sun that seemed as if time did not matter, and perhaps to one as ancient as he, it didn’t.
“And when I accused you of managing other people’s lives,” she continued, and her voice had dropped to the register that ached and she stared at her hands, “I was right—you do manage, and you know you do—but I was also describing myself. I did not see it until Bingley told a fairy tale about a sad dragon, and a six-year-old with more moral clarity than anyone in this story asked what kind of mean princess doesn’t forgive a dragon who carries his tortoise across the kingdom and said he was sorry.
I managed you, Mr. Darcy. From the very first evening, I decided who you were, and I defended that decision with every barb and observation I possessed.
My weapons were more dangerous than yours, because you managed with silence and authority.
I managed you with wit and contempt, and wit cuts deeper because it makes the audience laugh while it wounds. ”
The revelation was enormous, and the courage required to deliver it was astonishing. And she was entirely correct. She had wounded me, and she had drawn satisfaction from the wounding.
“May I tell you something?” I waited until she again looked up at me.
“The truth is I had seen you before Bingley pointed you out. And maybe you were not quite pretty the way painted dolls were pretty, and your dress was modified and several seasons old, but I could not look away because you were devastating. Sitting there speaking to your friend, observing the room, commenting and those eyes darting around, intelligent, missing nothing, and I…”
My voice caught because this was not a sentiment that a Darcy expressed.
Elizabeth waited. She did not rush in with a jest or a barb.
She regarded me, her eyes gentle, curious, and so I gathered up my courage.
“I was frightened, because you would see through me—my proud name, my grand estate, my consequence, and my connections, and yes, my ten thousand pounds would be the least of your considerations. All of it was nothing, because you would see the man behind the waistcoats and cravats and find me wanting.”
Elizabeth’s lips had parted. Her eyes were bright.
“And when Bingley pounced on me, I was not ready, and I could not calmly ask you to dance like you didn’t matter, because I had been planning and strategizing, and so, it was inexcusable, but I said the perfectly patronizing and proudest and most unforgiveable blunder, and I wounded you, not because I wished to, but I was a coward dressed as a gentleman, and cowards attack what frightens them.
And I said not handsome enough instead of devastating, and I wished to sink into the ground and never see the light of day. ”
“You did stand at the wall and scowl forbiddingly for the rest of the evening.” A little of her old spark returned, though without the barb. “Devastating. You are certain that is the word you mean, and not a kinder one you settled on to spare me?”
“Yes, to a man like me, because I cannot look away, and you spent the entire autumn upsetting everything I thought I knew about myself. You appeared at Netherfield when your sister fell ill. You withstood the Bingley sisters’ disdain, and you challenged me.
You poked and prodded, and you didn’t leave me a moment’s worth of peace. ”
“Sounds exhausting.”
“You are exhausting, and it has worsened considerably since Meryton, because in Meryton you were merely devastating at a distance. Here you are devastating at close range—over tea, and Elgin Marbles, and strawberry ice—you are devastating with compound interest. I have been accruing the debt for months, and I have no intention of paying it off, because the debt is the best thing I own.”
A sound escaped her—not quite a laugh, not quite a sob, something between the two that contained more honesty than either would have managed on its own. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth.
“We are quite a pair, Mr. Darcy. Two porcupines circling each other with our quills raised, each convinced the other was about to strike, when in fact we were both frightened and lonely and spectacularly bad at admitting it. I would rather not own how long I lived in the fortress your insult built—only that the man who dismissed me as barely tolerable is the same man who has made me feel that being quite pretty and devastatingly clever might be enough.”
“Elizabeth, you are more than enough. More than I deserve. Any insufficiency was mine, not yours—mine for failing to recognize that months of contrition and planning, managing and needing a tortoise to fix my failings fell woefully short of what it took Bingley to arrive at in twelve minutes.”
“You are comparing yourself unfavorably to Bingley. That must be painful.”
“Agonizing, but look how fast he moved from regret at having listened to me without investigating himself to calling on your sister. Did you know I had to restrain him? It was nine o’clock at night, and he would have appeared outside Jane’s window at Gracechurch Street and sang an aria.”
Here, Elizabeth burst into the first genuine laughter of the hour.
Her entire face opened up, and she touched my arm.
“Bingley is the model for efficiency, and Jane accepted him not because she did not have grievances or that she was not wounded. But she simply saw the fallibility of humans and decided she would rather trust in someone’s best efforts rather than condemn them for their worst mistakes.
I am afraid that I am the worse side of my sister, and hence she is the sunshine princess, and I am the sad, sharp princess. ”
“And I console myself that Bingley cannot brood to my level of artistry, nor will he pace his study and wear out his rugs, running through conversations and counting the ways I could have said something better, or endlessly regretting my blunders, and alienating devastating women at country assemblies.”
“You have only alienated one. Though I grant you, you chose with remarkable precision.”
We looked at each other, two porcupines aiming their quills at each other while protecting our soft bellies.
“Elizabeth.” I turned toward her on the bench, and the turning brought my knee against hers, and neither of us moved away.
“It might have taken us longer to get to where Jane and Bingley are, but I promise you, I have stopped managing anything other than my estate and business. I gave you the time, and I sat with an empty terrarium. I resisted every minute, every hour, the urge to do something, anything, to call on your uncle or to send a note, or even to ask Bingley about you. I stopped him from speaking. I know nothing about how you spent the past nine days, not because I did not wish to know, but because I wanted you to be free to choose, and so I waited, a torture for a man who has always arranged the world, and I would have waited until time ran out, and well… I’m only happy that I received your note this morning. ”
“Yes, because I decided I was not the mean princess who would not forgive the sad dragon who only breathed fire because he was sorry. For I am sorry, Mr. Darcy. I should be more Jane-like and simply accept your apology without looking behind it for traps.”
“And I should be the porcupine who rolls over and lets you bristle and spit, knowing that you are kind and would never aim your barbs at anyone who did not deserve them.”
Her lips twisted as if I had indeed left myself a target. “You don’t deserve them, not all the time, although, in Bingley’s story, I do throw a mean apple.”
“Your aim is exceptional, and you are still devastating, but I am now a braver man, or a fool.”
“I need you to know one more thing.” Her expression was open, like the woman at Gunter’s who watched the strawberry ice melt.
“I fell in love with you on the day Rose asked whether Sir Bertram dreamed, and you told her that all creatures dream, and she said then he will never be lonely, and you looked up from the carpet and caught my eye, and I knew then. It frightened me, and I fought it with every weapon I had, until that day you knelt in the lending library, broken in front of me, and I should not have walked away, but I did because I did not know how to stand in the wreckage I had caused.”