Chapter 26
Chance Encounters
Elizabeth was wise enough to realise she would not solve those mysteries without time and motion and might never solve them at all.
After breakfast, she kissed Mary on the cheek and left to walk. Mary had told William the good news, so Elizabeth could curtsey to him politely or bash him with a spade with similar effect. The man was practically babbling with happiness.
She wandered along her favourite paths without the slightest attention.
More and more, her thoughts returned to the Derbyshire gentleman.
Even if it was impossible for him to occupy her life, he seemed perfectly able to occupy her head.
He had taken up residence there. How long would it take to evict him?
As she walked, her fingernails occasionally dug into her palm; her hand balled into a fist and shook with such anger that she might break a finger. At other times, tears filled her eyes, though she usually had no idea why, and often did not notice them until they reached her cheek.
His voice went around and around in her head: Inferior. Degradation. Mother. Sisters. Admire and love.
There were surprisingly few significant words. Broadly categorised, the offensive ones made her angry, and the admiring words lifted her heart for a moment, only to send it crashing back into anger or dismay.
Sometimes she thought she should count the words, tally them by category, or review every interaction and determine how she could have done better… or… well, it was always the same. Or, Or, Or, Or, Or, could have, should have, would have! None were worth anything at all.
Vexing, vexing man!
Not paying attention, she found it either completely surprising or thoroughly expected (she was not troubled by mutually exclusive expectations) that her feet had carried her to the exact spot where Mr Darcy had first encountered her by chance.
The gentleman approached in a surprisingly timid manner and bowed deeply. “Miss Bennet. I have been walking in the grove some time in the hope of meeting you. Will you do me the honour of reading this letter?”
Elizabeth noticed the letter in his hand, her name prominent on the front in a handsome masculine hand.
Without pausing for thought, she snapped, “I most certainly will not! Put that away! What were you thinking?”
With a startled look—as if the risk to her reputation had occurred to him only after her chastisement—he quickly put it into his waistcoat pocket contritely.
“My apologies, Miss Bennet! You are absolutely correct. I was not thinking properly. I shall trouble you no more.”
With a final-looking bow, he turned and started to walk away. Elizabeth stared at him for a few seconds, even more frustrated, and snapped at him once more. How many more such exclamations lay between her current deportment and becoming a complete copy of her mother?
In the closest thing to a shout she had used in many years, she called, “Do not walk away from me!”
He stopped abruptly, paused a moment, and turned slowly around to face her, but seemed singularly obsessed with her boots.
Elizabeth sighed in frustration. “I apologise for my tone, sir. That was uncalled for. It is not my desire to order you about, lose your company, or demand to keep it. You just startled me.”
He gave a grim chuckle. “You of all people need not reproach yourself for your tone. In our entire acquaintance, that was the first time you have raised your voice to anybody for anything; and to be honest, it is but a tenth part of what I deserve.”
Elizabeth moved a step closer, staring at him until he finally looked up at her face.
“Do not overcompensate. That is as disingenuous as when that so-called gentleman at Netherfield tried to pass off his poor penmanship and scattered thinking as a virtue. Perhaps it is a quarter or half of what you think you deserve, but do not overstate your case. I am out of hair shirts.”
The odd humour made the man chuckle, though he still seemed flustered.
“I am confused and make no bones about it. I feel like a lost and drifting sailor. However, as you have 10 times my social skill, I will gladly accede to any suggestion you make. I only wished to spare you pain.”
“Slinking away, with the last words you ever hear from me being of chastisement, would not relieve me of any pain. It would only compound it.”
“Tell me what I should do.”
Elizabeth paused, for she did not actually know what she wanted him to do—aside from not handing her an improper letter, and not skulking away in anger or frustration. Other than that, she had not the slightest idea.
She considered a few moments. “Offer me your arm like any ordinary gentleman happening upon a lady by chance, and let us walk. I think better in motion.”
They adopted the accepted forms and continued in silence for 114 paces before she spoke.
“You said you walked in the grove hoping to meet me. Why not just watch from the folly, as usual?”
“There is no fooling you, is there? How did you work it out?”
“Rudimentary cartography. Converging lines of sight defined the vantage point, and timing verified it.”
“I should never have imagined an aficionado of mathematics would believe our meetings to be by chance.”
“No sir. I calculated the odds and updated my calculations with each meeting. They were simple enough once I estimated your walking habits. The odds of even two meetings by chance were vanishingly small. You were stalking me.”
“How long did you know?”
“From the second day. Even that was unlikely.”
“Did it worry you?”
“If it had, you would have known. I can be abrupt when my temper is riled.”
“And yet you did not mention it.”
“Rules of propriety, sir. We were both cheating then, as we are now. If the meetings were planned, they became improper rendezvous. If they were by chance, they just barely pass muster. I assumed you were reasonably discreet, for what man would want to be leg-shackled over a few walks in the park? It is entirely logical.”
“What man indeed,” he laughed, the sound brittle.
Elizabeth blushed. “I am sorry, that was—”
“No apologies, Elizabeth. Please.”
She ignored the use of her Christian name, assuming he must have used it in that overcrowded head of his for months.
She tugged him back into motion. “I shall do my best.”
“That is more than sufficient. To answer your original question, I suspected you knew of my earlier strategy, and I cannot decide which excuse to use for waiting at that spot. I either did not want to frighten you, should you work out how I was stalking you, or I supposed you might choose a different route and avoid my scrutiny altogether. To tell the truth, I came here hoping either serendipity or your own inclinations would deliver you eventually. I would have found another way if this did not work, but the other methods are uncomfortable.”
“Well, it worked, so I imagine you have no complaint.”
“None against you. For myself, I spent all night on an exercise once suggested to me. I recalled our entire acquaintance, beginning to end, except I replaced myself with an unknown gentleman, and you with my sister. I wrote the results in the letter you very sensibly did not take.”
“And?”
“If I could somehow move about in time, I would go back 6 months and beat my younger self with a stick.”
Elizabeth giggled. “That is very specific. How, pray tell, did you choose a stick?”
Darcy laughed with her—awkwardly, uncomfortably—but the tension eased.
“It is an old expression I heard from a tenant as a child. I do not know its origins. I presume a stick is hard enough to hurt but not kill. Just the right compromise between a willow switch, a club, and a rock.”
“In the end, even without the stick beating, your younger self was not so very terrible. I had mostly forgiven him. I even thought we might be friends.”
“Truly?”
“You may not have correlated all you know, so I shall inform you. I am an exceptional prevaricator, but a terrible liar. I avoided saying what I thought to you and your friends dozens of times, but I never lied even once, unless you are a stickler for lies by omission.”
As they walked with Elizabeth lost in thought, she paid little attention to her steps until she noticed she was gradually drawn to the side, while Mr Darcy walked clear off the edge, his boots in the mud.
A puddle lay ahead on her side of the path, vaguely reminding her of the mud bath after the Netherfield ball. He guided her around it without apparent thought. She could have stepped over the puddle with hardly a hop, but he prevented even that.
The chivalry touched her somewhat. It was sweet and endearing—and confusing.