Chapter 14
Fourteen
At the gentle rap on her bedchamber door, Elizabeth elicited a startled sniffle and raised her face from the pillow she had been sobbing into since she had banished Darcy from the house.
Disinterested in any company for her misery, she lowered it back into the soft comfort and called out a muffled, “Pray, leave me be! I have a headache.”
A single moment later, Elizabeth heard the latch click and the door inch open on a light squeal. Jane’s voice, full of concern, slipped into the room through the small crack she had made. “Lizzy? What is the matter? I thought you much improved before we left. Shall I fetch you some powders?”
Swallowing down her annoyance, for she could not countenance inflicting her pique upon innocent Jane, Elizabeth turned her face to the far wall before responding, “I have taken a turn, but I shall be well enough after a rest. Do not fret over me.”
The swishing of skirts told Elizabeth that she had not assured Jane as she had hoped. A cool hand pressed to her forehead as her sister crooned, “Do not ask of me that which is impossible, dearest. I shall always fret when you are unwell.”
Elizabeth snorted. “There is nothing wrong with me that time will not cure.”
So she said, but she was not certain how well she believed it.
Her anger would abate in the coming days and weeks, but she was positive that the hurt would linger.
Darcy not only despised her family, the very people who had made her who she was, but he had also betrayed her dearest sister and then lied about it.
Worse, he had had a month to confess his trespass to her yet had left her in ignorance.
There was little Elizabeth abhorred more than a deceiver, but being made to feel stupid was perhaps more unforgiveable.
Silly, gullible Elizabeth Bennet, ready to believe anything a handsome gentleman said.
First Mr Wickham, then Darcy…her own foolishness sickened her.
To think, she had been ready to accept a proposal from a man who had tricked her into believing that he considered her an equal! How he must have laughed at her.
Elizabeth did her utmost to hold her tears at bay in front of Jane, but they burst out of her again with a gasping breath.
Her sister was upon her the next moment, lying down beside her and gathering her to her chest. Elizabeth turned into Jane, sobbing brokenly against her shoulder as she exclaimed, “He lied, Jane! He lied! He hates us all, and…and…”
It was several minutes before Elizabeth was calm enough for rational conversation, though Jane eventually managed to coax her into a semblance of tranquillity with her steady presence. “There now,” she said as Elizabeth’s breathing evened out. “Tell me what happened to make you so upset. Who lied?”
“M-Mr Darcy.”
“Mr Darcy? What did he lie about? And what makes you say that he hates us all?”
With yet more tears and numerous hiccups marring her recitation, Elizabeth detailed everything Caroline Bingley had told her the evening before and recounted Darcy’s contentious visit, liberally chastising herself for ever giving him a second chance.
Mrs Bennet had been right to scorn him and question his intentions; he had been deceiving them all for weeks, if not longer, as to his true nature.
When she had finished, Elizabeth looked to her sister. Jane, despite the transgression perpetrated against her and Mr Bingley, appeared more perplexed than shocked. “Is that all?”
“All!” Elizabeth cried, sitting up. “Did you not hear what I said? Mr Darcy attempted to divide you from Mr Bingley, and he very nearly succeeded. Are you not outraged?”
Jane pivoted upright also, shifting into a more comfortable position.
“I suppose I might be if he had not later reversed his stance and brought Charles back to me. Also, from what you have reported of his reasoning, it sounds as if he was only looking after the welfare of his friend. I like to think that you would do something similar if you believed me at the mercy of a disingenuous suitor.”
“I—of course I would—” Elizabeth was not quite sure how to respond to that. On the one hand, it was not her place to meddle. On the other, she would do anything and everything necessary to guard Jane’s happiness. Had she not followed her sister to Gracechurch Street with exactly that intent?
“As to his objections to our family, you cannot deny that they can be rather…” Jane’s nose crinkled as she apparently searched for a polite euphemism. “Well, they are not always as genteel as they ought to be. And Mama has not been terribly generous with Mr Darcy since meeting him again.”
Elizabeth swallowed to loosen the tightness in her throat. Their mother had been positively horrid to Mr Darcy last evening.
“Also—forgive me—I must say that it was not entirely unreasonable for Mr Darcy to fear your temper.”
Gasping, Elizabeth jolted back and collided with the headboard. “What do you mean by that?”
Jane grimaced. “I love you dearly, Lizzy, but sometimes you can be rather…unforgiving of others. Your resentment, once stirred, is often quite implacable. Just look at how long you disliked Mr Darcy for his insult at the assembly.”
“I daresay any lady would hold a grudge against a man who declared her ‘tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt’ him in a public setting,” Elizabeth retorted incredulously.
“True enough,” Jane conceded in a soothing tone, “but was that single event, spoken in a moment of pique amongst strangers, really so egregious as to blacken his entire character? It was poorly done of him, I grant you, but you were prepared to denounce him as the worst sort of villain to all of Meryton over it.”
Elizabeth’s face burned, mortified at her sister’s justified censure.
It was delivered with the sweet compassion Jane was known for, but that only made the accusation sting all the more.
“I suppose not,” she mumbled, “but it does not later excuse him from trying to part you and Mr Bingley. It was none of his business, yet he meddled in any case.”
“He did,” Jane granted with a single nod, “but his motives were pure. He was protecting his friend from a woman he believed insincere in her feelings. He was wrong, but he could not have known it at the time, and Charles himself informed me that he was unsure of my affections.”
“Because of Mr Darcy and his interference!”
“No, because I was reserved in his company. Remember, we spoke of this before?”
Their tête-á-tête from just after Mr Bingley’s first visit at Gracechurch Street immediately came back to Elizabeth. They had, indeed, discussed Jane’s potential fault in failing to secure Mr Bingley’s constancy. “I still say Mr Bingley ought to have known better,” she mumbled.
“Perhaps he should, but then the past is often clearer to us than the present. In his way, Charles was attempting to do the gentlemanly thing by leaving the area. He thought himself preserving me from an engagement he believed I did not want yet would feel obligated to accept. When Mr Darcy approached him in February, he advised Charles to call upon me here, where there would be less pressure from our mother, and determine once and for all what my sentiments were.”
“How magnanimous,” seethed Elizabeth. “And what, pray tell, instigated this excellent advice?”
One corner of Jane’s mouth curled up in a smirk, and Elizabeth was powerfully reminded of their father. “He spotted you at the theatre.”
“What has that to do with anything?”
“As Charles tells it—and he heard direct from Mr Darcy—his friend was indignant to learn that Miss Bingley had hidden your presence from him the same way she hid my presence from her brother. One must assume that she was afraid of his attachment to you upsetting her own plans to become Mrs Darcy. Once he was aware of her omission, as he explained to Charles, he did not like the ignominy of being manoeuvred about like a chess piece and so felt it his duty to right his own wrongs. The very next day, he called upon Charles, and…well, you know the rest.”
Elizabeth’s heart palpitated at the humbling notion that Darcy might have been so enamoured with her as to alter his own well-meaning, if underhanded, scheme. It then occurred to her, “Wait, you were already aware of this?”
Jane nodded. “I was. Charles told me almost a month ago now, not wishing to have any secrets between us in our new understanding.”
“And were you not angry? How can you bear to so much as look at Mr Darcy, much less encourage me to accept his overtures? Why did you not tell me?”
Jane quieted Elizabeth’s babbling with a staying hand upon her forearm.
“Naturally, I was not best pleased to learn of the plot against my romance, but after I had some time to think on it, I realised that Mr Darcy was only being a good friend to my Charles, and I cannot despise him for that. His sisters might have prised us apart for selfish motives—he was quite severe on that point in the hope that I would not be fooled by their false friendship again—but Mr Darcy did only what he thought was in Charles’s best interests.
I quite agree that their interference was not the same.
Once I recognised the difference, it was easy to forgive Mr Darcy.
“As for encouraging you to entertain his suit, I have always felt that there was a similarity in the turn of your minds, and it transpires that I was correct. Have you not enjoyed Mr Darcy’s attentions? His conversation?”
Reluctantly, Elizabeth allowed, “I have.”
“And would you have—be honest, now—been open to receiving him if I had revealed to you his part in my temporary heartache?”
Although she wished to defend herself and declare that she would have considered his merits as well as his detriments, she could not do so without being untruthful. “Perhaps not.”