Chapter 12 Confessions in the Dark
Confessions in the Dark
The escapade proved disproportionately tiring, and Darcy slept for a good part of the rest of the day, not reawakening until dusk.
He lay still, assessing his various aches and pains before attempting to move, but was distracted by the faint and infrequent sounds of rustling and tapping.
As he turned his head on the pillow, something small sailed across the room and bounced across the table with a soft noise.
He turned his head a little farther to where Elizabeth was slouched in one of the chairs, her elbow on the arm and her cheek resting in the palm of her hand.
She lifted her head to rip a corner from the piece of paper in her lap—one of their messages to each other by the look of it—and roll it into a ball between her fingers.
This she then threw at the table—nay, at the candle upon it, Darcy thought.
It came close enough to make the flame dance sideways, but ultimately missed and skittered across the table to the floor as its predecessor had done.
Elizabeth puffed out her cheeks and returned her head to her hand.
Though it was no bad thing that their written communications be destroyed, Darcy reflected ruefully that under better circumstances, were he to be trapped alone in a bedchamber for a week with Elizabeth, he should not like to think that she would be dull for one moment of it.
He reached surreptitiously to slide another of their obsolete notes off the nightstand and quietly tore off a corner to make his own projectile.
He threw it at the candle and, more by luck than judgment, hit it.
Elizabeth whipped her head around to look at him in surprise.
He let a small smirk tug at the corner of his mouth.
She said nothing but inflicted a tug of a far more insistent nature upon him by slowly raising a solitary eyebrow.
He swallowed, relieved that his bandages would disguise his discomposure, and mouthed, “Your turn.”
Elizabeth hit the candle only once and he thrice more before she declared the contest unfair. “You have the advantage lying there—you are at the better angle.”
There was a pause while Darcy fought to suppress the temptation to suggest that she come and lie with him, after which he forced himself to get out of bed and into a chair and promptly proved Elizabeth correct by missing his next four shots.
“Let us stop,” she said after the last. “It is evidently hurting you.”
He did not object. The ache in his throat had worsened, and he did not think it was due to throwing a few trifling bits of paper. To detract from his own disquiet and the concerned manner in which Elizabeth peered at him, he wrote her a note.
I apologise for having been such poor company all week.
“You need not apologise,” she assured him. “You have been very ill.”
How have you passed the time?
“I have talked to the other guests, played cards with them once or twice, read a little.” She grinned saucily and added, “I made a snowman.”
This evidently delighted her, though whether she was better pleased by her own undertaking or his surprise, he would not have liked to say.
Was it a good one?
“No, not really. I got cold before I finished him, so he only had a belly and some arms. I called him Sir William.”
Darcy’s throat clamped closed around the laugh that bubbled up before he could prevent it, but as always, her wit took him by surprise, and she certainly had captured that man’s two prevailing qualities: his paunch and his knighthood.
The resulting spasms deprived him of air for longer than was comfortable, and the joke had passed by the time he recovered himself.
Nonetheless, he endeavoured to partake in her enjoyment.
I am sorry to have missed that. I have a talent for building snowmen of which I am unashamed to boast. My sister and I make it our business to build one together on the first snow of every winter.
“What a lovely thing to do,” Elizabeth replied, sounding genuinely pleased, even if she looked a little surprised. “It is true, then, you do enjoy liveliness. I would never have believed it before this week. You did not betray any hint of it in Hertfordshire.”
You did not see me in any places where liveliness was appropriate. It would be entirely impractical to build a snowman at a ball. Too many candles.
She laughed unrestrainedly at this—a sound that lifted Darcy’s heart for knowing he had brought it about.
I am sorry you have had nobody with whom to build your snowmen. It must have been an exceedingly tedious few days. Would that I could have been awake for more of it.
She shook her head. “Truly, Mr Darcy, you must not concern yourself with that. You need to regain your strength, for Master John made it to Spencer’s Cross this afternoon with our letters.
The road on the far side of the village is still blocked, apparently, but he seems to think that as long as it does not snow again, it ought to clear within a day or two, and then the post can be delivered.
It would be exceedingly vexing if, after all this, you were to keel over just as help arrived.
You must concentrate on getting better.”
“I am better,” he objected silently.
“I beg to differ.”
He frowned and wrote,
Am I not sitting upright, conscious, and conversing?
“Barely.” He must have reacted in some way for she winced sympathetically and made a placating gesture. “That is, you are certainly improving, but I would not say you are your usual self.”
Darcy pulled a face of ambivalence. “I am not sure I have ever been more at liberty to be myself.” What was it that Elizabeth thought was different? And why was he now the object of such an intense look? “What is it?” he mouthed.
“Do you honestly like Miss Bingley?”
“Pardon?”
“You said the other day that she was not as awful as I thought. Do you truly think well of her?”
“I do, yes.”
“May I ask why?”
Fighting to repress the smile of triumph tugging at his lips, Darcy wrote,
May I enquire why it troubles you so much that I should?
“Because I cannot believe you actually enjoy her officious attention. I think I have discovered enough about your character to know you do not like to be so assiduously courted, yet you claim to esteem Miss Bingley, who I never saw do anything but speak and look and think for your approbation alone. I cannot account for it.”
Darcy’s complacency vanished. He ought to have known better than to think Elizabeth would be jealous of any woman—she must know she had no cause. No, it was his character she wished him to account for. Again.
I do not hold her in high regard because she fawns over me. I esteem her because she is refined.
Elizabeth screwed up her nose. “That is an absurd reason to admire someone. You can like a person more for being refined, but you ought not to like them simply because of it, else you would like every well-dressed criminal in the country.”
You asked me to justify my regard, and I have. Refinement is a quality I admire, whether or not you agree that I should.
“That is fair,” she conceded with a modest smile and slight inclination of her head.
“It is certainly not my intention to talk down Miss Bingley’s merits.
She has them, I am sure, and if you admire them, then that is all to the good.
I only wished to establish whether your admiration was borne of vanity. ”
Are you convinced it is not?
After a brief pause and another searching look, she replied, “Yes.” She almost sounded surprised, making Darcy uneasy.
It was no falsehood when you told Bingley you were a studier of character, was it? I have been questioned to within an inch of my life this past week.
She looked abashed and a little hurt, which had not been his intention, and he hastened to add,
By which I mean, I think it must be my turn.
“Do your worst, sir. I am not afraid of you.”
Darcy fixed his gaze on her. “You are not afraid of anything.”
He watched her watch his mouth as he said this but could not tell from her expression what she thought of it. She only lifted her eyes back to his and enquired, “What do you wish to know?”
He wished to know everything but thought it easiest to continue in the same vein in which they had already begun.
I know which traits you disdain—you have made certain I know your opinion of such vices as vanity, pride, and resentment. Pray tell me, which qualities do you admire?
Her head came up, and she answered, “Integrity,” without hesitation, and something in the way she held his gaze made him feel no less under scrutiny than when she had been the one asking questions.
That is a fine quality indeed.
“And rarer than one might expect. Fortunately, it is not the sole measure of a good character, otherwise I should be perpetually disappointed.”
He desperately wished to know who had disappointed her. Her friend, for marrying a fool? Bingley, for abandoning her sister? Him, for encouraging it? He was too cowardly to enquire and wrote, instead,
What else then? What other virtues are good enough to earn the good opinion of the discerning Miss Elizabeth Bennet?
It would have been the height of vanity to ask the question in the hope of her answering with a list of qualities to match his own, and he assured himself that was not his design.
Still, when she began by talking about her mother, he assumed her purpose was to chastise him by praising she whom he had unreservedly disparaged.
Great was his chagrin as it dawned on him her answer had nothing in the slightest to do with him, no matter from which angle he viewed it.