Chapter Nine
CHAPTER NINE
elizabeth
“So,” I was saying, and it was the wee hours of the morning, and we were sitting atop the carriage together, taking turns driving it as we bounced over the road back towards Rosings, “if we can get ourselves to Friday, then it will be as if none of this happened.”
“True enough, I suppose,” he said.
We had not stayed for the ball. I suppose that phase of it, the phase where we were having fun, it was over now.
“And if that is the case, if we are back the way things were, we won’t be together, obviously. It’s not as if you wish to marry me.”
“I do, actually,” he said. “I wish very badly to marry you.”
“No, you wish to bed me,” I said. “You wish that, and you said that to Lady Catherine that time—”
“Oh, please, I beg you, let us never speak of—”
“And you feel guilty about it,” I said. “So, now we are going to exhaust every avenue we can before you give in. But if we manage to get to Friday, I lose you.”
His lips parted. “Since when did you want me, Elizabeth?” he said hoarsely.
“I don’t know.” I gazed off into the darkness. “I’m not sure when it started, but it did, and I do. You would rather break my heart than be with me, that is how this feels. You wish to make it so that we can’t be married, when we could… with each other… now.” I wasn’t sure what I wanted, truthfully, but this felt a bit like a rejection. Maybe it was the enormity of it, of whatever it was we were even considering with each other, maybe I wanted some way to put him off.
“Break both our hearts,” he sighed. “I would break both our hearts, Elizabeth. But it would be better for us to be heartbroken than for me to treat you with dishonor. You deserve better than that.”
I just eyed him.
“I do wish to marry you,” he said to me. “I do.”
I gave him a small smile. “But you can’t.”
“But I can’t,” he agreed.
fitzwilliam
We arrived back at Rosings when it was still night and were able to sneak back into our beds. I wondered about the carriage we’d taken from Tiewater. My suspicion was that it would reset and not be here after midnight came tonight, on the morrow, when it was Thursday again, but I resolved I would make sure that was true.
For now, I simply put the horses in the stable at Rosings and left the carriage next to my aunt’s carriages.
I went to bed, slept a bit and then met Elizabeth for our morning walk. We had decided to do that again, as per usual.
She indicated to me that the dress she’d taken from Rosings was still in her bedchamber at the rectory, and that she was going to see if it disappeared. “I may stay up until midnight just to watch and see if it poofs out of existence,” she said.
“That’s quite odd, isn’t it?” I said. “The tea we took that night, it did not poof out of existence, and the fire we made, it did not either.”
“Yes, good point,” she said. “We must test the boundaries of this. Perhaps that will prove the key to undoing it.”
Right, yes, that was what we planned to discuss this morning. It was only that, as I had lain in bed right before I fell asleep, I had thought to myself that I had already tried everything, and nothing had worked. What was left to do?
“You must go through for me all the things you’ve attempted,” she said. “You said you went to see clergy. And witches?”
“Yes,” I said. “But perhaps they weren’t really witches. Perhaps we should travel all the way to Scotland or something to find witches.”
“Are there witches in Scotland?” she said.
“Well, if there are witches anywhere, it would be there, I think.”
She considered, shrugged, and nodded in acquiescence. “Did you go to see a Catholic clergyman?”
“Well, no,” I said. “I suppose I didn’t think of that. I am not Catholic, Elizabeth.”
“Oh, neither am I,” she protested. “But there is something rather, I don’t know, arcane about the Catholic church? They are so shrouded in tradition and… and Latin.”
“True,” I said. “It does seem that if there were some way out of this, Latin might be involved.” A pause. “Do you read Latin?”
“Me? Oh, not really. I’m not really very good with French, truth be told. I never had a governess, you see, and I am loath to admit it, but I am not entirely skilled at practicing things that are difficult and boring.”
I chuckled, thinking of her piano playing.
“You, obviously, are a Latin scholar,” she muttered.
“I went to university. I studied Latin,” I said. “But, to be quite honest, I only ever had any skill at translating it. I can’t keep the conjugations straight. All my attempts to turn English to Latin were fraught with errors. But that shouldn’t matter, I suppose, for any good Catholic monk or friar or what-have-you must be excellent at Latin.”
“So, where is the closest monastery?” she said.
“I don’t know of any,” I said, thinking about it. “Say, do you even know any Catholics?”
“I…” She bit down on her bottom lip. “Well, there were servants at my Aunt Philip’s house who had rosaries.”
“I think there’s a church in Nettlestead,” I said. “We could go there and back in a day, likely. Perhaps not today, for we didn’t sleep well.”
“Tomorrow, then,” she said.
I nodded.
“But that can’t be all we try,” she said. “We must think of some other ideas, for it’s unlikely to be the answer, I think.”
“True,” I said with chagrin. “Well, what about what you were saying? About this being a curse, and that we must mend our ways morally?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Well, it is foolish at this point. I said that you must stop being so arrogant and haughty, but I didn’t even know you when I said that. You are not even remotely haughty, Will. I think you give off that air, but it is mostly because you are terrified of people.”
I smirked. “Ah, yes, just as you are terrified of horses.”
“You gravitate to people who are better at conversing with others as a strategy to make up for your weaknesses, I think. Mr. Bingley or Colonel Fitzwilliam are both quite amiable, and you simply allow them to make your introductions?”
I nodded. “This is true.”
“If we had stayed for the ball again this evening at Tiewater, I would have undertaken this role for you,” she said. “I would have gotten you conversing with all sorts of people. If you went out socially with me, Will, you’d have a lively time.”
My lips parted as I looked her over, sensing the truth of this somewhere deeply inside. I had been wrong, hadn’t I, when I had said to Colonel Fitzwilliam that she would be an intolerable sort of wife. Indeed, she would be exactly the sort of wife I needed in those situations. She would make those dreadful balls and dinners bearable. She would bring sparkle and wit and impish fun into all the corners of my life.
No, you are only thinking this because you have been wishing to put your mouth on her mouth for quite some time, I scolded myself. You are even now hoping that you cannot make time march forward so that you can take her to bed. You think you are not that sort of man, Will Darcy, but you are exactly that sort of man.
“Oh, apologies,” she said. “I do not mind that we are not going to the ball, truly. I am quite agreeable to this course of action. Forget I said that.”
“No, do not apologize,” I said. “You are quite correct in that, I think.” I scratched the back of my head. “We can go back if you like? This afternoon?”
She shook her head. “No, the phase of fun is over, and we both know it.” She squared her shoulders, walking a bit faster into the April sunlight. “Now, as to my defect, perhaps we could see to that.”
“Your defect?” I scoffed. “You are not in any way defective.”
She might have blushed a little. “You are biased now, sir. One spends this many days in only one other person’s company and one begins to see them incorrectly.”
“No, on the contrary,” I said thoughtfully. “Truthfully, we should have gotten on each other’s nerves by now, don’t you think? We haven’t even quarreled.”
“We quarreled quite a bit at the beginning,” she pointed out.
“I will grant you that,” I said.
“Anyway,” she said, “my moral shortcoming is that I am far too hard on everybody and that I have exacting standards and—”
“Are you sure that’s you and not me?” I broke in.
She laughed, throwing back her head, and she was dazzlingly beautiful. “Oh, yes, I had forgotten. Your good opinion once lost is lost forever.”
“Quite,” I said. I had the urge to put my arm around her, not in a romantic way, but in the way of comrades, walking along in the spring morning together, to touch out of companionship. Of course, I kept my hands to myself.
“Elizabeth, you were only ever hard on me, I think. And I deserved it.”
“No, no,” she said, shaking her head. “It was a series of misunderstandings, that is all.”
“I did say that awful thing about you at the ball in Meryton,” I said regretfully. “That was your first impression of me, and it was not complimentary.”
“Well, your first impression of me was apparently not complimentary,” she rejoined with a glint in her eye.
I considered. “No, I did not look at you truly. There’s a line, from Shakespeare, you might remember? ‘I’ll look to like, if looking liking move’? I did not look to like.”
“Yes, and you were in a version of your own personal hell, a crowded and noisy room full of strangers, all of whom were whispering about you.”
I faltered in my step. “Whispering about me? What were they saying?”
“Oh, you were a rich and eligible bachelor, sir. You were ever so exciting.”
“So, what are we saying? The curse for moral reasons is not the answer?”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
I sighed.
We walked together in companionable silence for a while.
Then she spoke again, and when she did, she flushed deeply in embarrassment. “There, er, I know we do not wish to talk of this, but I think we must speak of the pocket watch.”
In spite of myself, my gaze went directly to her bosom. I flinched. I stopped walking entirely and drew in a breath.
She stopped too. She would not look at me. “Listen, Mr. Darcy, you must understand that I am not given to carrying objects between my… that is, within my bodice.”
“W-well, it would be a convenient sort of space to…”
“They do not put pockets into women’s clothing!” she exclaimed. “Our clothes are ever so impractical, compared to men’s.”
“Yes, I see that,” I said, nodding firmly.
“But we must cease to associate it with anything untoward, because the pocket watch, it doesn’t make sense. It moves about differently than other objects do.”
“Well, we don’t know that,” I said. “Because we don’t know how the objects move.”
“Yes,” she said.
“We must conduct our experiments,” I said. “I shall look in to see what has become of the Tiewater carriage and the horses when the day resets and you will see what becomes of the dress. If you could stay up until midnight, that might be just the thing.”
“Should I hold onto it?”
“Well, no,” I said. “We know that if we are wearing the clothes, they stay with us. Simply lay it out and wait.”
“All right,” she said. “I shall.”
elizabeth
The following morning, Mr. Darcy collected me from our typical rendezvous point where we met each other for a walk, and we went directly to the stables, where we were taking a carriage.
On the way, I asked him about the Tiewater carriage and the horses, which had, indeed, disappeared.
“And the dress?” he asked.
“Well, I made a hash of that,” I said, sighing. “I fell asleep and missed it. But it was gone this morning when I woke. My room was exactly as I always find it.”
“Of course you fell asleep,” he said. “We did not get to bed the night before until quite late. You must have been exhausted. I should have contrived to be there with you so that I could have kept you awake.”
“Contrived to be in my bedchamber?” I laughed.
“No, I suppose not.”
“Anyway, you must go and look in the closet at Rosings, and see if it is back where we found it,” I said.
“Yes, I shall do that this evening when we return,” he said.
There was a pause in the conversation as we got to the stables and got settled into the carriage. The driver was in a bit of a tizzy, for Mr. Darcy had arranged all this just this morning and the driver had obviously had no time to prepare. We wished to hurry the driver along, for we did not wish anyone to come upon us and inquire what we were about. The colonel or Lady Catherine could easily put a wrench into everything and set us back another day.
So, we were occupied with all of that, and it was not until we were safely away, on the road, that we could return to the conversation about the pocket watch.
“I wish to speak of what you said, that you had an urge to take it,” I said. “Do you remember telling me that?”
He nodded slowly. “I do.”
“And don’t you think it is odd that you at some point lost the pocket watch?” I said. “How could I have found it in the parsonage?”
“Yes,” he said. “Let’s think that through. I remember that I had it the day that I proposed to you, because I checked it before coming down to see you, to see that it was about tea time, and I knew that you would be alone at that time and it would be a perfect time to propose.”
“And I remember you were fiddling with it as you were going on and on about how you wanted me against your own good sense.”
He winced. “That really was a dreadful marriage proposal, Elizabeth. Have I apologized for that?”
I waved this away. “Not only have you apologized, but you pointed out that you had apologized several times and that you were willing to keep apologizing. Granted, you said that in such a way as to make it impossible to forgive you, but this was so many Thursdays ago, I can’t even give a care about it now. Back to the watch. Did you set it down? Do you remember doing that?”
“Well, no, because you remember, when we were sitting outside, with the fire and the tea, you asked if I had it, and that was when I realized it was missing,” he said.
“That was days later,” I said. “It must have sat in the parsonage for what? Three Thursdays? Four?”
“Where did you find it?” he asked me. “Was it in the sitting room, where the proposal happened?”
“Yes,” I said. “And it was odd, too, because it was sitting out, clear as day, glimmering in a shaft of light from the window on a table. And I can’t think that a servant wouldn’t have seen it when they went in to open the draperies that morning. Or—if it had truly been there for that many Thursdays, it seems someone would have seen it while dusting or something and taken it, moved it, something. I got the odd sensation, when I saw it, that it was waiting for me.”
“You didn’t mention that?”
“Well, I picked it up and didn’t know what to do with it and then tucked it away,” I said. “And then when I gave it to you, I was so mortified that I had thoughtlessly plucked it out from my bosom and handed it over to you that I only wanted to change the subject immediately.”
“Yes, and that mortification has kept us from the subject entirely.” He eyed me. “You say you don’t usually tuck objects, erm, there.”
“No, of course not,” I said.
“So, why did you?”
“It just seemed… I had an urge ,” I said, grimacing.
He reached into his waistcoat and drew out the watch. He held it in his palm. We both stared at it.