Chapter Eleven
CHAPTER ELEVEN
fitzwilliam
It was late when I dragged myself back to my room in Rosings. I had to contend with Richard, who often accosted me if I came back late. He was angry.
He would rail at me on these evenings, irate, lit up with rage.
Where had I been all day, everyone had been worried about me, they had started a search party, it seemed that Miss Elizabeth Bennet was missing, they were certain they must send word to her family, and why didn’t I find any of this concerning?
I was used to it, and I had concocted all manner of answers, things that I learned to say by trial and error, to soothe him.
That night, I shut the door in his face and ignored him as he pounded on the door.
I sat down on my bed and pulled the pocket watch out.
I stared at it in my palm. “I never made any kind of wish,” I said to the watch.
The watch was silent and golden and gleaming.
I closed my fist around it.
“This is not a life I wish for myself,” I said, and the tears were coming again. “I would never have wished away my responsibilities. God knows, without them, I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
Clinging to the elopement, to the ceremony, it wasn’t as she thought.
It wasn’t because I wanted to wash myself clean of the sin of loving her, of wanting her, of wanting in that way. I did not think her a secret or anything shameful.
She made me a better man. I was happier when I was with her. She was the only thing that made living in this sham of an existence remotely bearable. If it had only been me, living the day again and again on my own, I should have gone mad. I should have thrown myself into that forge, again and again and again .
If I had taken her, if I had thrown all of it to the wind and lost myself in the wonder of her body, which I wanted to do—Christ, the thought of it!—if I had done that, it would have shattered the last piece of me, changed me irrevocably into something unrecognizable.
One of my tears fell on the pocket watch.
“How can a man be a man of honor in a world where honor is meaningless?” I said to the watch. “How can a man live a life of meaning in a world devoid of it?”
The watch said nothing.
I got up from the bed.
I stalked over to the door.
I pushed it open.
Richard was there, red-faced, blustering.
I went past him, saying nothing.
He pursued me as I walked down the stairs, across the foyer, out the front door and down the steps of Rosings.
He pursued me as I walked all the way over to the lake where my uncle Lewis de Bourgh had tragically drowned years ago.
Richard was still sputtering as I threw the damnable watch into the water.
Then I set out for the parsonage.
He came along, but he stopped saying much. I was walking very fast. He was puffing behind me, and I thought he should really be in better shape, considering he was in the army. Didn’t he have to march or something of that nature?
When I reached the rectory, it was dark, and I didn’t know which window corresponded to her room. I debated going about and banging on each of them, or throwing rocks at the upper windows.
But what did it matter?
It would be midnight again soon. All of this would reset.
I tried the door.
Locked.
I put my shoulder into it and splintered the damnable thing. That would reset, too.
Inside, I bellowed her name. “Elizabeth!”
From within, I heard the sound of feet, of alarmed voices.
“Elizabeth,” I screamed, my voice breaking.
People were coming closer.
“Elizabeth,” I cried, “you’re all there is. You’re the only thing that means anything at all. How can I make you understand that?”
Mr. Collins appeared in the front room, dressed for sleeping, his round face so startled it might have been comical under other circumstances.
“Where is she?” I said. “Come out here, Elizabeth!”
“Miss Bennet is missing, sir,” said Mr. Collins. “You were gone, too. We thought she was with you.”