Chapter Twelve
CHAPTER TWELVE
fitzwilliam
A horse was missing from the stables.
A horse .
She had gone out on horseback, and she was frightened of horses, and it was dark, and what could have possessed her to do something so very, very mad?
I saddled and bridled a horse and went looking for her. I didn’t know what direction she would have ridden, however, and I rode about in circles, even as others admonished me that they had given up the search hours earlier and that we must begin again at first light.
They hindered me until midnight came.
And then it was silent.
No one knew she was missing, now, not yet. They’d find her empty bed tomorrow—today—but when that might be, I couldn’t say. Would she be missed at the breakfast she shared with Mr. Collins? His wife and his wife’s sister would be off seeking ribbons, as they did every day. It might take until mid-morning.
I could raise the alarm now, get everyone out of bed, start the search party now.
But the silence gave me leave to think more clearly, and I realized there was only one place she would go.
She had gone home.
I galloped off on the road toward Hertfordshire, thinking that if I could ride quick enough, I could overtake her. I could not imagine she would ride quickly on a horse when she was no horsewoman.
But I did not overtake her on the road. Perhaps she had left immediately after she ran from me in the woods. If so, she might have arrived at Longbourn before midnight. She might have crept into her family home under the cover of darkness, crawled into her own bed, and slept there.
When she woke, her family would be startled to find her there, and it would be Thursday, but she would have likely thought of some plausible story as a cover to explain it. And certainly her mother and father would welcome their daughter home without questioning overmuch. She had been gone from them for some time. She would be there with her beloved sister, the one who I had separated from Bingley, and her father, with whom I knew she was quite close.
Or, no. Her sister had been in London, and I knew this, because I had conspired to keep knowledge of her presence there from Mr. Bingley. It might be likely Jane Bennet was still there, then.
I arrived in Meryton sometime near dawn. I was exhausted, both physically and deep inside, in my heart, and I did not wish to go and break in on her reunion with her loved ones, a mad and bedraggled man who had ridden all night without any sleep.
I might have simply found someplace to sleep, on the ground. I thought that if I got off the horse, I should be able to keep it until the following midnight, even if I wasn’t touching it. But I had only my intuition that she was even here.
So, I rode, half-asleep on horseback, to Longbourn, and I stayed hidden to watch and wait for a sign of her.
I fell asleep there, hidden away, and only woke to the sound of a shrill noise, obviously from the throat of Mrs. Bennet. I cringed.
What a mother-in-law you shall have, came the echo of words in the past.
Yes, but it would be worth it. Anything would.
Elizabeth’s mother was shrieking out her surprise at finding Elizabeth in the house, I was able to ascertain.
I had been correct.
I knew where she was.
Relieved, I went off to find myself a place hidden in the fields to lie down and slip off into sleep.
When I woke, it was because I had been lying in such a way that the pocket watch was digging into me in the pocket of my waistcoat. Of course, I had not thought throwing it in the lake would make any difference at all.
elizabeth
It hadn’t gone particularly well, but I’d do better after everything reset and I woke up here again. My mother was particularly out of sorts at my reappearance.
Had I traveled all the way here on my own without a chaperone? What about my reputation? What about my safety? What if I had been set upon by thieves on the road?
She couldn’t know that the reputation part of it didn’t matter at all. But I supposed I had not been abundantly careful about my own safety, truly. I would have thought it nearly impossible that I should ride so far on horseback on my own, but I had been somewhat desperate.
Even so, I could recognize that my actions were not the actions of a woman in her right mind, not truly. I had gone rather mad, but then, one would go mad, if one had to live Thursday over and over the way I had been doing. It was only reasonable.
After I sent my mother into a tizzy and she said she must lie down due to a headache, I went for a walk on the grounds of Longbourn. My father seemed to wish to speak to me. I could tell that he knew that this wasn’t normal, what I’d done, and he was worried, too, but worried in a different way than my mother was worried, for my mother’s concern for others—even her daughters—always seemed a little self-absorbed, as if she was only worried about other’s pain as it affected her.
Perhaps we were all this way, in the end, only worried about things that hurt us, but at the very least, we should all have the decency to hide such things.
Ostensibly, I had come home to see my papa, to be with people who loved me and who cared for me. Ostensibly, I should have spoken to my father.
It was only that I couldn’t.
I had two options. One was to tell him the truth, and he would not believe me. He would think I had lost my mind. The other was lie, and then why tell him anything?
I began to wonder why I had come here at all.
I began to muse that I should have gone to London, to my aunt’s and uncle’s house on Gracechurch Street. My sister Jane was there. I should have gone to Jane.
Perhaps I still could. Perhaps I could—
Not on horseback again, though. I simply did not have that in me, not again. I was amazed I had managed it the first time, in fact.
And, at any rate, Jane could do nothing for me. She would not believe me either. No one could believe me.
I had come here, but now, I felt more alone than I had felt since I had begun repeating Thursdays. I felt terribly and awfully alone.
Coming here had been an impulsive decision, so it wasn’t as if I had spent a great deal of time thinking it all through. It had seemed right, however, then. Now, it began to feel wrong and foolish and stupid.
But then, while I was walking, I stumbled upon Mr. Darcy, who was sleeping in the fields outside Longbourn.
He scrambled to his feet and ran a hand through his hair and looked me over.
“You followed me,” I said.
“Obviously,” he said.
“Obviously?” I folded my arms over my chest. “I should have thought it was obvious I was trying to get away from you.”
“Well, I was worried about you. You think I’m going to simply accept that you are off in the wide world all alone with all the dangers that come along with that? You’re my wife , Elizabeth.”
My mouth dropped all the way open and I made a noise in my throat. He had just said that.
He raised his gaze to mine. “I mean, of course, we haven’t made it official, and I haven’t done it right, but I will if you’ll only accept—” He broke off, understanding flashing over his expression.
“Mr. Darcy,” I said in a low and even voice. “I did not wish you to accompany me here.”
He ran a hand through his hair again. He had slept outside for a bit, and his clothes were dirty and he smelled of sweat and he looked unkempt, and… for some reason, I found myself thinking this made him look even more handsome. Dash this man to the depths and back again! He swallowed. “That is just it, though, isn’t it? You have not accepted me. Never once. No matter how I have asked, you have not.”
“You mean, asked to marry you?” I said.
“You do not wish to marry me, madam,” he said.
“I…” I looked over my shoulder at Longbourn in the distance. “I never said that.”
“You have not said that,” he said. “But you have not said that you would like to be my wife either. You said you wanted me, and that is not the same thing.” He turned away. “Perhaps I should not have come after you.”
“I would be foolish not to accept your offer of marriage,” I said stoutly. “And it makes even less sense now, in this half-life, this world in which nothing changes.”
He eyed me, furrowing his brow. “I don’t know about that. Is this a bad world for you, Elizabeth?”
“Obviously,” I said, hunching up my shoulders, though I thought about the night of the ball or the time that he had said we could travel all over the world, and I thought about what he had said about going to that house outside of Pemberley, just him and me, stuck there, living the same day again and again.
He nodded slowly, thinking it over. “You said it’s a perfect world for me, one without any responsibilities, wherein I can do as I choose. I came to tell you it’s not like that for me. That I was falling apart until you were living the day with me. And then, I had someone to be responsible to, someone to care about, someone to count on me… I don’t know who I am without that, Elizabeth, and I don’t know if you can understand, but I don’t wish to have no responsibilities. I cease to be myself without…” He shook his head. “Never mind, I can’t explain it.”
I uncrossed my arms, eyeing him.
“It’s a perfect world for you, actually, isn’t it?” he said quietly.
I shook my head. “No,” I said immediately, “no it is not.” But I did not cross my arms again.
He rubbed the side of his jaw. “What is your life like, Elizabeth? You said to me, once, that you depended on a marriage for your very survival, and I said you were exaggerating, but… what do you know of freedom, madam?”
I hung my head.
“Is that why you came here?” He gestured around. “All alone, all on your own, so many miles? Have you ever done anything like that before?”
I bit down on my bottom lip. My eyes stung.
He was still rubbing his jaw, still looking at me. “Have I spent all this time, all of it, thinking about you as some extension of me? How have I not thought of what you wanted, what you needed, how—”
“Oh, I am not important, Mr. Darcy,” I burst out with.
He raised his eyebrows. “Miss Bennet, you are—”
“I’m not saying that women are never important, but men are always more important, are they not? Men make all the decisions. And that is why I have to get married, obviously, if I want to survive. For what will I be otherwise except an imposition, a bothersome aging spinster who must be shuffled here, there, and everywhere?”
“I suppose I can see why you would say that, but—”
“A unmarried girl is important precisely for one moment in her life, in that moment where she gets to make the one important decision given to her,” I went on, somehow unable to stop the words coming out of my mouth, “and that is to decide who she will marry. She gets to decide that. But I am aging out of it, sir, and there is no decision to be made if no one is interested—”
“I am interested, for God’s sake, Elizabeth!”
“No, I know you are, of course you are, but don’t you see, that’s it, that’s the end. I make that decision, that one decision, and then my decision-making days are over and I spend the rest of my life catering to my husband’s decisions and doing as he asks and seeing to whatever makes him happy—”
“I won’t do that to you. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“No, I think it does, I think it does, actually—”
“Elizabeth, you have this view of it, of marriage from the perspective of your means and your social circle, but amongst people in my social circle, women have the capacity to do all sorts of things. As my wife, you will have agency. You will make decisions. You will have freedom—”
“No, I’m not saying I become some slave or something. Anyone could see from my own parents’ marriage that my mother does not serve her husband in all things,” I said, clenching my hands into fists.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Just so. I’m confused.”
I drew in a breath. “But she complains about my father, anyway, doesn’t she? And here we are, Will, here we are, with no expectations set down upon us and no reason to do what is expected and no reason to follow any strictures of any kind, and you wish to lock us up in some house without servants and live our endless days out in succession—”
“Oh, no, I see entirely what you’re saying,” he said.
I folded my arms over my chest again. “You do?”
“What do you want, Elizabeth?” he said softly. “Do you want to go on an adventure? Is that what you want?”
“No,” I said. “Not alone.”
“With me?”
“Well, not if you don’t want to,” I said. “Not if you just want it all settled.”
“I want to make you happy, actually,” he said. “I want to protect you and care for you and please you. If I don’t have someone to do these things for, there’s no point in life, and you’re everything to me, now. So, whatever you want.”
I twisted my hands together. “Oh.”
“That wasn’t the right thing to say?”
“It’s only that I…” I drew in a breath. “I have never had the opportunity to let my happiness be the driving force behind anything at all. I don’t matter, Will, not that much. I never have.”
“What are you saying? You matter quite a lot.”
“No, I don’t! Or, I haven’t. Never has anyone said to me, ‘We shall do whatever Elizabeth wants today.’ It is always that we must do whatever is best for the family or the group or the people at the dinner party or society at large or…” I let out a breath. “Do you see?”
He nodded. “Yes, I think so. But you mustn’t think my life is really like that either.”
“No, I know, that’s why I said the thing about your being happy that you had no responsibility, I suppose.” I considered. “But you’re right. It’s me who’s happy to have no responsibility. And if I agree to be your wife, it’s… responsibility.”
“All right,” he said with a shrug.
I moved my hands to my hips, glaring at him. “That easily?”
“Quite that easily,” he said. “If you change your mind, however, I still wish to marry you.”
I looked away. “It’s not that I don’t want to marry you… I want all the things that come along with it.”
“Except the responsibility,” he supplied. He was teasing me.
“Oh, damn you, Will Darcy,” I said.
He tutted. “Hardly a ladylike word, Elizabeth.”
“Apologies,” I muttered.
“I don’t think you object to the responsibility, truly. I think you have never had any freedom,” he said. “So, I wish to assume all the responsibility, all of it. And you are free to do as you like, and I shall make anything you want possible.”
Well, this warmed me. My lips parted as I looked him over, feeling affection rise in me. I wished to touch him, and he said I could have freedom, didn’t he, so… I did it. I put my hand against his chest, right over his heart.
He let out a little noise as I made contact with him.
“It doesn’t seem fair to you,” I whispered softly.
“Let me worry about that,” he said. His voice was soft, too.
I moved closer, my hand still on his chest. I held up my face, offering him my lips.
He looked at my mouth. He looked into my eyes. He looked at my mouth again. He let out a tattered breath.
And then, nothing happened.
Moments passed, and he was still looking at my lips. His voice was barely substantial. “If there’s something you want, Elizabeth, something I can give you, you must let me know. I have just pledged to make anything you want possible, have I not?”
“Oh,” I said, curving my mouth into a smile. “I want to be kissed, Will.”
He reached up and slid one of his large, warm palms against my cheek. His thumb feathered over my cheekbone. “Have you ever been kissed, Elizabeth?”
I shook my head.
“It would be an honor, then,” he breathed, and his mouth dipped down and his lips touched mine, brushing against mine once. The contact tingled all the way through me like the taste of effervescent wine. A pause and then his lips brushed mine again, and it tingled again. I made a noise in the back of my throat.
He made an answering one, and then his lips were on mine harder, and his tongue was warm and wet and slick and sweet against mine, teasing and tasting me, and I was nothing but tingles, all over my body.
I closed my hand at his chest around his clothing, clutching him as he kissed me senseless.