Chapter 20
I Love You
Elizabeth did not know if Mr. Darcy followed her or chose to remain with his cousin. All she knew was that she was in no state to write any letters right then.
She simply ran to her room in the parsonage and locked the door behind her. Then she collapsed on the bed with unending tears.
In all her twenty years, Elizabeth had never been exposed to anything so raw and heartwrenching.
The deaths she had known of until then were of shallow acquaintances, or people she had not known very well.
Her own grandparents on the Bennet side of the family had shuffled off the mortal coil when she was three—right after Kitty’s birth.
And those on Mrs. Bennet’s side had been long from the world before her mother had married her father.
Even the tragedy of Napoleon’s ongoing war had not truly affected the gentry of Meryton as much as it could have, though there were plenty of young men in the village and tenant houses who never returned home. The gentility were, after all, above the touch of such deaths.
Elizabeth suddenly felt exceptionally stupid as she realized—for all her satire and wise speak—she had never truly been wise at all.
Everything had brushed past her like the breeze. Unnoticed. Even when she thought she had noticed.
“Miss Bennet, I implore you, do not cry.”
Elizabeth raised her head from the cocoon of her arms. Mr. Darcy was kneeling once more beside her bed, their faces close enough to touch.
“How can I not?”
Tears continued to roll down her cheeks.
Mr. Darcy searched her eyes.
“I thought you did not hold me in any esteem.”
Heat flooded Elizabeth’s face. She swiped roughly at her tears. The lump in her throat had grown to the size of a giant boulder.
“I did not…” she said, hoarsely. “It is true.”
More tears overflowed from her eyes.
“But I do now.”
Her heart was weighed down, as if full of lead. As if it would sink through the earth and all the waters, and never stop sinking. “How could I not after spending so much time with you?”
Raw anguish suddenly spread through Mr. Darcy’s features. He disappeared. One moment there. The next moment, not.
Elizabeth covered her head with her arms once more and continued to cry.