Chapter Four
If I had hoped that my conversation with Caroline had communicated to her that I was not interested in her in that way, I was sorely disappointed in that. The following day, she somehow contrived to separate all of us walking so that it was just her and me.
She used this opportunity to tease me incessantly about marrying Elizabeth, and I wondered if her teasing was making the entire notion seem more feasible than it actually was.
I could not marry a woman like that.
She hated me.
But I told Caroline, when she teased me that I should never be able to get a painter to copy the likeness of my new bride’s bright eyes, that I should simply have to engage five or ten and have her sit for all of them.
“And where will you put all of these portraits?” she said icily as we walked by the shrubbery.
“Oh, I shall have a room entirely devoted to portraits of her, quite clearly. I shall call it, ‘The Elizabeth Room.’ I shall have it done all in blues. And I shall insist everyone who visits the house come in and sit inside and stare at my wife’s bright eyes and tell me that she is the most beautiful creature in the world, as I know is true. ”
Which was, of course, when Elizabeth herself appeared around the hedgerows, her eyes quite wide.
What must she think of that thing I had just said, especially because there had been a great deal of venom in it, a rather nasty tone. I had said it to hurt Caroline, but she had said the other things to hurt me, and it had not been for Elizabeth’s ears.
“You used us abominably ill!” cried Mrs. Hurst, who was right behind Elizabeth. “You cut us off and walked very fast and got yourself lost amongst the hedges so that we could not find you. What are you thinking, Caroline, really, alone with a man like that?”
I recoiled from her. I looked at all three of the women and I stalked off into the coldness of the November garden.
I walked alone for some time until I perceived footsteps behind me, and I called out, “Miss Bingley, I have no more interest in your company at this time, I am afraid. Pray give me but ten moments of solitude.”
Something in the way the footsteps faltered told me it was not Caroline behind me.
I stopped and turned.
Elizabeth was there, still with that wide-eyed expression on her face. “Oh, apologies, I… I ought not have come after you. They called after me to stop, and I did not heed them, for I felt I needed to…” She twisted her hands together, gaping at me.
I ran a hand through my hair, speechless.
“Why would you say that?” she burst out with.
I cleared my throat. “Caroline—that is, Miss Bingley—she has a sharp tongue in her head. She has taken to teasing me mercilessly that I am… that I wish to…”
“Wish to what?”
“T-to marry you.” I gestured. “She thinks it is quite funny.”
“Oh,” said Elizabeth, nodding. “I see. And you do not wish to, and you think the opposite of the idea that I am beautiful or whatever you said, and it was—”
“I am sorry you heard it,” I said. “I am very sorry.”
She shook her head at me. “You are not sorry. You are not a sorry sort of person. You are the sort of person who thinks of people like me as very much beneath you, and you do not care about how you make any of us feel.”
“Now, that is not true, not at all. I can see why you may have thought it of me, and I don’t know if I have anything to say in my own defense, but it is only that…
” I looked up at the afternoon sky above, a gray sky, a gloomy sky, a sky of the late autumn.
“This is not like me, none of this. Being here with these people, attending these sorts of social functions, having these conversations about pen mending, none of it.”
“Right, you’d be amongst other proper people, I suppose, having conversations about An Essay on Man ad infinitum.”
I hung my head. She thought I was some sort of snob.
Was I some sort of snob?
I met her gaze. “I have been out of sorts as of late, that is all. But I should tell you, Miss Bennet, that you are one of the most fascinating people I have met in quite some time. And while I obviously would never ask you for your hand in marriage, Caroline has been teasing me because I made comments about… well, you are pleasing to look upon, that is all, something that likely comes as no surprise to you, seeing as you—all of your sisters—”
“You cad!” she cried.
I furrowed my brow.
She threw her hands up in the air, uttered a frustrated cry, and then she pushed past me and hurried off down the path.
“Wait, where are you going?” I called after her.
She did not answer, so I went after her.
She heard me, and she called to me, without turning round, “Mr. Darcy, I should like to be alone. I am on the verge of tears, and I would rather you did not witness it.”
Verge of tears?
Was this my fault?
“Well, don’t cry, Miss Bennet,” I said, rushing to catch up with her. “I am so very confused right now. Did I say something that—”
“Leave me alone,” she cried, turning on me.
“I feel that I oughtn’t,” I said. “You are running off deeper into the gardens here—well, it’s going to give way to the fields and forest soon, actually—and I do not think it would be the right thing to leave you out here all alone.
Let me escort you back to the house and you may shut yourself up in your bedchamber all alone for as long as you like. ”
She scoffed.
“Allow me to apologize for whatever it was that I said—”
“Stop talking,” she said.
“But I am only uncertain what it was that I said that upset you!”
Abruptly, she veered off the path and dove directly between two fir trees and off into the wilderness.
I plunged after her. “Miss Bennet, be reasonable!” I cried.
She was off and running ahead of me.
I gave pursuit.
Now, we were running through the wooded area behind Netherfield. I was not entirely familiar with the grounds out here, but I was fairly capable of keeping a compass in my head. I was not frightened of getting lost, but it was alarming to be out here, off the path, I had to admit.
I caught up to her fairly quickly. My legs were longer than hers and they were not encumbered by long skirts.
She was a robust woman, who was obviously given to walking quite a bit, however, so while I may have caught up with her, I am embarrassed to say that I was already a bit winded, whereas she was not.
“Go away, Mr. Darcy,” she cried.
I caught her by the arm and stopped her movement.
She was furious and began to struggle against me.
I held fast. “Miss Bennet, please, calm down, see reason.”
“Let go of me or I shall kick you in the shins,” she said, her chest heaving, her eyes flashing.
I let go of her, less because I was frightened of her kicking and more because I was affected by the sight of her like that. She was something to behold, I have to say, like an angry goddess or the queen of the faeries. She took off again.
This time, I did not run after her, but simply kept her in sight as she rushed away from me into the woods. I followed her, but only so closely as to make sure I did not lose sight of her.
By and by, an old house came into view. It was smallish, though it had two stories.
However, it was in a state of disrepair.
There had once been a porch on the front of the house, but there was now a great hole in the midst of it, for the wood had rotted.
The ceiling over the porch had collapsed and was falling down, and there was no door to the place, just a gaping hole.
The windows on the top floor still had glass in them except for one, and that one was boarded up.
Elizabeth ducked into the house.
I cried out, “Madam, that structure does not look safe! Come out of there immediately.”
She ducked her head out. “You are still following me?”
“I have said to you that I am unwilling to leave you alone in a strange wood.”
She let out a roar of frustration. “You are the worst man I know, Mr. Darcy,” she said and disappeared into the house.
I debated. Now that I knew where she was, perhaps I should go back to the main house and enlist the help of others to get her to come inside.
Of course, what would be proper would be to bring along the other ladies, and I thought that Caroline would never set foot in this dirty, dilapidated house out here, and it would be pointless to even bring her along.
So, I could simply get Bingley, I supposed. Elizabeth liked Bingley more than she liked me, really.
Or did she?
What amount that little comment about his humility earlier?
Why had she said that? Perhaps it had simply been a little joke, something meaningless, but I think it spoke to an idea that she did not entirely think of Bingley as a serious man.
If I came back out here with him and he tried to get her out of the house, she might not listen to him either.
And, after all, there was a good chance that the minute that I left her here she went elsewhere.
I trudged forward and climbed gingerly over the broken porch before I ducked into the house myself.
“Miss Bennet?” I called.
She didn’t answer.
The house was in horrible shape. It looked as if some bandits had slept here at some point, and they’d made a fire right in what used to be the front room and left behind all the bones of whatever they’d cooked on the fire in addition to some jars and tins from the food they’d brought with them.
Animals had gotten into all of that and strewn it about the place. It was not a pleasant smell.
“Miss Bennet!” I called again. “This is no place for a lady like yourself.”
She didn’t answer me again.
There was a doorway here, opposite the front room. I went through it and the room here was dark and full of dead leaves and broken tables and chairs. Some had obviously been smashed for firewood. She wasn’t in there.
I retreated and started up the stairs to the next level. They were quite rickety, and they swayed as I climbed. “Miss Bennet,” I called again.
She appeared at the top of the stairs. “What is wrong with you, sir? I have asked you, again and again, to leave me be, and you—”
“This house is going to fall down at any moment, and it will collapse on your head, and I shall not be responsible for your death,” I said, heat in my voice.
“Oh, it is not going to collapse.” She gestured above us.
I looked up at the roof. “There are holes in the ceiling, Miss Bennet.”
She had noticed that too. “All right, all right.” She stepped one foot onto the steps, and there was a cracking noise, and she shrieked and backed off of the steps, eyes wide.
I went still.
She was standing above me, at the top of the stairs, on the second landing. The stairs swayed under my weight, and I suddenly realized that I was going to fall if I didn’t do something.
I scrambled up the stairs.
Why up and not down?
I haven’t any notion. I was close to the top, I suppose? I was going that way, anyway?
The stairs splintered under my feet, and I flailed in the air, and she screamed, and I fell forward, and she caught me, and then we were both yelling and I was trying to scramble about for purchase and she was trying to pull me onto the landing, and we both yelled out a number of orders to the other, none of which were followed.
We pitched back and forth, her almost falling onto the steps and me sending her tilting backward, and then she lost her balance and hurled down onto her backside, and I went with her.
At this moment, the stairs completely splintered and fell away, and I was left clutching the top of the railing, which was bolted to the wall, my feet on nothing, just on the air, and I managed to pull myself onto the landing just as the railing pulled free from the wall and tumbled down on top of the ruined steps.
I sat there, peering down at the bottom level, trying to catch my breath.
She crawled over next to me, letting out tiny little noises with each breath, worried noises, and we both looked all the way down at the tangle of the lumber of the steps below us and then scooted backwards, all the way backwards, until our backs were against the wall.
“Oh, dear,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “Quite.”