Chapter Two
“WHAT WAS THAT about?” said Jane to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was seated next to Jane outside on a set of chairs that had been set up with a pavilion.
The rolling green fields stretched out ahead of them, all the way to the horizon, where the sky was blue and dotted with fluffy clouds.
They were watching a game of pall-mall that was being played by a number of other guests, all of whom had glasses of wine.
If it came to that, Jane had a glass of wine, too.
Behind them, Barralds stretched up towards the sky, its pillars and windows stately and imposing as they overlooked the stretch of the lawn.
Elizabeth had refused the offer of wine. “What was what about?”
“You know full well and don’t pretend otherwise,” said Jane.
“You and Mr. Darcy. He came straight for you and you went and talked in whispers, and you both looked about, wary, as if you were concerned that people were watching you or listening in or something. It was all very irregular, and if you hadn’t looked so much as if you wished to conceal yourselves, it would have been less remarkable. ”
Elizabeth sighed. She had not told her sister a number of things that had befallen her, and she wasn’t certain why this was, exactly.
She usually gave her sister a faithful recitation of everything that happened to her, but there was a sort of line in her experience after which she did not speak, to anyone.
When she went to Rosings to visit her friend Charlotte Collins, she told Jane everything about that experience, up to the point when Mr. Darcy proposed to her and she refused him.
But she did not tell Jane that she knew that Mr. Darcy was the person who had convinced Mr. Bingley to leave Netherfield, thus preventing further connection between them. She had never told her sister this, even though Mr. Bingley had come back into Jane’s life now and was pursuing her again.
However, it seemed a rather long courtship in Elizabeth’s mind.
She was not certain what Mr. Bingley was about, inviting Jane along on this trip to the country but not asking for her hand?
She wasn’t sure if she thought well of Mr. Bingley or not.
Was something preventing him asking Jane to marry him?
What was it?
Was it Elizabeth herself?
She was no longer respectable, though she didn’t know if Mr. Bingley knew this or not.
It was partly because of her birth, though she now suspected that perhaps her parents had been married. If her mother had eloped with the duke, then Elizabeth might, in fact, be legitimate.
It was also because, however, she had done a number of improper things with men.
Not all of these had really been her fault.
But she had believed herself ruined and unmarriageable for so long that she was not sure she could actually accept the fact that she was now married.
Mr. Wickham had done things to her, had told her that he had ruined her, when he had truly only spilled his seed on her palm, had only coerced her into stimulating him to a climax with her hand.
She had never told Jane that.
She had not told Jane that she had acquiesced to an experience with her husband, before they were married, to show her that such behavior between men and women could be pleasant, because she had assumed she was ruined, and then she’d been naked and stimulated by her husband, and he’d discovered she had not been ruined.
Now, she was married.
Now, she’d been truly deflowered.
She wondered if she pursued this secret past of her mother so heavily so that she did not have to think so hard at all that had befallen her. In the end, she had been through quite a lot.
And then there was Mr. Darcy to think of.
“Does Mr. Darcy still wish to marry you, Elizabeth?” said Jane.
“No, Mr. Darcy is aware that I am married to his cousin,” said Elizabeth.
“Oh, he knows?” Jane tilted her head. “Perhaps, then, your husband did tell his family, Elizabeth. I know you are convinced he did not, and I know none of them have reached out to you, but if Mr. Darcy—”
“Mr. Darcy knows, but the colonel did not tell him,” said Elizabeth.
It was quiet for a moment.
Jane seemed to be thinking it over. “Mr. Darcy is still in love with you,” she decided.
“No, no,” said Elizabeth. “I don’t know that he was ever in love with me.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Well, he has never really behaved like a man in love,” said Elizabeth. “And it has never made any sense. He doesn’t find me handsome, as we all know—”
“You’re referring to that slight all that time ago at Meryton?” said Jane. “You can’t think that meant anything. If he proposed to you, he had obviously changed his mind!”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think it was ever about that,” said Elizabeth.
“Why, then? Why would he propose?”
“Well, that is why I find the man entirely confounding, I suppose,” said Elizabeth. “At any rate, we need not worry about that, because he has given me his word that he will leave off those sorts of intentions towards me, and he knows I am married. He has said we shall only be amiable.”
“You are saying you do not know why he proposed.”
“I have never known,” said Elizabeth. “I have never been able to make any sense of it at all.” It was true.
She knew that the man had been strangely devoted to her, willing to marry her even when they thought there was some chance she could have been carrying Mr. Wickham’s child (though there had truly been no chance of this, not that she had understood that.) She could not say why he had been so devoted, however.
Perhaps it was some overinflated sense of duty.
Mr. Darcy did seem that sort of man, in the end, duty-bound, serious, willing to do whatever it was that was right, no matter what it cost him.
“Lizzy, I see what you are about.” Jane sipped at her wine.
“What do you mean?” said Elizabeth. “I am not ‘about’ anything at all. You are the one who has brought up this subject and pursued it so faithfully. I should rather not think or speak of Mr. Darcy at all.”
“You have tried to lead me away from the topic I asked about in the first place,” said Jane.
“No, I have not!”
“Indeed, you have. You have not explained to me what he spoke to you about.”
Elizabeth had not told her sister that she might be the daughter of a duke either.
Truly, there was no reason for her to have concealed these things from her sister.
It was only that now there were so many of them that it was onerous to try to find some way to reveal them all.
She would have to start at the beginning and talk unceasingly for the better part of hours, she thought.
Now, she kept it all to herself because it was easier than explaining it.
Or… she didn’t know.
Perhaps it was something else.
Perhaps, when she’d discovered that she and Jane were not, in fact, sisters, a rift had seemed to open up between them.
She knew Jane didn’t wish it to be true, but Elizabeth could not help but feel it.
She was not who she had always thought herself to be.
It smote her, deep in the center of herself, and it changed her.
She did not feel like herself anymore.
She did not think she ever would, ever again.
She was someone else now, and she had no notion of how to even be this new person.
“He merely wished to inquire why I was going by Bennet instead of Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” Elizabeth told Jane, and this was not a lie, she assured herself. This was, indeed, why he had taken them aside.
“Perhaps you should reveal your marriage,” said Jane.
It would, truly, make her comings and goings much easier if she were married. She could even conceivably serve as a chaperone for her sister, if so. Elizabeth sighed.
“You know,” said Jane, “it is not only Mr. Darcy who makes little sense, I think. You, Lizzy, have made very little sense to me either. Your behavior seems strange and somewhat nonsensical.”
“Well, how would I go about revealing that I am married now, when I have been introduced to positively everyone as not married?” said Elizabeth.
“I don’t know, I suppose,” said Jane, sighing.
“But it would not have been necessary if you hadn’t insisted upon it.
” She eyed her sister. “I don’t think you trust your husband, that’s what I think.
You don’t believe that he will honor your marriage when he comes back, and so, you are acting as if you are not married to lessen the blow of all that when it happens. ”
Elizabeth only shook her head. “Don’t be foolish. I have the marriage certificate. I can prove it.”
“Yes, but you have thought about having to prove it,” said Jane. “I don’t know if you should have married that man. I wonder about Colonel Fitzwilliam’s character, in the end.”
MR. FITZWILLIAM DARCY was not entirely sure when it was he knew he was ruinously and irrevocably in love with Elizabeth, but he was afraid that it was rather later than he would like to think it was.
He did not think he was that in love with her when he proposed.
Somehow, her refusing him strengthened his feelings, which was perverse, and he knew it. Everything about this fascination he had with her had proved to be perverse, however, truly.
Seeing her here, at Barralds, it had been a blow. He had felt it, truly, as if he had been struck.
He had not come here to get away from her.
Well, not nominally. He would profess he had come here because he wished to introduce his sister to a varied society so that when she came out in the following spring, she would have become accustomed to many of the members of the ton they would be associating with.
He would have said that he had to go somewhere for the summer, because no one stayed in London, and he’d simply chosen this country house because it seemed the brightest social scene.
However, he would be lying if he didn’t admit that getting away from the specter of Elizabeth Bennet had been part of the allure of being here. He could have gone to Rosings, after all, had thought about it.