Chapter 13
Mary sat at the piano in the music room at Longbourn. She took a deep breath and began playing the passage once again. It did not work. For the twelfth time in a row, she flubbed the same bit.
Anger and frustration swept through her, and she took it all out on the piano keys in front of her by banging a short series of random chords. The cacophony pulled her out of her tantrum, though it did little to truly soothe her.
The problem was not her music. The problem was Alan Goulding.
She stood up from the piano and went to fetch her pelisse and her cloak so she could take a walk, hoping that a bit of movement and some fresh air would aid in relieving some of her feelings.
The moment she stepped out into the sunshine, she felt a little better. The bright sun warmed her heart while the chilly, autumn air cooled her head. She began briskly walking in no direction in particular.
Once she was in motion, she let her thoughts roam free.
It had been more than two weeks since the assembly with its frank conversation with Alan…and their magical dance. For the first time in her life, Mary felt seen, wanted, and admired. Not only that, but the gentleman who her made her feel so was the one man she saw, wanted, and admired above all.
He had promised to explain to her why he had treated her so poorly when they were children, and she had looked forward to the conversation with hope; hope that she would understand well enough to allow her to let go of the past and focus on the man he was now and how his attention made her feel.
He had promised.
But two weeks had passed, and she had not seen him once in that time. She had been to four parties, but though his parents attended two of them, he attended none. Three times his mother had called on Mrs. Bennet at Longbourn, but Alan did not accompany her.
Mary was confused. Much of her past resentment toward him, which had receded as he had begun to treat her like the lady she was, had begun to return. She did not like this dissonance between what he told her and how he behaved.
Alan Goulding was chaos incarnate. He always had been, and it was what Mary found most fascinating about him. The problem was that, when it came to Mary’s life, she didn’t handle chaos and confusion particularly well.
As she approached her home and the end of her walk, she began to think that perhaps, after all, she might just be better off if he never returned to her. There was too much of a mixture of pleasure and pain in his company, and she wasn’t certain the exchange would ever be worth it.
She was less than a quarter mile from her front door when the very subject of her musings appeared, driving a curricle and looking far too handsome for Mary’s resolve.
He pulled up alongside her and said, “Mary, I was just at Longbourn asking for you. Would you be willing to go for a drive with me?”
She looked up at him, pleasure in her heart and doubt in her mind. The pause before she answered was too long for his comfort, because he squirmed a bit in his seat and looked a bit guilty.
Fine, she thought to herself. At least he knows that he did something wrong.
“Very well,” she said, “but I must insist on some answers.”
“I will tell you everything,” he said earnestly. “And if I leave out anything, you may ask. There is nothing I would withhold from you.”
There was a timbre to his voice and an earnestness to his expression that said that he was referring to far more than just information in his declaration. A tiny little butterfly of hope fluttered in Mary’s chest, but she shoved it down into her stomach where it just made her nervous.
“Very well,” she said.
He hopped down and helped her up into his curricle. Once she was seated, he set the horses in motion.
“Perhaps, you can start with why I haven’t seen you in two weeks,” she said when the silence grew too long for comfort.
“I was thinking, Mary. A great deal. About the past and the future. I am truly sorry if you felt neglected or lonely, but I needed to sort some things out in my mind before I presented myself to you again. It took far longer than I expected, but it is settled now. I am settled. If you don’t mind, I would like to discuss the past first.”
“I don’t mind,” said Mary.
“From the first time I met you up until now,” said Alan, “you have caught and held my attention like no one and nothing else. For a child who never focused on any one thing for long, such an experience was as disconcerting as it was undeniable. I think, at first, my behavior toward you was simply trying to get revenge for you making me so uncomfortable.”
Mary thought that sounded reasonable. There was no friendliness to their earliest interactions.
It just looked to her as if he simply didn’t like her.
At the time, the feeling was mutual, so it was fairly easy to ignore his insults and taunts.
It was only later, when his teasing was sometimes intermixed with a bit of friendliness, that it began to hurt her more.
“After a time, I began to want you to feel the same discomfort, so I deliberately tried to get your attention. Once I had it, however, I didn’t know what to do with it, which resulted in all kinds of confused capers, like leaving you up in a tree instead of rescuing you like the hero I was supposed to be. ”
Alan sighed and looked out over the fields that surrounded them.
“The turning point came when you were twelve and I was fifteen. I saw you walking in Meryton, trailing behind your mother and older sisters. There was something different about the way you looked and the way you walked. I believe your figure was beginning to fill out a bit. Very suddenly, you looked incredibly beautiful to me.”
He sighed again, and his gaze went to his hands which were holding the reins.
“Again, I didn’t know what to do with such feelings.
All I can remember thinking was that I wished you weren’t so captivating.
So, I shoved you into the mud, hoping on some level that if you weren’t so beautiful, I wouldn’t be so confused. ”
Oddly, Mary, who had never considered herself beautiful or captivating in any way, could understand such a reason.
Had she not felt the same way about him, that she wished he were not so handsome that he did not linger in her heart and mind the way he did?
The only difference between them was that he had acted, and she had not.
That was always the main difference between them.
“From that point onward, my behavior to you was merely a result of an internal tug-of-war. I couldn’t stay away from you.
You were a torch, and I was a moth. Yet, if I was a moth, I had a bit more self-preservation that they typically do, for I resisted your call as much as a man can.
Unfortunately, my method of resisting was to try to convince myself that you were not as beautiful as you are.
In the process, I ended up convincing you far more than I ever convinced myself. ”
At this point, Alan looked at Mary directly. “I am so sorry, Mary. It was absolutely the foolishness of youth, and the pain I inflicted on you was never deliberate.”
Mary was caught in his gaze. The pain and remorse he expressed was clear in his eyes.
“I forgave every instance as soon as it was over,” said Mary, eventually, breaking away from his gaze and looking out over the scenery.
“However, the effect of your words and your treatment was impossible to ignore. I think I knew that your feelings and your actions were not in alignment. However, I heard the same words repeated by others who were not so confused as you. My mother, my mother’s friends, and my younger sisters all played a role in my pain.
“If it had only been you that I was insulted by, I might have let it slip away, unheeded. But I heard the same words uttered by many others: ugly, plain, awkward, flat, boring. If it was an opinion held so universally by those around me, how could I not believe them?”
Mary could see out of the corner of her eye that Alan was looking down at his hands once again. It made her feel guilty. He was trying to explain, to apologize, to repair the damage he had done, and she was merely reinforcing the idea that perhaps it was too little and too late.
“What I mean is that I am aware, and I always have been aware, that you did not truly mean the harsh words you spoke to me, but knowing that did not take away their sting. This is not to say that the past is unforgiveable, though. I do forgive you, just as I hope you forgive me for being inflexible and harsh in my beliefs. I am saying this in hopes that it will not happen in the future.”
“It will not,” said Alan firmly. “It is impossible. All of those instances happened due to my conflicting feelings about you and about myself, but those conflicts are gone, resolved. That is what I have spent the last two weeks doing. I took a long, hard look at what I wanted and what I was prepared to do to get what I wanted.”
“And what is it that you want?” asked Mary.
“I want to marry you,” he said firmly and without hesitation.
Mary felt her jaw drop, and her head swiveled to stare at him, her eyes wide in surprise. He met her gaze with the most steady, gentle expression she had ever seen on his face.
“Mary, you have always been my heart,” he said, “but until now I have not been in a position to do anything about it. We were both too young. The feelings I have for you, have always had for you, are too strong and too steady to trifle with. Before I could approach you and declare my feelings, I had to be certain I was prepared to follow through. I needed to be the kind of man you would want to marry and who could make you happy.”
“I don’t know what to say,” said Mary, simply to fill the silence that gradually became too heavy to bear.
“You may have been thinking about this for weeks, but I have not even contemplated such a thing. Not ever. Even in my wildest hopes, I only imagined spending time with you that was not overshadowed by mixed messages.”
“I am well aware, Mary,” said Alan. “Take your time and think about it. In the meantime, I have a great deal of work to do to convince you that I can be a steady and positive presence in your life. Even if it takes years, I will be here for you until the day you are no longer influenced by my past stupidity.”
“I don’t think it will take years,” said Mary. The words tumbled from her mouth without her even considering the consequence of uttering them.
Alan pulled the carriage over to the side of the road and stopped it. He turned to her, his eyes ablaze with excitement. Mary was captured by it. Such an expression was her favorite among his many, varied expressions.
“Does that mean that you already return my feelings?” he asked.
“I don’t know, for you have not expressed your feelings clearly,” she said.
“However, you have said enough that I feel it only right to tell you that, just as you have always been drawn to me, I have felt the same toward you. I cannot say more than that, for I have never dared to dream beyond that.”
With a smile that was a beguiling mixture of excitement and gentle affection, Alan took Mary’s hand in his own and brought it to his lips.
Though she could not feel his lips through the gloves that kept her hands warm, the mere sight of him kissing her hand caused her to feel far warmer than she had been.
“Thank you, Mary,” he said. “If you don’t mind, I would like to resume calling on you, though not necessarily in the presence of my mother. What say you?”
Mary hesitated. Of course, she wanted to agree, but she did not know how much enthusiasm to show. She stared at his happy expression, and she thought about his clear declaration that he wished to marry her. If marriage was the goal, then it was imperative that she be as honest as possible.
She smiled and said, “I would like that very much.”
She would not have believed that Alan’s face could be any happier, but that is exactly what happened.
He practically shone with the intensity of his joy.
He leaned forward and kissed her quickly on the cheek, just the tiniest flutter of a kiss.
Before he pulled away, he whispered in her ear, “Thank you, Mary.”
Alan soon set the carriage in motion once again while Mary attempted to recover her equanimity. Once she could speak, they chatted on more mundane topics. Her heart was too full to speak further of feelings.