Chapter 17 The Wheel Turns #3
“I do not believe it! All the advantages of this marriage are yours. You are perhaps not as rich and fashionable as you hoped, but you are well provided for, and should we ever have children, they will have every advantage. You have entered one of the most respected families in England. You no longer need worry about your mother and sisters as I will hardly allow them to starve in the hedgerows, and simply being related to me will improve their prospects considerably. You will eventually make some sort of position among the ton, and curtsy to the Queen. All the advantages accrue to you, and none to me.”
Thoroughly appalled, Elizabeth snapped, “And these are the words of a gentleman?”
Darcy gave full vent to his own ire. “You have some nerve accusing me of ungentlemanly behaviour. Perhaps I should pretend this marriage is anything but an evil. Do you expect me to be happy at having the rest of my life dictated by a woman so selfish and uncouth as your mother? Should I be happy that I let the rough charms of a country miss lull me into letting my guard down momentarily? Should I be overjoyed that a mere two minutes of not watching my back cost me my freedom? Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connexions? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?”
Drowning in fury, Elizabeth shouted back, “I repeat sir! For your own edification, in the vain hope that you will listen and believe me eventually. I. did. not. compromise. you! I never would! I do not even like you!”
“That has never stopped any fortune hunter before,” he said with a sneer that she wanted to wipe off his face with an axe.
“You mistake me, so let me be absolutely and abundantly clear, in the hopes that someday we can find a way out of this farce. From the very beginning—from the first moment, I may almost say—of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”
Darcy, so angry he was seeing red and clenching his fists, felt the words like a hammer blow.
“It sounds like Wickham’s lies found fertile ground. Pardon my mistake—I thought you cleverer than that, but apparently, I was wrong.”
Elizabeth moved closer to stare at him from a foot away, practically shouting, “Pay more attention! When I said, ‘a month,’ I meant literally ‘one month,’ not some vague interval between one and three months. That opinion preceded my acquaintance with Mr Wickham, and it was based entirely on my interactions with you and you alone.”
Darcy cut the distance in half yet again and spoke angrily from inches away. “And yet, here we are, both married to the last person in the world we could be prevailed on to marry.”
Elizabeth saw, much too late, that her temper very well could ruin the entire rest of her life if she were not careful, and suspected it already had.
She was under his power, and antagonising him seemed like a blisteringly stupid strategy, but he got under her skin in a way nobody ever had.
She was beginning to suspect she had led far too sheltered a life, and this man was going to be the death of her.
Calming slightly, she said, “Yes, here we are, and here, I suppose, we shall remain.”
Darcy calmed down slightly as well, stared out the carriage window for a few minutes, and finally said, “We will not solve it here in the courtyard of this inn.”
Elizabeth looked around and noticed that they were in fact stopped and there was another Darcy crested coach waiting, while several servants in Darcy livery stood around, far enough away to not overhear the conversation.
At least, she hoped rather than believed, since their shouts were probably heard a mile away, and the drivers and grooms in their present coach had certainly gotten an earful.
Trying to remain calm, Darcy said, “I must go. My ship leaves at dawn. I have several hours to travel, and several tasks to deal with when I get there. Go to Pemberley. Try not to be so angry, and I will do the same. When I return, I will work out how to make a life we can live.”
Elizabeth felt thoroughly discouraged. “You will work it out?”
“Yes, I will work it out. Whatever your involvement was or was not, in the end, you chose to attach yourself to my family. True forced marriages do not exist in England. Your father did not drag you to the alter kicking and screaming, and even if he had, you could have refused to speak the vows. You stood in that church and spoke them, albeit with one obvious omission. This is still my family, which you joined voluntarily, and as the head of it, I will determine our fate.”
Elizabeth tried to think of some reply to what was likely the stupidest thing any man had ever said on his wedding day, but she was singularly unable to produce a single word.
Darcy sat, waiting for her to say something, but given the set of her jaw, he did not expect anything useful.
Having never really dealt with women very much in his life, he assumed she would want to go off and cool off like a man would.
It was unfortunate that the cooling off period was to last months, but such was life.
He imagined he was not the first, nor would he be the last husband to transition straight from his wife’s brown books to a conveyance.
He suspected sailors and soldiers endured this sort of thing routinely, and if they could manage, he could.
He somewhat abruptly slid over to the door.
“I am sorry that we must part with such animosity, but I cannot tarry. You have another two or three hours with one rest stop before stopping for the night, and you will be at Pemberley in three days. Get to know the house, and we will start our life, such as it is, when I return.”
Still seething, Elizabeth could not think of anything to say, so she just nodded.
With a last look, the gentleman opened the door, stepped down, walked over to his other coach, and entered it without looking back.
Elizabeth watched the whole operation in consternation, until the other carriage pulled beside her coach on the way out.
Mrs Elizabeth Darcy, sitting in the courtyard of the coaching station in Hatfield and feeling the weight of months to decades of anger and humiliation falling on her, shoved the door of the carriage open again, stuck her head out, and bellowed at the top of her lungs in a most unladylike manner.
“FAIR WARNING, MR DARCY!”
End of Book 1.
Will her husband hear her shout, or not. The next book will examine that question and how a simple act can change anything.
This story has alternate endings. Book 2 is harder for our couple, and Book 3 is easier. They can be read in any order.