Chapter 5
FIVE
Mr Darcy accompanied her swiftly from the room, but once they were in the hall, he reached out suddenly, and very gently, took her elbow. She could feel that his hand was shaking—or perhaps it was herself who was so shaken.
“Miss Elizabeth—”
“Mr Darcy—”
“A moment, please. You seem unwell. Would you accompany me to the study, if only for a moment? I think it best that I return you to the company of my sister and Miss Lucas after we have both regained our composure.”
Elizabeth nodded mutely and allowed him to conduct her past the door to the music room and down the stairs.
Once they gained the quiet space of the study, he let go of her and gestured to a table glistening with crystal decanters.
“Is there something I can get you for your present relief? I keep some sherry here, if brandy is not to your taste.”
Elizabeth heard him asking her preference as if from a distance.
She nodded at the sherry without much thought and made her way to a chair near the room’s long window.
She sank into the cushion and closed her eyes a moment with a sigh, and when she opened them again, she watched him busy himself pouring her a little glass.
The mundane task seemed to steady his nerves a little, even as she felt hers unravelling at this act of kindness.
After such distress just moments ago, the balm of his hospitality shook her once again.
He offered the glass to her, and she took a sip dutifully, her eyes still on him.
She was absorbed by what she read in his expression as he equally read hers: the concern, the brightened emotion in his gaze, the rapid changes in his colour as his anger faded and passed into something simultaneously more and less composed.
Far from the proud aloofness that she had always associated with him, in this moment he seemed so very open, so very near, like his own heart was racing as much as hers, and all his thinking and feeling in as much a tangle as she found knotted up within herself.
“Miss Elizabeth,” he said at last, “there are no words to properly convey my apologies for what you have suffered just now. For Lady Catherine—my own aunt—to attack you with such unmerited ire in my own house!”
“There is nothing you must say to me,” Elizabeth said gently. “The fault here belongs to Lady Catherine.”
“Not entirely. She would not have attacked you thus without some cause. Forgive me. It is indelicate to speak of this—but I am certain when I first saw you today that my aunt perceived some change in me that raised her alarm. It was unconsciously done, but I undoubtedly betrayed my thoughts in that moment, and she presumed to judge you most ungenerously.”
“It was nothing you have done,” Elizabeth countered. “I do not think you heard—just now—when Lady Catherine disclosed that she saw something in my behaviour that exposed me to her worst suspicions. You cannot blame yourself.”
He shook his head resolutely. “But I do. I blame myself for exposing you to her censure, and I have wronged you on one other point as well. For despite my influence with her, I have done nothing to check in her that sense of unscrupulous pride that sets her so at odds with others in the world. Indeed, I even mirrored it and was encouraging of that habit of thinking meanly of others. You know this—for did I not wound you myself, only a month ago? Did I not humble, demean, and pain you at the very moment when I should have raised you up as a woman worthy of my utmost regard?”
He groaned and covered his face with his hands as if the bitter irony were blinding him.
He sank into the chair opposite her with a sort of boneless helplessness that Elizabeth found riveting.
She watched him take a heavy breath, and just when her sympathies caused her to wonder whether she should say something to comfort him, her judgment convinced her of the justice of his painful epiphany.
She would not interfere while he was still in its power.
She sipped her sherry and waited for her senses and his to reunite into a semblance of calm.
Gradually, Mr Darcy gathered himself. His hands unveiled his face, and he regarded her with a sincerity that fixed her further into silence.
“Please accept my profoundest apologies for speaking and thinking so, for paining you, for disparaging your own family when my own has treated you despicably. I am sorry, so terribly sorry. I find I am teaching myself at the price of your own pain, and I am humbled.”
Elizabeth had ample evidence before her to know that he felt his own words keenly.
Here was a man whose demeanour among others always showed the utmost self-control, yet he sat before her now entirely discomposed.
A man whose pride had once given her a disgust of him, and who was now plainly disgusted by it himself.
The transformation was remarkable, and Elizabeth hoped the great cost of his new humility gave it permanent value.
She set down her glass on the little table beside her, then rose.
His eyes widened as she approached him, but this did not deter her courage.
She placed her hand on his shoulder as she stood before him.
“I believe that when a wrong is acknowledged, keeping hold of its memory is unpardonable,” Elizabeth said softly. “I forgive you freely, sir.”
A huff of air escaped him, like she had dealt him a blow rather than given him the succour he sought. His frame shook with it until he pulled in a breath and raised his face to her in wonder. His hand reached up for hers, pressing into it where it still sat upon his shoulder.
“You are too generous with me,” he said softly. “Far too generous.”
“Generous, am I? I do not think I merit the term. But then, I feel I hardly know myself. To own the truth, I have not properly known myself since I have known you,” she admitted.
At his look of incredulity, she went on, “My own powers of understanding, which I once trusted, have been tested since our first meeting and have proved wholly deficient. It has been a painful lesson to acknowledge that I possess every weakness of vanity and mistaken judgment that can breed folly. Can you forgive me for exposing you to the worst of my nature, for thinking the very worst of you, almost from the beginning of our acquaintance?”
He regarded her intently for a moment, then he sat up a little taller.
He did not remove his hand from over hers.
Instead, he swept his thumb under her palm and took hold of her grasp properly.
Elizabeth, caught suspended in her own surprise, did not recoil.
He looked aside at their connexion for a moment and seemed to be steadying, gradually steadying in her grasp, gentled by it out of the intensity of his own discomposure.
She squeezed his hand in silent understanding.
“Miss Elizabeth,” he said, going very still at the sound of her name in his mouth.
“You truly are too generous. Too generous to trifle with me, I think. You have taught me so much in just the span of a few weeks, a few moments. Dare I think that within all these lessons, you have taught me to hope?”
“To hope, sir?” Elizabeth repeated, even as she found the answer in the warm weight of his hand, still holding hers.
“To hope that your opinion of me is not as fixed as it once was—and to imagine that you are extending me such kindness from an impulse more liberal than charity. My own affections and wishes are unchanged, but I cannot fathom yours. If your feelings are still what they were in Kent, pray, tell me so at once.”
Elizabeth tried to speak, swept back her breath, and tried again.
His apology had been in keeping with his sense of honour, but she would never have presumed to expect from him this constancy of affection—not after the pain and bitterness his letter had revealed he carried from her rejection of his suit.
“I hardly know what to tell you,” she said at last. “I find myself in the midst of more confusion than would allow for any confidence in my own feelings. In this moment, we have more to say to each other and more affinity to share than we could claim thus far in the whole of our acquaintance. And there is trust—there is certainly more trust between us, now, than ever before. We have both made great effort to deal with one another honestly, at the price of our pride. That represents something significant to me, although I cannot say what it signifies.”
He nodded. It was clear by his cautiously approving gaze that this reflection did not answer all his hopes, although it did perhaps represent some improvements in the nature of their acquaintance. He released her hand.
Elizabeth withdrew enough to clasp her still-warm hand in the grasp of her other and regain her breath. Once she had gathered enough of her own composure, she was able to observe that his own hands now mirrored hers, and his face was a picture of contemplative gravity.
“I ought to find that answer enough to satisfy,” he said at last. “I shall never forget how it was only weeks ago, when I witnessed that turn of your countenance as you spoke with such decided revulsion against my offer and my character. At least now, it seems you can bear my company tolerably.”
Elizabeth nodded with enough vigour to concede the truth of what he said.
Yes, her feelings had changed, although the depth of that change was still unknown.
But the longer she stood in this quiet room with him as he spoke to her openly in this soft way, the more she felt she could like him.
The thought cheered her enough to bring back her voice.
“Yes. You are tolerable, I suppose,” she confirmed with a gentle smile, tilting her head as she waited for him to recognise this ironic recollection of his words from the Assembly Room where they had first met.
Clever as he was, he was quick to catch her meaning and her look, and he evinced his own understanding with a short, disbelieving chuckle. His laughter grew into something more as he covered his face again in an attempt to suppress the emotions that seemed to suddenly assail him.
As his shoulders shook, Elizabeth suddenly feared she had hurt him with her teasing. She had merely meant to make light of his slight by turning it into a compliment. She was just on the point of apologising for her thoughtlessness when he raised his head to look at her.
“No,” he said haltingly. “Pray, do not apologise for using my own unjustifiable words most justly in my presence. It was well done, I assure you. You possess quite the talent for carrying your point.”
He shook off his weighty mirth, took a bracing breath, and stood.
The effect was pronounced. No longer crowded into his chair and dishevelled by distress, he restored the length and breadth and grace of his usual form.
Elizabeth was more familiar with this tall, elegant Mr Darcy that stood before her, certainly.
Yet, she missed the Darcy she felt she had just started to come to know, the man who had been in the chair, sitting and thinking, talking and feeling with her.
She had begun to fear she had lost that man until he approached her with an uncertain expression in his eyes that she now felt she understood and recognised, for she had seen Miss Darcy wear it: shyness.
He offered her his arm as if to lead her to a dance. “Miss Elizabeth,” he said, “I ought to take you home.”
Elizabeth agreed, although she felt no urgency either in herself or in him as she tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. He looked down on her with such a sweet expression of relief that she could not resist giving a little squeeze of reassurance.
He led her on amicably, parting only to overtake the stairs on their way towards the music room, where they met a shocking sight: poor Maria Lucas, crying into a handkerchief, and Miss Darcy settled beside her on the sofa in miserable commiseration.
Miss Darcy rose and approached them. “Miss Lucas had the misfortune of being a target for Lady Catherine’s most terrible anger. She shouted at her and then she left. Oh, Brother, I do not know what to say to make this right! What are we to do?”
Elizabeth understood well enough that poor Maria had been scolded for the shame of her association. She went to sit beside the girl and put her arm around her as a sister might, and Maria responded as any child would by turning her face to sob wretchedly onto Elizabeth’s shoulder.
Mr Darcy pulled out his own, dry handkerchief in offering to the girl. Elizabeth accepted it on her behalf.
“I can only offer my apologies to Miss Lucas, as I have to Miss Elizabeth, that such a thing has happened here at Darcy House. Lady Catherine has been the victim of her own misunderstanding, and yet she will persist in adhering to her folly,” said Mr Darcy, before turning aside to his sister.
“Obstinate, headstrong woman,” he sighed.
“I am ashamed of her, too, Georgiana. Do not let it distress you. Let us rectify matters with Miss Lucas and Miss Elizabeth by ensuring they are taken safely home.”
Miss Darcy nodded, her expression a little shocked from hearing her brother so summarily denounce their aunt. Mr Darcy patted her hand and then moved to address the other young ladies.
“Are you bound for Hertfordshire, Eli—Miss Elizabeth?” he asked awkwardly, over the sound of Maria’s hiccoughs and sobs.
“Not directly. I am for my aunt and uncle Gardiners’ house in Gracechurch Street. They are expecting us.”
He nodded. “I will be happy to convey you to any destination. You have only to say when you wish to go.”
Elizabeth had just turned to Maria to assess her readiness to leave when the girl suddenly sat up in alarm.
“Oh, but my bandbox and my trunk—all that has gone away with Lady Catherine!” Maria exclaimed with renewed distress. “She has everything!”
“That is easily remedied,” replied Mr Darcy. “She will have had no thought for your luggage in any case. I will not raise her notice by stopping for the trunks in my own carriage when a cart and some discreet servants will suffice.”
Maria turned back to Elizabeth pleadingly. “Then I—I do wish to go now to the Gardiners’ with you, Elizabeth.”
“And I will go with you,” volunteered Miss Darcy. “I shall also request that my maid accompany us—” and here she eyed Maria’s reddened face with thoughtful compassion, “—after she has attended to you, Miss Lucas.”
Maria nodded, and Miss Darcy prevailed upon her guests to accompany her to her own dressing room to tidy themselves. With a bow, Mr Darcy excused himself to dispatch a footman and his trusted valet to House de Bourgh for the ladies’ purloined luggage.