Chapter Nine
“I THOUGHT I had been going mad,” he said, coming across the kitchen towards her. “I kept telling myself, ‘Fitzwilliam, you are only thinking of her, and that is why you are seeing her everywhere.’ But it is you. What are you doing in my kitchen?”
Elizabeth swallowed the bite of boiled, parsley potatoes she was chewing, and wiped at her mouth, looking up at him, at a loss for words.
“You’re eating, clearly,” he said. “But you’re in the dower house, aren’t you?
I thought I saw you, hiding behind a door, but I told myself that was mad, that I was losing my mind, and I walked on past you, and if you are a hallucination of some sort now, I suppose I am going to have to have myself committed. ”
Well, that hiding space behind the door had not been a very good one, clearly. Caroline had seen her easily and Mr. Darcy had seen her, too.
He looked her up and down and his gaze stopped at her midsection and his eyes widened in alarm and then he looked at her plate.
She set it down. What did it matter now? “It happens that Mr. Hurst was injured in some way that prevents him from fathering children,” she said in a bland voice. “I happen to be conveniently with a child I cannot claim, and so we are here, hiding away until I—”
“Right,” he said, and he had turned rather white.
“This way, we are all hiding together, and then when we come back later, everyone will think that Mrs. Hurst—”
“I’m aware of the way these things are done, Miss Bennet,” he cut her off.
She felt awful, really awful, but it was a sort of dull awful.
She had dreaded his ever finding this out, but now he had, and it seemed to take the last little bit of spark from her, and now everything was nothing but dull, everything was just this, and she would never feel anything except this dull blandness.
Nothing mattered now. She had given up entirely.
It was very quiet. He was staring at her midsection, which was not really that rounded, not yet, but was not flat either.
“This is why the extra food,” he said. “This is why Miss Bingley made that request, and I thought nothing of it, for of course her sister who is increasing must need that, but Mrs. Hurst does not look as if she is increasing, not a whit, and now I see—” He straightened.
“Wait a moment, the extra she requested, that is all the food you are eating each day?”
She hunched up her shoulders, wishing to disappear. “Well, this is why I’m here, you see. I’m often hungry.”
He let out a noise, a noise of disapproval.
“But Miss Bingley did not ask me for more—” He broke off.
“Well, I have not been entirely encouraging to her requests, have I? Truly, she bullied me into hosting her, and she is dreadful dinner company, and she is rather aware, not to my credit, that I wish her gone.”
“Oh,” said Elizabeth, looking sheepishly at the food. “Well, I am sorry to be an imposition. We were not supposed to be here, on your property. There was a cottage—”
“I heard about the cottage, the one that didn’t have a dining room,” he muttered.
“The Bingley sisters could not bear it there,” she said. “But here, in your dower house, I must be hidden away, so that you don’t know that I’m here—”
“Except I know now,” he said.
“Yes, and she will not be pleased with me,” said Elizabeth.
“Who will not? Miss Bingley? Caroline?”
This was beneath her, entirely beneath her, but he had once… he had looked at her and said his feelings could not be repressed, and obviously he had no feelings for her now, not with that white-as-a-sheet countenance of his, but he might have a memory of feelings. “She has struck me before.”
Mr. Darcy’s eyes widened. “I have never liked that woman, and now I see I was entirely justified. She hit you? While you are carrying a child?”
Elizabeth did not know what to do with this, with his anger against Caroline.
She had wanted it, but now she felt ashamed of herself.
“She was out of sorts, I suppose, and she was disappointed about…” Your rejecting her.
“Something else unrelated, and I don’t know that she would do it again.
I mean, she has not. But she would not like if she knew that you and I were speaking, I don’t think. ”
“Miss Bennet—”
“Perhaps you could simply pretend you had not seen me?” she said softly. “Perhaps it could all go on as it is going on?”
“Well, I hardly think that can be,” he said.
“Yes, you must turn us out,” she said.
“No, of course not,” he said.
“Well, you cannot acknowledge that I am in your dower house, carrying an illegitimate child for Mrs. Hurst to claim as her own, you know.”
He made another noise. This one sounded wounded. “Perhaps not, I suppose,” he said, resigned.
“But if you… if you ever did care about me, sir, and I am not saying I deserved it, and I am not saying that I was not so very, very wretched to you when you proposed, when you expressed those feelings to me—”
“Well, you had thought things about me, and I—” He shifted on his feet. “That letter I gave you, it was entirely such a foolish thing to do. I have since realized that no one wants someone to send them a five page letter of justifications as to why they should not actually dislike them—”
“No, no, it was not that way. I was misinformed about you, sir. I needed to know the truth. After I read the letter, I was mortified—”
“Mortified?” He touched his chest. “No, the mortification is all mine, and it was so, so—” He groaned. “Miss Bennet, how can you be with some other man’s child?”
She cringed.
“Oh, don’t answer that. I am clearly aware how such things come about.” He was sarcastic. He ran a hand through his hair, rueful. “Saints preserve us, I would never have thought—” He shook himself. “Apologies.”
She swallowed. She did not know what to do with her hands.
He gestured. “Eat, would you? Will you eat, please?”
She did not eat. “I well know what you must be thinking of me,” she said in a dull voice, “but the truth is—”
“Oh, heavens, I don’t think anything,” he said.
“It’s not fair, really. I could have gotten some woman with child myself, and there would be no consequence to me, not like there would be for her.
Society is crueler to women than to men, and I think it’s unfair because the pleasure of the act seems simpler for men, so they have easier enjoyment and lesser consequences, and women have a harder time finding pleasure and much more dire consequences, and this seems by the design of God himself, which I cannot fathom, truly, why that would be.
” He cleared his throat. “I am talking too much.”
Truly, she had not heard him utter so many words and so quickly before, she did not think.
She found herself feeling a bit of an affection towards him, for his manner, for his obvious nervousness, now that she knew his behavior was nervousness instead of arrogance, and she…
it was all awful, really, to feel affection for this man now.
Why could not this have happened earlier, back then?
“Anyway, I don’t judge you,” he said. “Let he who is without sin throw the first stone and all of that.”
She tilted her head at him. “Oh? Truly? Not, ‘My good opinion once lost is lost forever’?”
He cringed, looking down. “Have I mentioned about being mortified?”
“I am sorry,” she said, but she was smiling. “I am actually trying to request a favor of you, and teasing you, sir, it is not at all going to get me what I want. I repent of it.”
“No, it is only that I understand entirely why you rejected my proposal when I think of the things that I said to you,” he said. “It is only that, you must understand, Miss Bennet, when I am around you, I have trouble speaking.” He moaned. “No, I meant that—”
“It’s all right,” she said. “You must not feel that way now around me, though, seeing what has become of me.”
He raised his gaze to hers, and his expression changed.
She shrugged. “You needn’t be nervous near me anymore, Mr. Darcy. I am nothing now.”
“That’s a wretched thing to say about oneself,” he murmured.
She felt like crying. She bowed her head.
“Oh, Miss Bennet, what is that horrible Miss Bingley doing to you over there?” said Mr. Darcy.
“Whatever happened with… I suppose some man made you promises and then treated you ill, so I don’t think you should blame yourself, really.
I have just got done saying that it is an unfair world, that God himself doesn’t seem to make things fair, and I…
” A long pause. “You are not nothing. You are very much something.” He let out a rueful chuckle.
“As I have said, I don’t seem to be able to speak when I’m around you. ”
She took a deep breath. “Well, anyway, you will not say anything, then. You will let it be.”
He eyed her. “That is what you wish?”
“There is no better future for me, not now,” she said.
“Mrs. Hurst is willing to perhaps allow me to settle in as a live-in companion with the child, she says, and it is the best I can hope for, so I must… if they were to grow angry with me, to abandon me, the alternative would be for everyone in my family to be shamed, and for my child to be ruined, and for myself to be—”
“Quite,” he said. “I do see what you are saying.”
She eyed him. “I cannot believe you have not a word of condemnation for me, sir.”
He laughed under his breath, tilting down his head as if he were embarrassed.
She could not understand why he would be feeling any sense of self-reproach. If he did feel embarrassed about not condemning her, why would that be? Or rather, what would possibly motivate him to excuse her?
He could not still have any regard for her, could he? Not after the way she had denied his proposal, misjudged his character, and been so abominable to him. No, certainly not.
He cleared his throat, gesturing. “Would you eat, Miss Bennet?”
She turned back to the potatoes. “I should like to take something with me.”
“Yes, you must,” he said. “And I shall make sure that there is more food for you. I suppose you cannot come to dinner each evening?”