Chapter 9 #2
“You will thrive there.” His voice held quiet certainty. “When you are settled in the Highlands, you will wonder how you ever tolerated the flatness of the south.”
Elizabeth managed a smile. Settled. As though it were already decided and done.
“The house at Strathaird will require some updating,” Malcolm continued.
“It has been without a mistress these six years. But you will find our customs more suitable to efficient household management than the English habit of excessive ornamentation. Highland practicality serves a household well. And Moira will be able to live with me again,” he added, smiling at his daughter.
Mrs Bennet interjected with questions about the house. How many rooms, how many servants, what style of furnishings. Malcolm answered patiently.
“Of course, Elizabeth will wish to bring some familiar items with her,” he said. “A few personal effects, books perhaps. Though you will, of course, prefer my arrangement for the household once you see how things are managed in Skye. The climate requires different considerations.”
“I am certain we shall find a way to blend both traditions,” Elizabeth ventured.
“Indeed.” Malcolm's tone was indulgent, the way one might humour a child. “Though I find that most English ladies, once they experience Highland hospitality, quickly adopt our ways. My mother was English herself, from Yorkshire. Within a year, she refused to return south even for visits.”
The story was meant to be reassuring. Elizabeth felt the opposite.
“How lovely,” she murmured.
The conversation turned to wedding details.
Mrs Bennet fretted about the menu for the breakfast, the guest list, and what Elizabeth should wear.
Malcolm offered opinions on each point, gentle suggestions that somehow became decisions.
The breakfast should be sober, given the mourning period.
The guest list limited to close family and neighbours.
Elizabeth's dress should be modest, perhaps ivory rather than white, out of respect for her father.
All sensible suggestions. All reasonable.
All delivered with the quiet assumption that his preferences would naturally align with hers.
“You are very kind to take such interest in the arrangements, Mr MacKinnon,” she finally told him.
“It is our wedding, my dear. I wish it to reflect well on both our families.” He smiled at her. “Though I defer to your judgement on matters of English propriety. You understand these things better than I.”
The compliment felt like a concession, a small space carved out for her opinion in the larger structure of his expectations.
Jane caught Elizabeth's gaze across the room. Quickly averting her eyes, Elizabeth glanced down at the ring on her finger. The cairngorm caught the light, smoky and mysterious. It was beautiful in its own way, but it was not what she would have chosen, if choice had been hers.
For some reason, Mr Darcy's face flickered through her memory.
There had been a strange intensity in his face during that disastrous proposal, his words stumbling over themselves, his pride and her prejudice colliding in spectacular ruin.
She had felt such righteous anger that day. Such certainty in her refusal.
Now she felt only a distant ache. Not romantic longing. She would not allow herself that luxury. Simply grief, perhaps, for the road not taken. For the marriage her father had always hoped she would make, one based on mutual respect and intellectual partnership rather than financial necessity.
But her father was gone. And with him, the luxury of choice.
Mrs Bennet collapsed into her chair, fanning herself with her handkerchief. “Oh, what a day! What a glorious, exhausting, wonderful day! My Lizzy, engaged to a laird!”
Mumbling her excuses, Elizabeth climbed the stairs to her room. She sat at her writing desk and pulled out a fresh sheet of paper.
Her hand hesitated over the inkwell. There was only one person she longed to talk to right this instant, but her father was dead. He was the only one who would have understood her. After all, he had often expressed his hope that she might find a partner who would value her wit and intelligence too.
Her hand moved across the paper before she could stop it. She knew it was lunacy, but writing to her Papa made her feel closer to him.
Dearest Papa,
I find myself in a situation you would find both predictable and lamentable. I have done the sensible thing. I have accepted Mr MacKinnon's proposal, and in six weeks I shall be married and gone from Longbourn for ever.
You would approve of him, I think. He is everything reasonable. Kind, honourable, considerate of our circumstances. He will provide well. He will treat me with respect. He will give Moira a mother and our family a protector.
And yet.
Elizabeth's hand stilled. The yet hung there, waiting to be filled.
And yet I cannot shake the feeling that I am trading myself away.
Not in the mercenary sense. Mr MacKinnon is no fortune hunter, and I bring him nothing but burdens.
But in some other way I cannot quite articulate.
As though I am packing away the parts of myself that do not fit into the life he has already planned for us.
He speaks of “our” future, but it is his future he describes. His plans. His expectations. I am simply the woman who will inhabit the space he has carved out for a wife.
Is this what marriage is, Papa? This quiet subsumption of one's self into another's vision? Or did I simply choose wrong?
Her hand trembled. The next words came unbidden.
I think of Mr Darcy sometimes. I have not forgiven his insults, nor do I harbour romantic feelings for a man who thought so little of my family.
But I think of his proposal at Hunsford, clumsy and proud as it was.
He offered me everything. Wealth, position, security for my entire family.
Everything Mr MacKinnon offers and more.
I refused him with such vehemence. Such righteous anger. I felt powerful in that refusal, Papa. I felt like myself. Sharp and certain and uncompromising.
But when we spoke during Moira’s lessons, I believe I saw a hint of a different gentleman, Papa. Still, I accepted Malcolm MacKinnon's proposal with quiet resignation, and I feel like a stranger to myself.
The difference, I suppose, is that I could afford pride at Hunsford. I could afford anger. You were still alive, and Longbourn was still ours, and the future seemed full of possibility.
Now I can afford only pragmatism.
Elizabeth stared at the words on the page.
She thought of Mr Darcy's face during that disastrous proposal. The way his pride had warred with his feeling. The way he had stumbled over words that should have been tender but came out all wrong.
She thought of Malcolm's calm certainty, his gentle presumptions, his complete lack of doubt.
Which was worse? A man who offered everything with insulting pride, or a man who offered security whilst quietly erasing her?
Elizabeth read through the letter once more. Then, slowly, deliberately, she tore it in half.