Chapter 15 #3
“I would do what is necessary to secure what is mine.” He reached out and touched the brooch pinned to her bodice, his finger tracing the Celtic knotwork.
“Dìleas gu bràth, Elizabeth. Faithful forever. That is all I ask of you. Faithfulness. Loyalty. The assurance that you are mine, wholly and completely, and that no other man has any claim upon your heart.” His hand dropped away. “Is that truly so much to ask?”
Elizabeth could not speak. She could not move. She stood frozen whilst his words settled over her like a shroud.
Jane rose from her chair with a rustle of skirts. “Mr MacKinnon.” Her voice trembled, but she pressed on. “I must ask you to moderate your tone. You are distressing my sister.”
Malcolm glanced at her as though he had forgotten she was in the room.
“Elizabeth. Forgive me. I did not intend to cause distress.” He stepped back from Elizabeth and tugged at his waistcoat, composing his features into something approaching his customary equanimity.
The transformation was swift and unsettling.
“I have said more than I intended.” His voice had resumed its normal warmth, as though the last quarter hour had not occurred. “Forgive me. The cold and the strain of these past weeks have worn upon my temper.”
He moved toward the door, then paused. His gaze fell upon the slim volume where it lay upon the table, and something flickered across his face before he looked away.
“I shall expect your answer presently, Elizabeth.
Consider carefully what is at stake. For your family's sake, if not for mine. Also…” His eyes narrowed.
“I must ask that you limit your interactions with Mr Darcy. Under the circumstances, I believe it would be for the best if Mrs Annesley or Lady Lucas were to escort Miss Darcy to the lessons instead. I realise this is not easy to hear, and I do not make the request lightly. But I would be grateful if you would consider it — for the sake of our understanding, if nothing else.”
He looked back at her once more before he reached the door. Elizabeth saw something pass across his features, anguish or regret, or perhaps a faint echo of the man who had dropped to one knee in front of her.
Then it was gone. The door closed behind him with a crack that echoed through the silent room.
Elizabeth stood rooted to the carpet, staring at the closed door, whilst the fire crackled and Mary's pianoforte stumbled through yet another repetition of that wretched passage.
Jane crossed to her swiftly. “Lizzy.” Her hands closed around Elizabeth's, chafing warmth back into fingers gone cold as ice. “Lizzy, look at me. What just happened? What are we to do?”
Elizabeth looked down at the brooch pinned to her bodice. The silver gleamed in the firelight, beautiful and old and heavy against her heart. Faithful forever. The words blurred before her eyes.
“I do not know.” Her voice sounded strange and far away, as though it belonged to someone else entirely. “Jane, I do not know. But you must not speak of this. Not to Mama. Not to anyone.”
“Lizzy, he threatened us.” Jane’s whisper carried a fierceness Elizabeth had never heard from her. “He stood in our father’s house and threatened us. That is precisely the sort of thing one does speak of.”
“To whom?” Elizabeth whirled on her sister.
“To Mama, who would have it round Meryton by Thursday and would still tell me to marry him before the month was out? To our uncle Philips, who would want something written down? There is nothing written down. He said that circumstances might compel decisions he would rather not make. Repeat that aloud in a drawing room and hear how it sounds. Two women who stand to keep a house by it, accusing the man who owns the house.”
She stopped. Her hands had begun to shake, and she pressed them flat against her skirts until they stilled. “And if it reached Mr Darcy.”
Jane said nothing. She did not need to.
“If it reached Mr Darcy, he would come here,” Elizabeth said.
“He would come here and say something he could not take back. And then Mr MacKinnon would have precisely what he has been hunting since Lady Catherine’s visit — proof that I am not his.
He would not need to threaten anyone after that.
He would simply be a man wronged, doing what any man in his position might do, and every soul in Hertfordshire would agree he was within his rights. ”
Her voice had steadied somewhere in the middle of it. That frightened her rather more than the shaking had.
“No one must know what transpired in this room,” she said. “Please.”
Nodding, Jane pulled her close. Elizabeth pressed her face against her sister's shoulder, desperately trying not to think about the choice that lay before her.
Marry Malcolm at Christmas, and secure her family's future at the cost of her own happiness.
Or refuse, and risk losing everything.
Beyond the frosted windows, the sky hung low and grey, threatening snow that would not fall.
Elizabeth thought of dark eyes that held hers across a crowded room.
They were quite unlike Malcolm’s grey-green ones.
She thought of a voice, low and fierce, declaring that her character was beyond reproach.
She thought of a great many things she ought not to think, and the brooch burned cold against her skin. From somewhere deep within the house Mary played on and on, the same halting passage, a lament that would never find its resolution.