Chapter 2
Elizabeth
All evening, I waited for Mr. Darcy while reproaching myself for waiting.
At first I persuaded myself that he wished to convey some news concerning Jane or Mr. Bingley.
Then I rejected this idea, since he knew nothing of the reason for my distress.
I thought he might have learned of some fault of Wickham’s and wished to defend his family.
This possibility pleased me no better. Finally, I told myself that his request probably had no importance whatsoever and that my imagination was merely lending romantic luster to an ordinary conversation.
At seven o’clock, Mr. Collins was called away to attend a sick parishioner. Charlotte accompanied him to the door and returned to tell me he would not be back for some time.
“Maria has gone upstairs to write to her sister,” she added. “We shall therefore have a remarkably peaceful drawing room.”
I suspected she was less innocent than her tone suggested.
“Mr. Darcy said he might call.”
“Indeed?”
“Do not feign astonishment. You have counted his visits with greater accuracy than your own to Rosings.”
Charlotte took up her needlework.
“I count nothing. I merely observe that a man who detests insignificant conversation seems to take remarkable pleasure in coming here to seek it.”
“Perhaps Mr. Collins offers him an incomparable subject of study.”
“Perhaps.”
A knock at the door interrupted our exchange.
Mr. Darcy entered a few moments later. He greeted Charlotte, then me, and remained standing before the fireplace without offering the slightest reason for his presence.
His pallor and agitation struck me. His fingers closed and relaxed behind his back.
He circled the room twice. Charlotte, after several minutes of silence that had grown almost cruel, rose.
“I have forgotten to give the cook an instruction.”
She left the drawing room before I could protest.
I set my book upon my lap.
“You wished to speak to me, sir.”
He stopped before me.
“Yes.”
The word seemed to cost him. He looked away, drew a deep breath, and turned back to me with an intensity so naked that my irony withdrew of its own accord.
“I have struggled against what I feel,” he said. “I believed I could master it. I reminded myself of all the reasons this inclination is imprudent—the objections of my family, the difference in our situations, the consequences of an alliance with persons whose conduct…”
He broke off, perhaps because my expression had changed.
I did not understand at once, however. My mind, encumbered by Jane’s letter, refused to recognize the obvious. Then he spoke my name.
“Elizabeth, I love you.”
My heart skipped a beat.
Mr. Darcy loved me.
The man who had scarcely found me tolerable at our first meeting, who had observed my family with barely concealed disapproval, who seemed incapable of spending ten minutes in my presence without growing more rigid, had just confessed that he loved me.
He continued. His declaration was passionate in principle and disastrous in form.
He spoke of the violence of his feelings, of reason vanquished, of the weakness of my connections, of the inferiority of my birth.
Every phrase that should have honored me contained a wound.
In other circumstances, I might have answered him with all the anger such a proposal deserved.
But Jane’s letter lay in my pocket.
Five thousand pounds.
I saw Longbourn closed behind Mr. Collins.
My mother seeking a house she could not afford.
Jane hiding her grief beneath a smile. Lydia refusing to understand why no merchant would extend her credit any longer.
Kitty weeping alongside her. Mary affirming that adversity elevates the soul while fear blanched her lips.
And before me stood a man who possessed ten thousand pounds a year.
The thought disgusted me.
I rose so abruptly that my book fell to the floor. Mr. Darcy took a step toward me, then stopped.
“I have offended you.”
“You have taken great care to explain why your affection humiliates you.”
A dark flush spread across his face.
“I did not mean to…”
“Yet you have succeeded.”
The anger was returning, but it did not liberate me. It collided with necessity. I wanted to refuse him. I wanted to tell him that no fortune could compensate for his arrogance and that he had been mistaken in imagining I awaited him. The words pressed behind my lips.
I thought of Jane.
Mr. Darcy bent to retrieve my book. When he straightened, his assurance had vanished.
“I beg your pardon for the manner in which I expressed myself,” he said. “I cannot, however, regret having spoken to you. My affection no longer permitted silence. Will you consent to be my wife?”
The question hung between us.
I looked at the man awaiting my answer. He was proud, awkward, wounding.
He was also loyal to his sister, respected by his cousin, and capable of a quiet attentiveness I had noticed several times since my arrival.
I did not love him. Perhaps I did not know him well enough to hate him as certainly as I would have claimed a few hours earlier.
Above all, he could save my family.
“Before I answer you,” I said, “you must hear me without interruption.”
His face tensed.
“I am listening.”
“I do not love you.”
He paled further, but did not look away.
“I understand.”
“No. I do not believe you understand. I was surprised by your proposal. I never supposed you felt anything for me beyond a curiosity that was sometimes less than kind. I cannot, therefore, offer you what you feel for me.”
“I do not ask you to pretend.”
“You ask me to marry you.”
“Yes.”
His voice was lower, but it did not tremble.
I took a few steps toward the window. My reflection in the glass looked like a stranger: a young woman standing straight, chin raised, perhaps about to sell her future with well-imitated dignity.
“I esteem certain qualities in you,” I continued. “Your devotion to your sister. Your sense of duty. The loyalty you show to those you love. But I also disapprove of many of your judgments, and I do not know if we could make each other happy.”
“I believe we could.”
“You are naturally disposed to trust your own judgment.”
For the first time, something like a smile crossed his lips.
“On that point, you have never spared me your warnings.”
This response, almost humble, troubled me.
I turned toward him.
“If I were to accept, I would want no illusions between us. I will not pretend to love you. I do not promise to become a wife who defers to your every opinion. I will not tolerate your despising my family in my presence, even when their conduct merits criticism. And I will ask for time before our engagement is made public.”
He looked at me as if each condition strengthened rather than weakened his desire.
“You would accept?”
The happiness that suddenly lit his face nearly made me step back. I had never seen Mr. Darcy unguarded. He looked younger, more human, and infinitely more dangerous to my resolution.
I must not lie. Yet I could not reveal my father’s debt to him without my father’s permission.
“I believe that affection can grow from esteem,” I said. “And that esteem can deepen when two people are willing to know each other better.”
He took a step closer.
“Elizabeth.”
I should have corrected the tenderness he heard in my words. Instead, I lowered my eyes to his hand, open between us.
“Yes, Mr. Darcy. I will be your wife.”
His fingers closed over mine.
I was wearing gloves. Yet the warmth of his palm came through the fabric with surprising clarity. He did not raise my hand to his lips. He simply held it in his own, as if he feared I might take back my word if he let go.
“I will do everything in my power to deserve your trust.”
This promise caused me unexpected pain.
I had just given him my consent for a reason he did not know. He answered me with an honesty I perhaps did not deserve.
“We must speak to my father,” I said.
“As soon as you wish.”
“Not before my return to Longbourn. I want to write to him first.”
“Of course.”
The silence that followed was no longer that of two near-strangers. It contained an entire future, with its shared chambers, its meals, its obligations, its nights. I felt the blush rise to my neck.
Mr. Darcy followed the flush despite himself. His gaze dropped for a second to my mouth before rising again. The desire I glimpsed there took my breath away.
He released my hand at once.
“I will take no liberties that you do not grant me.”
I did not know whether this statement reassured me or made what I had accepted feel more real.
Charlotte reappeared a few minutes later. She stopped in the doorway and looked at each of us in turn. Mr. Darcy announced our engagement to her with a gravity befitting a treaty between nations.
She congratulated me without betraying her surprise, then asked if she might inform her husband.
“Not yet,” I replied. “Please.”
Mr. Darcy agreed to this discretion without argument. He stayed only a short while, but before leaving, he turned to me.
“May I see you tomorrow?”
“You are dining here.”
“Before dinner.”
“I may walk in the morning.”
A gleam flickered in his eyes.
“Then I hope chance will prove favorable.”
When he had gone, Charlotte closed the door and leaned against it.
“Lizzy,” she said slowly, “it seems to me that chance has just changed your life considerably.”
My hand went to Jane's letter.
“It may change my entire family's life as well.”