CHAPTER SIX
"I love you," he said, "in spite of every obstacle your situation presents, and I find I can no longer set that against reason and win.
Your mother's want of conduct, your father's want of authority over his own household, your three younger sisters running wild after every red coat in Meryton, an uncle in trade in Cheapside, another an attorney, five daughters and no fortune worth naming between them.
I have weighed every one of these against what I feel for you, Miss Bennet, and I find myself asking you to be my wife regardless. "
The warmth left her face so completely and so fast that he saw it happen, saw the exact moment the yes she had been about to give him closed like a door.
"You have made a list," she said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"You have made a list, sir, and read it to me, and asked me to be grateful you loved me despite it.
" Her voice was very steady, which frightened him more than shouting would have.
"You have catalogued my mother's failings and my father's and my sisters' and my uncle's trade as though presenting evidence in a trial, and you expect me to hear all of it and then thank you for the verdict. "
"I meant it as honesty. I did not think it kind to pretend the obstacles did not exist."
"You did not think it necessary to pretend they were not the first thing out of your mouth, either.
" She had gone very white, very still, the letter to Jane still lying forgotten on the table between them.
"In such cases as this, I believe it is customary to feel some obligation for a man's regard, however unequally returned.
I find I cannot feel it. You have not offered me a compliment, Mr. Darcy.
You have offered me an itemized account of every reason I ought to be unworthy of you, followed by your generous decision to overlook it. "
"That is not what I meant."
"Then you have a singular gift for saying precisely what you do not mean, and choosing the cruelest possible order in which to say it.
" Her chin lifted, and he saw, beneath the anger, something that looked almost like grief, quickly buried.
"You could not even manage the ordinary decency of loving me first and complaining of my family after, as any man with sense would.
You had to prove to me you had counted the cost before you would admit the sum came out in my favor. "
"Elizabeth."
"Miss Bennet." The correction landed like a slap. "I have not given you leave."
He stood there with his hands empty, no ledger to consult, no argument prepared for this, and found that every word he might offer in his own defense sounded, even in his own head, exactly like the thing she had just accused him of: another calculation, another attempt to show his reasoning had been sound even where his conduct had not.
"I could not make the offer, then," she said, "in any manner that would have tempted me to accept it. You have insulted every person I love, in order, and asked me to thank you for the arithmetic."
"You are angry."
"I am furious, sir, which you would know, if you had ever once looked at me and seen a person instead of a column to be reckoned."
He left without another word, because there was nothing left to say that would not simply be another figure entered wrong, and he heard, as he closed the door behind him, the particular silence of a woman who has decided she will not cry until she is certain of being alone.
She did not cry.
She sat at the small writing table for a long while after he had gone, the light failing outside, and found that what she wanted, more than tears, more than Charlotte's comfort, more than anything, was to be certain, later, of exactly what he had said.
She had already felt, even in the moment, the particular danger of a wound like this: that time would soften it, that she would half persuade herself, in a week or a month, that he had not been quite so cold, that memory would be kind to him the way memory so often was kind to men who did not deserve it.
She would not permit that.
She drew a fresh sheet of paper, dipped her pen, and began.
He said: I love you, in spite of every obstacle your situation presents.
She numbered it, unwillingly amused even now at her own precision, a small bitter answer to his.
Item one. My mother's want of conduct.
Item two. My father's want of authority.
Item three. My three youngest sisters, and their want of restraint.
Item four. My uncle in trade at Cheapside.
Item five. Another uncle, an attorney.
Item six. Five daughters and no fortune worth the naming.
She sat back and looked at the list, six items numbered in her own hand, and felt something settle in her chest that was not quite peace but was, at least, order.
He had made his accounting aloud, careless of what it cost her to hear it.
She would keep hers in writing, careful of nothing but its accuracy, and she would not let a single figure soften with time.
She folded the paper and locked it into her writing box, and told herself, blowing out the candle, that she had done it only to remember him rightly, and never once for the small, treacherous hope that she might one day watch him try to answer for every item on it, in order, and fail, or succeed, and that either outcome would matter to her more than she currently had the honesty to admit.