CHAPTER 16
They continued to walk, slower than the day before, Elizabeth thought. And, in their slow progress, found that evening brought them only a short distance from where they set off that morning.
Nevertheless, with the light failing again and both of them footsore past any easy remedy, they were overjoyed to come upon a second shelter.
It was an old charcoal-burner's hut, abandoned by whatever trade had once occupied it, but it was sound enough, and private, tucked deep enough into a stand of woodland that neither road nor farmhouse showed any sign of being near.
Unfortunately, they built no fire here, having no easy access to dry materials, with everything around them muddy and boggy, but the hut was smaller than the shepherd's had been, and warmer for its smallness, and they settled into what dry bedding it offered.
That night, however, was very different from the prior one. Neither spoke at first. They were both too conscious of the other, of the closeness forced upon them by the little shelter and the exhaustion that had made ordinary propriety increasingly difficult to maintain.
As Elizabeth lay in the hut, she thought of Longbourn, and her life before Cobb and his men had taken it from her. She thought further of the situation that she found herself in now. Lying there with Mr. Darcy’s heartbeat slowing gradually back toward its ordinary measure beneath her ear.
Before their abduction, she had disliked Mr. Darcy with a passion she had considered, at the time, entirely justified.
She had found him proud, disagreeable, judgmental, and insufferably conscious of his own consequence.
Indeed, she laid some part of the blame for their present misfortune at his door; had he not so provoked her at that small gathering at Netherfield, she would not have quit the party in temper, nor walked out alone into the garden where the men had been waiting.
And yet, the past few days had built her another portrait of him entirely, laid down one brick at a time, until she could no longer credit only the first. Mr. Darcy had carried her when she could not walk.
He had gone without food so that she might eat.
He had thrown himself into the river without a moment's hesitation, and taken the worst of the current upon himself, that she might come to no harm.
He had placed himself between her and danger more times than she could number. And, most inconveniently of all, he had done these things without once demanding gratitude for them. Elizabeth shifted slightly.
Darcy's voice came quietly through the darkness. "Are you uncomfortable?"
Elizabeth turned her head enough to look at him. The little light that remained through the cracks in the hut roof was insufficient to make out more than the outline of his face. She issued a humorless chuckle before saying, “I am not comfortable at all.”
A faint breath of amusement escaped him. “I suppose I am not very comfortable either.”
She settled back, and flitched, as she felt his shoulder next to hers, though unable to move much further, she let out an inconspicuous yawn, and tried to maintain whatever wits she had about her.
A faint breath escaped him, and she felt it across the top of her head. He broke the silence, “I have been thinking about you, and our predicament.”
Elizabeth frowned at the turn of their conversation. She chose not to turn around to look at him, and stated rather seriously, “What do you mean by our predicament?”
“These circumstances,” he said. “I have been thinking about them since we escaped. About the manner in which we have been forced to depend upon one another, and about what it may look like when we are no longer here and are able to think about it with the benefit of proper distance.”
Elizabeth turned more fully toward him. “Mr. Darcy, I assure you, I am quite capable of understanding the circumstances in which I find myself.”
He looked at her, his eyes leveled with hers, as they lay on the cold dirt floor.
His voice was serious, and he said in plain terms, “I do not doubt it, Miss Bennet. And, this situation is not your fault in the slightest, but the reality of this situation is that society will talk, and it will not be kind, I assure you.”
“Then do not speak as though I am some helpless creature who cannot understand the consequences of our situation, Mr. Darcy. Society will talk; let them, I have nothing to be ashamed of,” she bit back in defence.
He sounded, for a moment, almost annoyed; the words coming out clipped, before he could soften them.
"I am not speaking of helplessness. I am speaking of judgment.
Yours, and mine." He paused, and seemed to consider whether to go on.
"You have been frightened, exhausted, injured, hungry, and removed entirely from the life you knew.
You have had no one to rely upon these days but myself, alone. You must take my meaning, Miss Bennet."
He had not meant to accuse her of any deficiency of understanding, of that much, at least, he was certain.
He had meant only that whatever that the two of them, thrown together as they had been, could hardly help but be entangled by it.
And, being a man of honor, he could not in good conscience leave now; he would have to marry her, and he was attempting to make it clear that he could marry her.
Elizabeth was quiet a moment, then asked, rather bluntly, "And what consequence concerns you?"
Darcy did not wait for her to finish arriving at it herself. "You, of course. We must marry. There is no question of it, nor any use in discussing whether we wish it; the situation admits no other remedy, and I should not think of leaving you exposed to speculation on my account."
He said it plainly, as if it was a fact requiring only to be acknowledged, not debated or even asked. And, it did not appear to occur to him that it might be received any other way.
"Must we." Elizabeth's voice had gone very cold. "How fortunate, that you have settled the matter so entirely without me."
"I had not thought there was another course open to either of us," he said plainly, "nor did I imagine you would wish me to pretend otherwise"
"How could I think otherwise?" Elizabeth stared at him. "You have never behaved as though you thought of me as anything but a subject for fault-finding. You have always behaved as though you did."
"I suppose I was cold," he bit out, "because I did not trust myself to be otherwise."
Elizabeth blinked. “You did not trust yourself?”
He quickly responded, and she sensed some anger in his tone. "No, and I am not proud of it either."
"How very inconvenient for you." Her voice was light, but there was an edge beneath it, sharpened by something that was not quite laughter. "To find yourself so at the mercy of your own attention. I confess I had not thought you capable of losing command of anything, least of all yourself."
His jaw tightened, and his eyes narrowed slightly.
Elizabeth expected, from the expression alone, that he might offer some carefully reasoned defense of himself, perhaps even one of those explanations in which he managed to make an unpleasant truth sound considerably more reasonable than she had thought it.
Instead, what he admitted was altogether different.
“I suppose I was afraid,” he finally admitted.
Elizabeth blinked. “Afraid?”
"Not of you, precisely." His mouth tightened, as though the distinction mattered. "I was afraid of what my attention toward you might reveal. I did not know what to do with it, and I knew even less what you might do with it, if you discovered it."
"What I might do with it." She let out a short, disbelieving breath. "You imagined I would, what, Mr. Darcy? Laugh at you?"
"I imagined you would see it for precisely what it was, and find it as unwelcome as I did."
"Unwelcome?" She repeated the word as though it had a bad taste.
"So you decided, quite on my behalf, what I should find unwelcome, and then behaved accordingly, and never once thought to simply.
" She broke off, pressing her lips together, and when she spoke again her voice had gone tight.
"You let me think myself despised, Mr. Darcy, rather than risk being thought a fool. "
"Yes." He said it without flinching, which was somehow worse than if he had tried to soften it. "That is precisely what I did."
"Then I do not know what you wish me to say to you now. That I am flattered? That it is a very great compliment, to learn I was disliked out of cowardice rather than contempt?"
"I do not wish you to say anything." His voice had risen, very slightly; the first real crack in his composure she had seen. "I am telling you because you asked, and because I find I am tired, Miss Bennet, of managing what you think of me."
She regarded him with open disbelief. "Why should a man so thoroughly acquainted with the world be tired of what a woman thinks, who has so little fortune, and much less consequence, than himself?"
Something in his expression eased, not quite into a smile. "That was precisely the difficulty. You are the one person wholly unimpressed by everything I had been taught to consider impressive."
Her eyebrows rose. "I confess I do not take your meaning."
He considered her a moment before he answered.
"Most people, whether they will own it or not, are conscious of what I am.
They seek my approval, or resent me for possessing what they do not.
Even those who dislike me remain aware of me.
You did not. You would contradict me, laugh at me, challenge me, and then walk away as though you had given the matter no further thought. "
Elizabeth could not help smiling. "I did think of you afterward. Only not, I think, in a kind light. You were disagreeable, and insufferable, upon occasion."
"I have no doubt I was all of that, and worse." There was something warmer in his eyes than his voice allowed.
For a moment neither spoke. Then his expression settled again into gravity.
"What I could not account for was why your opinion should matter to me as it did.
I told myself it was vanity, that I wished only to prove you wrong.
Then I told myself I wished merely for your good opinion. Neither answer served me long."
"What did you discover?" Her voice had gone soft.
"That I wished you to know me." He paused, as if the words cost him something. "Not Mr. Darcy of Pemberley. Not the man whose name and fortune you had heard of before ever you met the man himself. I wished you to know what lay beneath all that; though I hardly knew, myself, how it was to be shown."
Something shifted in Elizabeth's face. "You might have tried being agreeable."
"I might have," he admitted, "and did not."
"No, sir, you did not. You looked at me, instead, as though I had committed some offense merely by speaking."
"I was trying not to look at you as though I wished very much to hear you go on."
He seemed to hear the admission only after he had made it, and did not retract it.
"You made me conscious of myself in a manner I found deeply uncomfortable.
I would leave a room out of temper with you, and discover, some hours after, that I could recall nearly everything you had said in it.
I told myself you had provoked me. It was easier than considering the alternative. "
Her eyes lowered. "And what was the alternative?"
"That I thought of you far oftener, and far more warmly, than was at all sensible."
Elizabeth felt the old certainty loosening.
Her mind went immediately to the assembly, when she first saw Mr. Darcy in all his reserve.
He had refused to dance with her that evening, and the look he had given her, she had taken for contempt.
Then, she remembered Netherfield, and all his silences whenever she entered a room; his brooding and serious manner, which had felt cold and distant.
Had she mistaken him in all of it?
"I can scarcely credit it, sir. Your actions have told so different a story from the one you tell me now, that I hardly know how to reconcile the two."
"I thought I might master it. I thought distance would answer.
Instead, the more I tried to suppress it, the more I found myself noticing you; your humor, your temper, the look you wore when you suspected someone of being a fool.
The patience you showed your sisters, even when they exhausted it.
The ease with which you could be wounded by Miss Bingley, and still find something in the evening to laugh at. "
She did not know what to think. And what was worse, she could not dismiss the possibility that she had been equally blind to herself.
She had disliked him. She was certain of that.
Or, at least, she had been. She had delighted in finding fault with him, in proving him wrong, in imagining that his pride deserved every sharp observation she could offer.
Yet the memory of that certainty no longer possessed quite the same strength.
She had seen another man these past three days, one she had not expected to find beneath the Mr. Darcy she had so confidently condemned.
She did not know whether this man frightened her more or less.
Darcy watched her for a moment before his expression softened. He seemed to understand that there was nothing more to be gained by pressing her further tonight. His breath caught almost imperceptibly, and then he said quietly, “That is enough for me tonight.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes, though sleep was the last thing on her mind. She needed the darkness, if only because she could no longer bear the uncertainty of his watching her while she tried to make sense of what she was feeling.
She turned over quickly, putting her back toward him, and drew the coat more securely around herself. “Good,” she murmured. Then, after the smallest pause, she added, “Because I am very tired.”
It was not entirely true. She was tired, certainly, but not enough to sleep.
Her mind was far too occupied for that. She simply did not know what else to say, and pretending to be ready for sleep was easier than admitting that his words had unsettled every conclusion she had once held about him, and, perhaps, about herself.
Behind her, Darcy said nothing for the remainder of the night, and for that, she was grateful.