CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Darcy could not have suffered a greater blow had his steed, which he led by the reigns, kicked him square in the bollocks than was delivered by the sight of Miss Elizabeth.
At first he questioned the appearance of Miss Elizabeth as an illusion wrought by his decision to relieve his horse and walk the final miles on foot.
That she should be at Pemberley of all places was a coincidence too fortuitous to believe.
It was as if his constant thoughts of her the past months had called her to his presence.
His heart threatened to scramble from his chest.
She turned away as he approached, and for a moment he thought his letter to her had done nothing to dispel her ill opinion of him, but Abby had written him of her conversation with Miss Elizabeth and assured him his letter had had a profound impact upon its reader.
He trusted Abby and had felt a great weight lifted from him, but nothing in her letter, despite his dissection of every sentence, had suggested that Miss Elizabeth’s animosity, though neutralized, had made the conversion to goodwill.
The letter did conclude, however, with a gentle urging that if his feelings were unchanged, his prospect of satisfying his heart’s desire, could only be improved.
He scarcely dared to consider such a possibility.
Her rejection of him had pained him far greater than the dismissal of the Duchess, for though his feelings for the latter had the potency of youth and the blush of first love, the passion and authenticity of his feelings for Miss Elizabeth cut far deeper.
Darcy heard his gardener utter an expression of surprise but attended only to Miss Elizabeth. Her manners would not allow her to ignore him and she received his compliments, which he somehow managed to convey, if not in terms of perfect composure, at least of prefect civility.
She did not meet his gaze when he inquired after her family. Perhaps she had taken umbrage at the opinions he had expressed of her family. Perhaps she thought he resented her for the rebuff he had received at Hunsford Parsonage.
“Did you depart Longbourn some time ago? Rather, have you been in Derbyshire long? Or merely a few days?” he asked, unsettled but endeavouring the most gentle manner to assure her that he bore her no ill will.
His questions seemed to discomfit her more.
“Will your stay in Derybshire be of short duration? Or long?” he tried.
“Yes.”
A long and awkward pause ensued.
“You came upon fortunate weather.”
“Yes.”
They stood without saying a word. He could see she had no particular wish to be in his company. Recollecting himself, he took his leave. Once inside, his heart still hammered and he barely heard the warm welcome with which Mrs. Reynolds greeted him.
“Your chambers are ready for you, though you have startled us with your early arrival,” she was saying. “We did not expect the party till to-morrow.”
“Yes,” he responded absently, the majority of his mind still being outside.
“I hope nothing is amiss? But where are the others?”
“The young lady outside—with Joseph, I think—what brought her here?”
“You mean the visitors? They are touring the estate. Joseph was to show them the gardens.”
He wondered what the chances were that Miss Elizabeth might have purposefully sought out Pemberley?
“Did she make any inquires of me?”
Mrs. Reynolds looked perplexed. “She?”
“Yes, the young lady. The, er, pretty one.”
“Ah, she acknowledged she knew you a little and agreed the miniatures to be a handsome likeness of you.”
He flushed, then realizing he was still in his riding attire, made for his chambers.
He dressed quickly. Though Miss Elizabeth had given no indication that she took any pleasure in seeing him, he was determined to speak to her once more before she left.
Perhaps he would not sound quite the jabbering idiot after the opportunity to collect his wits.
Without Abby’s encouragement, he would have harbored no hope of earning the good graces of Elizabeth Bennet.
Even now, he felt his prospects slim. She might not despise him as much as she had, but he doubted his letter to have had the power to overcome all her hostility toward him.
After his own anger had dissipated, he saw the error of having assumed that the mere offer of his hand would have flattered her into accepting or that, being a comprised woman, she would be desperate to marry.
How arrogant he must have appeared to her and how worthy of her indictment!
That she had acknowledged the truth of his letter, though it must have pained her, gratified him and elevated his estimation of her.
She might have as easily dismissed its contents and insisted on her own righteousness.
Courage and humility were required to admit where one was wrong.
He had not thought it possible for his love to grow more than it had, and he had more than once wondered what might have happened had he revealed himself to her as her instructor.
But he had promised to uphold the confidentiality of all concerns of Trenwith House.
That he had feelings of a tender nature for his student did not exempt him from his contract.
The truth might mortify her and make her forever too embarrassed to speak with him.
Her current demeanor certainly did not hearten him, but where a woman was concerned, if there was even the tiniest shred of hope, a man must pursue it till pain too great to bear confirms its obliteration.
*****
After Darcy had left, her uncle and aunt joined her, and expressed admiration of his figure; but Lizzy heard not a word, and wholly engrossed by her own feelings, followed them in silence.
She was overpowered by shame and vexation.
Her coming there was the most unfortunate, the most ill-judged thing in the world!
How strange it must appear to him! In what a disgraceful light might it not strike so vain a man!
It might seem as if she had purposely thrown herself in his way again!
Oh! why did she come? Or, why did he thus come a day before he was expected?
Had they been only ten minutes sooner, they should have been beyond the reach of his discrimination; for it was plain that he was that moment arrived.
She blushed again and again over the perverseness of the meeting.
And his behaviour, so strikingly altered—what could it mean?
That he should even speak to her was amazing!
—but to speak with such civility, to inquire after her family!
Never in her life had she seen his manners so little dignified, never had he spoken with such gentleness as on this unexpected meeting.
What a contrast did it offer to his last address in Rosings Park, when he put his letter into her hand!
She knew not what to think, or how to account for it.
They had now entered a beautiful walk by the side of the water, and every step was bringing forward a nobler fall of ground, or a finer reach of the woods to which they were approaching; but it was some time before Lizzy was sensible of any of it; and, though she answered mechanically to the repeated appeals of her uncle and aunt, and seemed to direct her eyes to such objects as they pointed out, she distinguished no part of the scene.
Her thoughts were all fixed on that one spot of Pemberley House, whichever it might be, where Mr. Darcy then was.
She longed to know what at the moment was passing in his mind—in what manner he thought of her, and whether, in defiance of everything, she was still dear to him.
Perhaps he had been civil only because he felt himself at ease; yet there had been that in his voice which was not like ease.
Whether he had felt more of pain or of pleasure in seeing her she could not tell, but he certainly had not seen her with composure.
At length, however, the remarks of her companions on her absence of mind aroused her, and she felt the necessity of appearing more like herself.