CHAPTER EIGHT #2
"You spoke as though your honesty made the insult generous. My family is good enough to educate your sister's friend and welcome your closest companion; Jane is good enough to marry him—but loving me is still an act of condescension."
"I did not say that."
"You described it."
Darcy turned away, then back. "My objections concerned circumstance, not worth."
"You separate them very neatly when it serves you."
The fire snapped behind the grate. Outside, a carriage passed on the road, wheels muffled by damp earth.
"Is this your only objection?" he asked.
"No."
His expression closed.
Elizabeth thought of Jane at the Gardiners' window, holding Bingley's letter. "I have every reason in the world to think ill of you. You separated Mr Bingley from Jane. You concealed her presence in London. You judged her heart without asking her and congratulated yourself upon friendship."
"I have admitted my error."
"To me. Did you sit beside Jane while she tried not to weep? Did you watch her wonder whether she had imagined every look and word? Your admission did not endure that. She did."
Darcy's jaw tightened. "I did not conceal Miss Bennet's presence. Miss Bingley did."
"And you knew Bingley remained ignorant."
"Not until later."
"Yet you were content when he stayed away."
He could not deny it.
"I believed her indifferent," he said. "I was wrong. I assisted their reconciliation once I understood."
"Because the evidence changed, not because you questioned your right to govern him."
The accusation reached deeper than she knew. Darcy took a breath, but she had not finished.
"And Mr Wickham."
His face transformed. "What has he said to you?"
"Enough to claim that you denied him what your father intended. Papa's inquiries support your account of the living and the money, but there is more. Everyone behaves as though some great danger must remain unnamed. You demand trust while withholding the truth."
"The truth concerns another person whose reputation I will not expose."
"Then say so without treating every question as insolence."
"Wickham is not entitled to your sympathy."
"That is precisely the manner I mean. You do not explain. You pronounce."
Darcy went still.
Elizabeth heard her own breathing. Anger had carried her beyond caution, yet nothing she said felt false.
"If you believed me arrogant," he said, very quietly, "why did you dance with me? Why come to my house? Why allow me to hope?"
The question hurt because it was not wholly unjust.
"I did not know the extent of my anger until you asked me to overlook it. And I did not understand your purpose. You were kind to Mary. You love Georgiana. You apologized for the assembly. I thought—"
She stopped.
"What did you think?"
That he might be better than her first judgment. That she had begun to anticipate his calls. That the sight of him at Court made her feel seen rather than measured.
"It does not matter."
Pain entered his face before pride covered it. "It matters to me."
"Then know this: I might have respected the man you were becoming. But tonight you offered me the same judgment dressed as love."
He recoiled as if struck.
For several seconds neither moved.
When Darcy spoke, every word was controlled. "You have said enough. I comprehend your feelings and have only to be ashamed that mine were expressed in a manner which caused offense. Forgive me for taking so much of your time."
He bowed.
At the door he stopped but did not turn. "My care for my sister is not a disguise. Whatever else you believe of me, do not doubt that."
"I do not."
His shoulders lowered by a fraction. Then he left.
Elizabeth remained standing until the outer door closed.
The room seemed too small for the force of what had occurred. She sat, rose again, and crossed to the window. Darcy walked rapidly toward Rosings without hat or greatcoat, though rain had begun.
She expected triumph. She had defended Jane, challenged arrogance, and refused to be purchased by wealth.
Instead her hands shook.
He had loved her.
Not admired. Not intended to flirt. Loved, with enough force to disturb every expectation of his life. The offer had been insulting, but the feeling had not seemed false.
Elizabeth pressed her palm against the cold glass.
Charlotte returned to find her before the dead fire.
"Lizzy?"
Elizabeth looked up. The compassion in Charlotte's face broke the last of her composure.
"Mr Darcy proposed."
Maria gasped. Charlotte sent her upstairs with a look.
"And you refused him."
"How do you know?"
"Because if you had accepted, you would not look bereaved."
Elizabeth laughed once, painfully. "He spoke of overcoming us. Papa's new title. Mama. The entail. He separated Jane and Bingley. He still commands rather than explains."
"Then you were right to refuse."
"Yes."
Charlotte sat beside her. "Being right does not prevent grief."
Elizabeth covered her face.
At Rosings, Darcy entered through the side door drenched and found Colonel Fitzwilliam in the billiard room.
"Good God, Darcy. What happened?"
Darcy removed his wet gloves one finger at a time. "I asked Miss Elizabeth to marry me."
The colonel's surprise became delight, then alarm. "She refused."
Darcy looked at him.
"You look as if she shot you."
"She was more accurate."
The colonel poured brandy but did not offer easy consolation. "What did you say?"
Darcy repeated enough.
By the end, Colonel Fitzwilliam closed his eyes.
"You informed a woman you professed to love that her family was beneath you?"
"Not in those words."
"Words seem to have been the principal difficulty."
Darcy took the brandy and did not drink.
"She accused me of offering the same judgment disguised as love."
"Was she wrong?"
The answer came too quickly in Darcy's mind and too slowly to his mouth.
"No."
Rain struck the windows. Somewhere above, Lady Catherine rang for a servant with imperious force.
Darcy thought of Elizabeth at Netherfield saying the King's greatest gift had been a father who learned to leave his library. Sir Thomas had changed after seeing death an inch away. Darcy had believed himself more disciplined, more responsible, less in need of correction.
Now the future he had privately built—Elizabeth at Pemberley, Elizabeth with Georgiana, Elizabeth across his breakfast table—vanished because he had asked her to enter it as a concession.
"There is more she must know about Wickham," he said.
"Georgiana?"
Darcy nodded.
"You cannot tell Miss Bennet another woman's secret merely to win an argument."
"No. But I can trust her with it so that she may judge me truly."
He went upstairs and began a letter.
* * *
Elizabeth left Hunsford early the next morning because remaining indoors felt impossible.
The rain had passed. Water hung from hawthorn branches, and the path through Rosings Park shone in broken patches of sun. She walked quickly, as though distance might arrange the disorder of the previous night.
Darcy waited where the path entered the grove.
He looked as if he had not slept. His coat was perfectly fastened, his cravat exact, and his face stripped of every social defense.
Elizabeth stopped.
"Miss Elizabeth."
He held out a letter.
"Do not be alarmed. It contains no renewal of the sentiments which disgusted you. I ask only that you read it."
She accepted it. Their fingers did not touch.
Darcy bowed and walked away before she found a reply.
The letter was thick, written closely, and sealed only once. Elizabeth carried it to a fallen tree beyond view of the house.
Darcy began with Bingley.
He admitted observing Jane's preference without understanding its strength.
He had known Bingley's attachment and believed it temporary because his friend's affections were easily engaged.
Lady Bennet's expectations and the younger girls' liveliness concerned him; the recent rise in the Bennets' consequence had made him question whether Bingley understood the social pressures surrounding the match.
Yet he acknowledged that these objections had become excuses after Jane's character proved faultless.
I saw the risks and presumed I must prevent them, he wrote.
Bingley's trust encouraged my interference, and I mistook Miss Bennet's reserve for absence of feeling.
When Miss Bingley concealed her arrival in London, I did not know immediately.
Once I learned it, I allowed the concealment to continue. For that there is no defense.
Elizabeth read the paragraph twice.
He did not soften his guilt. He did not say his intentions excused him. Anger remained, but it could no longer feed upon denial.
The account of Wickham followed.
Darcy described childhood companionship, his father's partiality, the promised living, and the three thousand pounds accepted in compensation. He enclosed dates and names already confirmed by Sir Thomas's investigation.
Then he wrote of Georgiana.
At fifteen she had been placed at Ramsgate with a companion, Mrs Younge.
Wickham renewed acquaintance, won the lonely girl's trust, and persuaded her to agree to an elopement.
Her fortune of thirty thousand pounds was the object.
Darcy arrived unexpectedly days before the plan. Georgiana confessed. Wickham left.
My sister's name must not be exposed, he wrote. I reveal it because my silence allowed a practiced deceiver to appear merely unfortunate. I withheld the truth from fear for her, not contempt for your questions. My manner gave you reason to believe otherwise.