Chapter Twelve #3
Elizabeth pressed her lips together for a moment before saying, “I was wounded at our first meeting at that assembly. Oh, forgive me for teasing you about it again, but it is objectively one of the most amusing things that has ever happened to me.”
“And here I was wishing those words unspoken. Our first meeting might have gone very differently.”
“If you had not been so out of sorts from worrying over your sister, would have you taken your friend’s advice and asked me to dance? Ah, but of course you would have, if only to spite Miss Bingley.”
“Which is precisely why you would have accepted,” he chided her. “Would you have formed a favorable first impression of me?”
“I would have been astonished to find you so sensible,” Elizabeth said with a wicked smile.
“Why would that have astonished you?”
“Because no gentleman, in my experience, is handsome, rich, and clever. I have only ever found such specimens in Mrs. Bevan’s novels, for she is a woman of considerable imagination.”
Darcy sat up a little straighter; she thought him handsome. “And how would you have known so quickly that I was sensible?”
“Why, from your asking me to dance.” She batted her eyelashes at him with feigned innocence, and Darcy chuckled.
“Shall you tease me forever?”
“If you had remained longer in Meryton, I am sure I would have found many ways to tease you.”
“No indeed! I would have invited Georgiana to join me at Netherfield, knowing you would adore her, and then you would have been subjected to enough of my company to improve your opinion of me.”
“It would hardly have been fair for you to gain the company of such a darling relation, when Longbourn was, at the time, forced to bear a very tedious one. My cousin—your aunt’s parson—came to visit us not long after the assembly.
Have you ever happened to meet him, when visiting Miss de Bourgh at Rosings Park? ”
Darcy had not actually visited Rosings since before his betrothal to Anne.
His last visit had been while Georgiana was at Ramsgate, just before that fateful debacle with Wickham.
“I vaguely recall my aunt having a new parson that I did not find especially agreeable—though he agreed with my aunt at every opportunity. She lectured him for an entire dinner on what sort of bride he ought to seek out—in fact, I believe she suggested the daughters of an estate that was entailed upon him.”
Elizabeth started down at her dessert plate. “Well, it is not entailed upon him anymore.”
“So, it was your family—he came to visit you at my aunt’s behest?” Darcy chuckled. “I suppose if I had still been in the area, we might have orchestrated the very same sort of arrangement we have arrived at now, in order to deter him from pursuing you.”
When Elizabeth looked up, there were tears glistening in her eyes. Darcy panicked. Had he taken his jest too far? Was she now reconsidering their ruse? He offered her a handkerchief with a look of penitent concern.
“Forgive me, I did not realize that I would become so agitated, speaking of it after so long. My cousin—he—I….” Elizabeth let out another weary sigh, her posture slumping a little.
“He did attempt to woo me, in his own repellent way. I refused his offer of marriage and my mother—she… it was my fault that she had an apoplectic fit.”
As Elizabeth dabbed her eyes, Darcy subtly drew his chair nearer to hers, making free to rest his hand atop hers. She curled her fingertips around his. “I feel so silly.”
“Your tender sentiments do you credit, Elizabeth. And I am in no position to think ill of you for such feelings. When my father died, I was inconsolable for months, and even seven years later it still pains me to think of what despair I felt then. From time to time, I think of what he might have thought of some event in the papers, or some jape of Richard’s, or Georgiana’s progress at her instrument—and I can hear his voice as clear as a bell in my mind.
It is a small way of keeping him with me, even though, at times, knowing what he might say is more a torment than a comfort. ”
Darcy reached out and wiped a tear that had slid down to the edge of her jawline. “Had I stayed longer in Hertfordshire, I might have told you as much when offering my condolences.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes and breathed in sharply, then smiled at him. “I would have been very grateful, as I am now. Hearing it then, I might have never….” Her voice trailed away as her face grew pink, and Darcy’s hand twitched as if wishing to touch her once more.
Realization struck him in the chest like a physical blow.
If Darcy had stayed any longer at Netherfield, he would have undoubtedly fallen in love with Elizabeth.
But then we would not have been free to quell his aunt’s blackmail by engaging himself to Anne.
He would never have fallen in love with Anne, would never have seen the side of herself she shared only with him.
And, worse yet, Elizabeth would have been at Pemberley when it burned.
She might have been a great consolation to him after that tragedy of watching his ancestral home burn, but she would have been placed in considerable peril.
Elizabeth’s countenance turned playful once more. “Mr. Darcy, what are you thinking of? Your expression has changed five times or more in the last minute!”
“It occurred to me that if I had courted you to repel Collins, just as I court you now to win back Anne, we may have wed; your uncle told me your father would have given me the business for our little scheme. You may have been at Pemberley when it burned.”
“Oh.” Elizabeth blushed again and briefly looked away. After fidgeting with her fork for a moment, she asked, “How did it happen?”