Page 20 of An Offer of Marriage (Engaged to Mr Darcy #7)

TOO WISE TO WOO PEACEABLY

S triding from his drawing room, hearing her sobbing from within the room behind him, pained Darcy more than he could have thought possible. His fury did not make him impervious to her sorrow, it seemed. “A joke,” he reminded himself. “This was a farce to her.”

There were other examples, so very many, now that he considered them.

He felt a fool, thinking of how he had imagined, at times, that she flirted with him.

No indeed. Her intention had been to deliver insults to him, to pierce his pride, to make him ridiculous, beginning from their time at Netherfield Park.

How well he remembered those evenings! How delighted he had been by her cleverness, her wit. Had it all been at his own expense?

He had arrived in his study almost without knowing how he got there.

He sank into a chair while her insults, so many of them, rang in his head.

He placed his head in his hands, wanting the torment to stop, but he could not prohibit himself from thinking of all the times she had shown him that she disdained him—and he had misapprehended it completely.

Their conversation in the drawing room at Netherfield when he, very boldly he thought, had meant to compliment her. Hurst had only just insulted her for preferring reading to cards, and he had said a woman must improve her mind with extensive reading to be considered accomplished.

I am no longer surprised at your knowingonlysix accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowingany.

How had he failed to understand that she had not taken it as any compliment to herself, but rather an example of his own pride? Did she believe he thought he was too good for the ladies he met?

Rising, he went to the window which overlooked the street below. His carriage had been brought round for her and before long, she emerged from the house. Her bonnet dangled from her hand and she stumbled a little. She looked pitiful, and his heart, his foolish heart, ached to go to her.

If she turns and looks back , he decided, then it means she has regrets and I will go to her later, sort things out. If she does not look back, however, it means my initial judgment is right and she has no regrets.

She did not look back. The footman handed her in and closed the door behind her, and the carriage went off, returning her to Gracechurch Street.

Then I hope I never see her again. He knew it was untrue even as he thought it, but perhaps in time he would come to believe it, to know this outcome was for the best.

He decided he would write everything out, all the insults she had levelled at him during the time of their acquaintance. Perhaps seeing it so indelibly would help his heart come to understand what his mind already knew .

He went to his desk and withdrew a sheet of paper, then took up a pen and began. The remark about accomplished ladies went onto the page first, of course. Their dance, ruined by her veiled barbs on behalf of George Wickham.

The time at Netherfield when she had argued with him about Bingley’s nature.

He had thought it all in good fun, to discuss how such an agreeable person as Bingley was blown to and fro, but in reconsidering it, Bingley had known it for the dispute it was and so had she.

She had meant to deliver him a facer, and so she had—with him none the wiser. Fool!

Bingley had said, “…Arguments are too much like disputes. If you and Miss Bennet will defer yours till I am out of the room, I shall be very thankful; and then you may say whatever you like of me.”

Elizabeth replied, “What you ask is no sacrifice on my side; and Mr Darcy had much better finish his letter.” Dismissing him completely!

The time Miss Bingley had caught him in staring at Elizabeth and had tried to turn some of that attention on to herself by proposing a turn about the room. He had daringly tried to flirt, but it had turned sour, quickly.

“You either choose this method of passing the evening because you are in each other’s confidence, and have secret affairs to discuss, or because you are conscious that your figures appear to the greatest advantage in walking;—if the first, I should be completely in your way;—and if the second, I can admire you much better as I sit by the fire. ”

Miss Bingley had been ridiculously missish, demanding coquettishly that they punish him for such a speech, but it had been Elizabeth who proved, in retrospect, surprisingly vindictive.

“Nothing so easy, if you have but the inclination,” said Elizabeth. “We can all plague and punish one another. Tease him—laugh at him. Intimate as you are, you must know how it is to be done.”

That had been the same conversation in which she had tasked him about vanity and pride and had said, ‘I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good’.

Ergo…she had not thought him either of those things.

Not wise. Not good. Proud, ridiculous, with a disposition inclined towards hatred. This was what she thought of him.

More and more of her now-revealed insults ran through his head, and he wrote more quickly than was his wont, hoping to capture them all.

Mr Darcy has no defect. He owns it himself without disguise…

Shall we ask him why a man of sense and education, and who has lived in the world, is ill qualified to recommend himself to strangers?

…My fingers do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women’s do.

They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression.

But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault—because I would not take the trouble of practising.

Even when he had met her in the woods at Rosings Park, she had been careful to inform him of which her favourite paths were.

He had presumed to think it was her way of asking him to meet her.

Had she instead been wishing for him to avoid her?

To leave her to her solitude? His face flushed at the idea that he might have been continually turning up where she least wished him to be.

All this time, she had hated him. Loathed the very sight of him! How had he been so stupid?

“The wisest and the best of men, nay, the wisest and best of their actions, may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke.” Those were not Elizabeth’s words, but his own, said to Elizabeth.

He had been more astute in that than he had realised, for her first object was a joke.

A cruel joke. She had fooled him before, but he saw it now.

She was exactly like her father, wishing to sit back and comment satirically on those around her.

He had gravely misunderstood her, and it was his own fault.

He hoped he was not so idiotic as to fail to see the errors in his own ways.

So accustomed to the flattery of young ladies wishing to ensnare him, he had interpreted everything she said, every barb, every arrow as its own sort of obeisance.

He had allowed himself to think that their little back-and-forth meant she was desirous of his attentions…

not that she actually thought so little of him.

His pride had brought on his downfall, and Elizabeth had certainly delivered it.

The days which followed were a torment. Elizabeth wrote letter after letter to Darcy trying to explain things.

It was no easy task; it was not mere misunderstanding.

It was true, she had said the things Charlotte wrote of, but she had not meant them.

She had been angry and unguarded, but she had been with one of her oldest and dearest friends, releasing the helpless anger she felt whenever she was called upon to atone for her family’s sins.

She would never have done something so cruel as to marry a man for the express purpose of making him unhappy; one would need to be a madwoman, willing to punish oneself as well as her husband.

In one matter she was able to be satisfied.

It had not been Charlotte who put the letter into the hands of the de Bourghs.

Indeed, Charlotte had put aside the cold manner of their parting, it seemed, and was shocked and deeply regretful to know the condemning object was her own.

She apologised profusely for her carelessness but was also curious as to how the letter came into Lady Catherine’s possession, as even the maids did not trouble themselves with the things within her escritoire.

“Her ladyship is more intrusive than any person I have ever known of,” Elizabeth told Jane. “I do not doubt that she thinks it her right to go through any of Charlotte’s things whenever she wishes to.”

“Do you think our cousin gave it to his patroness?” Jane asked. “Perhaps as punishment for not having accepted him.”

“Why Jane, that is positively suspicious of you,” Elizabeth said with a wan smile. “Thinking ill of people like that! I am proud of you. As for your conjecture…I do not know. I suppose it is very possible.”

Her letters to Darcy were ignored, or at least she believed they were. In any case, she had no reply until one day one came. And then she wished it had not.

Miss Elizabeth Bennet,

Pray desist in these letters you continue to send me. We are not engaged, as you so vehemently indicated, and it is highly improper for a young lady to send letters to a bachelor.

I understand that you believe your words were misunderstood regarding the notion that marriage to me is a joke. I submit to you, then, all the various cruelties you have uttered to me in the time of our acquaintance. Surely you do not mean to posit that all of these are misunderstood ?

What followed was a list of the various insults—some hidden, some less so—since last October.

What he did not mention was his own insult of her at the very first assembly where they met, although he did seem to have perfect recollection of two times that he had asked her to dance and she refused him.

She had wept so often and so copiously since the fateful day in his drawing room that his list left her feeling benumbed. Her eyes moved over the words, knowing they were things she had said, knowing they were—mostly—said out of spite.

Because of his insult. Did he even remember it? It did not seem that he did, or if so, he had exonerated himself for it. But with that she had decided his character, and had given him her little punishments, such as she could, ever since.

Surely I am not as cruel, not so vicious as this sounds? And yet the evidence was there. She was mortified by her mistreatment of him. It seemed she had misunderstood him, believing him worse than he was, and he had misunderstood her as well, thinking her better than she was.

And now each of them knew the truth.

How despicably I have acted , she thought miserably. Until this moment, I have never known myself, and now that I do, I am ashamed.