Early in the day following Elizabeth Bennet dining with his aunt, Darcy encountered her walking in a favorite grove of his in his aunt’s park.
Darcy’s thoughts had already swirled about her, both a little confusion about how little she knew of her family background—that there was some mystery that his aunt had guessed—and how pretty she had looked.
The way she had looked when she had stepped into the drawing room would be imprinted forever on his memory.
She had sat straight and smiled as his aunt interrogated her. It made him...proud.
As he contemplated that, Darcy saw Elizabeth stepping along her path confidently, despite the book that she held up before her face.
He smiled to watch her, and the smile widened as she came close enough for him to see that the title’s lettering was in Greek. As she had not yet noticed him, he said aloud, “Homer again, Miss Bennet?”
Elizabeth startled and laughed. “No, one of Plato’s more incomprehensible dialogues. The one about the one and the many.”
“Parmenides?”
“That is the one. Or is it the many?”
“I knocked my head against it as well,” Darcy said, rather more impressed by that than he would have been had she been reading Homer again. Homer was a pleasure. This was philosophy. “I never made head nor tail of it, and in the end was forced to assume that the correct interpretation was the one advanced by my professor.”
Elizabeth laughed. “And I might ask what your professor said, as I cannot understand it at all either.”
“Something about eternal forms. I do not recall any details, beyond everything having been about whether everything is one or many. It seems to me to be clear that it is both , and the confusion is in our language, not in reality or our perceptions. I think that is the true solution to many of Socrates’ queries.”
“ You have thought deeper than I if you can say so much.” Elizabeth grinned at him. “My deepest thoughts prompted by this was a confusion about how the author of The Symposium and Phaedo could write something so difficult .”
Now it was Darcy’s turn to laugh. “Plato was a man of many capabilities, and that is why he was great, and we are not—I must apologize for my aunt’s treatment of you last night.”
“No...” Elizabeth paused for a long time after he said that. Then she shook her head and smiled at him. “I did not mind in the end.”
“I see that it affected you strongly to be treated in such a manner. I had not imagined that she would act in such a way.”
“Mr. Darcy, I only wish that she had explained what prompted the whole—but I do not dislike Lady Catherine. On the contrary. She was kind to me afterwards, as you saw. And she has been most kind to Mrs. Collins, though her kindness takes a form that I would not wish to experience myself.”
Darcy studied Elizabeth.
She wore a fetching sprigged muslin that fit far better than any he’d seen on her at Longbourn. Her bonnet looked very fetching, with a beautiful ribbon whose color set off her hair and eyes. Her eyes sparkled, and she pressed a delicate hand against her cheek.
“I was glad to see you again,” Darcy said. “Very glad.”
She flushed and looked down. “I too. Beyond words, when I heard you would be in the neighborhood while I was here...I often think about our conversations and your friendship.”
A strong thump in his chest. Darcy needed to swallow.
A magnetism existed between them.
He turned a bit away, and placed his hands together behind his back, he began to slowly stride forward.
She stepped with him, holding the book in her hand.
“You look very well indeed,” Darcy said. “You are now... Miss Bingley once said something about you, that you dressed to make men dislike you. Ever since then I noticed how you did that. But—”
“Miss Bingley said so much,” Elizabeth replied laughing. “I had not thought myself to be such an object of her regard.”
“I believe it was part of an argument to her brother about why he should not marry the woman who did in fact become Mrs. Bingley.”
Elizabeth laughed. “That sounds more like her. I always suspected that she considered the Bennets to be beneath her. But she and Jane are good enough friends now , and there would be no benefit in promoting family disunion.”
“Miss Bingley has always seemed to me,” Darcy said, “ss a woman capable of acting as best accords with her interest in any situation. But I do not mean to insult her—she does so in a way that is perfectly proper, and perfectly...” He frowned. “You could not, I think. I do not think either of us could change our manners or ideas so quickly as might make our situation the easiest.”
She smiled without looking at him. “And now you see that I have ceased to dressing to disoblige men—Mary insisted. A condition of my visit.”
“You look happy.”
And as soon as he said that a frown came over Elizabeth’s face again. She looked at the grasses and mosses, and the bark of the trees. It was not a particularly happy look.
They passed out of the grove into the more general open air around the park, and Darcy pointed to a little Grecian temple in the distance. “Have you yet seen the view from there?”
At Elizabeth shaking her head that she had not, Darcy led them up towards the eminence.
She still did not say anything, and it made something in Darcy anxious that he had somehow offended her. Why would that feel so terrible?
And how could his having said that she looked happy make her unhappy?
“Do tell me what is on your mind,” Darcy asked when they reached the marble columns. He gestured for her to sit on a bench and sat down across from her.
“The view from here is a fine one,” Elizabeth said. “Your aunt is fortunate to have such a house.”
“It is more correctly,” Darcy said with a smile, “ Anne’s house, which she merely allows her mother to use. But Anne is not the sort of person to ever make any difficulty for someone with a strong will.”
Instead of this amusing her, Elizabeth turned completely dour again. Her face looked quite sad. She smoothed out the line of her dress and picked up a small white stone from the ground.
Why was it suddenly so difficult to speak to Elizabeth? He remembered it always being easy.
“Is that why you are to marry her?” Elizabeth asked. She tossed the stone across the ground and watched it bouncing away, until it rolled down the side of the hill.
“What?” Darcy replied. “Who has been saying such things—I am not engaged to Miss de Bourgh. Why would—”
This suggested to Darcy a reason why she might be unhappy. Even he could not pretend to himself that there was no sign of her admiring him. But this was not something he felt able to think about. It would be, in any case, presumptuous to assume that the question came from such a source.
She looked at him with some startlement and clear eyes. Her perfect lips forming an O. “You are not to marry Miss de Bourgh?”
“No. Never.”
“But...” Elizabeth growled. “Of course. I should only have expected falsity from such a source.”
“Who?”
“That gentleman who I am sure you are yet cursing yourself for not making your parson. Mr. Wickham. Your loss was the regiment’s gain.” Elizabeth snickered. “Mr. Bennet likes to describe how he simpered and made love to us all.”
“Mr. Wickham?” Darcy thought about that answer. “I can see why he might think that.”
“Mr. Collins also confirmed it...though he said something like ‘you were intended for her daughter by Lady Catherine.’”
“ That has the virtue of being the simple truth. But my aunt sometimes mistakes the difference between what she intends for others and what they intend for themselves.” Darcy looked over the park and at the manor house itself with annoyance. He stood. “Let us finish our turn about. But I can tell you that I will never marry Anne. I am not bound to her by affection, and I do not consider myself as being bound by honor.”
They walked down the hill and started around again. Elizabeth was slightly smiling, and Darcy perceived her to be in a better mood.
“I had counseled Bingley to not marry Miss Bennet,” he suddenly said. “But I now think that it was a mistake to have done so.”
Elizabeth looked at him with some surprise. “And why did you do so?” She grinned. “Were the Bennets too low for a friend of the grand Mr. Darcy, whose aunt is the mistress of Rosings Park?”
“Rosings Park hardly deserves to be compared to my own estate of Pemberley,” Darcy replied with mock haughtiness. “But think of it from my perspective. How could a man favored with my friendship even glance towards a girl whose dowry is not at least...say forty thousand.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Bingley, not understanding his own worth—but why not fifty?”
“That would be better,” Darcy replied seriously. “But there must be some scope left for Bingley’s preferences in terms of character and person.”
As Elizabeth showed every sign of amusement at this, Darcy felt the need to ask her, “I would have expected you to be offended on the behalf of...well they are your family.”
She was thoughtful. “You meant to offend me?”
“I meant to apologize for something you might find offensive. I do not quite know why I spoke.”
She looked down. Her cheeks were red. There was a mysterious small smile.
They walked on for a little, and Darcy was intensely aware of her presence at his side.
That awareness had always been there, since the day he met her. He always had a known sense that she was...shaped perfectly. Had perfect hands. He’d always felt an intense stirring deep inside, the sort of thing that he never felt with women who he might marry. It was something about her eyes, and the way that she wore her clothes, and the ivory curve of her neck.
And her mind.
At one time, he’d wondered if the attraction was because she dressed strangely. Yet, here in Kent she dressed as any fashionable young gentlewoman might, but that sensation was yet stronger than ever before.
It had made it impossible for him to speak to her when he first saw her, and he suddenly again felt tongue tied.
He wished he could take her hand and hold it.
“I dread returning to Longbourn,” Elizabeth said. She touched the side of her lace trimmed blue bonnet. “I...I can’t do that again.”
“Dress to please Mrs. Bennet?”
She touched her hair, the curls falling over her cheeks. And then she nodded. “That was not so mysterious as I thought it would be.”
“You should always be who you wish to be. Mr. Bennet will support you. And besides, Mrs. Bennet has already married two of her daughters, she must be—”
“I would be too scared. Or maybe not—I sometimes wonder if my fear of her as ever been about her , or about something else.”
“Your memory of being beaten?”
“You know about that?”
“One time I asked Mrs. Bingley—though this was before she was Mrs. Bingley—about your childhood.”
“I didn’t know Jane knew.” Elizabeth was pensive. “Yes, I think that.” She took a deep shaky breath. “Yes. That. That.”
“Mrs. Bennet cannot hurt you if you do not allow her.”
“Not,” she replied with a smile, “unless she convinced Mr. Bennet to let her—unlikely. Mary likes it when I am admired. It is almost odd to me. She teased me about how all of you gentlemen eagerly hung about me—she made more of it than is reasonable.”
“Did she?” Darcy’s voice was involuntarily low.
“See, even you are doing it! I hardly know what to do when a gentleman flirts with me. No, no. With you at least, I beg for seriousness. None of those meaningful yet meaningless sentences and glances. I can amuse myself in such a manner with your cousin . I expect something different, more substantial with you .”
“More from me?” Darcy said with some surprise. “And what do you mean?”
“I expect you to be my friend,” Elizabeth said seriously.
“That is a simple matter, yet also a substantial one.” A warm sensation spread through Darcy’s chest. “Then I shall always strive to be your friend.”
“Thank you.”
They looked at each other for a long minute. “Friend,” Elizabeth said.
“Yes, friend,” Darcy agreed.
When they began to walk forward again, Elizabeth said, “Such a strange thing. It is merely clothes! Yet everyone treats me differently.”
“No, no. It is not merely the clothes,” Darcy replied. “You carry yourself differently. With additional confidence. As though you believe yourself to be worthy of attention. I think that is what draws it. I was surprised by how confidently you faced my aunt last night.”
She told him with her arch smile, and in a low, conspiratorial voice, “I thought about you. How you would behave, and what would make you approve of my behavior.”
That spark went through Darcy again. It was like he was falling, but did not mind. He knew that he needed to see Elizabeth safe and well, and that he did not wish it to be nearly six months before they would be in company again.
“I have thought,” she said, “about asking Mary if I might stay. She is happy to have me here. But...she does not make use of me. I am so used to being required to do this, or that, as repayment for my place. It is too odd to be comfortable. Mary acts quite like I am her sister—she even refers to me as her sister...I wish it were true.”
“Is it not true in some essential way?”
“Yes, but it is also false in an equally essential way.” Elizabeth sighed. “It is that philosophical thing you said. Our language does not catch the delicacy, the multiplicity of human experience, where a thing can be both one thing and yet another at the same time. It feels fragile.”
“Whether you return to Longbourn, or stay with Mrs. Collins,” Darcy asked, having formed the scheme in his head in the last minute, “I can offer you a reprieve from all of your habitual company this summer: Mr. Bingley and his family will visit Pemberley after the season ends. I would like it if you were a part of the party. I especially very much like the idea of you having a chance to see my estate.”
“You would?” She smiled at him. “I would be delighted. I shall eagerly await it. Oh, I do thank you!” She looked almost as if she wished to embrace him or kiss him. The air was filled with a magnetic vibrancy again, like a rainbow had burst from her face to strike his eyes.
Or something else equally ridiculous.
As they continued to walk, Darcy said, “I do wonder at Mr. Bennet not telling you what plans he has for you.”
Elizabeth grimaced. “He has always been secretive on the matter.” A long pause. “I know part of why, but not the whole of it. I had feared last night that your aunt had guessed the worst of the secret. Or you.”
“That sounds very serious,” Darcy said. Something about the grim manner that Elizabeth said this with made him smile at her. He could not care, but he was happy that she trusted him enough to hint towards it. “Do you wish to tell me the ‘secret’?”
“No.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I wish I did not know. Trying to hide it from me was a kindness of Mr. Bennet’s. But it is shameful.”
“I do not believe you can feel any shame on the point.” Darcy took her arm again. “You are being most mysterious, begging me to guess but not saying. Why? Either tell me or entreat me to not think on the matter at all.”
“I worry.” Elizabeth flushed. “It is best that no one knows. So, I must entreat you to not think about it at all. That is why Mr. Bennet never says anything.”
“And you think my aunt might know?”
“I think your aunt might have known my mother. The insistence on knowing her name, and that question about the hairstyle. I copied it from the miniature I have of my mother. The only image of her I’ve ever had.” Elizabeth touched the locket that she wore. “I had thought to myself that I looked very much like her when I studied the mirror that afternoon.”
“I see.”
“Do you?” Elizabeth asked. She pulled her arm away to wrap it around herself again. Then Elizabeth pressed a hand on the locket, as though that gave her comfort. “I hardly can.”
“I only mean to say,” Darcy smiled, “that she must have been an exceptional beauty.”
Elizabeth looked up at him sharply. “No flirting!” She wagged her finger in his face. “We already agreed: Only friendship, no flirting.”
“Of course, Miss Bennet.”
“Do not call me that .” She frowned. “It makes me feel as though I am pretending to be a daughter of the house. Even though Kitty and Lydia are not here, it is Kitty who has now taken the mantle of Miss Bennet from her sisters.”
“Not you?”
“Just call me Miss Elizabeth.”
“You are worried for the future—what would you do if you could do anything?” Darcy paused. And then, something in him that ought not to have been allowed to speak asked, “Would you marry if you could?”
“No.” Instant and confident answer. That completely lacked any flirtatiousness. Elizabeth had successfully followed her own stricture.
“Do you not wish to marry, or you only think that you cannot, or—”
“I have not thought about it. As I said last night: All seems dim. But I know that I cannot marry. Maybe I never will be able to.”
“Cannot marry?”
A frown had formed around Elizabeth’s mouth. This related to that secret she hinted at, but did not wish to discuss.
What could it be?
A part of Darcy’s mind whispered that it could not be such a difficult problem. It would be easy to guess. He could learn what she did not wish him to know—she in part did wish him to know so that there would be no secret between them. That was why she had given him such hints.
“I wish I could help you,” Darcy said instead of trying to guess. He felt anxiety at the thought, even though he was sure that Elizabeth treated this secret as being of greater significance than it deserved. “I promise that I will if you need it.”
“How could you help me?” Elizabeth said with an odd look, as though she were surprised to hear him say that.
“Within which difficulty?” Darcy shrugged. “I do not know at present. But in terms of your future, there must be something wholly respectable that can be arranged. I shall think about that. If nothing else, there must be someone in England who would be happy to employ you at good wages as a governess to teach her daughter Greek and Latin.”
“Hahaha.” Elizabeth grinned at him. “If I were a man , I would find it easy enough to get employment with my accomplishments, such as they are.”