Page 25 of Cads & Capers
CHAPTER TWO
“You have been very quiet since we left the gallery, Lizzy. Is anything the matter?”
Elizabeth looked at her aunt and away again, quickly. Something was the matter—the same thing that had made her almost stumble and trip outside the gallery. The same thing that had caused her heart to race. The same thing that had given her a palpable jolt of happiness whilst simultaneously filling her eyes with unshed tears. She had no wish to talk about it, though. She had lost count of the number of times her aunt Gardiner, or her sister Jane, or her friend Charlotte had told her it was time to cease dwelling on missed opportunities and allow her heart to heal. She did not want to hear it again.
They were walking past the newly completed Somerset House, and she pretended to admire its vast frontage to conceal her disquiet as she answered, “No, nothing. I am a little tired, that is all.”
“I see,” Mrs Gardiner replied. They walked a little farther in silence before she added, slyly, “It had nothing to do with us almost running into Mr Darcy, then?”
Elizabeth gasped, looking around so quickly she almost tripped a second time, making a mockery of her attempt to feign composure. It had been the most fleeting of glimpses—Mr Darcy had been stepping into his carriage in front of the British Institution at precisely the moment she and her aunt exited, and he had seemed in a rush—but she would recognise him anywhere, and it had most assuredly been him. Such a sighting would, even in ordinary circumstances, have exposed wounds that lay unhealed and unforgotten beneath the thin veneer of her equanimity. In the context of the encounter just compassed inside the gallery, it was even more distressing.
Her aunt nodded. “I thought as much.”
“Before you say anything, I was not going to mention it, so there is no need to tell me again all the reasons I must not talk about him.”
“Nobody has told you not to talk about him. We would only see you happy again—is that so terrible?”
“Mama would see me married. Whether or not I am happy is by the bye.”
Mrs Gardiner winced but did not argue. “In your mother’s eyes, being settled and being happy are one and the same. And however wrong she may be, I can tell you she thinks it because the opposite is so often true. Unless one is extremely well connected or extremely rich, then being an unmarried woman and being unhappy are one and the same. You will have to allow yourself to love somebody else when the time comes.”
“And I am sure I shall,” Elizabeth replied wearily. It was not as though she was not trying to forget Mr Darcy. All her aunt, sister, and friend’s frustration combined could not equal her own at being thus afflicted eight months after seeing him last, but it seemed her heart was a more obstinate creature even than she, for there he resided still, and no amount of sympathising, warnings, or good sense had thus far succeeded in banishing him.
She supposed it was fair comeuppance that she should have come to love him so thoroughly just as his affections ran dry. She had, after all, treated him abominably for most of their early acquaintance, and never worse than at the moment he opened his heart to her to propose. Yet, love him she did, and in a way she had never loved anyone before; with respect, gratitude, admiration, and—most unfamiliar to her—ardour.
She had given much thought as to when her sentiments had begun to change. His saving Lydia from ruin and her whole family from degradation had obviously fixed him in her mind as the most generous man she had ever known, but in truth, she rather thought she had been half in love with him by then in any case. His housekeeper’s liberal praise of him, given when Elizabeth visited Pemberley the previous summer with her aunt and uncle, had opened her eyes to aspects of his character—fine, admirable aspects—that she had never before considered. Nevertheless, she doubted it would have worked to improve her opinion if her enmity had not already begun to wane. His letter to her, in which he explained his history with Wickham and his motive in separating Mr Bingley and Jane, had done away with much of that. It was difficult to persist with a grudge against someone who had proved themselves innocent of all the charges laid against them.
In the end, Elizabeth had come to believe that every feeling of warmth she now held for Mr Darcy could be traced to the days and weeks after his proposal, during which time it dawned on her that, without any encouragement from her, without any material advantage in it for him, and against the certain violent objections of his family and all his friends, Mr Darcy had truly loved her. Anyone who could effortlessly relinquish sentiments built on so poignant a foundation was a better woman than she.
“Have you given any more thought to Mr Knowles’s request?” her aunt enquired gently.
Elizabeth sighed and shook her head. Mr Knowles had occasional business with her uncle, and after meeting her several times in Mr Gardiner’s warehouses, he had expressed a desire for them to ‘become better acquainted’.
“He seems perfectly amiable, but…” But he did not make her stomach squeeze just by looking at her; he did not make her blush when he took a cup of coffee from her hands; he did not speak to her as his equal or make her proud simply to claim his friendship. She had not wanted his attentions before today, and seeing Mr Darcy only further convinced her of it.
Indeed, never mind Mr Knowles; seeing Mr Darcy confirmed that she was not ready to submit herself to any other man’s attentions. Which was unfortunate, considering that she had just agreed to meet one in the gallery tomorrow, and that not meeting him would give great offence to the lady who had suggested the arrangement as a favour to her. The thought of it set her heart off racing again. Why, oh why had she agreed to it?
“But?” her aunt pressed.
“But I do not know whether I like him well enough ,” she answered with some agitation. “And I cannot help but think that if I agree to spend more time with him, it is as good as saying I do like him, and that will only make him think he has leave to propose, and then I shall have to accept him regardless of my sentiments, because if I refuse any more offers of marriage, Mama will disown me.”
Mrs Gardiner chuckled lightly. “It is unfortunate that he did not express an interest in Kitty. She seemed quite taken with him.”
“Kitty is taken with everything in trousers.”
“Lizzy,” her aunt replied with a half-admonishing smile. “Your sister is under just as much pressure from your mother to marry. If she is going about the business more eagerly than you, who are we to cavil?”
“Who indeed?” Elizabeth replied, a little distractedly, for an idea had occurred to her which, even if it could give no relief to her injured heart, might at least stop it from pounding, ten to the dozen, in her breast.
“Enough talk of troublesome men,” Mrs Gardiner said after another period of silence. “Let us put them all from our minds. What say you we enjoy a little shopping on our way home?”
Elizabeth agreed that she would like that very well and was reasonably happy with her success at concealing the fact that she thought about little else but men and their attendant troubles for the entirety of their excursion.