Page 15 of Done for the Best (Engaged to Mr Darcy #5)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE LETTER EXPLAINED
“A n explanation would be splendid,” Elizabeth said, her voice quivering a little. “I think it is long overdue for me to have some sense made of any of this.”
Darcy took the pages from her hand, briefly glanced at them, and then slowly folded them again. Elizabeth extended her hand, wishing to have them returned to her, and he complied. He seemed unable to meet her gaze. His pallor truly alarmed her, so she suggested, “Perhaps we ought to sit.”
He did not reply, but she turned and went to a sofa. He followed and sat next to her.
“The night before my accident, you proposed to me. Yes?” she asked.
“Yes, I did.” With a deep breath he said, “I told you I ardently admired and loved you and begged you to relieve my suffering and become my wife.”
There was a long pause until she said, “That sounds very prettily done.”
“No.” He leapt to his feet and ran a hand through his hair. “No, it was not prettily done, not at all. There were other things, concerns and considerations…things which did merit consideration but should never have been a part of any proposal. Certainly not.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “Such as a dislike for my sister.”
“A dislike for…? I do not dislike your sister, any of your sisters.”
“Then why did you persuade Mr Bingley to abandon her?” She held up the pages. “And apparently conceal her presence in London from him. Did it not occur to you that in marrying me, Jane would be your sister too?”
He walked towards the mantel, leaning one hand against it. “Elizabeth. I love you and I believe…I think you love me too. I cannot deny I have made many mistakes?—”
“No!” Her voice rang out more loudly than she had intended. She modulated it but remained firm as she said, “I will not be put aside again. It is too frustrating, too distressing to be walking about feeling like the main character in a book someone else wrote. I want to know all.”
“What good can that do? If our past was not always…amicable…what can it?—”
“What precisely were the concerns and considerations you spoke of?” Elizabeth said sharply. “And what would provoke you to enumerate them while proposing?”
“I suppose some part of me thought that you might feel…feel the weight of distinction more keenly if you knew of the obstacles I had overcome to…to…offer…” He heaved a sigh. “The expectation for Mrs Darcy has always been a woman of wealth, of status…perhaps a lady who is titled. My mother was the daughter of an earl, as you know.”
“Whereas I am the daughter of a minor landowner and a woman he raised from trade.”
“And I wish I had never given the least thought to any of that, but much as it shames me to acknowledge it, I did. I spent a great deal of time last autumn discouraging any…pretensions you might have had towards me.”
Elizabeth had no idea what to say to that. She could not imagine herself having pretensions towards any man, but perhaps she had.
Darcy turned from the mantel to look at her. “Alas the joke was on me, for what I perceived as interest on your part was merely…I know not what. Nothing. In any case, when I met you at Rosings Park, I knew I was lost. I had barely been able to remove from Hertfordshire without declaring myself madly in love with you. To see you again, by such coincidence…it felt as if Providence was telling me to throw aside all else and make you my wife. I believed you understood the nature of my intentions towards you. We had been walking the grove…you had teased me about taking the trouble to practise conversation with you—I believed it an invitation to further attentions.”
Had she been pleased by his attentions? She had no idea.
“When I came to you, that night, I somehow felt that the differences between us…these matters of station and fortune, ought to be discussed.” He had begun to pace, slow steps towards and away from the mantel. He did not look at her as he said, “I also mentioned the fact that your sisters…your mother…they can be somewhat…untamed in…in company.”
To hear him say that so plainly still stung. Yes, they had spoken of it before and yes, she had made light of it, but somehow, in this context, it pained her.
“You grew angry, as I did too. In fact”—he rubbed a hand over his brow—“you were already angry with me when I came into the room.”
“Why?”
“You had learnt, earlier that day—unbeknownst to me of course—that I…” He paced away again, looking at anything but her, and licked his lips. “About my role in separating my friend from your sister.”
“So you admit it.”
He nodded. “When did you speak to Bingley?”
“He called on me at Gracechurch Street. Evidently, he did not think it would irreparably damage him to be civil to my aunt and uncle.”
Darcy looked down but said nothing to that.
“Jane loved him,” Elizabeth said earnestly. “She loves him still. Is my family so disgusting to you that you would make your friend unhappy by telling him the woman he loved had no regard for him?”
“I believed it to be true!” He paced while he explained how he had led his friend away from Netherfield Park, and yes, had even gone so far as to hide her sister’s presence in London, believing his friend ought not to be involved with Jane. The pain of that made her tremble, but she could not fully consider it, not yet.
“I truly did not think your sister’s heart was touched by him. I believed that she was perhaps tolerating him in hopes of gaining a wealthy husband.”
“My sister is not mercenary,” she said immediately. She might have forgotten many things, but Jane’s good character was still fast in her mind.
“I know. I know I was wrong, and it was presumptuous of me, who barely knew her, to make any judgment of her feelings for my friend.”
“Did I think she loved him? That night, I mean.”
He nodded. “Yes, you were quite certain of it. Miss Bennet was terribly distraught by his leaving, and you were pained by her continued distress, even in April.”
“I am told she remains distressed now,” Elizabeth said flatly. “In May. But he has found another, so there is nothing for it.”
To this Darcy could only sigh heavily.
“And this Mr Wickham—from this it would seem you thought I had a tender regard for him? But you offered for me anyway? Thinking I was in love with another man?”
Again turning from her, Darcy slowly walked to the window where he leant heavily against the sill. “I…I did not think you were in love with him when I proposed. I thought so…afterwards.”
“After what?”
“There are things I have done to Wickham, things you felt revealed a general cruelty in my character. You did not, at the time, know about Georgiana, or understand the truth of his nature.”
“Clearly not, for surely I could not defend such a creature, certainly not to you.”
“But what you did know was that I had behaved unkindly nearly throughout my entire stay at Netherfield. I perceived the society of Meryton to be far beneath me and did not exert myself to be friendly to any of them, including your family. Including even you.”
She watched his shoulders rise and fall as he drew a deep breath. He reminded her then how he had refused to stand up with her the first night they met. “The worst of it was that I knew, quite well, that you had overheard me and yet I failed to apologise to you.”
Elizabeth remembered laughing about his insult previously. Somehow it was not at all amusing now.
“You said I had a selfish disdain for the feelings of others, and you accused me of having injured your sister with regard to Bingley. In truth, the fact that I accused you of being in love with Wickham was, in itself, a slight against you, because it ignored all else that you so justly tasked me with.”
She recognised that she was twisting her hands and forced them to still. She had hoped the truth would make her feel…if not better at least less confused. But she was still confused, still unable to reconcile her present reality to the brackishness of the past.
“I still cannot understand why it is that after such a row, we would somehow find ourselves engaged. And that you would write this letter to me…the ending of which seems like you would never know me again, if we were not…”
Her voice trailed off as the comprehension at last dawned. “We were never engaged.”
His gaze was locked on hers for several excruciatingly long moments until at last, he shook his head and dropped his eyes. “The last thing you said to me was”—he swallowed audibly—“that I was the last man in the world you could ever be prevailed upon to marry.”
She gasped, and her hand flew up to land on her chest.
“I left the parsonage that night with your rejection echoing in my ears, and heard you begin to cry as I closed the door behind me. I went back to Rosings where I spent a sleepless night writing you that letter and intended to wait for you in the grove the next morning, hoping to place it in your hands. Then I learnt you had gone missing from the parsonage, the search ensued…the next I saw of you was when I found you, unconscious.”
“The last man in the world…” Elizabeth echoed him faintly. It was too difficult to grasp the meaning in it all. How thoroughly she had been deceived! How blatantly everyone had lied to her!
He crossed the room to come to her in two quick paces. “I intended to tell you, truly I did. I thought I would tell you and offer a proper proposal this time, one worthy of you?—”
A piercing pain shot across Elizabeth’s head. She pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling panicked confusion mount. “You were disgusted by me, appalled by my family…and then I went to Kent and all of this…this disdain for me somehow turned into tender regard?”
“No,” he said immediately. “I was in love with you long before that. In truth I cannot say where or when exactly, but it certainly began in Hertfordshire, fairly early on.”
“Early on? How can you say so? You left Hertfordshire, and could not have known if or when you would see me again! You behaved so…so unfeelingly towards me and my family. You ruined Jane’s chance at a future with the man she loves!”
“Elizabeth, listen to me, I beg you. For however poorly I began, I love you and wish to marry you. I have tended to your reproofs, truly I have?—”
“Have you? I think not. Indeed, I would say this is an exceedingly strong example of a selfish disdain for my feelings.”
He ran a hand across his face.
“I have been ill, and recovering from a grave injury, and you have taken advantage of that weakness?—”
“That was never my intention.”
“But it is nevertheless what you have done!” she cried. “For weeks now, you have allowed me to persist under the belief that I accepted your offer of marriage! You never hinted that we had this contentious?—”
“I told you we argued!”
“Argued! But not months of impassioned dislike! Not an entire acquaintance stained with rancour!” The words hung in the air as Elizabeth gathered her sensibilities. “You claim you love me and yet so much of me, of what I am, is abhorrent to you, else you could not have said it in a marriage proposal. And apparently, I had equal revulsion for you—and I must say it cannot surprise me. Arrogance and pride have long been the thing I can tolerate least in a person, to say nothing of deceitfulness!”
“I cannot disagree with you,” he said finally. “My actions have been…I have erred. All I can do now is throw myself upon your mercy and pray you will permit us a new beginning.”
Her insides shook as she beheld him, so handsome and yet capable of such cruelty towards all those she loved and yes, even towards her. Mercy? Where was his mercy when she was addled and sick and wholly dependent on those around her?
“How am I ever to trust you? It is bad enough that a man will so often mislead a woman as to his intentions and feelings. You have lied to me about my own intentions and feelings. And you think I can just wave it away like some little bit of nothing?”
“I do not ask you to merely wave it away but only to think of how wonderful these weeks have been and?—”
“It has all been a lie!”
“If you will only consider this reasonably,” he said urgently. “These last weeks, this time when all of our prejudices and preconceived notions about one another?—”
“Reasonable?” Elizabeth gaped at him. “I should think it quite reasonable that I want no part of a man who would deceive me for weeks, allowing me to think myself engaged to him!”
“I have never once said we were engaged. You said it, and yes, I should have corrected your misapprehension. But I did not lie to you, nor have I taken any of the liberties that an engaged man might have.”
“Liberties?” She laughed, bitterly. “What greater liberties might a man take than an attempt to force a woman to bind herself inextricably to him! I suppose you planned to tell me once the wedding was over, and I had no recourse?”
“No.” He knelt before her, reaching to take her hands in his own. She pulled them away before he could. “Elizabeth, please, I beg you. Everything was done believing it was for the best. I was persuaded that it was what was best for you.”
“I do not believe you,” Elizabeth said softly. “How could I? I do not even know who you are.”
He stared at her, the pain evident in his eyes; she swallowed and looked away from that. Lies, it was all lies, none of it meant anything. Darcy—no, Mr Darcy—was nothing at all like she thought he was. He was an arrogant, impudent, unfeeling, haughty, unkind stranger, the sort of person who thought himself so much better than anyone else. The sort of person accustomed to getting their own way, no matter the cost.
Well, she was not for sale . She thanked God for whatever interventions or coincidences had led her to discover the truth before it was too late.
She rose to her feet with the greatest amount of dignity she could assume, and without a syllable more, strode towards the door. She heard Darcy rise from behind her.
“Looks like I had the right of things the first time,” she threw over her shoulder. “You are the last man in the world I could ever marry.”