Page 34 of Such Persuasions as These (Pride and Prejudice Variation)
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“ I say, Darcy, you have done a fine job avoiding us the past two days. Scarce said a word this morning while we were out. What’s on your mind, old man?
” Wentworth asked him as he poured two glasses of scotch.
The other gentlemen were in the billiards room with Bingley, awaiting a dinner of pheasant and grouse, as well as a haunch of pork for those who preferred not to spit lead balls onto their plates as they ate.
Darcy, having had a surfeit of polite attention from the country squires, had slipped away at his first chance.
He had been meditating without intermission on his conversation with Elizabeth.
If he was honest, most of his thoughts centred on one moment, that moment where all his fears and doubts and misgivings and distrust were overruled by the magnitude of his attraction.
He had found himself surrendering, knowing full well that it meant giving her his name, his hand, his fortune, his whole self.
He had not intended it as a test of her avarice in that moment, but after she had walked away so furiously, he could not but admit that it was a test she passed.
“Avoiding you?” Darcy responded at length.
“I suppose it would seem that way. I apologise; I have had much to think on of late. I had a rather disconcerting conversation yesterday, and it has me…distracted.” He accepted the drink from the captain’s hand and unconsciously rested it against his aching cheekbone.
It was not black and blue, but he certainly felt it.
“Lizzy, I take it? I saw her trying to get your attention at the market. I assume she caught you up, then?”
“Oh, that she did,” he replied drily.
Darcy expected Wentworth to enquire as to the nature of their conversation, but before he could form in his mind a circumvention to another topic, the captain spoke up.
“That woman can certainly get a man in a tangle. Why, I was in a tangle over her from the age of nine up until I met Miss Elliot, I would say. And I am not the only one.”
“No?” This piqued Darcy’s interest. How many men had she insidiously conquered and left writhing in pain in her path?
“Elizabeth is universally admired—and not just because of her beauty, like her sister. Elizabeth makes everyone she meets feel so heard, so appreciated. And her laugh; well, you must have noticed how her laugh can hypnotise. Problem is she does it so unconsciously that she often finds herself with admirers she would rather not have, like that canting prig of a parson, Mr Collins.”
“Collins is in a tangle over Miss Elizabeth?” Darcy asked, of a sudden almost worried, while at the same time affronted that a man like him could dare to think he deserved such a woman.
“Oh yes, couldn’t keep off her elbow at dinner the other evening. She was out of sorts, but still, he was charmed. I suppose, taken in a prudential light, it would be a good match, as he is to inherit. It would guarantee her the estate of Longbourn.”
“Never going to happen,” Darcy replied, unwittingly voicing his condemnation of the ridiculous cleric aloud.
“Well, she does not have her standby excuse to refuse him anymore, so she will have to rely on her own resourcefulness.”
“Standby excuse?” He was learning so much; of course he would from Elizabeth’s oldest friend.
“When she was about sixteen, I came for a short visit, and she was being hounded by this septuagenarian with a fat wallet and eager hands. He would not accept her polite hints of refusal, so when she told me about it, I asked her, ‘Did not we have an understanding?’ I shall never forget the look of gratitude in her eyes when I said, ‘You dare entertain the advances of another man? You are spoken for!’ And from that moment on, she has had a ready means of deflecting any unwanted attentions.”
Wentworth smiled broadly at the memory.
Darcy could not believe what he was hearing. Elizabeth’s words came unbidden to his mind, ‘You are in no danger from me, for I have long been spoken for.’
Feeling as though Wentworth was party to her deception, he asked, “You were amenable to her using your name to deceive respectable gentlemen?”
“It was never about deceit, per se . Just a gentle way to guide their attention elsewhere. She has never been in a hurry to marry—indeed I do not think she has ever met anyone whom she liked well enough. And you know her mother. Dear creature, but terribly anxious about her daughters’ futures.
If even the scent of an opportunity had made it to her keen nose, she would have insisted on Lizzy taking anyone with more than four hundred a year, be he a king or a cobbler. ”
“Was she trying to guide my attention elsewhere when she told me she was engaged?” Darcy asked, unsure whether Wentworth knew that he was one of Elizabeth’s tangled men.
“Ah, yes, she mentioned that she told you of our understanding, ” he replied simply.
“She must think quite highly of herself, or quite lowly of me, as she informed me of it almost the moment we met. What a disgusting creature I must be for her to feel the need to so forehandedly reject me.” He tried to laugh it off as a self-deprecating joke, but the plausibility of its truth stung, stunting his chuckle.
“No, she drew you up straightaway,” Wentworth answered without hesitation, casting him a smile with an arch of his brow.
“She knew you would not allow her to help you—something about you limping at the ball and needing her assistance. Never thought you would look twice at her—what was it you called her, barely tolerable ? In any case, she knew you would lump her in with all the eye-batting belles and teasing tarts, so she decided to take herself off the market. It worked, did it not?”
Wentworth’s speech was given so freely, it appeared that Elizabeth had related to him the circumstances of their acquaintance without compunction. Her conscience, it seemed, was perfectly clear where Darcy was concerned.
“Yes,” Darcy said, his thoughts and emotions in a tumult. “It certainly did.”
“Not that she is proud of it. Not in your case, at any rate.
If you knew Lizzy, you would know, as playful as she is, she is never underhanded.
It appears that after you two became friends, she worried that you would feel deceived.
‘Course, I told her it was not possible—you are too honourable a man to hold something so innocent against her. You may not value her friendship as I do, but I am sure you would not give it up on such a slight offence.”
Darcy strove to follow as Wentworth revealed truth after truth about the lady he had so determined to despise.
Elizabeth had not accepted the fat wallet who had hounded her just a few years ago.
She would not accept her cousin, who could guarantee her and her family a comfortable home for life.
And she had not accepted his own improper, presumptuous attempt to compromise her into matrimony—not even ‘for ten thousand a year…’
His whole being was ablaze at the remembrance, only this time with scorching shame. How could he have demeaned and dishonoured her so?
In his anger and distrust, he had driven away the only woman he had ever loved. His scepticism had prevented him from even hearing her explanation. He had promised that nothing could make him despise her; yet, at the first test of the veracity of his word, he had proved faithless.
She was right; he deserved to be left to the company of his bitterness and disdain. He had earned every ounce of the self-recrimination he would yet suffer for having treated her so disgracefully.
She was no mercenary.
But, truly this time, he was a fool.