Darcy tilted his head to one side, surprised that a woman would worry about future felicity in a marriage beyond the capture. Perhaps she did not understand who his cousin was. “My cousin will be the future Earl of Matlock, and the lady is the daughter of a wealthy baronet. I dare to say she will find the match amiable.”
Elizabeth shook her head slowly but said nothing, returning to her meal. Darcy did not let her off the hook. “Please, I am most eager to know your opinions. Fear not offending me.”
Elizabeth slowly chewed and then swallowed. Taking a moment to drink her chocolate, another luxury often available at home, but not every meal, she chose her words carefully. “A man has little to fear from a poorly made match as he may seek an escape from his wife. But a lady must be very careful in choosing a husband, for riches and wealth do not always make for a happy life.”
“I wonder if your opinions are the work of true philosophy or merely a contradiction of your circumstances. You cannot say a young lady of a lower rank would not seize the chance at a title or wealth.”
A flash of anger at his unfiltered honesty spurred Elizabeth’s immediate response. “Nay, sir, they are the observations of a woman who has seen far too many a couple shuffle through life, miserable beyond measure, yet bonded in matrimony. For that reason, I shall only marry for true esteem and respect or not at all.” Elizabeth rose from the table, no longer finding herself hungry and scarcely curtsied before leaving the room.
Marching with more gusto than her usual gait, Elizabeth’s aggravation manifested in pent-up physical energy. The nerve of that man to be so mean about her circumstances! Why, he should not even have brought up the subject, with his nonsensical laughter. And what man takes pleasure in a cousin’s folly?
With half a mind to stalk out the front doors of the home, she belayed that desire from a lack of proper shoes and attire. To act rashly now, she’d likely end up as sick as Jane. Remembering her sister, she took a few calming breaths and planned to follow through on checking on Jane when she spied the library door standing slightly ajar. A quick chess move might allow her to finish her game, should her opponent remain vigilant, before their opportune departure from this place.
She ducked into the library feeling a small amount of joy from her anticipated victory. Not disappointed, the moment stood perfectly as planned. The mysterious opponent had played right into her hands.
With a surge of power, she picked up her queen and placed her squarely in the sights of the rogue black knight. Considering the darker pieces were of a deeper rosewood, she supposed it ironic it would be a rose knight to take her queen. She replayed the conversation just moments ago with Mr. Darcy and could not help feeling amused at how her queen’s sacrifice was much like the trap his poor cousin fell into with his lady.
A presence behind her compelled her to turn. She stared into the doleful face of none other than that infuriating man who alternated in complimenting and insulting her person.
“Miss Elizabeth, I hoped to find you here. Please accept my sincerest and heartfelt apologies.” The man bowed low, much lower than a simple greeting, and Elizabeth involuntarily rolled her eyes.
“I accept your apology, Mr. Darcy. Now, please excuse me while I find more reading material before tending to my sister.” She walked away towards the sparsely populated shelves.
“Were you not making a move in our chess game?”
Elizabeth paused and hunched her shoulders. Releasing the grimace on her face, she slowly turned around to look carefully at the face of Mr. Darcy for signs of falsehood. There were none.
“Our chess game?”
“Indeed,” Mr. Darcy made a dramatic readjustment of his coat and took a seat on black’s side. He frowned as he looked at the board, then at her, then back at the board.
Elizabeth, still shocked over the identity of her opponent, thankfully did not give the gambit away. Darcy stared again at the board, and for a moment he considered allowing her threatened queen to survive. As she slowly took her seat at white’s position, he reconsidered such a concession. If she saw he could have taken her queen, and chose not to do so, she would be more offended than him taking her most powerful piece as a result of her blunder.
“It appears I must apologize once more . . .” he trailed off as his knight took her queen. He regretted he had sought to checkmate her so early, now that they were sitting down together in privacy, he found himself very content.
“No, Mr. Darcy, I believe I am the one to owe apologies. It was a trap, you see.” Elizabeth Bennet picked up her white knight, with no blood on its hands, and took one of his pawns. “Checkmate.”
Darcy’s eyelids blinked fiercely as he looked again and again. She was right, no matter what move he made, his king remained in jeopardy and his queen could do nothing to parry the attack. Drumming his fingers along the edge of the table, he gave the brilliant game play of his Elizabeth one last, mind-searing examination. Perceiving her rising, he called out.
“It would be an honor to enjoy such a game every afternoon at Pemberley with a beauty such as yourself.”
Elizabeth’s mouth opened wide, but she closed it again. What kind of woman did he think her? Did he think a woman in her position would take just any offer, even that of a word she could not bring herself to speak in her mind?
“Your offhanded and practiced cruel games are of no interest to me, Mr. Darcy. Good day to you, sir.” Elizabeth did not curtsy before she picked up a random book from the shelf and quit the library. She cared not who saw as she ran up the elegant stairs, nearly knocking Mr. Bingley down when she reached the top.
“Good morning, Miss Elizabeth!” The ever affable Bingley put his manners to good use, but the tear-streaked face of Elizabeth Bennet passed him by. She scurried to her sister’s room and closed the door behind her.
Jane slept peacefully in her bed, oblivious to her sister’s horrid start of the day. Elizabeth held her sobs at bay, racking her brain for some sign of Mr. Darcy’s proposition to be false. But the man had made conspicuous observations as to her family’s status, and he appeared to enjoy manipulating her emotions at every turn.
Wiping her eyes, she refused to cry for his caddish behavior and instead walked over to the window where ominous clouds hung that were not there just one hour ago. Scowling at the vista before her of the rolling fields of Netherfield Park, the moody sky ripped a seam and poured showers of water on the surrounding area.
“Checkmate to me,” she whispered before tiptoeing out of Jane’s room and, after making sure the hall was clear, escaping to the relative safety of her own room.
Downstairs, Charles Bingley found his friend Fitzwilliam Darcy standing sentry at the large windows in the breakfast parlor.
“Er, morning, Darcy. You’ve not eaten?”
“I have. I planned to take an early ride when this broke.” Darcy lifted one hand from where they were clasped behind his back, motioning towards the storm raging outside.
“Did you happen to speak with Miss Elizabeth?” Bingley tried to sound nonchalant as he loaded a plate with pastries and meats. “She was crying just now as I passed her on the stairs. You did not upset her did you?”
“Blast!”
Charles dropped his plate to the table audibly as Darcy shouted out. The master of the house nodded to the servant waiting to serve him coffee.
Darcy turned and walked towards the table, gripping the back of a chair with both hands. “We were playing the chess game I told you about . . .”
“And you beat her. Well, to play a game, there must be a winner and a loser.” Bingley reasoned as he raised his cup.
“You are mistaken; she bested me!”
Charles sputtered his coffee, and it dribbled down his chin while the cup was still raised to his lips. He hastily put the cup down and dabbed his wet person with a serviette. “You lost? She won over you? Well, well, well, look how the mighty have fallen!”
“It’s not about the game, Charles. I made a fool of myself and revealed
my affections for her, and she spurned them. A more missish, coquettish bird I have never encountered!”
“Er, about that . . . I inquired gently from her sister about Miss Elizabeth’s thoughts on you. As you requested . . .”
“The two of them likely planned this, from the start! Beware Charles, I’m beginning to observe these Bennet girls are much flirtation and little substance.” Darcy scowled and stomped in frustration.
The doors to the breakfast parlor opened again even as the hour now neared noon. With no sign of the sun, the day appeared held captive in time by the rain. Louisa Hurst and Caroline Bingley entered the room giggling and carrying on their own conversation. When Miss Bingley spied Mr. Darcy, she stopped her inappropriate laughter and stood up a tad straighter. Instantly, she transformed from a genial sister to putting on the unaffected airs she thought a lady of high society should display.
“Mr. Darcy, how lovely to break our fasts together! With you retiring so early last night, it’s a wonder you too would rise so late.”
“I’ve already enjoyed my morning meal, madam.” Darcy bowed and quit the room, leaving Bingley to deal with his sisters. His pique over the expression on Elizabeth’s face when he voiced a future of them together, raised his blood pressure even higher. The pure disdain and repulsion he read in her features pushed him over the edge as his mind began to torment him.
He had ended up in the library, his room of last resort, mostly on habit. But the physical location only served to mock him further. With a great visceral growl, his eyes fell to the chess game standing just as it was left, with his checkmated king. His hand scattered the pieces to the floor, and he leaned forward against the window, his forehead pressed against the cool glass. Huffing rapidly until a great fog obscured his view entirely, Fitzwilliam Darcy accepted the fact he stood as a rejected man and the pain felt far worse that what could be called a passing fancy.
At Longbourn, the ancestral home of Elizabeth and Jane Bennet, Mrs. Bennet breached her husband’s study with a broad smile on her face.
“Mr. Bennet, Mr. Bennet! Have you seen the weather? We are saved I tell you.”
Mr. Bennet, a man in his late forties and father of five daughters but no sons, did not look up at his wife as he continued to scratch the letter on his desk. He disliked the task of correspondence very much and felt cross that his Lizzie temporarily resided miles away at Netherfield Park, even if it was in the service of caring for her elder sister. For years, his second eldest daughter had shown great wit and interest in the affairs of the estate and become somewhat of a secretary for him. As his arthritis stung with each carefully crafted word, his irritation grew that Elizabeth was not present to fulfill this duty for him.
“However do you reason that, my dear?” he asked tersely, not wishing to humor his wife, but also knowing the woman would not leave until satisfied.
Mrs. Bennet happily hurried over to the window wiping her hands on her apron. “It is raining buckets outside, even if it should stop raining tomorrow; there is no hope of the carriage making it through the mud and muck for at least two days.”
“I still fail to see how a little fall of rain and muddy roads plays into your logic.”
Mrs. Bennet squinted her eyes at her husband and pursed her lips in consternation that the man could be so dense. “This means our sweet Jane will spend even longer at Netherfield Park and I am certain Mr. Bingley will fall madly in love withherif he is not already!”
Mr. Bennet put down his quill and leaned back in his chair. A bubbling sense of mirth flooded his senses, but he stifled his laughs. “Your means of marrying off our daughters baffle me to no end. But, despite the poor weather, I am expecting a visitor to arrive in two days’ time.”
“A visitor? In this weather?”
Mr. Bennet shuffled papers around on his desk to retrieve a letter from the bottom of the pile. He held it up and pretended to read over it for a refreshing of the salient details, but it was not necessary. His feud with his cousin Collins stretched back decades, and now that his cousin had died of natural causes, being older than Mr. Bennet himself, his son and heir apparent of Longbourn intended to stay a fortnight.
As Mr. Bennet related these details to his wife, he was not spared her normal theatrics of nerves and palpitations over his unavoidable demise and therefore loss of the estate due to an entail that followed only the male line.
“I still see not why he should visit here. Shall I also allow him to inspect the silver and count the plates?”
“I do not believe we owe Mr. Collins an inventory of the home quite yet as I am both hearty and hale. However, my most intriguing cousin does come with the intention of marrying one of our daughters I suspect, and I leave that matter in your capable hands, madam.”
Mrs. Bennet’s eyes widened in fear. “Oh no, not Jane! She is practically engaged to Mr. Bingley.”
“Yes, and we shall not trade a prospective man of wealth like Mr. Bingley for a cousin of known inheritance, for that would not be prudent.” Mr. Bennet said in his normal sardonic tone, completely missed by his wife of more than one score.
“Certainly not! He is what, a parson? What if you outlive him? See? What then? Shall one of our daughters be a lowly parson’s wife while some other obscure male relation inherits this home and all the contents?”
Mr. Bennet rubbed his temples as his wife spun more and more hypotheticals. When she reached fever pitch about being thrown into the hedgerows, he held his hand up to signal he had endured enough.
“We shall see which one of the other girls he shows interest towards and meanwhile,” Mrs. Bennet snatched the letter from her husband’s desk to review it herself for any information of Mr. Collins’ tastes and preferences. “I shall direct Hill to prepare the guest room.”
Mr. Bennet waved his hand and returned to his odious task of correspondence while his wife fluttered out of the room. He stared at the torrential downpour falling nearly in solid sheets outside the window. A fleeting thought of sympathy for his poor cousin to travel in such a gale crossed his mind. Then he remembered the bombastic tone and gross assumptions the man had made in his letter about the Bennet family and Mr. Bennet returned to his usual nature of finding amusement in the most ridiculous of persons, until he remembered he must continue writing letters, and then he cursed the rain under his breath.
The gloomy afternoon in the drawing room at Netherfield Park dampened the spirits of most of the inhabitants. Elizabeth Bennet sat in one chair, doing her best to concentrate on the novel in her hands, but she, unfortunately, held no interest in it. Still, she suffered through the prose as it was the book she hastily retrieved earlier. Her sister, Jane, rested comfortably snuggled in blankets near the fire, with the undivided attention of Mr. Bingley bringing forth her soft tinkling laughter at regular intervals. Elizabeth was not close enough to overhear their conversation. She tried to muster happiness for her sister. Instead, her attitude remained flat observing Mr. Darcy standing stoically at the window out of the corner of her eye.
“My Louisa, is not this weather simply unbearable? And so inconvenient, why you and I planned to call on the Longs this afternoon.”
Elizabeth wondered if Caroline Bingley ever exhausted her energy in actively ignoring the Bennet sisters. She had never encountered such brashly rude behavior in a woman to regularly exclude the company around her in conversation. Miss Bingley had completed finishing school according to her boasts, but the opinion of Elizabeth Bennet asserted she must have ended her tenure before the education completed.
“Such horrible weather makes one feel as if they might go absolutely mad.” Louisa Hurst looked up with an air superiority from her knitting. “And being cramped in one’s quarters can make even the most pleasing company grating.”
Elizabeth slammed her book shut startling both of the sisters and attracting the attention of Mr. Darcy. With the three of them looking expectantly at her, she offered a plastered smile. “Forgive me, I find this book not to my liking. I shall f
ind another.“ She rose from her chair and walked confidently to the door with her shoulders back. The waiting footman hastily attended and Elizabeth offered the young man a nod in gratitude.
Tension between her temples eased as her fingers traced the spines along one line of volumes. Considering Don Quixote, a title she reasoned would allow her to read Cervantes’ ridiculous parables and replace the names with her present company, or an older Gothic romance, she felt in no hurry to abandon her solitude. When Elizabeth turned and realized the room was entirely empty save the warm fire in the grate, she placed the Gothic romance back on the shelf. She and the Cervantes hastened over to the most comfortable chair she could find. As a guest in the home, surely no one would have a problem with her reading in a room such as the library. After all, were not these comforts specifically here for persons interested in reading?
Within half an hour the library door admitted one other, but Elizabeth sat so engrossed for the errant knight’s ridiculous quest, she did not disrupt her reading. Mr. Darcy selected a title from the sparse shelves and took the seat across from Elizabeth, on the other side of the fireplace. This movement so close to her person did finally interrupt her concentration but still cross with the man for reasons even she was not entirely sure of, Elizabeth said not a word.
The storm continued its fury outdoors; a stalemated silence raged inside. The clock on the mantel provided a metronome cadence that Elizabeth found echoed in her mind as she read each word but failed to register its meaning. Instead, her mind raced with every odd thought she had ever held about the mysterious man from Derbyshire who appeared not to care for the sensibilities of others around him so long as it pleased his wishes. Even at this very moment, he displayed his disdain for others by entering the room without even so much as greeting her! Between his insults, flatteries, and proud behavior on other evenings she observed, she could not find herself agreeing with Jane. Where her sister saw only the good in people, Elizabeth Bennet was less inclined to hold such optimism. Mr. Bingley’s friend was haughty and snobbish and no matter how much it might please Mr. Bingley and Jane, Elizabeth Bennet held no interest in even remaining acquaintances with the man.
To Capture Mr. Darcy, a Pride and Prejudice Variation Novel Page 3
