“So you agree with my assessment? You are a misanthrope!”
“I neither agree nor disagree.”
“Vacillating is an even more despicable tactic than smiling! I no longer find it shocking that you abuse books and pianofortes, even instruments as beautiful as this one.”
He should have let the conversation come to an end; he should have finished his trek to the door; he should have returned to the ball.
Instead, he asked, “Do you play?”
“A little. Not very well.” Then she smiled. “Better than you do, though.”
“My teacher would take umbrage at that characterization.”
“If you paid a master to instruct you, I would ask for a return of your payment.”
“My sister’s only tuition was a new piece of music and a little patience on my part. I found the former much easier than the latter to give.”
“In that case, your sister should be congratulated for her efforts.”
“Yes, I think so. She managed to teach me a little.”
“Does your sister have a favorite composer?”
“Mozart, for the moment. Do you know this piece?” he asked, taking a seat at the instrument. He stared at the keys, difficult to see now in the near dark. It struck him then, the unseemliness of the situation: the door, half closed, the fire nearly extinguished, the two of them only steps away from each other while the ball continued merrily in the next room. There was something about being alone with her, though, that made him believe that the rules of society did not apply. So, he let his fingers search for the right keys until he was punching out an arrhythmic melody.
“Sonata in A perhaps?
He glanced up at her; she was standing just at the edge of the bench.
“I am uncertain. Could you play it?”
“If you move, yes.”
It was the darkness that inspired in him the courage—or the impudence—to slide to the edge of the bench, giving her just enough room to sit. She glanced at him, the piano, and the bench, and he wondered if she would turn and leave the room. Given Wickham’s stories of his cruelty and Collins’ claims of his engagement to Miss de Bourgh, he should have behaved with more, not less, propriety, if only to convince her that he truly was not a misanthrope. Instead, he found himself acting the fool, as if he were challenging her to like him in spite of himself.
So, it felt right, if not correct, when she smoothed the front of her dress and sat down beside him. No part of her—not the ribbons in her hair, the tip of her elbow, or the toe of her shoe —touched any part of him, yet that inch of space between them felt as provocative as a caress.
She placed her fingers on the keys and began to play. It was a common enough piece, one he had heard many young women of his acquaintance play: his sister played it with a steadier tempo; Miss Bingley never missed a note; his cousin Sophia achieved a better dynamic range. Yet he could not say he had ever truly enjoyed the sound of the music until it had been accompanied by the click of her nails against the ivory and the unsteady rhythm of her breathing.
“I have lost my place,” she whispered, looking up at him.
It would have been a simple matter of placing his index finger beneath her chin, brushing his thumb across her lips, and leaning forward while her eyes fluttered shut. But his fingers were still attached to his hand, which still answered to his brain, which was, despite all of his indiscretions in the past half hour, still aware of the situation.
So he looked away and said, “I am not a misanthrope.”
“No,” she said, laughing shakily, “perhaps not. But you must own that you appear disdainful to those who do not know you.”
“I certainly have not that talent some people possess of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.”
“My fingers,” she said, placing them on the keys of the piano and playing a few notes, “do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women’s do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault—because I would not take the trouble of practicing.”
He smiled. “You are perfectly right. You have employed your time much better. No one admitted to the privilege of hearing you can think any thing wanting.” He paused and met her gaze. “We neither of us perform to strangers.”
She sighed, and his brain, which had previously been so helpful in restraining the rest of him, quite suddenly failed. Before he knew what he was about, his right hand had found its way to the nape of her neck, while the fingers of his left hand traced the lines of her cheek, her chin, her lips…
“And so I told Cook, take this bun and burn it!”
They froze at the sound of the voices in the corridor.
“You’re gonna get yourself dismissed, Tom!”
“No, Cook knows I…”
Tom’s voice faded until there was no sound but the muted strains of violins and chattering from the drawing room. Even so, Darcy needed a good five seconds to realize that he could move. It took Elizabeth a few moments longer, but when she became aware of her surroundings, she jumped from the bench and hurried toward the door.
“Wait!” he said, striding after her.
She half turned. “I cannot…what we…inappropriate…”
She grabbed for the door handle, but by benefit of his longer legs, he reached it first.
“Listen,” he said, but she tried to make her way past him, so he pushed the door closed and, for good measure, leaned hard against the handle.
She stared up at him, her mouth open and wordless.
“I will not be marrying my cousin,” he said, “and neither will you be marrying yours.”
Chapter Eight
She took two quick steps away from him, nearly tripping over a chair as she made her hasty retreat. Darcy lunged forward to steady her, but she waved him away.
“I do not think that is a good idea.”
“No,” he conceded, clasping his hands behind his back as if to prove that he was not as much of a menace as he must have seemed to her. “No, it is not.”
“Was that…were you…? Given the circumstances, you will forgive me for speaking frankly?”
“Of course.”
“Was that a declaration of marriage? If so, it was very badly done.”
He could not help but smile. “It was.”
When he said no more, she exclaimed, “And this is all the reply which I am to have the honor of expecting! Then I will answer you with equal brevity. No, I—”
“Please, allow me to explain.”
“No. Your behavior…” She stopped and looked down at her hands. “My behavior…”
“You have done nothing unseemly.”
Her head jerked up. “I see. If you found your sister, alone with a man she had nearly—”
He inhaled sharply.
“That was inappropriate,” she whispered, her gaze returning to the ground. “I should not have—”
“No,” he said, his shoulders falling. “No, in fact, it was more appropriate than you could possibly know. Please,” he said again, “allow me to explain.”
She glanced at the wall separating them from the dancers in the drawing room. Then, sighing, she nodded. After taking a seat in the chair that had nearly sent her tumbling, she asked, “Are you attempting to break your engagement to Miss de Bourgh?”
“I have never been engaged to her,” he replied, sitting across from her.
“Then why does Mr. Collins seem to think otherwise? I realize that he is a very silly man, but I do not think he would willfully misrepresent his beloved patroness.”
“My aunt wishes the marriage to take place, wishes it with so much ferocity that she believes it to be true. Only a few months ago, I would have said that her dream of such a union was a foolish one. Now, I must own that it is the most sensible course of action I coul
d undertake.”
“Then it stands to follow that by asking for my hand, you are behaving insensibly.”
“No. I…” He stopped, wondering how to proceed. He could tell her that he loved her—but did he? In this dark room, with so little space between them, he thought he did. He certainly admired her. He could not, however, discern the nature of his affection: did he love her for herself or for the alternative she presented?
That kind of doubt had no place in a successful marriage proposal, but he was, above all else, an honest man. “It is insensible,” he admitted. “By declaring myself thus, I am going against the express wishes of my family, my friends, and I hardly need add, my own better judgment.”
She made a little sound; he could not tell if it was a sigh or a stifled laugh. “You are not improving your case, Sir.”
“I will not flatter you. The inferiority of your connections—” She made as if to stand up, so he reached for her hand, immediately stilling her. “—would be reason enough to call this proposal insensible, but society’s disapproval, heavy as it would be, is not my weightiest concern. My aunt has made it very clear that, if I wish to regain custody of my sister, I must do my duty and marry my cousin.”
She stared down at their hands, fingers still intertwined. “I suspect this something to do with what you could not bring yourself to tell me in the library.”
“Yes.”
She slipped her hand out of his. “If it is your duty to marry your cousin, then why ever would you propose to me?”
He did not know how to put his feelings, uncertain as they were, into words. So he prevaricated: “I would think our actions this evening provide a clear enough answer.”
“Oh, I see. You cannot live without hearing my pianoforte performance, is that it?”
“Perhaps,” he said, smiling again—how easy it was to smile in her presence, even in the most difficult of situations. “Or perhaps I cannot live without your wit.”
“It is unfair of you to play to my vanity. Very well. I suppose an insensible marriage proposal warrants some explanation?”
“I suppose it does.” Still, he hesitated, unsure how to begin. Finally, he asked, “What did Wickham tell you about his relationship with my family?”
“Wickham? What has he to do with any of this?”
“Earlier, you asked me how I would react if I found my sister alone with a man.”
“Oh, no.”
“I am afraid so.”
“Your sister is but sixteen!”
“Sixteen at present; she was fifteen this summer when he attempted elopement. I was able to intervene before my sister’s reputation was materially harmed, at least outside of the family,” he added with a scowl.
“I did not trust his portrait of himself, but I hardly suspected him of this! To think he claimed to have been a favorite of your father’s!”
“As far as that goes, he spoke the truth. He fooled my father almost as badly as he did my sister.”
“You must despise him,” she said. “I despise him, and he has done nothing me.”
“Yes, I despise George Wickham. I despise him almost as much as I despise myself.”
It felt surprisingly good to speak those words. He had tried to appear calm for Georgiana, and Richard had been so furious that he had not had the opportunity to vent his own frustrations. Bingley knew nothing of the situation, and it had seemed appropriate, for Georgiana’s sake, to keep him uninformed. Though Darcy had acquaintances enough to fill the whole of Pemberley, there had been no one with whom he felt comfortable enough to explain his situation.
Sitting across from her, however, he felt no misgivings. As he spoke, he realized how it was her actions, more than his words, that brought him relief: she listened so attentively while he related his long and sordid history with George Wickham; she refused to pass judgment when he spoke with great bitterness of Richard’s decision to inform his father; and, with no hesitation at all, she took his hand as he explained how he had done nothing, nothing at all, when his uncle, Lord Matlock, had descended on his London home and demanded Georgiana remove to Rosings.
In the space of an hour, he felt his doubts begin to slip away. If he had been wrong about the marriage proposal, his error had come only in calling it insensible, for when he had finally finished speaking, he could not have imagined anything more sensible than marrying Elizabeth Bennet.
*
He had been silent for several minutes before Elizabeth realized that she was still clutching his hand. She should have pulled away, but so much had changed in the last hour that it now seemed more proper to hold on than to let go. Certainly, it was easier than figuring out what to say. The only words she could manage were, “And how did you find Malcolm’s advice?”
“Malcolm,” he replied, laughing quietly, “is very wise. However, it is not fair to compare my pain to yours.”
“Perhaps not, but only because one can never truly understand another’s sorrows. Oh, we are a wretched pair,” she said with a poor attempt at a laugh. “Both of us, hiding from our fates on out-of-the-way balconies, in rarely-used libraries, and in darkened music rooms.
“I am not hiding,” he said, brushing his thumb against the base of her wrist.
She pulled her hand from his grasp before he could cause that sensation again. “There can be no other reason for your proposal of marriage.”
“No other reason? Could it not be love?”
Much like Miss Bingley’s pianoforte, the word sounded warm, rich and slightly out of tune.
“No,” she said, looking away. “You are grateful to me for listening to you. Had you found Miss Bingley here—”
“I would have immediately exited the room,” he interrupted. “Coy. I will add that to your list of faults.”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You are being coy. You know quite well I would never have told Miss Bingley what I told you, but you wanted to hear me say so.”
“I am quite amazed,” she said, unsure whether she should be offended or amused, “at your ability to speak of love in one breath and my many faults in the next!”
“It is proof that I am being rational. I understand you, Elizabeth Bennet, your strengths and your weaknesses, and I wish to marry you.”
Her breath caught in her throat, and for a moment, she allowed the word “yes” to echo in her head. Then she regained her wits and said, “Just an hour ago, you claimed to be insensible. Which is it to be, Sir?”
“I was mistaken then.”
“Or perhaps you are mistaken now?” She shook her head. “You do me a great honor, Mr. Darcy, by asking for my hand—or, more accurately, claiming my hand, for you never did ask—but I cannot, in good conscience accept. You are clearly mad.”
“Another fault,” he replied.
“Rejecting you, or calling you mad?”
“Both, naturally, but I meant your propensity to hide behind your wit.”
“And here I thought you had such fondness for my wit.”
Again, she shook her head, hoping to clear it. How easy it would be to lose herself in their banter. When she was alone with him, she could almost forget the world outside of herself: her father was not dying, his family had no quarrel with him, there was no Mr. Collins or Miss de Bourgh. They had managed to create a strange sort of vacuum where they could discuss their concerns while overlooking them, too.
To accept him in this quiet and illusory space when they had to live in a reality with harsh, unavoidable consequences seemed the utmost folly. Yet, to reject this man who caused her pulse to quicken and her mind to race in order to marry her silly, pretentious cousin seemed equally foolish.
“Come, let us speak seriously for a moment,” he said.
“That is precisely what I am trying to do. You have nothing to gain by marrying me. And do not,” she added quickly when he began to speak, “suggest love again, for I do not believe it.”
“I see. You think me as untrustworthy as Wickham.”
“Oh, now who is being coy? I meant no such thing! But to speak of love when our lives are in such disarray…How can we possibly know our true feelings when we both want to escape our current circumstances?”
“Do you suppose that I have not already considered that? Very well, let us put aside love for the moment,” he said. “We will speak of this with cold, calculating reason. We both have something to gain from such a union.”
“It is clear what I have to gain,” she said. “If the rumors of your wealth contain even a sliver of truth, you could provide security for my family after…” She swallowed. “But you cannot cure my father. You cannot keep Longbourn from being entailed away. If I am going to marry for material reasons alone, I had better choose Mr. Collins, if he proposes.”
“That is absurd. You cannot tell me that you respect Mr. Collins. You may call me proud, but I am certain that you have some measure of respect for me.”
“I will call you proud, but not for that observation. I do respect you, very much,” she added, her voice breaking. “That is why I do not think it is wise to accept. I would bring nothing beneficial to this marriage. I have no fortune and no connections—or rather, inferior connections, I believe you called them. You would eventually come to regret making such a hasty declaration of marriage, one that might separate you from your sister forever.”
“What I would regret,” he replied, “is if I did not act. Before I stepped onto the balcony and saw you, I faced two deplorable paths. On the one hand, I could take no action; I could accept the fact that Georgiana was lost to me. This, however, I knew to be impossible. The only other alternative was to marry my cousin. I promise you this, Miss Bennet: that marriage proposal, long considered and eminently sensible, would be the regrettable one.”
“Perhaps, but it does not follow that you will not one day find this marriage proposal regrettable, as well. I have nothing to offer you beyond repartee and these…these feelings that may or may not be lasting.”
“Do you want to know what you have to offer me? A choice, one that I will have made not because it is what society expects of me, not because it is my duty to my family, but because I believe it to be best.”
This Disconcerting Happiness: A Pride and Prejudice Variation Page 9
