Page 58 of Knowing Mr. Darcy
But, to Mr. Darcy’s great delight, Elizabeth paid Richard entirely no mind. Instead, she caught his gaze and held it. They looked at each other across the room, both silent, for the entirety of the visit.
A few times, someone spoke to her, and she had to beprompted to respond, but she always came right back to him, to looking at him, to smiling a little as she looked at him. He felt the way he always did, as if everything else went a bit muted, and she was the only thing in focus.
Usually, she disrupted his equilibrium badly, but today, for some reason, she steadied him. Looking at her made him feel better, all over better, just good.
Perhaps he conceived of the idea then. He was not certain. Perhaps it was later.
But he knew, at some point during the course of that first day at Rosings, that he was simply looking for his moment. He needed a time when he could reasonably expect to find her alone, and then he would come and speak to her, and he would ask for her hand.
He was going tomarry her, damn everything.
ELIZABETH FOUND SHEhad nothing to say when Jane spoke at length about Colonel Fitzwilliam. She realized she had been in the room with him and he had spoken a great deal, but that she had heard next to nothing that he had said. She had been entirely distracted by Mr. Darcy, though he had said nothing at all.
She supposed there was no way she could deceive herself about Mr. Darcy at this point.
Caroline Bingley said he was in love with her. Her brother had said it as well. Mr. Darcy didlookat her in that way of his. And he’d possibly come to Rosingsbecauseof her.
It was true, then.
On the other hand, she didn’t know if it meant anything. Mr. Bingley had told her that he did not think that Mr. Darcy would marry her, and she could not see a world in which he would either. From the first, she had thought that marriage between herself and Mr. Darcy would be viewed as a degradation to him. She didn’t think he would stoop so low.
Furthermore, as fascinated as she must admit herself to be with Mr. Darcy, she was not entirely sure that shelikedhim.
If she hoped that she would have some chance to discover Mr. Darcy’s character whilst they were both guests in Kent, she was disappointed in this manner.
For one thing, she and Mr. Darcy both seemed to be reliably tongue-tied whenever in each other’s presence. For another, they were—of course—never alone, as it would not have been proper.
She took to walking with Jane over the grounds of Rosings in the mornings, and Mr. Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam began to appear with some regularity, joining them for their walks.
The colonel would speak to both of them, but Elizabeth would get her eyes full of Mr. Darcy’s dark eyes and his mournful expression—because he always looked mournful, truthfully, always looked as if he had just suffered a terrible blow to his very soul—and she would get stuck on him, like always.
So, the colonel would speak and Jane would respond. At first, Jane would be quite soft and tentative, but the colonel had a way of teasing out Jane’s voice, getting her to speak louder, getting her to laugh. Jane had a lovely laugh. It pealed over the grounds of Rosings in the early spring, and it made Elizabeth feel safe and pleased and excited about being alive.
Or maybe that was because she was socloseto Mr. Darcy.
Sometimes, when they walked, their shoulders accidentally brushed. He would not jerk away when this happened. Their gazes would latch onto each other, and they would both draw in a breath, seemingly together. Then he would put some deliberate space between them. She knew he hadn’t minded that they touched. He knew she hadn’t minded.
Once, she was feeling daring and she brushed her hand into his. On purpose.
He sucked in a breath like a hiss, and she could swear heshuddered.
She bit down on her lower lip, meeting his gaze as she deliberately crossed her arms over her chest.
He started to reach for her. She swore it. But it was only the barest of movements, and he stifled it, shaking his head, just the barest of movements for that, too, as if he were scolding himself.
She dragged her upper teeth over her bottom lip and his gaze honed in on that part of her and then he looked into her eyes, and she felt as if she was falling apart, as if she were a flower, petals going everywhere because of a gust of wind, fluttering every which way.
Mr. Darcy undid her equilibrium.
She and Jane did go to Rosings to play the piano sometimes, too, but if she saw him, she practically ran away. A few times they did see each other and converse, but the conversations were awkward and stilted, punctuated by long silences.
So, there was no discussion between them. She was not able to ask him about the incident with Mr. Wickham, to ascertain exactly what had happened. She knew that Mr. Bingley had claimed that Mr. Darcy was innocent of wrongdoing, and she hoped, for her own sake, this was true, for she seemed to be badly enamored of this man, regardless of any practical elements of their possible pairing.
She thought about marrying him.
She didn’t think he’d ask, but if he did, what should she say? She wished to accept him, obviously, if only because she wanted to get closer to him. Being close enough to brush shoulders was not nearly enough. When she thought of the idea of extreme physical closeness with this man, when she thought of shocking things like his being divested of his shirt or—heavens—his trousers, she felt tight and strange and eager. She wanted that. It was shameful, but there was some verse in the bible somewhere in Corinthians that said it was better to marry than burn. She didn’t know if it meant burn in Hell or burn internally, but she was already burning internally for this man, so… better to marry, yes.
But it might be an altogether terrible idea, in the end.Why, say he was not innocent of wrongdoing with Mr. Wickham. Say he was, in fact, a jealous and petty sort of person who took revenge on people who were lower in status than him.
