Page 65 of Knowing Mr. Darcy
She thought maybe she should protest. It wasn’t prudent to behave in such away. But she didn’t care, she found, and she couldn’t protest.
She wanted to be his, wanted it more than she’d ever wanted anything on earth.
MISS ANNE DEBourgh was sitting out on a wooden swing in the gardens at Rosings, smoking a pipe.
It wasn’t ladylike for women to smoke pipes, of course.
It wasn’t really in fashion for anyone to smoke pipes. The rage was snuff these days. It was inhaled through the nostrils. There were cute little tins for it.
Anne wasn’t much interested in being cute or fashionable.
She was, as her mother called her, a trial and a tribulation.
Long ago, her mother had realized that Anne must not be seen or heard by anyone, ever, for Anne was incapable of doing whatever was expected of her. Anne didn’t even know why. It was a perverseness within her, something that welled up and seemed to take control of her. She would have liked it to be different, truly. She could see that when a person did as society dictated of them, people were nicer to them.
But, to Anne, this seemed inauthentic to the extreme.
If a person only liked her because she followed all their stupid rules and pretended to be exactly like everyone else, then that person didn’t really like her, they only liked her compliance.
Anne never complied.
So, her mother had begun putting out the story that she was sickly, and it wasn’t exactly a lie. There was something wrong with Anne, that much was clear. Despite the fact she could rationalize why she would not comply, it wasn’t actually a choice. She couldintendto do the proper thing. To speak in a simpering voice and play the piano and wear lovely dresses. She could intend to do it. But when it came exactly down to it, it simply wouldn’t happen, as if some other, demonic force had taken over her body.
So, the story was that she was ill, and she was hidden away here, never taken to town, and given a free rein when visitors came. She was allowed to not come down to dinner or to not participate in any social obligations. The excuse would be her health. But the truth would be that she simply couldn’t behave in the manner expected of her.
It was painful, truly, because Anne actually desperately wished to be liked.
Not liked for her behavior or her compliance, but liked because of her real, true self.
And because she could not comply, she was shunned.
So, the truth was, being authentic meant rejection.
Anne knew it, and she still couldn’t stop.
“There you are,” said a voice.
She hopped off the swing. “You’re late.” She blew out smoke. She was working on learning to blow smoke rings.
“Oh, and here I thought we’d sit together,” said Mr. George Wickham.
“Still eager to be close to me, I see,” she said. “Is this why you sent me the letter? Is this a tryst?”
She had surrendered her virtue to George Wickham some years ago, though the act had never been repeated, because she’d been disappointed in the entire enterprise. She felt it was the height of unfairness. It felt much better for him than it did for her. It seemed designed for men, in fact, for men’s pleasure.
She could pleasure herself much more effectively, and she wasn’t interested in doingthatever again.
Wickham used to be at Rosings all the time, when they were younger. He was a tagalong, Fitzwilliam Darcy’s playmate, always welcome. Then he’d been caught in Anne’s bed, and that had meant he was banished from the place forever.
Her mother had been horrified, of course, but had long ago made peace with the fact that Anne would never marry. The idea of Anne’s compliance to a man was simply out of the question. For some time, considering that Mr. Darcy was still unattached, her mother had loudly proclaimed hither and yon that there was a betrothal between Anne and Darcy. But Lady Catherine didn’t really think this would happen. She only said it to explain why she was not trying to marry Anne to anybody at all, why Anne never had a Season, why Anne never had any gentlemen callers.
This excuse would only last so long, of course, but Anne thought privately that her mother was simply hoping to die before Darcy married. He was only eight and twenty, after all, and he might wait another seven or even ten years to marry.
After her mother did pass on, Anne would inherit Rosings and the family fortune, which was fortuitous for her. She would be able to live here, an eccentric old maid, forever.
Likely, if she wished, Anne could even take a lover and flaunt the fact she wasn’t married. Likely, she could have a very public affair with a married man. Likely, she could even have an affair with a woman.
Anne could do whatever she wished. And she did. But what she really wished, deep down, was just to be, well, loved.
