Page 81 of Knowing Mr. Darcy
“Thank you for saying it likethat,” she said witheringly.
“You know what I mean,” he said. “I never did anything with Georgiana, not really, and nothing with either of these Bennet girls. Well, I might have been a bit too wayward with my hands with Lydia—”
“George! Is there some part of me that looks interested in hearing about this?”
“You’re really rather mean, did you know that?”
She only smiled.
“Right, right. Well, I didn’t come here to talk. I came to listen. So, you think…” He blew out a huff of air. “What if I started behaving better, instead of testing to see if people would betray me or not? What if I assumed that as long as I wasn’t awful, they’d like me? Do you think I could ever win them back?”
“That’s not up to me, George, but people are frightfully sentimental, sometimes, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility, I suppose.” She shrugged. “But how is it that you’re going to behave better?”
“I just will.”
“Oh, as if it’s easy?”
“Maybe it’s not easy for you,” he said. “Maybe you do have an elusive defect or what have you. I think maybe I justthoughtthere was something wrong with me, likely because of things that old Darcy used to say to me. He’d make me feel like I was bound to go wrong sooner or later, as if I must be on guard against it all the time. But what if I’m not? What if I could just have a life, a nice life with a pretty girl who likes it when I put my hands on her, and dinners with her family, and a place to belong? What if I could have that?”
“I suppose you could,” she said.
He nodded, as if he were thinking hard about this.
“Is that all?” she said.
“Maybe there’s nothing wrong with you either, Anne.”
“Depend upon it, George, I am horribly flawed,” she said.
“I guess so,” he said, nodding at her.
Something about that, about how readily he agreed with her, made her deep-down furious.
Later, she had an urge to smoke a pipe, but she took the pipe and the pouch of tobacco and her flint and went all the way down to the stream and tossed it all in and watched it float downstream.
She wasn’t giving up the pipe to be ladylike or anything.
She just was beginning to think it was stupid to want to do something only because it ruffled other people’s feathers. That was a kind of control, really, wasn’t it? If she did a thing to upset people, was it any different than doing a thing to please people? Their reactions still ruled her. It was a sort of reverse control, truly.
Anne was never going to be controlled.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ELIZABETH WAS PACINGin the drawing room at the rectory, wringing out her hands. She and Mr. Darcy were alone there, even though that wasn’t exactly proper, but he said that he needed to speak to her without anyone else present and paid no mind to Mr. Collins’s protests. He had told her everything, and it was worse than she could have imagined. “Oh, everything is horrible now. Whatever are we going to do? I am beside myself.”
He put a hand on her shoulder.
Then removed it, because they were both rather affected by his touch, too affected.
He cleared his throat, backing away. “Apologies for… that. I think, actually, things may improve soon. The colonel is with Wickham now, and he is escorting him back to London. Wickham says he is willing to marry Lydia right away, and Jane seems to have her pick of either Bingley or the colonel—”
“What?” Elizabeth folded her arms over her chest. “Why is everyone switching back and forth between me and Jane?”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Darcy with a shrug. “It’s rather like a bad novel, isn’t it?”
“A very bad novel,” she agreed.
“Anyway, it seems everything will end rather well,” said Mr. Darcy. “And I am come to escort you back to London, to be reconciled with your sisters and to see your father. If youwould but pack your things, we could depart this evening, I think.”
