Page 36 of Bitten By Mr. Darcy
He might want her in the way he could not remember wanting a woman in hundreds of years, maybe ever, but it was not only about his own wants, it was about what his attentions would take from her.
So, weeks passed, and it was not Elizabeth’s pain he felt, but only his own.
The bond sometimes flared back at him when he didn’t do a good job at keeping his longing from her, and when it flared, the emotion he felt back from her was almost smug, as if she wished him to suffer, and he supposed he deserved that.
He would suffer, as penance, then.
He did make time to see Miss Georgiana Darcy, however. He was very fond of her, and he did think of her as if she were his younger sister. She resided in London with a matronly companion, and he visited her several times a week. He would go to dinner with her, though he would not eat, only sit and sip wine and chat with her about whatever took her fancy. He knew all about what she thought of the latest fashions, what books she was reading, and what piece she was struggling to learn on the piano-forte.
It struck him, of course, that his sister was but four years younger than Elizabeth.
She is barely more than a child,he scolded himself.
Yes, but it wasn’t true. By any reckoning, a woman of twenty years of age was full grown. It was only that he was so old he had forgotten how it changed, how each year made such a difference then.
It was from Miss Darcy that he learned of Elizabeth’s impending marriage, however.
He might not have even paid it any mind, for Miss Darcy was reading a letter to him from her aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and he was only barely paying attention. He told himself that family business must be heeded, always, and his loyalty was to the Fitzwilliam family. Lady Catherine was of that family, so he must be sure to be apprised of what was happening in her life. However, the letter was just tidbits of information about all manner of people who lived near Rosings, nothing that was truly his concern.
It detailed that the new parson would be marrying, and Mr. Darcy thought idly that he’d met that man at the Netherfield Ball. Highly irregular, truly, for Mr. Collins had come to speak to him without an introduction. However, it had made him singular to Mr. Darcy, and he remembered him well. He did not have a high opinion of the man, he had to say.
He paused the reading of the letter to relay this story to Miss Darcy, who was properly horrified.
“Without any introduction at all, you say?” she said.
“None,” he said. “Who is that man marrying, I wonder?”
“Oh, I think I know this,” Georgiana said. “Only because Aunt Catherine wrote to tell me she’d advised him to marry one of the daughters of the house he is to inherit.”
Right, he was Elizabeth’s father’s heir. Darcy knew this. “So, is he to marry one of them?” he said.It would be the eldest, not my Elizabeth,he assured himself.
“Oh, yes, he is, but it’s all rather strange, for he asked the second oldest, as I understand. He was led to believe that the eldest of the girls was practically engaged to someone or other, but this man has entirely quit the neighborhood, so now Mr. Collins has written to Lady Catherine to ask if he should switch sisters, and she told him, of course, that he cannot do such a thing.”
“Second oldest?” Darcy’s voice was very, very small. “Do you remember her name?”
“I might if I heard it,” she said.
“Elizabeth?”
“That sounds right,” said Georgiana.
He felt that nearly split his chest in two. He had known she would marry, of course, but to that man, why, it was simply horrendous. She deserved better than the boorish Mr. Collins, who doggedly applied to Lady Catherine for advice on his every move.
The bond flared back, Elizabeth reacting to his reaction.
This was staggering, the strength of it, but he supposed he’d been so very overcome that it only made sense.
He had to excuse himself from Georgiana, claiming the sudden onset of illness, for he was too distraught at the thought of Elizabeth’s impending marriage to stay and continue to exchange pleasantries with her.
He had not taken a carriage, for he liked long walks on the London streets at night, so he walked back towards his house in the darkness, thinking of Elizabeth with that man.
He could hardly bear it. It seemed a crime for her light to be extinguished by that man’s heavy bluntness.
Then he thought of the fact that she would have to go to bed with him and that was too much for him. He had thought of Elizabeth’s marriage to a man, of her eventual deflowering, in a hypothetical way, and it had always involved her being desperately in love with that man, a human man who could walk in the sun with her and give her children and grow old with her. His imaginings of it had been desperately jealous.
He had never considered, never once, that she would be trapped in an unpleasant marriage.
But looking at it, he could see that she had little choice in the matter, that there would be all manner of pressure from her family to marry this man, so that their estate could be preserved. This way, upon her father’s death, Elizabeth’s mother and any of her unmarried sisters would not have to be turned out of their home. It all made a great deal of sense from a practical perspective.
