Page 53 of May I Have the Pleasure
“I was most certainlynotflirting, I assure you. I would have rejected you a third time at the ball if I could have thought up an excuse fast enough. I did not like you… still do not, for that matter.”
“Perhaps I can change that?” he asked sheepishly.
“How?”
“By showing you my best side instead of the worst side you have seen thus far.”
She frowned a bit. “I have three days before I owe Mr Collins an answer, and you have six weeks of bad behaviour and more weeks of neglect to overcome. Can it be done?”
Darcy chuckled. “That recalls something they say about bears in the Americas. There are no bears left in England of course, but I think the saying apropos.”
“What do they say?” she asked in some curiosity, quite happy to be discussing something at least seemingly less fraught than her current marital difficulties.
Darcy gave her a smile that she may have had to admit (if only to herself), made him look quite handsome (particularly compared to Mr Collins).
“When you are being chased by a bear, you need not outrun the bear—only the man running next to you.”
Elizabeth burst into laughter, feeling for the first time that the conversation was not an unmitigated disaster. “Are you asserting you need not beat every man in the world… only Mr Collins?”
Darcy smiled, reached out to take her hand and squeezed it briefly. “Not exactly. While that logically is theminimumbar, it is not a standard I aspire to. I said it mostly to make you laugh.”
“In that you were successful, much to my surprise.”
“I remembered you said that you love to laugh and took a chance.”
“What is the standard you wish to set? How fast is the bear chasing you?”
“I want a love match on both sides. Why do you think one of the most eligible men in England remains unwed after a decade of having handsome, rich, connected ladies thrown at him from all sides? I have been looking for that which I could not find for the longest time,” he said with a rueful sigh.
“Naturally, I compounded the problem by failing to even recognize it when I finally at long last found it. You said earlier that you and Miss Bennet always aspired for love matches. Since I aspire to the same thing, could we be the solution to each other’s problem?”
“I imagine if I was going to fall in love with you for anything aside from your vastly superior situation in life, I would already feel some slight bit of affection,” she said, looking thoroughly confused by his assertion.
“How?”he asked emphatically. “I slighted you before we were even introduced. We were associated for six weeks, but what did that amount to? A dozen or two hours in each other’s company and a few thousand words, mostly talkingaround Miss Bingley’s incessant fawning and carping? Probably those first ungentlemanly and untrue words at the assembly are all that truly counted.”
“I suppose that sounds right. Those words certainly coloured the rest we shared.”
“We have three days and all the privacy we could ask for. We have spoken more honest words since you entered this room than most couples have on their wedding day. Your father seems like we could ignore him for the rest of the week so long as my staff keeps him fed, watered, and brandied, while he finds my library adequate.”
“The rest of the year,” she quipped with a small smile.
He chuckled along with her. “Nobody in Hertfordshire knows you are here, and nobody will ever know unless you choose to disclose it. No gossip will escape this house, so our reputations will remain pristine. We have the time to fall in love given the inclination. We have far more time available to us between now and Saturday than Bingley spent with your sister in the entire six weeks.”
Elizabeth stared at him for a moment. “What happens if I move past disliking you to being barely willing to tolerate you more than my other choice? What if you only outrun Mr Collins by a foot?”
“A foot is as good as a mile,” he said with a disarming smile. “I will take the win, and you will give me years to make you love me. Perhaps my pride is not under good regulation—but I will assert that I am up to the challenge.”
She stared at him for a moment more before replying, “Shall we glance back to assess the bear’s progress.”
“Let us,” he said with a slight smile.
“How shall we proceed?”
Darcy glanced back at the chairs, but then had a better idea. “Let us start with my observation that Mr Collins would not in a hundred years work out that, after a carriage ride of several hours and a rather fraught conversation, you are indesperate need of a walk in Hyde Park, which is less than half a mile away.”
She laughed. “You gained an inch on the bear right there—perhaps even two.”
Darcy laughed, feeling slightly more optimistic. “That is two twelfths of my goal, and we have not even left the room.”
