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“Then you can declare that there is no foundation for it?” she asked.
“I do not pretend to possess equal frankness with your ladyship,” Elliot said. “You may ask questions which I shall not choose to answer.”
The outrage was palpable, and Lady Catherine actually gasped in horror that she was to be denied an answer! “This is not to be borne, Mr. Bennet,” she said. “I insist on being satisfied. Has he, has my nephew, made you an offer of marriage?”
“Your ladyship has declared it to be impossible.”
“It ought to be so, it must be so, while he retains the use of his reason! But your omega arts and allurements may, in a moment of infatuation, have made him forget what he owes to himself and to all his family! You may have drawn him in!”
“If I have, I shall be the last person to confess it,” Elliot said.
That was absolutely too much for Lady Catherine, and the outrage subsided in an instant to be replaced by an icy disdain. “Mr. Bennet, do you know who I am? What my place in this society is?” she demanded.
“I do,” Elliot said.
“And yet you choose to speak to me thus! It will not be borne. Such language! I am almost the nearest relation he has in the world and am entitled to know all his dearest concerns.”
“But you are not entitled to know mine,” Elliot said. “Nor will such behaviour as this ever induce me to be explicit.”
The outrage had not worked. The iciness had not worked. Lady Catherine then changed her approach entirely and her next words were clipped and direct. “Let me be rightly understood,” she said. “This match, to which you have the presumption to aspire, can never take place. Never. Mr. Darcy is engaged to my daughter. Now what have you to say?”
“That if he is so, you can have no reason to suppose he will make an offer to me.”
Lady Catherine hesitated for a moment, and then replied, “The engagement between them is of a peculiar kind. Planned from their infancy on the wishes of their parents, their alpha parents. It cannot be prevented by an omega of inferior birth, of no importance in the world, and wholly unallied to the family!”
Elliot knew that Darcy had no intention of marrying Lady Anne regardless of what might happen between them. They were fast friends and no more. “Darcy has no intention of marrying your daughter,” Elliot said after a moment. “No matter your plans. Darcy will make another choice, and if I am that choice, why may not I accept him?”
“Because honour, decorum, prudence, nay, interest, forbid it!” she fumed.
“Such an alliance will be a disgrace. Your name will never even be mentioned by any of us.”
“These are heavy misfortunes indeed,” Elliot replied.
“Obstinate, headstrong boy! I am ashamed of you! Is this your gratitude for my attentions to you last spring? Is nothing due to me on that score? You are to understand me, Elliot Bennet, that I came here with the determined resolution of carrying my purpose nor will I be dissuaded from it. I have not been used to submit to any person’s whims. I have not been in the habit of brooking disappointment!”
“I fear disappointment is unavoidable in this case,” Elliot said.
She shuddered in a breath. “My daughter and my nephew are destined for each other by the voice of every member of their respective houses and what is to divide them? The upstart pretensions of a young man without family, connections, or fortune. Is this to be endured!”
“I am a gentleman’s son,” Elliot said, and his voice now held an equal degree of iciness. “So far we are equal.”
“True. You are a gentleman’s son, but who was your mother? Who are your uncles and aunts? Do not imagine me ignorant of their condition.”
“Whatever my connections may be,” Elliot said, “if your nephew does not object to them, they can be nothing to you.”
Lady Catherine waved those words away, her patience no more. “Tell me once for all, are you engaged to him?”
Elliot paused for only a moment before answering, and he could give nothing but truth. “I am not,” he said.
Lady Catherine breathed a very obvious sigh of relief. “And will you promise me never to enter into such an engagement?”
“I will make no promise of the kind, and I certainly never shall.”
“How dare you!” she breathed. “Have I not already listed the objections? Must I add another? I am no stranger to the particulars of your youngest brother’s infamous elopement and subsequent patched up marriage. Is that to be my nephew’s brother? Heaven and earth! Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?”
And though Elliot knew there was plenty of truth in those words he turned at them and walked away, unable to listen any longer. “You can now have nothing further to say,” he said. “You have insulted me in every possible method. I must now ask you to leave.”
Her ladyship was so incensed at being ignored, at being turned aside, that she followed immediately. “You have no regard, then, for the honour and credit of my nephew! Unfeeling, selfish boy! Do you not consider that a connection with you must disgrace him in the eyes of everybody?”
