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“I have already said that I have fought against that,” Darcy snapped.
“And have decided to disregard it. Why?”
“It matters not now, does it,” Darcy grated. “Given you have refused me, with no reason other than your brother’s disappointment!”
“As if that is not enough?” Elliot demanded, goaded into saying more. “But it is not merely this affair on which my dislike is founded. Long before it had taken place my opinion of you was decided. Your character was unfolded also in the information I received from Mr. Wickham. On this subject, what can you have to say? In what imaginary act of friendship can you here defend yourself? Or under what misrepresentation can you here impose upon others?”
“You take an eager interest in that gentleman’s concerns,” said Darcy, in a far less tranquil tone, and with a heightened colour.
“His misfortunes, you mean,” Elliot said.
“His misfortunes!” repeated Darcy contemptuously. “Yes, his misfortunes have been great indeed.”
“And of your infliction,” Elliot cried. “You have reduced him to his present state of comparative poverty. You have withheld the advantages which you must know to have been designed for him. You have done all this! And yet you can treat the mention of his misfortune with contempt and ridicule!”
“And this,” Darcy snapped as he pulled Elliot into his arms, “is your opinion of me! This is the estimation in which you hold me! I thank you for explaining it so fully. My faults, according to this calculation, are heavy indeed!” he added as he dragged Elliot into his embrace. “But perhaps these offenses might have been overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by my honest confession of the scruples of our relationship.”
“How dare you!” Elliot gasped as Darcy pulled him close. He could feel the other man around him, his big body surrounding him, his strong arms encircling them. And that scent, that damnable scent which would haunt Elliot forever! It was too much!
“I am not ashamed of the feelings I related,” Darcy said, and he moved them so that Elliot’s face was tilted up to him, their eyes now locked on one another, a desperate heat burning. “They were natural and just. Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?”
The sadness that had consumed Elliot the moment he had realised what had been offered to him and what he had no choice but to refuse, was cast aside and at last anger, wonderous anger, filled him.
“You are categorically unable to act in a gentlemanlike manner,” he snapped as he pushed Darcy away. “Always it has been so. But regardless of how you approached this proposal, you could not have made the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it.”
“Cease this!” Darcy demanded but Elliot did not, could not.
“From the very beginning, from the first moment of my acquaintance with you, your manners, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were enough to form the groundwork for my belief that you are the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to mate with!”
“You have said quite enough, sir,” Darcy grated. “Enough! I perfectly comprehend your feelings and have now only to be ashamed of what my own have been.”
“Ashamed?”
“What else is there,” he demanded and then before Elliot could say another word, Darcy leaned in, and for a moment, just one wild moment, Elliot thought Darcy was going to kiss him, and despite the anger and the agony, despite it all, all he could think was: at last.
But then, the next moment and Elliot was alone, no longer surrounded by Darcy, no longer at risk of being pulled into his arms, his lips tingling with an anticipation that would never be met.
“Forgive me, dear sir,” Darcy said softly, “for having taken up so much of your damn time.”
And with these words he turned, and he left.
Thirty-Eight
Darcy could not bear the prospect of staying at Rosings any longer, not knowing that Elliot was so nearby. He was therefore ready to take his leave the very next morning and long before he would usually have been at the parsonage waiting to accompany his mate on his walk.
His mate…
It mattered not what Elliot had said, Darcy knew it to be true, and he knew it also to be impossible, and so he was leaving, home to Pemberley, where he belonged! But, knowing what Elliot was to him, what could have been between them, Darcy could not simply leave with such great misunderstandings between them.
Not if he had an opportunity to correct some of them!
He needed Elliot to understand.
And so, he had spent the better part of the early hours writing Elliot a letter, explaining as much as he could.
“Be not alarmed, sir, on receiving this letter,” he began for he wanted to be both reassuring but also clear. “It does not contain a repetition of those sentiments or renewal of those offers which you have refused. I write without any intention of paining you, or humbling myself, by dwelling on wishes which, for the happiness of both, cannot be too soon forgotten.”
Darcy paused, his pen above the paper. The look of astonishment on Elliot’s face when Darcy had made his proposal. Why had he been so shocked? Surely, he had known it was coming. Why else had they spent every morning together?
