“Fah, it would bore me to crow over Lady Lucas if my daughter was married to a man of ten thousand a year. I do not needyouto work for my happiness. The proper course of matters is quite the opposite.”
“Are you really so untroubled…when I refused Mr. Collins…”
“Pah. Heavens! To expect me to act the same as I did five years past, when none of my girls were married. I knowyoubetter now.” She embraced Elizabeth. “Do not weep overmuch. Men are not worth such grief.”
“I…I thank you, Mama.”
“Mr. Bennet — you will not berate Lizzy either.”
Mr. Bennet smiled at his wife, also clearly surprised by what she said. “I had not the slightest intention of doing so.”
Pain stabbed Elizabeth in the gut once more.
She had jilted Mr. Darcy. She would never banter with him happily, or kiss him, or let him again hold her. Elizabeth pressed her hand against her chest. “God, God, God.” She pressed her hand over her beating throat. “I — I must…be alone. Pardon.”
Elizabeth retreated to the safety of the library. Papa’s place, where no one else was. The fire crackled in the stove and warmed the air for Papa, despite the lashing storm outside. Elizabeth clumped herself onto the chair. The weather made the day sound like a ruined castle. No — like a ruined hut whose owner had believed it to be a castle.
That damn, damn, damned man. Georgiana sobbing.No, you may not speak; I shall not listen to you.He thought she was beneath him. Beneathhim. He thought she only agreed to marry him for his money — did Darcy think solittleof his every other attribute? And so little of her?
She didn’t need his deuced money.
She’d proven that.
Ha! Elizabeth growled and rose. She paced forth and back, sweating despite the chill on the air that the smoky smelling fire did not drive away. Too much smoke curled into the room — the chimney needed to be cleaned again.
The ring, his ring had pulled smoothly off her finger, as though the band did not belong upon her hand and wished to be gone. The glint of gold in the air. The clank, in a moment of silence between rolls of thunder as the ring bounced against the table and then the wall. Where had her ring rolled?
So angry. How had she become so angry?
God — the look on his face. Never should she have ended their engagement likethat.
He lacked respect for her, her position in life. If he despised her uncle and his partner so grandly, surely some despite must fall upon her also.
That was unfair to Darcy. The abominable standards of society claimed it reasonable for a gentleman to marry the daughter of a gentleman whose brother-in-law was in trade, but not allow his sister to marry a man who was in trade himself.
This was not hypocrisy, because Elizabeth’s station in life was higher than Mr. Peake’s.
A sick pain bled into her stomach. She doubled up and pressed her hand against her guts. He would never look at her likethatagain. With that light in his eyes and that low seductive voice. The smell of his coat. She missed the smell of his coat.
Never, ever, ever. She would never find anyone whose conversation she enjoyed so much as Darcy’s. It was ten years since she had entered society, and she had never before met anyone she liked like Darcy.
Couldn’t he havelistened? This was his fault. Everything — the pain she felt now. Her pain; hisdamnedfault.
She had been cruel when they argued — he had beentryingto care for his sister. He was merely bad at it. But that was not right either. She could not think lucidly.
Damn, damn, damn.
So sure when she pulled the ring off her finger. She had been so sure. She had raged. Now she was beset round about by doubts.
Elizabeth leaned her forehead against the cold window as the rain lashed against her forehead. She cried again.
Pain was another passion. She could not marry a man who would not listen to her, and who dictated to the women under his control.
Elizabeth plopped again into her stuffed leather chair, and squeezed herself back into it with her arms around her legs. She stared at the gruesome grey day. A taste like the bitter dregs of a cold cup of tea sat in her mouth.
The door softly opened. Elizabeth did not look away from the window. She felt disgust at being interrupted in her misery. A silver tray stamped with a floral pattern was softly placed on the desk next to her arm.
Elizabeth looked at Papa, and he softly smiled at her and moved quietly to sit in his own chair. He picked up the newspaper, and shook it out with a posture that indicated that he would happily be ignored by her, but that he would be present for her to talk when she wished.
