“Don’t be like the fox with the grapes. Do not try to pretend you are not desperately unhappy.”
“You tell me it is for the best.”
“Elizabeth expects a great deal from her husband. If you cannot offer her what she wishes, you should not seek her hand. Life…it is not some game. Marriage is compromise. If you cannot accept that—”
“She couldn’t accept it!”
“You and she would not have been happy together. I am glad Elizabeth saw that before it was too late. But I hope…I hope I shall not lose your friendship forever.”
“We would have been happy. If only she wasn’t so…so… Damn, man! I will not cry. You will not make me. Order my damned carriage to be prepared.”
Darcy left Bingley. He went to the hallway. He hid in a servant’s closet with a wooden bucket, three dirty mops, and a fat spider, so that no one could see him cry.
The cave at Royston, her hands brushing against his arm. They had planned to walk every day the whole way around the park, so that Elizabeth could see Pemberley come alive in Spring, and detail every bit of the growth of green. He would never walk around the park with her.
Bingley was right. For the best.
He’d been eager to walk the park with her. What was the point of having a park if he could never walk around it with Elizabeth?
He would not bend, bow or change. Not inthismatter. Elizabeth was not a fit woman to marry a man such as he.
He needed to mail to everyone the news of the end of the engagement. After it had been posted in the newspapers. Another scandal.
They would all think, when they heard about the engagement ending, thathehad come to his senses and abandoned the woman who had a modest dowry and poor connections. He would look dishonorable. And he was honor bound to keep from explaining to his friends that it washerfault. That she was a cruel woman who casually and callously stomped upon the soul and spirit of a man who ardently adored her.
He still wished to walk the circuit of the park with her.
===
During the day followingthatday, the one during which his fiancée threw the ring he had given her to symbolize their connection and happiness in his rough direction, Fitzwilliam Darcy had the awareness thrust upon him that his sister, Georgiana Darcy, was not merely unhappy, but that she was in fact unhappy withhim. It was no great surprise.
Women were inconstant in their temperament and prone to spiting those who cared most for their welfare.
“Pray, Georgie, would you wish,” Darcy said, hoping for a reply, but knowing it was unlikely, “to speak upon matters from yesterday?”
His sister stared at the hot coffee and the porridge she had ordered for herself after Darcy had, in hopes of raising her spirits, asked the inn to bring out all of its finest pastries. Anne, satisfied by her consumption of the sugary concoctions, stickily tore the excess strawberry and lemon tarts and chocolate cornets apart and strewed little threads of breading around the edges of the tablecloth in a complicated pattern which only a child’s brain could properly appreciate.
Neither of her guardians stopped her. Darcy had not eaten a great deal either, lacking the stomach for food as well.
Never marry. Never.
That was his new decision. The softness of mind and manner required to deal kindly with the mutability of females eluded him. Fortunately the need to brick off his heart had been stabbed into him before he took vows, before church and man, burdening himself with the unending care and management of one Elizabeth Bennet.
Lizzy, why?
Darcy looked at the crisscrossing brown beams of the ceiling. She would not have appreciated being told that marriage would have placed her under his management — he never thought of it in such a way. When he imagined their married life, he’d seen fascinating disputes, happy celebrations, light and laughter and friends brought to Pemberley, a sensual sequence of Elizabeth-scented nights. What they would do if they disagreed deeply had not crossed his mind.
Georgiana was the child — girl — not a woman adult, under his management.
Anne was distracted by her guardians’ distraction, and she started throwing crumbs at the fireplace. They blew up into little bright flames before blackening and giving the room a smell of burnt bread. Georgiana did keep half an eye on her daughter to ensure she did not wave her hands too close to the fire, but otherwise allowed her to do as she wished.
The three of them were trapped in this inn, at least until noon, along with their servants and the rest of their accoutrements. Ice had formed on the road thirty miles to the north of London. Perhaps they might have proceeded at a very slow pace, but now that he was a sufficient distance fromthere— when one wrotethereone also wroteher— Darcy had no hasteful hope to reach his vast empty estate. A comfortable inn — Anne liked the way she could make a toy out of the pastries; the room was as warm as home; and Darcy had stayed here several times before while traveling between Pemberley and London.
Too much of a gentleman? What did that even mean? If he was too gentle a gentleman, Elizabeth was too laddish a lady.
“Uncle Will, Uncle Will.” Anne pulled at Darcy’s sleeve. Darcy looked in concern at the wool fabric, but his niece had cleaned the jam off her tiny fingers with a bit of water and a napkin before demanding Darcy’s attention.
He turned his attention to the girl, glad for the distraction from his thoughts, and he smiled at her.
