Elizabeth looked out the window that faced out into the inner courtyard that was shared with the neighboring houses. The rain lashed the ground, creating big puddles filled with large bubbles.
She watched one of those bubbles waiting to see it pop by going too close to the sides of the puddle or getting hit by another raindrop.
It took nearly a minute before it disappeared.
“Papa just didn’tbelieveme.”
Mrs. Gardiner took Elizabeth’s hand and squeezed it.
“I always thought he’d believe in me. And Mama! If she had just… just kept quiet. Lady Lucas did see, but she… wouldn’t have spread stories. Sometimes… I sometimes hate them both.”
“And now you are isolated from them, and all your family, and you will go far away from anyone you know in just a week.”
“I wish he hadn’t married me! I wish he’d just run back to his great estate, and left the rumors behind, and then nothing would have changed.“ Elizabeth pressed her hands against her cheeks. “I don’t want to cry.”
Mrs. Gardiner embraced her tightly. “My dear Lizzy. You are brave, you are strong, and you will do well.”
Elizabeth suddenly found herself sobbing.
“Dear, dear sweet. Dear, dear Lizzy. There, there. There, there.”
“I don’t want to leave town so fast. I thought… thought it would be only after the New Year. And then I’ll be meeting his uncle, the Lord of Matlock. And, and — I’ll have to host an earl, and the rest of his family. And they’ll look at me, andjudge. It doesn’t matter what I do, I won’t be who they wanted. Idon’t care. Idon’t. I didn’t choose this. But they all think I did. Oh! Why did I ever say a word to Mr. Darcy? Ever? Why did he ever need to come tomyneighborhood!”
Mrs. Gardiner rubbed her hand in soothing circles around her back.
“He never even asked me! He never even asked me if I wanted to marry him. They all just assumed.”
“I know.”
“And don’t tell me that I should not think this way. That I should focus on what is happy and good in the situation. Iknow— Lord! I should never have… I should have run yesterday. When he came up to me in the church, and the vicar asked ‘Do you have this man’ — I stared at h—"
Elizabeth laughed.
“All I’d say is talk to him. Make him your friend, and come to know him, who he really is. Try to let go of your preconceptions and expectations.”
Elizabeth groaned again, and then, hearing the clock ring the hour, realized she ought to return home, in case Mr. Darcy had returned early from his business, like he had suggested he would.
Oddly though, this conversation had left her feeling enormously better than she had an hour earlier.
Chapter Five
When he’d returned from his business in the City, Darcy was immediately informed that Elizabeth was still out. He went to the drawing room. Long glass-covered bookshelves dominated two of the walls and the third had a great many windows.
He was desperate for the evening to come again.
The nervousness he’d felt around Elizabeth this morning would be gone then, when it was the universally agreed proper time for a husband to go to his wife.
He stalked back and forth glancing, ignoring the flowers, the portraits, the two large fireplaces surrounded by Japanese screens.
Where was she? He missed her.
And was Colonel Fitzwilliam right that she was unhappy?
No, of course not. Elizabeth couldn’t be unhappy now that she was his wife. No woman would be.
But…
A little part of him that had never stopped believing that his father loved Wickham more than him, because Wickham was the one who could make him laugh. She must be gleefully spending the money she had gained at the dressmakers and shops… and naturally she would think nothing of her husband left at home.
