Yet… Elizabeth realized that shewasin fact in an enviable situation. She was… happy.
Right here, stomping through the lightly snow covered pathways around Pemberley, she was happy.
That was a startling realization, that she was happy with Darcy. The way he held her, his sharp mind, his dry sense of humor, his responsibility, and his generosity. Even his willingness to, in the end, accept her foibles.
The two of them were, in fact, a well matched pair.
Poor Jane! And nothing that she could do but write a letter. At least her sister’s heart would have a better chance to heal with the Gardiners than at Longbourn.
Or you could ask Darcy to speak to Mr. Bingley about Jane.
An anxious twist pulled tight in her stomach.
She could not.
Bingley’s name had appeared in the conversation with the Fitzwilliam family a few times. He had money enough, barely, for them to accept, but his father’s time in trade was remembered far more easily than the respectable family of which that father had been a younger son. If they must accept the scent of trade clinging to the waistcoat of a connection, could it not come from more thanmerelyfive thousand a year?
Miss Bingley received more criticism, for reasons that Elizabeth could not disagree with. Lord Hartwood and Lady Susan insisted that she dressed badly, while Lady Matlock found the airs she gave too puffed up by her fine education and the time she had spent in company with people of rank.
But despite their snobbery, Darcy’s relations accepted Bingley as his friend, and she was treated by Lord Hartwood to tales of what Bingley and Darcy had been like when they were still in university, and when Bingley visited Darcy at Pemberley.
However… each time Bingley was mentioned, Darcy’s manner changed. His face flattened, his mood worsened, and his very being narrowed. Once, in private, Elizabeth had ventured to ask Darcy about why Bingley had left Netherfield so suddenly.
His manner had been awful. And then he’d said, “It must have been a great disappointment to your mother.”
They both remembered Mama saying:And he will throw her sisters into the paths of other rich men.
If she asked Darcy to talk to Bingley about Jane, to at least give Elizabeth something that she could send to her sister as an explanation of his actions, sheknewwhat he would think. It might destroy the warm relationship they slowly were developing.
That mercenary chit is trying to entangle yet another man in the schemes of her family. Does her greed know no bounds? Is she not satisfied with having entangled me?
She angrily walked faster.
Whatrightdid he have to judge her, even if she had been mercenary, which she was not. All of his family obsessed over appearances, fortune, social position, and connections.
They could afford to sneer at Mrs. Bennet for doing so only because they were already wealthy and of rank, and wished to avoid losing that standing, while her mother stood on the outside, slavering like a fox to get into the henhouse.
It was not just!
It was hypocrisy!
Her husband in this matter was simply a hypocrite.
Elizabeth’s heart pounded harder with anger as she walked faster and faster.
In any case, he was the one who had placed his lips on hers. He was the one who made her his wife. She did not seek this, and she would have avoided it if she could have. How dare he, even if only in her thoughts, and not in reality, be angry ather for being mercenary?
Yet, Elizabeth decided, after she had walked the circle around the house twice, and stayed out nearly forty-five minutes past the time she usually returned inside, that shewouldask Darcy about Bingley. She would convince her husband to either convince Bingley to at least give Jane a third hand explanation of his behavior — the information passed to Darcy, and then through him to Elizabeth and finally to Jane.
Thiswasto be her marriage and her life. She refused to live her entire life too frightened to ask her husband to help her family when it was about an entirely reasonable matter.
Having decided this, and returned to the house, while she stripped boots, gloves, and coat off, she asked the servants where her husband presently was. She was informed that he was in the upstairs billiards room with Lord Matlock and Lord Hartwood.
This discouraged Elizabeth’s intent to talk immediately with her husband upon the matter. Yet she decided to join him in any case, as they had not spoken since breakfast, and Elizabeth found that she enjoyed Darcy’s company.
When she came close to the room, she heard their voices as she approached due to the door having been left open a crack.
“We then removed ourselves to Netherfield’s library so we might argue with greater security from listeners.” Darcy’s voice, and Elizabeth was halted as she realized they were talking aboutthatnight. “We spoke a few minutes more… I confess I was deep in my cups. More foxed than I’d been since I was a student. She tilted her face up to me in a way that I was sure meant she wished me to kiss her. I should have resisted, but…”
