“Did you?”
Darcy laughed. “I hope dearly that when I have a son that he will not be such an unnatural creature as toneveravoid his tutor on a particularly fine sunny summer day.”
These memories swirled around Darcy in a thick cloud of acrid smoke.
It had been George who taught him that there were people who were fundamentally bad, and who could never be trusted again.
“I am so, so sad to see your loss,” Elizabeth said.
Darcy pressed his lips together and he nodded. Everything was too warm, pleasant, burbling and green scented. Like childhood.
He could not look directly at her.
“Why?” Darcy flicked a pebble into a tree trunk with his finger. “I asked myself that so many times in university. But his character will never change. He harmed others. He ruined the lives of young women, wrecked engagements, left poor tradesmen with debts he never meant to pay, used his charm to escape consequences, and cheated on exams… I slowly grew to hate him for who he was. Why? Why couldn’t he have been a different man?”
Her eyes were sad.
“I did not ask for him to be a good man — only a man who took some responsibility. Who was not spectacularly bad. He promised to change… he always promised. Promised, promise, promise. I never told my father about the seductions… in fact I took two of his bastards upon my charge. I believe from some disapproving comments that he made one of the last times I saw him, that my father had the impression that they had been mine. And Wickham promised to change… Papa was ill, and I could not bear to tell him how utterly unworthy Wickham was of his affection, of the position we planned for him in the church. Of everything.”
She suddenly threw her arms around him and hugged him. “Mr. Darcy — oh! I wish, I wish he had been.”
The feel of her slender body, of her care, her concern for him. Her breasts briefly pressed against his chest. There were tears in her eyes when she stepped away, blushing at her own boldness, but not repenting of it.
Darcy wiped at his own eyes.
“In any case,” Darcy added, “matters have now ended between us forever.”
They walked on again, side by side in silence. Darcy felt better. As though speaking of Wickham had lanced some boil in his soul, and now that it had been drained, the wound that had been there for so long could begin to heal.
“You are right,” he added. “I ought to forgive Mr. Bingley. He is not… he ought not be sorted into the same drawer as Mr. Wickham.”
She did not reply, he looked at her and smiled. “No crowing over me admitting you have a point?”
“Would it be likely to improve your ability to admit such points in the future were I to do so?”
He smiled in reply. “I like this about you — you have a debater’s cleverness with words. And the philosopher’s ability to let a man find his own conclusion, for it is always more certain when he does.”
“I perhaps spoke too much in the defense of my friends last night — I cannot… I understand you better now but I cannot repent my loyalty, and my…”
“It was the very first thing I noticed about you. The first time we danced together — half the dance you praised Miss Bingley, and the other half you spent wholly confused at why Bingley and your sister danced togethera second time.”
Elizabeth laughed sweetly. “I did not credit the idea that Jane could admireCharliein such a way until… not until they announced it to the family. Though by then I had seen enough to know that such was the natural sequel.”
“Are they happy? — I cannot imagine them being otherwise. With Mr. Bingley’s good nature, amiability, generosity, and… your sister is likewise. Always smiling. They always formed a proper picturesque when they stood together.”
“He misses you.”
“I miss him.” Darcy studied the thick roots on the ground. He kicked aside a stick. “But…”
Elizabeth’s warm smile seemed to speak to him, and say,Yes, you should speak to Bingley once more.
“When you danced with me, it was the first time I had ever been in a dance with an unattached woman who did not spend the whole period seeking to gain my favor.”
Elizabeth giggled. “I suspected! I knew you liked me for not pursuing you. What an odd and complicated inclination.”
Her smiles and laughs filled Darcy with a light floating sensation.
If he could hear her laugh every day for the rest of his life, he would account it a life well worth having been lived.
