Despite that, discretion in front of servants had been drilled into Darcy’s mind by his father and mother.It was always a simple notion: Never trust one who must earn a day’s wage with information of true importance.There were ample stories of men betrayed in some important way by a servant.Mr.Darcy always maintained a distant but courteous manner with his servants, even maintaining his dignity around those such as Mrs.Reynolds who had helped to raise him as a child, and who was related to the family.
Elizabeth’s convivial manner with Becky felt strange to Darcy to watch.Once he would have seen it as a sign of her poor breeding — in a way he still thought that, but the insult was now turned around and pointed towards himself: Elizabeth did not have an overly rarified breeding and an overly refined sense of her own self-importance.
Both features of Elizabeth that showed her superiority.
“Mr.Darcy,” Elizabeth said archly, “we must have some conversation.Only a little may do — you were quite verbose when it was only the two of us.As for what I did to the nose of that personification of at least two of the seven sins — though he certainly does not personify sloth, so he cannot manage for all seven — I used my head, like every clever and sensible young woman ought.”
“Sothat’show your forehead was bruised.”Darcy unconsciously and unstoppably brushed his fingers over where the remaining hint of damaged skin had been disguised by an excellent application of some cream by Becky.The covering made the tone of the skin on her bruised forehead nearly match the rest of her skin.
Darcy blushed and drew away his hand.He looked at Becky again, who studiously studied her knitting.The needles clicked against each other.
It appeared hedidneed a chaperone, and not only to maintain a thin pretense of Elizabeth’s respectability.
“That’s where that big bruise came from,” Elizabeth agreed cheerfully.“Cracked him hard, though that was not enough to put him down.”
“Every sensible girl should use her head?I do not thinkthatis what was meant.”Darcy looked admiringly at her smiling face.
“I have been so afeard of hanging.I dreamed about it,” Elizabeth said, “but now—”
“Do not say anything on that matter.”
“I am so glad he is alive.”
Darcy lowered his voice, so that he was almost sure Becky could not hear him, and leaned close to Elizabeth and said in a soft whisper, “You did nothing wrong.Even if you had killed him, you would have done nothing wrong.”
“I do not know what to feel.I nearly died.He did not hurt me more than the bruise from a slap.The damage to my forehead I do not place athisaccount, for when I chose to crush his nose with my head I can hardly object to receiving a far milder injury.I did nearly die, and the experience of walking across the cold of London in a pair of house slippers on a sleety day, twice, is not one I shall forget soon.Nor that I would care to repeat.But…”
Elizabeth trailed off.Her mouth was screwed into a small frown.
Darcy worried what she may be thinking.Richard once told him that after the sack of a town, women who were raped often felt deeply stained and shamed by what had happened to them, and that even women who had been simply handled roughly by men, but who escaped worse fate, felt likewise.
And then Elizabeth smiled, brilliantly.“I am exceeding proud.Proud of myself in a way I cannot recall ever being before.Exceeding proud.And I would be prouder yet if I’d killed him, though the consequence ofthatmust make me grateful that I did not.To make an allusion to the ancients, I feel as an Amazon must have upon capturing a shepherd to serve as her supposedly unwilling mate.I have beaten the unfair sex at their own game, and though it may be unfeminine of me to exult in having achieved some success at brute violence, I exult in it.This awareness that I can triumph, and that I can use my body to make a gentleman, a peer of the realm, tohurtis part of me now, and I am happy it is.”
“My sweet warrior woman friend.I salute you then,” Darcy grinned, “andIam happy for your Amazonian traits.”
“Yes, well, I shall endeavor next time I am in a ballroom to hide those Amazonian traits.IhopeI still can fill a dress with my female traits,” Elizabeth spoke in a sly voice that made Darcy both laugh and flush, “And in truth, I would much prefer to beunderestimatedthan overestimated.If he’d known that I had some reckoning how to fight, I doubt I could have mauled Lechery so easily or efficiently.And certainly not Mr.Blight as well.”
Darcy was quite sure, as he was unable to keep from glancing down to admire her female features, well displayed by the light day dress of Georgiana’s Becky had somehow fitted her in, that no one would mistake Elizabeth Bennet for a burly Amazon warrior.
“I shall never underestimate you,” Darcy spoke low, looking into her eyes, “Not again, for you once have given me a drubbing.”
Now was Elizabeth’s turn to turn away and flush, hiding her red cheek against a plump pillow.“Have I really?Ihopeyou did not hurt so much as IhopeLord Lechery hurts from his smashed nose.”
“I confess, your words stung, and stung deep.But they stung because they had truth behind them.”
“I hope, you know,” Elizabeth replied, “that I have long since ceased to give much credence to any objection I held against you at the time.”
Darcy smiled wryly.“I hope you have notentirely, for that would waste the effort I have put forward upon how to amend myself in accord with your reproofs.You said,had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.I confess that notion, that I had not behaved in a gentlemanlike manner, has stuck in my head all these years.”
“Dear me!”Elizabeth exclaimed.“I certainly had no notion of affecting you so deeply.”
“I should imagine not, you thought me lacking in every proper consideration then, and—”
“I certainly did not.And now Iknowwhat a man lacking in every proper consideration is like.”
They smiled at each other.
Darcy felt in his heart that it would be entirely impossible, and deeply disreputable for him, to push any attention Elizabeth did not explicitly, and unprompted ask for upon her at this time.She was a refugee under his roof.However, he yet loved her, and the passage of four years had done nothing to the love he held for her, and further he thought, that beyond the gratefulness she had for his rescue of her, there was something in her that was awakening to him, and that she responded to his unchanged — no hisgrown— affection for her, with an affection of her own.
