She tried to read Darcy’s novel, and as the sun set the now obsequious waiter immediately set several beeswax candles out for her to read by.But rather perversely she put the book aside shortly after.
The relationship betwixt her and Darcy was filled with such an odd mixture of the awkward and the delightful, and at this moment her annoyance at the awkward was predominate.
How could she endure months at least — perhaps much more — halfway the chosen companion of Darcy’s life, and halfway a helpless distressed maiden, a piece of driftwood fate had tossed on his shore?
SheunderstoodDarcy.
He was honorable.He wanted to do the right thing.He would act to protect his friends when he thought they made the wrong decision.But Lord!This was the same sort of mistake that he had made with Jane and Bingley.
Mr.Darcy thought it was his business to ensure she made no enforced decision.That there was no necessity tying her to accept him, and no excess of gratitude that influence her in his favor when her natural preference would have been in some other direction.It wasridiculous.
Was this really where his hesitation to declare himself came from?
Maybe, despite Darcy’s evident and clear affection for her, his infatuation towards her, his desire for her, perhaps he did not want to have a wife who would be forever barred from England.Or perhaps he was rethinking the entire matter, and not at all sure if he wanted to marry her with the poverty and the scandals.
His first instinct, she comforted herself in this dour speculation, had of a certainty been to ignore her changed circumstances.But his pride held him back further and further the longer he pondered on the matter.
The brutish fact was that her circumstances were worse by far, and her family would need far more of his support than when he had asked her to marry him the first time.
And Darcy had not come easily to the decision to marry her then.
And thus he had concocted in his mind this notion of it being important for her to not be dependent upon him for her life and safety as an excuse to avoid admitting to himself that he did notactuallywish to take her on as a wife, with all that would entail.
Elizabeth shook her head annoyedly, and asked for a glass of wine and some of the cheeses and sliced meats that one of the other patrons dined on from the waiter when he ran up to her to beg if he could do anything to be of service to her.
The blue veined cheese with freshly baked bread, made for the evening crowd, tasted exquisite, an explosion of taste in Elizabeth’s mouth.
On consideration, it was not in Darcy’s character to engage inthatlevel of self-deception.
The uncertainty scared her.Until he declared himself, she could not know that hewoulddeclare himself.
Elizabeth wanted to know.She didn’t want her heart to be tortured in this almost engaged state.If he yet loved her, and loved her enough to take her despite all the reasons against such a match, she wanted him to do it now.
But it was impossible for a lady, even one so daring as she, to simply say that brazenly.
There were matters of money, but she could survive withoutmuchmoney.
In any case, she wasnotso desperately dependent upon him.
Certainly, her French was not so good that she could easily seek some sort of employment at present in France, but her command of the language also was not so bad that she would require a great length of time before shecould.She had improved enormously in just the past few days.She could make an effort as a governess again, to some family which never returned to England, or to a French family which wished to ensure their children spoke English perfectly — this time she would find a widow to employ her.
Or she could become the companion to some widowed or unmarried lady.
Darcy had an extensive acquaintance.He could foist her off on some friend of his.
Elizabeth brooded.
Frowned and brooded.
And so she was frowning, and slightly tipsy from the excellent red wine she had drunk a glass of, when after just an hour’s absence Darcy returned with General Fitzwilliam in tow.
“See,” General Fitzwilliam said loudly, and with a wink at Elizabeth, “Miss Bennet is flowering and in better spirits than she ever has been.You needed not to worry about her.”
“We did not stay away too long?”Darcy asked, in a slightly worried tone, as if she would choose to disappear if he did not constantly keep her in sight.
“No.”Elizabeth knew her voice was irritable.
Beyond everything else that she had faced in the last weeks, including being assaulted, nearly dying, and becoming an exile from her country of birth, she could feel that she was only a few days from the commencement of her monthly bleeding.
