“I know that you would have liked to be told that you were right,” Elizabeth growled back.
“Ah,” Papa murmured.
They reached the promenade and then worked their way down the stairs out onto the sand. Their shoes sank in, and the two of them separated a bit as it was easier to walk along that way. Shells, driftwood, flotsam, and a stinking dead fish. If Elizabeth dug her shoe deep into the sand, crabs surfaced and scurried away to bury themselves again in the sand.
After a while Papa said, “That was unkind of you. To let your pride make you cast off your father in such a way.”
Elizabeth’s face crumpled. She started to sob again. “Forgive me, forgive me. I couldn’t. I justcouldn’t. I thought about it. I even tried. But not until he was dead. No, not even then. It was only when Darcy helped to do so that I was able to write.”
“There is a good reason that the Holy Book included ‘pride’ amongst its deadly sins.” Papa embraced her again. “There, there. Sweet child, you know that I love you. I have missed you.”
“Icouldn’t. I know I should have. For your sake, for George and Emily. But Icouldn’t.”
“Do not worry about it. Do not.”
“It is difficult. It is so difficult. I know it should not be. I hardly know—you told me. You did. And then…”
Papa laughed. “Even when I told you that I would help, I had said that it would be when you were ready to admit you were wrong. It seems that such a day would never come. You are too much my daughter, and I am too much your father.”
Elizabeth wetly laughed with Papa. She took his arm again. They sat next to each other by the cliffside.
It was the very same place that she had been sitting when George and Georgiana found her, while she contemplated whether to accept Mr. Darcy’s offer.
The surf whooshed in and out.
It was hypnotic to listen to it, and to watch the waves gathering and coming in, and then flowing back out.
“The sea is a pleasant thing,” Papa said after a while. “I should travel more.”
“You?” Elizabeth asked with a laugh. “I shall believethatwhen it has come to pass.”
“It may yet,” Papa replied stretching his legs out. “But tell me more. How did you find yourself engaged to Mr. Darcy?”
“Oh, that was simple enough. I told him about my plans to become a nurse, and he instantly asked—you are not the only gentleman who cares for me who was horrified by the notion—after thinking about it for two hours and listening to both George and Miss Darcy begging me to say yes, I did so.”
“That answers the question which I asked, but it provides me with additional ones.”
Elizabeth smiled at Papa.
“I see. A point which you were not unaware of when you offered that ‘simple’ answer.”
“It in fact began, for me in any case, when I received a letter from a friend who had been in Ramsgate saying that she was sure she had seen Mr. Wickham entering this house several times. I—well, I had difficulties with the husband of a friend who I was staying with, and I needed to remove myself to a boarding house immediately. I did not expect Wickham to give me anything. Not at all, really. But I still packed all of us into the stagecoach and came.”
“Likely you hoped to scream at him,” Papa said. He stared at the surf.
“Likely enough,” Elizabeth agreed.
Neither of them said anything as several waves came and crashed against the sand.
“In any case,” Elizabeth continued, “when I arrived at the house, and pushed my way in, I found Mr. Darcy nearly bare chested, with blood showing through bandages that had been wrapped too tight. He informed me that my husband was dead in a duel, and I surmised that his woundcame in the same duel…and then, well I needed to do something to distract myself.”
“And you had experience changing bandages?” Papa said. “My dear child.”
“That is the essence of the matter…he has a great deal of guilt. He grew up with Wickham. His father was Wickham’s godfather, and…he says that he sees it as his duty, but I think he wishes to marry me in part to find absolution. Not that he can find it in such a thing.”
“No, he certainly cannot. Which raises the clear question:Why?”
“Why do I intend to marry him?”
