Mary was confused. Much of her past resentment toward him, which had receded as he had begun to treat her like the lady she was, had begun to return. She did not like this dissonance between what he told her and how he behaved.
Alan Goulding was chaos incarnate. He always had been, and it was what Mary found most fascinating about him. The problem was that, when it came to Mary’s life, she didn’t handle chaos and confusion particularly well.
As she approached her home and the end of her walk, she began to think that perhaps, after all, she might just be better off if he never returned to her. There was too much of a mixture of pleasure and pain in his company, and she wasn’t certain the exchange would ever be worth it.
She was less than a quarter mile from her front door when the very subject of her musings appeared, driving a curricle and looking far too handsome for Mary’s resolve.
He pulled up alongside her and said, “Mary, I was just at Longbourn asking for you. Would you be willing to go for a drive with me?”
She looked up at him, pleasure in her heart and doubt in her mind. The pause before she answered was too long for his comfort, because he squirmed a bit in his seat and looked a bit guilty.
Fine,she thought to herself.At least he knows that he did something wrong.
“Very well,” she said, “but I must insist on some answers.”
“I will tell you everything,” he said earnestly. “And if I leave out anything, you may ask. There is nothing I would withhold from you.”
There was a timbre to his voice and an earnestness to his expression that said that he was referring to far more than just information in his declaration. A tiny little butterfly of hope fluttered in Mary’s chest, but she shoved it down into her stomach where it just made her nervous.
“Very well,” she said.
He hopped down and helped her up into his curricle. Once she was seated, he set the horses in motion.
“Perhaps, you can start with why I haven’t seen you in two weeks,” she said when the silence grew too long for comfort.
“I was thinking, Mary. A great deal. About the past and the future. I am truly sorry if you felt neglected or lonely, but I needed to sort some things out in my mind before I presented myself to you again. It took far longer than I expected, but it is settled now. I am settled. If you don’t mind, I would like to discuss the past first.”
“I don’t mind,” said Mary.
“From the first time I met you up until now,” said Alan, “you have caught and held my attention like no one and nothing else. For a child who never focused on any one thing for long, such an experience was as disconcerting as it was undeniable. I think, at first, my behavior toward you was simply trying to get revenge for you making me so uncomfortable.”
Mary thought that sounded reasonable. There was no friendliness to their earliest interactions. It just looked to her as if he simply didn’t like her. At the time, the feeling was mutual, so it was fairly easy to ignore his insults and taunts. It was only later, when his teasing was sometimes intermixed with a bit of friendliness, that it began to hurt her more.
“After a time, I began to want you to feel the same discomfort, so I deliberately tried to get your attention. Once I had it, however, I didn’t know what to do with it, which resulted in all kinds of confused capers, like leaving you up in a tree instead of rescuing you like the hero I was supposed to be.”
Alan sighed and looked out over the fields that surrounded them. “The turning point came when you were twelve and I was fifteen. I saw you walking in Meryton, trailing behind your mother and older sisters. There was something different about the way you looked and the way you walked. I believe your figure was beginning to fill out a bit. Very suddenly, you looked incredibly beautiful to me.”
He sighed again, and his gaze went to his hands which were holding the reins. “Again, I didn’t know what to do with such feelings. All I can remember thinking was that I wished you weren’t so captivating. So, I shoved you into the mud, hoping on some level that if you weren’t so beautiful, I wouldn’t be so confused.”
Oddly, Mary, who had never considered herself beautiful or captivating in any way, could understand such a reason. Had shenot felt the same way about him, that she wished he were not so handsome that he did not linger in her heart and mind the way he did? The only difference between them was that he had acted, and she had not. That was always the main difference between them.
“From that point onward, my behavior to you was merely a result of an internal tug-of-war. I couldn’t stay away from you. You were a torch, and I was a moth. Yet, if I was a moth, I had a bit more self-preservation that they typically do, for I resisted your call as much as a man can. Unfortunately, my method of resisting was to try to convince myself that you were not as beautiful as you are. In the process, I ended up convincing you far more than I ever convinced myself.”
At this point, Alan looked at Mary directly. “I am so sorry, Mary. It was absolutely the foolishness of youth, and the pain I inflicted on you was never deliberate.”
Mary was caught in his gaze. The pain and remorse he expressed was clear in his eyes.
“I forgave every instance as soon as it was over,” said Mary, eventually, breaking away from his gaze and looking out over the scenery. “However, the effect of your words and your treatment was impossible to ignore. I think I knew that your feelings and your actions were not in alignment. However, I heard the same words repeated by others who were not so confused as you. My mother, my mother’s friends, and my younger sisters all played a role in my pain.
“If it had only been you that I was insulted by, I might have let it slip away, unheeded. But I heard the same words uttered by many others: ugly, plain, awkward, flat, boring. If it was an opinion held so universally by those around me, how could I not believe them?”
Mary could see out of the corner of her eye that Alan was looking down at his hands once again. It made her feel guilty. He was trying to explain, to apologize, to repair the damage he had done, and she was merely reinforcing the idea that perhaps it was too little and too late.
“What I mean is that I am aware, and I always have been aware, that you did not truly mean the harsh words you spoke to me, but knowing that did not take away their sting. This is not to say that the past is unforgiveable, though. I do forgive you, just as I hope you forgive me for being inflexible and harsh in my beliefs. I am saying this in hopes that it will not happen in the future.”
“It will not,” said Alan firmly. “It is impossible. All of those instances happened due to my conflicting feelings about you and about myself, but those conflicts are gone, resolved. That is what I have spent the last two weeks doing. I took a long, hard look at what I wanted and what I was prepared to do to get what I wanted.”
“And what is it that you want?” asked Mary.
