“However!If you meant to interfere, you should have done soproperly. Mr Bingley could have abandoned her but told her of his intentions, or lack thereof, in a hundred ways. He could have acted like a grown man instead of a frightened boy and told her to her face. He could have written to my father. He could have sent secret messages through our servants.Youcould have written to my father.It was badly done, sir!”
Darcy stared at his feet. “When you force me to see it from your perspective, I agree. “
“That is what the dollhouse was for. I used an analogy of boxes and houses to teach another gentleman how to see the world from another perspective.I used the same technique on myself to consider the world fromyourpoint of view, and that was the only reason I was prepared to give you a chance tonight.”
Darcy looked up sharply. “I was not doomed from the start?”
Elizabeth blushed furiously, stared at her hands, and whispered, “No sir, you were not.You were by no means assured of success, or even an easy path, but you were not doomed.”
“What changed?”
“I will get to that with my third reason. To finish the topic of Mr Bingley, perhaps I should show you the darker side of my character. My sister would have beengrievouslywounded by that boy’s abandonment, had I notmanipulatedher.”
“How so?”
“Some say love and hate are two sides of the same coin. Jane could not think clearly, so it was my duty to do so in her stead. I convinced her to flip the coin.”
“Love to hate… understandable enough.”
“I fed her rage mercilessly, and she spent all her feeling for the man in a single rage-filled day, while chastising my parents within an inch of their lives over our failures as a family. It was quite intemperate by any standard—she uttered actual curses—and triply so for Jane, who never has an unkind word for anyone. It was painful, but she found a better man, so your interference was for the best.”
“Do not make excuses, I beg you. You say this hurt my chances but was not the death knell?”
“No, but it is a resentment I only recently, and after much reflection, abandoned. Though it was not what made me decline your hand, I thought you should know that the past has tainted all our interactions here at Rosings, and I have viewed them through that lens.”
“Very well. I shall examine that part of my character and amend it. You are correct. I could have done more or insisted Bingley do more. I failed both your sister and my friend.”
“If you must amend it for your own benefit, feel free, but not on my account or his. I suggest you let Mr Bingley make his own mistakes.”
“That is good advice. My help was in the service of a friend, but it was badly done and probably counterproductive. Shall we move on to the second reason?”
“The second is minor, but it caused me grief, though, as I said, I recovered from it long before this conversation, and even before coming to Hunsford. It is the matter of Mr Wickham.”
“What about Mr Wickham?”
Elizabeth did not flinch. She met him with a hard stare.
“Youknewhe was a scoundrel, and I gave you the perfectopportunity to apprise me of his character, and you didnothing. At the time you left, I stupidly liked the man, and you just left me to him. You warned nobody, not even me. I have forgiven you for it because Lydia discovered his nature a few days after you left, but it took some effort.”
Darcy stared at his hands. They clenched hard enough to turn his knuckles white. “That man has been the bane of my existence all my life. I had reasons for holding my tongue, but they were mostly excuses born of my pride.”
Pained by his distress, Elizabeth barely touched his hands to still them. “As I said, a minor point. It is just something that bothered me at one point, but I already resolved it, and have not given it a single thought for months.”
Darcy relaxed his hands. “Something tells me you started with the easy things, because you still have not come to therealreason, and you feel it will either anger or pain me.”
“You are correct. It will do both, and I have been prevaricating.”
“I understand.”
Elizabeth sighed. “It… it was your proposal—well, not the proposal per se, but the underlying sentiments it exposed. You see—”
She paused, her hands shaking.
“It is thescruples, as you called them, that prevent me from accepting your offer.Nobodywants to be considered inferior. Nobody wants to be second best, tolerable, less than ideal, good in a pinch, any port in a storm, adequate, and so forth. Nobody knows the defects of my family better than I, but theyaremy family, and will remain so. My connectionsare what they are, and frankly, if they are insufficient for a Mrs Bingley, they are far, far, far from adequate for Mrs Darcy. I will not—”
Elizabeth paused. Tears pooled in her eyes, but this time she let them fall.
Darcy sighed. “I did not mean—”
