“Of course.”
“Do you think that significant?”
“Not particularly. I am intelligent, and as you once said, I live in a mostly static and unvarying society; it is not difficult to keep track of all slightly significant conversations. I tried yesterday to make a rough estimate of the total number of words passed between us, but I could not keep my mind on the problem long enough to get a good estimate.”
“I relived them all last night at some length, more than once, but I did not count them. I should think the answer in the low thousands.”
“Let me remind you what I said at that awful dance at Netherfield. I said something like,‘I have always seen a great similarity in the turn of our minds. We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the éclat of a proverb.’”
“Do you remember that?”
“I remember the refrain as well, with perfect clarity,” he said. “This is no very striking resemblance of your own character, I am sure. How near it may be to mine, I cannot pretend to say. You think it a faithful portrait undoubtedly.”
“And what did you think?”
“Much to my chagrin, I suspected you either teased or flirted with me, but then you mentioned Wickham, and my thinking became even less rational.”
“What do you mean,even less rational?” she asked, perplexed.
“You cannot know, with all evidence supporting the theory that I am devoid of all proper feeling. To be honest, you had haunted my dreams for weeks. You know mythinkingwhich I ill-advisedly told you yesterday, but myfeelinghas been much stronger and of longer duration than my brief declarationimplies. I spent most of my time at Netherfield thinking about you.”
Elizabeth sighed. “That makes what I must say either easier or harder… I cannot decide which, and yes, I realise they are opposites.”
“I am sorry to add to your burden. I truly am.”
“I know; else I would be sitting with Mary talking about babies—” She gasped. “Pray forget I said that.”
“Said what?”
“Very good!”
“Let us return to myteasefrom the Netherfield ball, that we wereeach of an unsocial, taciturn disposition. Your two hypotheses are wildly in error.”
“You were neither teasing nor flirting?”
“No sir! I was not.”
“What exactly were you doing?”
“I spoke theexact literal truth.”
Darcy stopped abruptly as Elizabeth expected; she stopped with him.
After a moment, he said, “That will require some explanation.”
“I suspected as much. You see… well… let us return to your metaphorical tenfold difference in social ability. I will take your assertion at face value for the moment. Let us say my skill is 10 times yours. If true, I can assure you, it is becauseI have practised 100 times as much!”
Frustrated by her bonnet’s interference, Elizabeth looked around and noticed they stood in a small, very private glade. She took off her bonnet and stood before him confident they would not be discovered—not that a missing bonnet would be cause for panic anyway.
“I have never told this to any living soul beyond my family and closest friends. You see…I was a horrid child… horrid beyond measure.”
He waited for her to continue.
“Lady Catherine criticises my mother because we did not have a governess, but we had an excellent housekeeper who acted the part. Her two children died before their sixth birthdays, and she doted on us. She would have resented a governess.”
“I see.”
“When I was young, I was very personable and persuasive… and extremely, inordinately, monumentally stubborn. I could talk a calf out of his milk by arguing with him until he finally gave in just to end the torment. It meant I got my way most of the time, but also that I alienated just about everyone. When people dug their heels in, I fell into frightening, overwhelming fits of temper.”
