“Mathematics!My father caught me in one of my moods when Mary and Charlotte were away, and either as punishment or to shut me up, he made me sit in his library and read amathematical textbook for young boys for 2 hours. He bade me sit beside his desk while he read his own book, ruler in hand, and said I would get a rap across the knuckles for every peep I made. I managed to keep it down to 7.”
Darcy chuckled. “My father did something similar, but he would never pick anything as interesting as mathematics.”
“My father had not the slightest idea I would find it fascinating. He was more interested in silence than any lasting effect, and the book of mathematics lay on the top of the pile. I might just as likely have become an expert on geography or Stoicism.”
Elizabeth frowned, as though the admission had escaped her.
“At any rate, at the time, I apparently had trouble with units of measure. He assigned 2 hours, and I spent 2 days… then 2 weeks… and… for the first time, I found something powerful enough to slow the churning in my mind. When the noise becametoo muchand I could not spin on the swing, run through the woods, or climb a tree, I could always return to mathematics or music. Did you notice a pause yesterday before I spoke?”
“I did.”
“I was calculating Fibonacci and prime numbers.Thatallowed me to calm myself and think. I briefly reviewed a few rules of deportment and was at last ready to speak.”
“If you had not used mathematics?”
“I would have scorched the Earth worse than a Hun. I am clever enough to think of the meanest, vilest, nastiest things to say. I would have said all your cousin threw at you last night and more. I might have claimed you were the last man in the world I could be prevailed on to marry, or I might have ridiculed you, or even said some of those things your cousin said aboutselfish disdain. All those and more would have been at my disposal to hurl with abandon.”
“Thank God for mathematics.”
“Or not,” she chuckled. “Without it, I am certain I would have been shipped off to India or Bedlam long before you met me, and the whole thing might have been avoided.”
“That would have been a crime against the world.”
“I suppose so. Now you know just how narrow your escape was.”
Her tone was impertinent, but her telltale fidgeting betrayed her nerves. “Or perhaps it tells me how narrowly I missed my one-and-only chance to secure the best woman I have ever known.”
Elizabeth’s head snapped up. “That is not fair!”
“Do you want truth or fairness, Elizabeth? You cannot have both.”
“What is ityouwant?”
“The exact same thing I wanted yesterday… and something completely different.”
“Those are contradictory and mutually exclusive.”
“A habit I acquired from my Mirror Lady.”
For a moment, she smiled nervously. “I am afraid I… I… well—”
Her tongue failed her; some calculation seemed to run behind her eyes.
“I cannot… I… well, I just cannot.”
“I know you cannot, but may I ask you a mathematical question?”
“Of course!”
He took a deep breath. “If you imagine every possible future state between us—with every supposition, from your being so angry as to burn Pemberley to the ground in a fit of pique,to a deliriously happy marriage, and everything between—can you seeanychance that someday we might achieve happiness together? Is the whole set of future possibilities in which we are happy together anempty set?”
To her credit, Elizabeth did not blurt out the 1stthought, or the 5th, or 10th. Instead, she closed her eyes, tried to picture all those possible states, and considered her feelings about each.
At last, she said, “It is not anempty set, sir, but I must admit it seems at this point to besparse.”
“I will accept sparse.”
“But I cannot. It has all the disadvantages of binding us with none of the benefits of commitment.”
