Page 25 of Courting Elizabeth

I could not leave.

“You feared he would withdraw his offer,” Jane said.

“Yes.”

The word struck me with terrible clarity.

“Because of Pemberley?”

“Because of him. Because of the security as well—I will not be so noble as to deny it. I accepted his name, his fortune, and the protection they offer my family. I accepted the man as well. I simply do not yet know if what I feel has become love.”

All the signs rearranged themselves with perfect cruelty.

She had never declared her love to me. She had done something more effective to deceive a man so certain of being loved: she had let me assign whatever meaning suited me to each of her hesitations.

No.

The truth was more humiliating.

She had spoken to me of her doubts. I had decided they concerned only what I could repair. I had mistaken her desire for affection, her consent for a promise of the heart, and every willing gesture for confirmation.

But she had known what I believed.

She had been afraid to set me right.

“You should have told him before this morning,” Jane continued.

“I know.”

“And now?”

“In a few hours, I'll be alone with him in London. What would you have me say? Forgive me, sir, I accepted your name, your fortune, and your protection, but I never spoke the words you chose to hear?”

I stepped back before the floorboards could betray my presence.

The wound was immediate. A briefer, more dangerous anger tried to rise in its wake. Yet it crossed neither my lips nor my face. I had spent my life concealing from the world anything that could be used against my family. I discovered that this discipline could also protect the woman who had just married me.

I found a small empty room at the end of the corridor and closed the door without a sound.

My name. My fortune. My protection.

Elizabeth's words mingled with Lady Catherine's with perfect cruelty. For a few seconds, I saw only the man vain enough to believe his love was as certain as his income.

Then the rest of her confession returned.

Because of him.

She had feared losing me as well. She esteemed me. She desired me. Her heart was changing—only more slowly than my impatience had assumed.

And she had warned me.

She had said her opinion was not fixed. She had named my faults. She had asked for time to discover the man behind the pride. I had listened to each of these reservations before deciding they must surely surround a feeling already born.

I had not been deceived with the cunning my humiliation first wanted to attribute to her.

I had deceived myself.

This truth did not erase the silence she had chosen afterward. She had understood what I hoped for. She had been afraid to correct me. The thought wounded me enough that my hands tightened on the back of a chair.