Page 103 of The Matchmaker’s Mistake

“Of course,” he said.

“A week ago I sat in your mother’s house and listened to your sister play. At the end of the evening, I went to fetch my aunt’s shawl, and the library door stood open. Your mother and uncle spoke of a fine girl with thirty thousand pounds and no nonsense about her who would be perfect for you. ‘Miss Finch is exactly the sort of girl he wants,’ your mother said. She had not been so easy about a thing all season.” Her chin was perfectly level. “I hope you will forgive me if I ask—if you love me, how can you allow your mother to match you with someone else?”

The shawl. Now he had his answer.

For a week Darcy had agonized, had searched his own conduct for any offence he could possibly have committed, and all the while it had nothing to do with him. It had been something she had overheard between his mother and his uncle, something he had not even known had been said and that might have been corrected in ten words had she only asked him about it.

A hard, useless anger rose in him then. Not at Miss Elizabeth—though he was angry with her too—but at his mother. Her cleverness, her arrangements, her meddling in other people’s lives, pushing them where she wished them to go. She wanted to bring people together but had managed only to keep Miss Elizabeth and him apart.

She had told him to let Miss Elizabeth be, to be civil and expect nothing, since no sensible woman could forgive a man who had insulted her twice. And he had obeyed. For weeks he had not spoken to Miss Elizabeth beyond the bare necessities of politeness, because his mother had judged it kindest and he had thought her wiser in such matters than himself.

Then, when he could stay away no longer, when he had begun to invent small excuses to be near her—walking her to the music room, to the warmth of the conservatory, seeking her out in the park, watching out for her when there were too many people in his house—his mother had not known what it meant, though others had. How well he made amends, she had said. What credit it did him. She had watched him falling in love and missed it completely.

Instead, she had been busy elsewhere on his behalf though he had told her he did not want it. The parties that quadrupled in size. Miss Finch, who was not what he wanted. Other ladies paraded before him for his mother’s own purposes. He had been called into rooms on cue, hat in hand.

He had let her do it. That was the worst of it. He had walked around the blocks of Mayfair at her whim and thought himself dutiful.

His mother had found Aldridge. She had set that good, steady, blameless man down in Gracechurch Street and left him there, and Darcy had been terrified that this match, unlike the others, would prove successful.

None of it had been necessary. He had loved Miss Elizabeth Bennet from very nearly the first, without any assistance whatever.

He set it aside as best he could. His mother was not in the room, Miss Elizabeth was, and she was currently watching him argue silently with himself. “They were not speaking of me,” he said, using every ounce of restraint he still possessed to keep his voice level.

Miss Elizabeth’s expression did not change. “No? Then of whom?”

“I was not there, madam, I cannot answer for their conversation. But Miss Finch is not for me.”

A little colour came into her face. “That is a difficult thing to know, Mr. Darcy, when so many people seem to have been deciding so many things on your behalf.” She paused. “And on mine.”

He could not deny it. “No,” he said. “You are quite right. I can speak only for myself, but my decision is the one that matters.”

“And that is where I am confused.” The words were quiet, but they struck him hard. Miss Elizabeth rose. “Is this your decision? I thought I understood,” she said. “I thought your mother had chosen one course, and that you were in agreement. Now I find I was wrong, and I am asked to believe that you feel completely differently than you did in Hertfordshire.”

“No.”

She sighed and her shoulders dropped, her expression sceptical. “You do not feel differently than when you insulted me?”

“I mean that I loved you then as well. Only I did not understand what I was feeling.”

Her brows pinched together, and there was pain in her face before she could hide it. “But you must see how difficult it is for me to know the truth of your feelings.”

She closed her eyes for a moment before opening them again, and Darcy could see that she was weary.

“All winter I have been told where to go and with whom to speak,” she said. “Thoughtfully, perhaps, but also with great skill. A call here, a walk in the park there, a seat beside this person, an errand that happened to bring one gentleman or another into the room. I thought your mother was simply being kind, and I daresay she was. But I ask you again—how am I to know what is true and what has merely been arranged?”

“Miss Elizabeth⁠—”

“You tell me you love me. But you have also said you only asked me to marry you because you did not wish me to accept someone else.”

He heard the words now as she must have heard them. They sounded hurried. Competitive. Almost desperate.

“I said it badly.” He took a breath. “I did not come because of that. Not only because of⁠—”

She would not allow him to finish. “If not, then why today? By your own admission, you have waited months to confess that you love me. How can you know that your feelings are not an impulse born of some sort of competition? How am I to know, for that matter?”

He would not lie to her. “I was afraid,” he said. “I have wished to speak for longer than I can defend. But I told myself I had reasons to wait, and some of them were even good reasons, among them the need to make my apologies to you. Then I heard a rumour that another man might ask you, and I understood what more delay might cost.”

Her expression betrayed her confusion. “So it was a rumour that brought you.”