Page 104 of The Matchmaker’s Mistake

“The rumour compelled me to do what I ought to have done before.”

“But it was the rumour that brought you today.”

He hesitated, but there was nothing for it. “Yes.”

The admission lay heavy between them.

“Your mother introduced me to Mr. Aldridge, and he has visited us here several times. So I suspect the rumour you heard was about him?”

Darcy nodded once.

“Mr. Aldridge has made no secret that he is seeking a wife this season. However, if he makes an offer at all, I suspect it will be to Jane,” she said. “I do not believe he will, not yet. He has called only three times, and he does not strike me as an impulsive man.” She shook her head. “I would not have said you were either.”

She looked at him steadily.

“You have called here twice since December, Mr. Darcy. The first time you came was only because you accompanied Mr. Bingley. Today you come alone and ask me to marry you because you believed another man might ask me first.”

He had no answer to that. Not one that would help him.

“I do not wish to be rushed into an engagement because a man wants to prevent anyone else from asking,” she said. “I do not wish to feel I am a prize two gentlemen have discovered at the same moment. What if I were to choose a victor only for him to discover after we were wed that it was not me that he wanted after all, only the satisfaction of winning me away from someone else? No, Mr. Darcy, marriage ought to be entered into with care and consideration, and certainly not on the foundation of two calls nearly three months apart.”

For a moment he could not answer. All the talk at Brooks’s, all the versions of the rumour, all his sickening certainty that Miss Elizabeth would be taken from him by a man who had acted more decisively—he had built the whole fear upon nothing and that fear had ruined the whole.

“You are right in every particular,” he said. “I have gone about this as badly as a man can. I came in fear rather than in—” He stopped. The word he wanted was not one he had any right to use twice with her. “I have made you feel set upon. That was the last thing I intended, and I am sorry for it.” His laugh was short and bitter. “I seem always to be apologising to you.”

A frown came and went. He had spent the winter learning to read her—the arch of the brow, the tilt of the head, the moment she chose not to be clever because it might wound—and now, when he needed it most, the skill deserted him. She looked at him like someone adding up figures that would not come right, but he had no idea what she might be thinking.

“I do not know what to say to you,” she said at last. “I find I cannot⁠—”

She did not finish it. Her hands closed on one another in her lap. And into the quiet, so low that he thought afterward she might not have known she had spoken at all, came the rest.

“I cannot be chosen in this way.”

The words went through him like a blade. He waited, hoping she might soften the phrase with some remark that would allow them both to go on, but she did not. She sat very still and looked at the floor between them.

He knew her. Whatever else he had got wrong this winter, he knew that Miss Elizabeth Bennet was the clearest-thinking creature he had ever met. She had never, to his knowledge, been at a loss to know what she believed. If she was silent now, when one word would have ended his suspense either way, it could only be that the word was one she was too kind to speak. A woman who meant to accept a man did not stare blankly ahead of her. A woman who could not forgive him looked exactly as she looked now.

He would not make her say it. He had taken enough from her this morning without demanding that of her too.

“You need not answer me.” He was relieved that his voice held steady. “I understand you perfectly. I ought never to have come to you in this fashion, and I will not compound the error by pressing you for an answer you do not wish to give.”

He rose. She rose with him, quickly. For an instant he thought she might speak—her lips parted—but she quickly pressed them closed again, and he took the small mercy of her silence for the answer it so plainly was.

“Thank you for hearing me. Will you make my apologies to your aunt? I find I am not fit for company just now.”

He bowed. He did not trust himself to look at her a second time, and so he did not. He was handed his greatcoat at the door, and he tossed it over his arm.

I cannot be chosen in this way.

He carried her words out into Gracechurch Street, turning them over, unable to make them mean anything but that she would not have him.

CHAPTER 26

The front door closed, and Elizabeth stopped trying not to weep.

She was still standing where Mr. Darcy had left her, one hand on the chair. The parlour looked exactly as it had before he came. The fire was low, her work lay in her basket, a book sat on a table next to the sofa.

Elizabeth shook herself a little and stepped to the window. She could see Mr. Darcy in the street below. He had not taken his carriage. He walked away down Gracechurch Street towards St. Paul’s, his shoulders straight, his pace neither hurried nor slow. He did not look back.