Page 2 of He Insulted My Entire Family Before Proposing

Colonel Fitzwilliam looked at her more closely. "You disapprove?"

"Of rescue? Never. I have always longed to be rescued from happiness by a gentleman with better information than my own heart."

He winced. "Miss Elizabeth, I fear I have blundered."

"Then you are the first man in Kent to notice when he has done so. You must not apologize too quickly. It is refreshing."

The colonel stood, crossed to the mantel, and picked up a little porcelain shepherdess as though she might advise him. "I spoke thoughtlessly. Darcy's actions may have been more complicated than I know."

"They generally are, I suspect. Men of large fortune seldom do simple harm when complicated harm will flatter them more."

He set the shepherdess down with care. "You are angry."

"No," Elizabeth said, because anger was too small a word for the thing opening in her chest. "I am informed."

When he left, he did so with every appearance of regret and no useful ability to gather his words back from the air. Elizabeth remained seated, her work fallen into her lap. Outside the window, the lane to Rosings lay bright beneath a clean spring sky. Somewhere beyond it, Mr. Darcy existed in the confidence of a man who had injured Jane for her own good, insulted Elizabeth for his own amusement, and considered himself not cruel but careful.

That was the trick of it, she thought.

A vulgar man said, I think myself above them.

A proud man said, I protected my friend.

And a woman was expected to feel the difference as an improvement.

By the time Charlotte returned, Elizabeth had resumed her sewing. Her stitches, had any person inspected them, would have revealed a spirit unfit for needlework.

"You look as if Mr. Collins has praised you," Charlotte observed, removing her gloves.

"Worse. I have been enlightened by a gentleman."

"That is severe."

"I am trying to bear it with Christian fortitude."

Charlotte's gaze sharpened. She had not married Mr. Collins because she was foolish. She had married him because she could count incomes, prospects, and the narrow choices allowed to women without fortune. "What has happened?"

Elizabeth told her enough. Not all. Not the little private grave where Jane's hopes had been buried under everybody else's sense. But enough for Charlotte's mouth to tighten.

"Men call it prudence when they arrange a woman's disappointment before she can object," Charlotte said.

"And when they dislike her connections?"

"Then prudence becomes moral courage."

Elizabeth laughed once. It was not a pleasant sound. "I used to think Mr. Darcy merely proud."

"And now?"

"Now I think pride may be the ribbon on the parcel. I should like to know what is wrapped inside."

Charlotte went to the window. "Take care. Men like Mr. Darcy do not enjoy being unwrapped."

"Then he should not have presented himself tied in such an impressive bow."

That evening, at Rosings, Mr. Darcy watched Elizabeth more than he spoke to her. He had done so often enough that it should not have mattered. But now she understood the look differently. It was not admiration unbending itself by degrees. It was inspection. A man could study a woman and still be measuring the cost of her family.

Lady Catherine spoke for twenty minutes on the proper boiling of asparagus. Mr. Collins glowed as if each stalk had been a theological revelation. Anne de Bourgh coughed delicately into a handkerchief. Colonel Fitzwilliam, more subdued than usual, avoided Elizabeth's eye.