Page 11 of Shadows Of Rosings Park: Part 2

"I have spoken to her. She will trouble you no further this evening. Should she approach you again with unpleasantness, you will inform me immediately."

Elizabeth's eyes narrowed. A fraction. He caught it.

"As you wish. Though I'm capable of managing Caroline Bingley without a gentleman's assistance."

"Your capabilities are not in question. But as my wife, you will learn that certain battles need not be fought alone."

Her resistance faltered into puzzlement. He had said something she could not judge.

"You would defend me, then? Even against your longtime acquaintance?"

The question had layers. He could not see to the bottom of it.

"I protect what is mine."

She said nothing. Surprise crossed her face, unguarded and real, followed by the briefest possibility of trust.

It vanished immediately. She was too intelligent to trust him, but the glimpse settled in his chest like a coal.

Mary played the pianoforte. Kitty followed. During the music, Darcy surveyed the gathering: Bingley and Jane exchanging glances like notes passed in church, Caroline rigid with humiliation, Mr. Bennet in his corner watching his daughter with the face of a man who had run out of useful things to say.

Elizabeth slipped out through the French doors after Caroline's final attack. She asked no one's permission. She simply went. Her small, unilateral decision produced in Darcy both irritation and reluctant admiration.

He gave her three minutes. Then he followed. The terrace was visible through the French doors, anyone glancing out would see them, which provided the thinnest veneer of propriety.

She stood at the balustrade in the moonlight, and the sight of her, silver-lit, unguarded, her face turned toward the garden with an expression she would never have shown him willingly, made him stop. His breathing stilled. He noted this. He resented noting it.

"You should not have followed me," she said without turning.

"You are visibly distressed. As your betrothed, it would be more remarkable if I did not attend to your well-being."

She laughed. Short. Bitter. "My well-being. How curious that you should express concern for that which you systematically undermine."

Direct hit. He absorbed it.

"You mistake my purpose entirely. Did I not just demonstrate as much with Miss Bingley?"

She turned. Her eyes were bright. Wet. She had been crying, or nearly. The sight tightened his throat and roused an impulse toward gentleness that ran against every habit of command he possessed.

"Protection? Is that what you call this? This slow dismantling of my will, this public charade, this —" She stopped. Drew breath. "Miss Bingley's words wounded not because they were spiteful, but because they contained truth. You do not love me. You desire to keep me. There is a world of difference between the two."

Darcy looked at her. Moonlight. Tears. The honest, devastating clarity of a woman who could read him better than he read himself.

Did he love her?

The question arrived without warning. He had not thought to ask it. He had thought in terms of desire, claim, and arrangement, the narrow vocabulary of a man who treated every human exchange as ground to be won. Love was not a word that appeared in his habits of thought. It was Elizabeth standing in the moonlight telling him exactly what he was. Being right. Making him want to be something else.

"You cannot know my mind," he said. It was the weakest thing he had ever uttered, and they both knew it.

"Cannot I? I have observed you as closely as you have observed me. The satisfaction you take in my compliance. The pleasure you derive from my discomfort. You wish not for a wife but for a possession — one that retains just enough will to make subjugation interesting."

He stood motionless. Her clear-sighted judgment, delivered without cruelty or even anger, struck harder than anything Caroline Bingley could have devised.

She was right, though she saw only part of it. He wanted to own her. He had woven coercion around her to ensure that ownership. Wanting something more, something he was unable to name and had no idea how to pursue, failed to erase what he had done.

"You simplify a complex matter," he said, and heard the inadequacy of it even as the words left his mouth.

"Then enlighten me."