Page 63 of Yearning

“Well, I should rather have never had to do that. If this is the only reward for such things, some admirable attitude, I do not think it has been worth it.”

“No,” she said. “It is not like that, is it? It is balance, but it is still so very brutal, all of it.”

“It is not all brutal,” he said, smiling down on her. “After all, this moment, you and me here, walking under the leaves as they turn… there is nothing like this moment. It is rare and precious and simply perfect.”

She smiled back in agreement, and they simply walked for some time.

Eventually, he cleared his throat. “He did say something else.”

“Who did?”

“Richard.”

“Oh, yes, we did not settle that dreadful sibling business. Is that really why he stopped? Because he felt as if we were siblings?”

“He said that he could tell you did not want him, and that he didn’t want you if you did not want him.”

“Oh, I suppose I do remember something like this,” she sighed. “He does not want me either, that is the truth of it.”

“He said this to you?”

“No, he denied it, but I can tell, because I know how it was between you and me, and whatever it is between him and me, it is not the same thing.”

He was quiet, thinking that over.

“Does this not please you? Because he also said some wretched thing about how I wanted a man to need me, and that I was asking too much, and I don’t think you have ever needed me, anyway.”

“I… perhaps I did need you,” he said softly. “Perhaps I drove you away precisely because I needed you, and because I was so frightened of needing anyone at all, and I thought that if you were gone, I should learn to take care of myself.”

“That seems to be what happened.”

“The path here, I am not sure if it was the right one,” he said. “I am not sure if all the pain we both suffered has been worth it.”

This was perhaps the closest she would get to his expressing regret, she thought, amused.

“But,” he said, “I suppose I was thinking of something else you told me once, a long time ago.”

“What?”

“You said that you did not think you were pleasable.”

She remembered. She drew in a breath and looked off into the distance. “Well, he was proficient enough with that.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Darcy, his voice a bit gruff.

She winced. “I could have kept that to myself, I suppose.”

“No, that is…” He cleared his throat.

“My husband, I think, was either ignorant of the workings of women’s bodies or selfish or both,” said Elizabeth. “But it was all so long ago. After having Lily, so much of that faded away. I worried much less about it.”

“Yes,” he said, “and you are increasing again, so your interest will have waned, and I am… so, we need not worry over that at all.”

She stopped walking. “You said that there was something,” she said. She was curious.

“When I am not near you, I swear that I rarely even think about it,” he said. “These past four years, I have largely never thought about it. And I am not plagued with the same kind of raging desire I had when I was younger. Likely because I have had the source of all of it removed, though.” He laughed.

“Oh,” she said. “I see. So, it is like that?”