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And I hear, at last, what I have said.

Chapter Twenty — Darcy

Had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.

I have heard those words before.

Not tonight. Not in her teasing voice, warm against my jaw, with the lilac over us and the nightingale singing. Somewhere else. In another voice. Her voice, but not like this. Cold. Clear. Each word set down like a stone on a table.

Had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.

The garden goes away.

***

A parlor. Small. Narrow. The light coming in low and gold through a window.

A clock on the mantel, ticking.

I know this room. I have been trying to find this room for six weeks. I have lain awake in Bingley's second-best bedroom reaching for it in the dark, and it has always slipped through my fingers. It does not slip now. It comes all at once, the way a wave comes over a sea wall, and there is no holding it back.

Mrs. Collins's parlor. Thursday evening. My blue coat.

She is sitting by the fire with a letter in her lap. She looks up when I come in. She does not smile.

In vain I have struggled. It will not do.

My own voice. I hear it as though from outside myself. Stiff and hoarse, speaking to the window instead of to her, because I could not bear to look at her while I said it.

My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.

She stares at me.

And I go on. God help me, I go on. I walk four steps to the hearth and four steps back, and I tell her about her connections. Her situation in life. The inferiority of her family. Her mother. Her sisters. The degradation. I lay it all out for her like an account, every item of it, as though I were proud of how thoroughly I had fought against loving her. I was proud of it. I remember being proud of it.

There was no workbasket.

There was no green worsted. I did not knock anything over. I did not sit down beside her. I stood in front of her chair and looked down at her and asked her to end my suffering, and I expected her to say yes.

In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed. If I could feel gratitude, I would now thank you. But I cannot.

I remember the clock ticking.

I remember her rising from the chair. I remember her voice, getting louder. Jane. Wickham. His misfortunes. My own laugh, short and ugly. And then her face, white with anger, lifted to mine, and the words coming out of her as though she had been saving them for months.

Had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.

From the very first moment of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressed me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others.

I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.

The last man in the world.

I remember the walk back to Rosings in the dusk, and not being able to see the path. I remember the stairs. The candle. Nine sheets on the floor, ten, eleven. My cousin in his shirtsleeves, telling me he had walked with her that morning in the grove and told her about Bingley, as a compliment to me. Lowe and the coffee. Then the flowers had better be very large, sir.

Be not alarmed, madam.

I remember sealing it. I remember putting it inside my coat, over my heart, where it sat like a stone. I remember Hobbs in the stable yard, warning me about the bough. The black, dancing under me. The paling flashing past. Her voice in my head, over and over, louder than the hoofbeats.