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We were all just absorbing this when Charlotte said yet another very distressing thing.
“I am not stupid. I know I am being unreasonable… and unfair… and mean… and silly and… well, everything else that is terrible… but… every time I see the colonel, I see a combination of Wickham, who took everything from me, and Colonel Blackwood, who failed to tame him or protect Betsy and me. Colonel Blackwood probably turned a man who would have forgotten us entirely into a man who hates me to my very soul.”
At that point, her reserve had completely cracked, and the tears I had been expecting finally arrived. “I know your cousin is probably a good man despite his annoying tendencies, and I know he believes he esteems me. I am neither naïve nor deaf. But how can you possibly build a friendship from that? I know I owe him much better than I have given him, but… I do not know if I ever can, or even where to start.”
We all just took in the enormity of what she said: Me in some shock, Mother with obvious calculation as to how to take care of her charge, and Charlotte just sitting there nearly spent.
Lizzy slid her chair around the small table to where she was practically sitting in Charlotte’s lap, and talked directly to her in a whisper we could barely hear. “Charlotte, do you know what I thought of Fitzwilliam four days before the attack?”
Lizzy’s distraction seemed to work.
Charlotte said, “Can I guess it had not improved since the previous year?”
Lizzy gave a grim chuckle. “Quite the contrary. At that point, ‘not handsome enough to tempt me’ was the high point of our acquaintance.”
Charlotte chuckled, but it was of the grim sort. Mother and I had no idea what she was talking about, but would be asking forthwith.
Lizzy continued, “I will tell you a secret—” With that, she looked pointedly at Mother. “Which shall remain as such?”
We just nodded.
“He lost a horseshoe and was walking near the parsonage when he overheard a conversation between me and Bennet… of which you will not be privy. He stopped and listened… eavesdropped, really… to the whole thing… all of it.”
We all gasped at the idea that the ever-fastidious Darcy would stoop so low.
“At that point, he would have had to improve considerably to get to the point he was at when he left Meryton.”
Mother asked, “What was that point?”
Elizabeth just said, “I disliked him intensely. He… he—”
At that point, I could see there was much more of a story, and that I would have to drag it out of Darcy, as she was not going to finish.
“That was Friday. He approached me again on Monday and continued to dig a hole for himself. I went from merely disliking him to nearly hating him then, but he just kept at it. He was practically suicidal—”
We all knew about the knife at that point, and wondered if she was using ‘suicidal’ literally or figuratively. I believed from some clues that she might have been near a breaking point back then. We all waited in breathless anticipation for her to continue.
“Somehow, in the next three days, he became my confidant, and to this day, I have no idea why or how… just that it happened. He learnt all my secrets that had not been exposed by his ungentlemanly eavesdropping, and we became… almost… well, not friends, I suppose. More and less at the same time, but I know not what.”
None of us wanted to point out the obvious.
“I did not just have an aversion to his manners, Charlotte. I nearly hated him. I told him… well, I cannot go into it, but suffice it to say I nearly flayed him alive with censure more than once.”
We all watched her in fascination.
“I still did not like him the night of the attack, and when I see him, I may love him or hate him on sight, but he is far, far from the man I thought he was.”
Now, she was crying a bit herself, but she finished. “Give the man a chance! Let him earn your love… or your hate… or your indifference; but do not charge his accounts with another’s debts. If you do not, you will spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder, and no man will ever be good enough. All will be discarded without cause. Give him a chance. That is all I ask.”
Charlotte was done with crying by then. “I will, Lizzy. Will you?”
We had all been acting as if her husband was dead already—and he would be soon enough even if one of us had to hurry him along—but that was not the only thing between Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam. I doubted any of us would ever know the true story, but we could at least hope.
Elizabeth managed to nod, which was all any of us could hope for.
Phaeton
Charlotte
