Page 1 of Mr. Darcy Forgot I Said No

Chapter One — Elizabeth

"In vain I have struggled. It will not do."

Mr. Darcy says this to the window.

Not to me. To the window, as though the glass has offended him for months together and he has at last resolved to have it out.

I lay down Jane’s letter. I have read it four times this evening in search of the cheerful sentences, and there are fewer each time. My head aches. I told Charlotte it ached so that I need not go up to Rosings for tea, and now it truly does, which seems a fitting punishment for the untruth.

And I have had something else to read over all day, besides. This morning Colonel Fitzwilliam walked with me in the grove and told me, as a great compliment to his cousin, how Mr. Darcy had lately saved a friend from a most imprudent marriage. There were some very strong objections against the lady, he said, smiling, as though it were the best joke in Kent. I have thought of nothing else since.

“Mr. Darcy? Are you unwell?”

He turns. He is pale. He has the look Mary used to wear before she played at a party, and I have never once seen him look like anyone but himself.

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

I stare at him.

The clock on Charlotte’s mantel ticks three times. I count them, because I can do nothing else.

He takes my silence for encouragement. He must be the only man in England who could.

“I have fought against it,” he says, and begins to walk. Four steps to the hearth, four steps back. “Since the autumn. Since Netherfield. I have argued with myself every day of it.”

“Argued,” I repeat faintly.

“Your connections. Your situation in life.” He does not look at me. “The inferiority of your family, which I cannot pretend not to see. Your mother’s conduct at the ball. Your younger sisters. The degradation of such an alliance to a man in my position. My judgment set all of it before me, Miss Bennet, and my family would set it before me again.”

“I see,” I say. I do not see at all.

“And none of it signifies.” He stops before my chair. “None of it has done the least good. I love you. I ask you to end my suffering and consent to be my wife.”

Suffering.

He waits. He expects a yes. I can see it in his face, the hope and beneath it the certainty. He has told me I am beneath him, that loving me is a disorder he has failed to cure, and he is quite sure I shall thank him for it.

“In such cases as this,” I say, and my voice comes out strange and calm, “it is, I believe, the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed.”

He goes very still.

“If I could feel gratitude, I would now thank you. But I cannot.” I fold my hands, because they wish to shake. “I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly.”

The color leaves his face, then returns all at once, dark red.

He walks to the mantel. He sets his hand upon it. He breathes.

I count the ticks again. Eleven.

“And this,” he says at last, very low, “is all the reply which I am to have the honor of expecting? I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so little endeavor at civility, I am thus rejected.”

“I might as well inquire,” I say, rising, because I will not be loomed over in Charlotte’s parlor, “why, with so evident a desire of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character. Was not this some excuse for incivility, if I was uncivil?”

His jaw tightens. “Miss Bennet—”

“But I have other provocations. You know I have.” My heart is beating in my ears. “Do you think any consideration would tempt me to accept the man who has been the means of ruining, perhaps forever, the happiness of a most beloved sister?”

He does not deny it.