Page 5 of Mr. Darcy Forgot I Said No

“And whom would you have answered more cleverly?”

“No one.”

“Lizzy.”

I look into the tea. “Charlotte, suppose a man told you that he loved you. And suppose that in the same breath he told you it degraded him to do so.”

“I should think him honest,” Charlotte says, “and very stupid.”

In spite of everything, I laugh.

“And suppose you answered him in a temper,” I go on. “And said things you meant, and said them very well.”

“Then I should think you both honest and very stupid.” She tucks her feet beneath her wrapper. “Mr. Collins made me his offer after a fortnight, you know, and it was not elegant either. He spoke of Lady Catherine’s shelves for a full three minutes before he mentioned me at all.”

“That is different.”

“Is it?”

“Mr. Collins was clumsy. This—” I stop. “This was cruel.”

Charlotte is quiet a moment. “Was it cruel? Or was it only true, said badly?”

I do not answer. I cannot.

“Drink your tea,” she says gently, rising. “And walk in the morning, since her ladyship commands it. A walk always mends you.”

“Charlotte.”

She pauses at the door.

“He said he had been kinder to his friend than to himself,” I say. “What do you suppose a man means by that?”

She looks at me for a long moment over the candle. “I suppose he means that he is not as proud as he looks,” she says. “Good night, Lizzy.”

The door closes.

“He is exactly as proud as he looks,” I inform the ceiling.

The ceiling, like Charlotte, declines to argue.

***

By dawn I have given up the attempt.

I dress without the candle and go softly down the stairs, stepping over the fourth, which complains. Mr. Collins snores like a man who has never passed an uncertain night in his life. I let myself out by the kitchen door.

The air is cool and gray and smells of wet grass. Over the Rosings woods the sky is just turning the color of the inside of a shell. Somewhere a thrush is singing. It sounds insufferably pleased with itself.

I take the lane that runs along the park paling. Not the grove. I have walked the grove every morning this week, and nearly every morning this week Mr. Darcy has chanced to walk there too. Yesterday it was his cousin instead. I thought it a coincidence. I thought it a very tiresome coincidence, and I told Charlotte so.

He was in love with me.

He walked there on purpose.

“Good heavens,” I say aloud, and walk faster, as though I might outpace my own memory.

I shall go to the end of the lane and back. I shall eat my breakfast. I shall write to Jane and say nothing whatever, and in a fortnight I shall be in Gracechurch Street, and in a month I shall have forgot the precise gray of his eyes when he said you have said quite enough, madam.