Page 30 of Mr Darcy’s Inconvenient Wife

Her colour rose. She opened her mouth to answer him.

“It was foolish,” he said, before she could. “I talked to Bingley afterwards. He knows exactly what family he has married into, and he is glad of it. He would help your sisters in any way he could, and think himself lucky to be asked. I had no right to interfere once, let alone twice. I was wrong.”

She had not expected that. He saw it in the way her hand dropped from the wall.

“But you would have done it.”

“I thought about it. I will not pretend I did not.” He stopped. The cold of the flagstones had begun to come up through his shoes, and he knew there could be no worse place in all England for what he was about to say. “There was another reason. I told myself that if Bingley were not tied to your family, I might find it easier to stop thinking about you. It did not work. I care for you a great deal, Miss Elizabeth. I have done so for a good deal longer than I like to admit.”

She went back a step. Then another, until the stair behind her stopped her from going any further.

“When I came to the parsonage that night,” Darcy went on, “I came to ask you to marry me. You never let me get as far as that. You were angry about your sister, and you had every right to be, and I went away without ever saying it.”

Elizabeth stared at him. Her lips parted. He waited, and did not know what he wanted her to say.

The door above them slammed shut.

The draught stopped at once, and the candle flame stood straight up. Elizabeth turned and was at the top of the steps before he had quite understood what had happened. She put both hands flat on the boards and pushed.

Nothing happened.

“It is stuck.” She pushed again. “It cannot be locked. There is only a bar on the outside, for when the wind gets up, and nobody ever bothers with it.”

Darcy went up after her. The stair had been built for one servant with a basket, not for two people, and there was no way to stand beside her without standing pressed against her. He put his shoulder to the door above her head while she pushed lower down. For a minute or more they heaved at it together in the gloom. Her back was against his coat. A loose curl had come down and brushed his cheek every time she moved, and she smelt of lavender water, and of the cold. On any other day he would have noticed nothing else. Today he noticed only the door, which did not shift so much as an inch.

She twisted round to face him. It brought them closer still, and he went down a step to give her room.

“Did you do this?”

“I?”

“Is it some trick? Did you mean to compromise me? You could not get me by asking, so you thought you would try another way?”

“No.” It came out sharper than he meant, and he tried again. “No. I never meant anything of the kind. I was not going to tell you any of this today. If you had not come down here and accused me, I should have kept it all to myself and gone back to town. But you asked me, and I am tired of you thinking worse of me than I deserve. I only came down here because your mother said the Lucases' youngest had wandered in and could not get out again.”

Elizabeth said nothing for a moment. Then she shook her head.

“The Lucases' youngest is Maria.”

“I do not follow you.”

“Maria is fifteen, Mr Darcy. She is sitting in our dining room at this very minute, eating syllabub. There has not been a little child at Lucas Lodge for ten years.” She looked hard at him. “Why would my mother tell you such a thing?”

“She did not tell me. She told Mr Collins.” He began to see it himself as he spoke, and he did not like it. “She was very insistent. She wanted him to go down, and she said she would fetch one of the Lucases. But he walked off the other way, so I came instead.”

All the colour went out of Elizabeth's face. She swayed on the narrow step, and he caught her by the elbow before she could fall.

“No,” she said. “Oh, no. No, no, no.”

She pulled her arm away and struck the door with the flat of her hand. Then she struck it with her fist.

“Miss Elizabeth, what is it? What have I said?”

She did not answer him. She hit the door again, and just then it was pulled open from outside. Winter sunlight fell straight down the steps, so bright that Darcy had to put up a hand to shield his eyes.

Mrs Bennet's face appeared in the doorway. It was pink with excitement, and her mouth was already open to speak.

But then, she said nothing at all. In fact, her lips parted like a fish out of water. Behind her stood as many wedding guests as the kitchen garden could hold. Every one of them was staring at Miss Elizabeth Bennet on the cellar stair and Darcy realised his hand was still on her arm.