He though was often distracted by thoughts of Elizabeth, and he smiled every time he thought of Elizabeth.
He even smiled when he recalled, as he often did, that moment when she refused him. Now that he had admitted to himself his love for Elizabeth. Now that he was determined to his own self to be true, he was happy.
Delightedly happy.
He did not tell Bingley about the proposal he had made, though Bingley had been in a cheery and whistling mood the whole day. It was rather disconcerting and humbling to be refused by a woman, even though he possessed a steady hope that Elizabeth would accept his next proposal, which he would make once enough time had passed for her to see that he spoke out of true affection, rather than an impulse of the moment to be regretted on later reflection.
Darcy now also laughed at and ridiculed his list.
It was quite strange to think that he had once, i.e., as recently as yesterday morning, cared so deeply about whether his wife knew all of the major European languages and could play at least two musical instruments with facility, or one with exceptional talent.
What a strange man he had been when he wrote that list, understanding nothing of the twists and turns of his own heart.
All Darcy asked after he knew was for the right to comfort and support Elizabeth when she was hurt and when she had any need.
That night Bingley cornered Darcy after he’d finished reading, before he could retire for the night. “Billiards, Darcy, billiards! — been dull as a broken knife today. Reading all day? Reading! I invited you here to entertain me, and instead you just go through the books of that girl’s author again and again — though Isabella liked her.” Bingley grinned and winked at Darcy. “Do you wish to avoid my company?”
“You’ve trapped me now. Billiards, eh.” Darcy smiled widely. “Excellent plan. Though I warn you I am going to deliver unto you a defeat such as you have seldom suffered, and will not quick forget.”
“Ha!” Bingley exclaimed. “I win at least a game in four — I have played a great deal this past week with Mr. Hurst. I’ll skim your cream. You watch. You watch.”
Their field of combat was a green felt table lit from above by bright burning beeswax candles hanging on a silver struck chandelier.
Both Bingley and Darcy had small glasses of the whiskey that was traditional to sip during such masculine displays of ability.
Crack.
Darcy went first, as the challenged.
Crack.
Bingley took his turn, scoring a point.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Twenty minutes of shots, mostly taken in silence and then Bingley had proven himself the victor in the first round of their battle. The two friends grinned at each other, shook hands, and reassembled the game after the frightfully close fought battle.
Darcy sipped his whiskey while he ruefully stared at the table as Bingley prepared to take his first shot of the second game.
“Heh, so,” Bingley said, “you have not spent your endless walks of late contemplating carefully the best angle with which to hit the billiards.”
Darcy shrugged. “I’ll beat you this round. I just needed to warm up the fingers.” He flexed his hands.
“I have a guess!” Bingley grinned delightedly. “Have you perhaps been contemplating a pair of pretty dark eyes, and the curve of a dimpled cheek? Eh?”
“Bingley, I shall not dignify such with a reply.”
“Now, now, my friend — now, now.” Bingley laughed as he finished assembling the table and stepped away for Darcy to take the next shot. “I am an old widower — you must let me relive those dreams of youth and love. I remember well the remarkable pleasure that a pair of pretty eyes, in the face of a particularly pretty woman can give. That is whilst a man is yet young and yet green.”
Darcy flushed. And he saw Elizabeth’s eyes again. Bright, affectionate, and set in a particularly pretty face. A face with a beautifully dimpled smile.
“Ha! Upon my word! That is the face of a man in love.” Bingley grinned at Darcy and took a sip from his own glass, before he settled down with his cue stick running over his palm between his thumb and other fingers to aim his next shot. “I see that the eyes of an E are not far from your mind.”
“Bingley!”
The gentleman laughed so hard in response to Darcy’s outraged reply that he completely wrecked his shot, bouncing it off the edge of the table, without even hitting the target ball.
“There,” Bingley said magnanimously and gestured for Darcy to take his shot. “I give you the advantage as you are too lovesick to play without one.”
“You should not bandy the name of a gentlewoman of our acquaintance about.”
“Oh! This girl’s name does begin with an E?”
Darcy ignored Bingley and lined up his shot.
Right as he was about to strike the cue stick against the ball, Bingley added, “Miss E is the prettiest girl in the neighborhood.”
And Darcy hit too hard, the striking ball bouncing wildly off the target ball and hopping off the table and onto the rug with a loud marble crack.
“Bingley — I do not wish my affairs to be talked about by everyone. Nor the affairs of…”
“Of Miss E?” Bingley grinned at Darcy. “You do not wish to be teased — but the time has come for me to roast you. At last!”
Bingley calmly lined up a shot and the ball popped the shot neatly as could be in the pocket.
“Really, Bingley. One ought not talk loosely about a respectable lady.”
“Darcy, Darcy.” Bingley clapped his hand on Darcy’s shoulder with far more familiarity than he almost ever showed. “My dear Darcy, we are speaking of your sentiments.”
Darcy rolled his eyes and took his next shot. Decent strike.
“Now,” Bingley said, rubbing chalk powder onto the point of his billiard stick. “We can all see that you are infatuated enough to not care about the weather, to walk about during the heaviest storm bareheaded, and to come back with a smile rather than a cold. To be so insensible to the normal slights and slings of poor fortune that you have even cheerfully bantered with Louisa. I love my sister, but she is not a woman easy to enjoy the company of.”
“She is not so bad.”
“See! Our Miss Eli— Miss E. Miss E has turned you into a universal philanthropist, a lover of mankind. Ah — had Isabella lived to see this day. She would have delighted in it.”
“How long have you known?”
“That you were infatuated? My dear man, I suspected from the day we met Miss E.”
Darcy shook his head. “That is not discreet — Miss E.”
Bingley laughed. “Do not ruin my fun. I have been the one who has been the lesser, the provider of entertainment, for so long. But the circle has turned, and the chance is mine, and I shall enjoy it now that I have my chance.”
“I am not so lovesick as that — I do not tease you when you do not wish it.”
“No, but you always are very superior. You almost never behave like the sort of a man who would wander the muddy paths for three days, in the worst rain, simply because he cannot see his lady love. You were always a sensible sort, but now, now you are quite as ridiculous as any lover in a play. Ah, and you can only hope your lady sweet shall have mercy upon you. Ahhhh, to be young and in love again.”
“You yet remain several years my junior.”
Bingley grinned and they traded several more shots.
Despite how Bingley completely fluffed the one shot, he was winning, again. And Darcy found it impossible to care, his mind was far too filled with Elizabeth, and with that terror, that had lurked somewhere ever since she refused him, that despite everything, despite the way she had turned to him for comfort when she cried on his shoulder, perhaps her refusal would be a permanent, an unchangeable thing.
“How… was I that obvious? — do you, do you think that she… admires me in turn?”
Bingley laughed hard, but this time he paused in his play, and so did not ruin another shot. “
You worrying about if a woman admires you? Never, never seen you in such a remarkable situation. What has happened to the great and confident Fitzwilliam Darcy, who looks upon all with disdain, and assumes every woman is his for the asking?”
Darcy blushed. He knew that Elizabeth was not simply his for the asking. “A woman truly worth pleasing is not so easy. She… I cannot speak of such matters, but… Miss B-b… Miss E has had difficulties in her life. She does not trust so easily.”
Bingley tilted his head. “Have you spoken to her about your feelings? — She likes you. Miss Bennet likes you, and she likes you well indeed. I have rarely seen a more promising inclination on either side. I only refrained from teasing you till now, as I had a conviction until recently that you would decamp from the county if you realized you were on a steady course to ignore everything in your list.”
Darcy groaned. “Do not remind me of my list. Rubbish.”
“Oh, you can depend upon it. I will remind you of your list with some frequency.”
Darcy took his next shot. A good one, but that still left him behind Bingley. Unless Bingley fluffed an easy shot on the next, Darcy would be down two games in a row to his friend, which was a rare case. “You are probably right. I likely would have fled at first.”
Bingley calmly settled himself, took his shot, and won the game. “Ha! Two in a row. Must have been a year since I did that to you last.”
Darcy now took the turn to arrange the table for another round. “Hard… hard to speak. To say what is in my heart. I do not… what objections Miss E might have to marriage? Beyond that she distrusts my steadiness, as I have abandoned the list I long proclaimed I would follow.”
“What? Did she refuse you already once?”
Darcy flubbed the shot he was making.
“Upon my honor! Upon my honor!” Bingley laughed loudly. “I could never have imagined you in such a case.”
“Bingley,” Darcy said warningly.
“But do not worry! Do not worry! She’ll come around.”
“I think that likely, though by no means certain.”
“Certain. Nothing could be certainer. I confess, I understand her objections, you are an arrogant man, of rigid opinions, a tendency to look down upon others, and to think less of them than they deserve, and to—”
“Bingley. This is yet a sore point for me.”
“Despite every flaw you have, you are the best man I know — Kind, loyal and affectionate to those who have earned your care. The strongest friend, a man who I would rather entrust my life to than any other, and a man to whom I would entrust either my children or my fortune to without a second thought. You are a good man.”
“I do not so much fear objections to myself, as…”
Bingley shrugged. “You know Miss Bennet far better than myself. But I think… you are too reticent in general. You expect others to understand what you think, when you have said nothing. You ought make an effort, a strong effort to speak openly to her about what in her character gives rise to your affection. When courting a woman, the greater risk is too say too little, because you fear you shall say the wrong thing, than to say too much — that only is true when what you say comes from your heart.”
As it happened, Bingley also won the third game, and Darcy was not sure if such an event, his losing three in a row to his friend, had ever happened. Such a series of losses, if they had occurred, had occurred in the distant past when both had but recently met at their university.
Two days later the heavy rains relented, and Darcy saw again the woman he loved. He had now finished all of her novels, and reread his favorites once or twice. The briefly sunny weather was slowly drying out the drenched roads.
With the expectation that he would stay in Netherfield rather longer than his initial intent, Darcy resorted to the bookseller and his circulating library to see what other books he might wish to read.
“You could actually stand A Gentlewoman’s work?” The bookseller scratched his neatly trimmed beard. “I’ll buy them back for you, at a proper discount, if you do not wish to populate your shelves with such.”
“No. No. Part of my library now — everyone, gentlemen of sense included, ought to read her work,” Mr. Darcy replied evenly, and with an inner smile. “I shall recommend them to all and sundry. But I have now finished them all, and need something else to read — perhaps a matter of history.”
“The tales of our own monarchs?”
“I think not — our history is deeply familiar to me. What do you have upon foreign shores?”
“If you read French I have a fine history, recently published in Paris, upon the late disturbances there, and the restoration of the rightful monarch. I only just finished that myself.”
“Ah… have you bound it yet, or is it still in the block?”
“Prefer to have your books bound to match your other books? — don’t worry. Just paper and string at present.”
“Then I would happily buy that book.”
The door rang when a new customer entered, and Darcy glanced to see who it was.
Elizabeth.
Her eyes clear, and her nose cute and pert. Her skin delicate, freckled, and with a hint of a blush. Darcy’s stomach flipped.
They both for a long moment filled with feeling silently stared at each other.
“Hello! Miss Bennet, Mrs. Hawdry!” the bookseller exclaimed. “My condolences, my deep condolences, Mrs. Hawdry.”
Until the bookseller called out to her, Darcy had not even realized that Elizabeth’s blond sister, draped in black, stood next to Elizabeth. Mrs. Hawdry smiled sweetly at the bookseller and then looked down.
Elizabeth walked up to the counter, her eyes on Darcy.
However the bookseller again addressed her, “Miss Elizabeth, how do ye do. Mr. Darcy here — he says he liked the books you recommended him. Not sure if that means there is something I didn’t see in them, or if it just shows that neither of you have any sense.”
Darcy hid his amused grin. He understood exactly why Elizabeth liked Mr. Martin: There were few merchants who would openly say that a rich customer such as himself, or even a simply well off one such as Elizabeth, had no sense.
“That neither of us have any sense, assuredly,” Elizabeth replied in her clear delightful voice. “But then no one does.”
The bookseller laughed. “What do you hope to borrow today?”
“I am not sure, yet — Mr. Darcy, do you wish to finish your business first?”
He smiled brightly at her, and she blushed and looked down, before peeking back up at him. Possibility and tension infused the air. And the scent of freshly cut and printed books.
“I have just purchased a French history of their late disturbances, but as you are now here, I would ask, since you gave such good advice to me the first time, that you suggest another work for me to read.”
“Oh! Now I am to be your librarian as well as your friend?”
“I would have you be that and more.” He smiled meaningfully at her, remembering Bingley’s advice to be more rather than less forward.
“Oh.” She swallowed and looked down.
“But a book!” Darcy exclaimed, hoping to break the tension. “I must still have such a recommendation.” He turned to Mrs. Hawdry. “I am pleased to see you again, might you recommend a book?”
“I have not read any of the recent novels…” Then Mrs. Hawdry smiled in a way that made her particularly fetching and beautiful. “I have only just read Fashion Exposed yesterday — that was a fine read.”
Darcy laughed. “Yes, I have read it twice myself now. I believe I have met the author.”
“Oh.” Mrs. Hawdry smiled, and looked between him and Elizabeth.
Elizabeth said, “Now, now! What books have you liked of late?”
“The works of A Gentlewoman.” He smiled brightly at her.
“No! No — that is no help. Before that?”
“Polidori’s The Vampyre — a chilling tale, told well.”
Elizabe
th shivered. “That poor man, unable to warn his sister — and such a monster. Such a creature—” She snapped her fingers. “Have you read Frankenstein? I have upon good authority that the premise for both were born on the same evening in a chalet in the Swiss Alps, whilst Lord Shelley and Lord Byron were also of the party.”
“I have not… is it not rather grotesque?”
“In a brilliant way… it is strange, and sad, and deeply affecting. And another powerful tale of the uncanny. A gothic tale, but with an educated sensibility — Mrs. Shelley’s mother and father both were philosophers of note.”
“Wollstonecraft.” Darcy made a face.
“Come now! Come. Have you read her work? She is still remembered fondly and much lauded in more liberal circles in London. Godwin though, poor man. I have met him once. He did not at all mean to damage her reputation with his biographical sketch, but speak the truth of her. And it is a truth that speaks to the turns of the human heart.”
Darcy smiled at Elizabeth. “I confess I have not read any of Wollstonecraft’s work — though her life is a warning upon the inability for persons, no matter how clever or well educated, to order their life purely through the application of reason, and to be able to ignore freely their own sentiments.”
“I entirely agree upon that — she failed the principles which she advanced, and she fell short of her own educational maxims. She became dependent upon her first lover for happiness and fortune, and that was her mistake. I would never educate a child upon the lines suggested by her — clearly they did not succeed at creating the sort of better woman she wanted, yet, I would still seek to create that sort of better woman. The ideal of womanhood that she put forward, independent, strong and intelligent that she put forward in Rights of Women has inspired me.”
“Has it?” There was a connection between the idea of Mary Wollstonecraft and her immoral behavior with men and repeated attempts to take her own life. A connection which had entirely overshadowed any interest in the details of what she said in the public mind. “That sounds like you, Miss Bennet. Independent, strong, and intelligent. Were I asked to describe you, I would speak in such terms.”
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