Unequal Affections: A Pride and Prejudice Retelling

by Ormiston, Lara S.

  She nodded against his chest.

  “You will . . . tell me when you are certain?”

  She nodded again.

  “You . . .” He breathed at last, a deep shuddering breath. “You would not lie to me?”

  She drew back a little to look at him, refracted light sparkling through her unshed tears. “In this,” she said, “I have never lied to you.”

  He blinked fiercely and shut his eyes, more utterly discomposed in his happiness than he had ever been in his grief. It hardly mattered that the profession was not complete. That Elizabeth thought she loved him was so much more, so very, very much more than he had believed possible only an hour ago. The terrible specter of both their miseries had receded. He could wait for the rest; if he had already won so much from her, in so few weeks and against such odds, then surely all else would be forthcoming soon.

  Elizabeth was similarly too overcome to say much more. The rapidity and force with which these emotions had rushed over her left her dizzy, and she could not think to do anything more than to rest her head against Darcy’s shoulder, to feel his arms around her, and his careful, hesitant fingers as they explored the area around her neck and shoulder.

  It was Darcy who finally broke the long silence. “You should not be here,” he said, although his tone did not indicate concern.

  “Are you sorry I came?”

  His arm tightened around her. “No.”

  “Then we shall not worry about it. We shall be married in only a few days, anyway. It’s a bit too late for scandal now.”

  “Married,” he breathed. “Sweetheart, are you certain—I know that I have asked this before, but are you absolutely certain that you do not wish to delay the wedding? It would be difficult but not impossible, and it would give you more time to be certain of your feelings.”

  She pulled away enough to look at him. “Do you want to delay it?”

  He shook his head. “I am tired of being engaged to you, Elizabeth. But I would rather wait a score of years than risk your happiness.”

  “A score of years, Mr. Darcy?” Her eyes began to dance again. “Would you really tolerate my caprice and indecision for so long?”

  With a quick movement he pulled her tight against him and whispered in her ear, “Not when you look at me that way.” That made her blush scarlet again, but he let her go carefully and stepped away.

  Elizabeth felt bereft, and flushed more to realize it. She could scarcely look at him for a moment, feeling suddenly embarrassed about a whole host of things, not the least of which was a distinct wish to have him kiss her again; then she realized that he had donned his coat, and she felt his familiar hand catch hers and bring it to his lips. Meeting his gaze at last, she saw he looked concerned and smiled at him.

  Darcy saw her blush and, without fully understanding its reason, was drawn like a magnet back to take her rosy face in his hands. “I want to make you happy, my love.”

  It was with great pleasure that Elizabeth was able to look fully into his eyes and say in all sincerity, “You do.”

  Which was enough to cause Mr. Darcy to grant her her wish.

  They walked back to Longbourn together. Darcy would have called for his carriage, but Elizabeth insisted that she did not want it, and it would cause something of a stir for her to show up in his carriage after ostensibly taking a walk. “And I am sure that the walk coming over disheveled me so much that any further damage will be inconsequential,” she remarked ruefully, attempting to straighten her hair with her fingers before replacing her bonnet. “I should have tidied up before seeing you.”

  Of that Darcy would say little but, with a slight purse of his lips and a slight color in his cheeks, “Dishevelment becomes you.”

  She laughed at him and took his arm. They walked slowly, Darcy’s mount for the return trip trailing behind. There was everything to say and nothing to say. They both knew, without discussing it, what awaited them at Longbourn house—calls and callers, fittings and menus. Elizabeth’s family and community would demand most of her attention during this last week of her maidenhood. It seemed hard to be so much separated just as they reached a true understanding, but the bonds and permissions of marriage were close behind.

  “You must think me so mercenary,” blurted out Elizabeth after some minutes of quiet.

  Darcy’s brows shot up. “Mercenary?”

  “To have accepted you as I did, when—well, when I had thought so ill of you.”

  He considered this. “Perhaps I might, if it had not been several times borne in upon me how much you dislike my wealth.”

  “It’s not so much that I dislike it,” answered Elizabeth. “I am not actually so unworldly as to object to pleasures like pretty gowns and comfortable carriages. But it made me feel small. To be reminded that you were rich—that you were giving me everything and I was giving you nothing—it made me feel like a fortune hunter, and that is what I did not like.”

  “If you had accepted me for purely mercenary reasons,” he replied, “it would be no more than I deserved. My behavior to you up until that time was not at all calculated to inspire affection, and I did not ask about your feelings. I put no qualification on your acceptance.” He paused. “I must admit that I have often wondered—that I still wonder what your reasons were. The Elizabeth I know would proudly refuse such an upstart as myself, as you proudly refused my aunt her impertinent demands.”

  She glanced up at him. “It is so inconceivable that I would be attracted by the idea of marrying a handsome, sensible, educated man who loved me?”

  He smiled slightly. “If those were the terms in which you thought of it, then I am glad.”

  “I—,” she paused. Yet she could not tell him less than the truth, not again. “I cannot pretend that the future security of my family was not a major consideration—that it was not the final deciding factor, even—but it would not have been enough by itself. I had turned down the opportunity to save my family’s future before.” She smiled wryly.

  He looked at her sharply, but it did not take much effort to guess from whom the opportunity had come. “I suppose I should be thankful that you found me more desirable than Mr. Collins.”

  She blushed but could not help a smirk. “Rather.”

  Darcy raised the hand on his arm to his lips. “Collins is a fool. You would have made him miserable.”

  She burst out laughing. “I would have, wouldn’t I?”

  “He would have been only slightly less miserable than I would have been, imagining you as his wife.”

  “Which is not nearly as miserable as I would have been as his wife!”

  The thought made him shudder, and before he knew it he had pulled her into his arms. She came so easily, it took his breath away. “And I? I will not make you miserable?”

  She could not blame him for his need for reassurance, but it made her blink back tears while she smoothed the lapels of his coat. “If only you can promise me not to speak of your aunt a hundred times a day, I think I might be tolerably happy.”

  “I promise.”

  “And if you will not expect me to redesign closet shelves for maximum efficiency.”

  “That as well.”

  “Or to read only moral-improvement books.”

  “I find your morals quite satisfactory already.”

  “And you will not . . . ,” she raised her eyes, “you will not disbelieve what I tell you because you consider it the practice of elegant females to say what they do not mean?”

  He frowned slightly at this. “I shall not say that you are not an elegant female, for you are, but I am happy to say that you are not the sort of female who says the opposite of what she truly means to imply and expects her listeners to understand.”

  “Then you will believe me when I tell you, Fitzwilliam, that . . . ,” she had to retrain her gaze on the slightly crumpled knot at his throat in order to keep speaking, “that you are now the only man I can ever imagine marrying, and I do believe that you will make me very happy. If
. . . if you chose to abandon me now, then I would be miserable.”

  He tightened his grip on her. He would not tell her, not yet, just how close he had been to just such an action. Her words were a balm to him, soothing over recent pain, reminding him of happiness.

  “I wish I could somehow atone for what you have suffered on my behalf.”

  He shook his head. “It was of my own affliction. If I had courted you properly the first time—if I had not given you so much reason to dislike and resent me—”

  “If I had been more forthright from the beginning—”

  “What reason had I given you to believe I would hear your complaints? What proof that I cared about your feelings?”

  “I promised to be your wife. I should never have done so if I wasn’t willing to confide in you.”

  “I cannot blame you. I was not entirely forthright either. I avoided the subject of Bingley and your sister, knowing it might anger you. The very fact that I found it necessary to conceal my actions should have alerted me to the fact that they were wrong.”

  “My concealment was worse.” She spoke in a low voice. “I saw . . . him several times and said nothing to you, because I knew you wouldn’t approve. I did not encourage him, or seek him out, but I should have told you. I should have asked you what I should do. He was able to impose on us both because of me.”

  Darcy was silent for a moment. It still was not easy to think of it, to remember the pain of those encounters. “Suspicion, I know, is not in your nature. Without any explanation from me it was natural that you would trust him—that you would know no reason you should not speak with him. My behavior to your family certainly gave you no reason to rely on my good nature.”

  She did not like the shadow that had crossed his face again. “I cannot agree, but perhaps it is best if we do not quarrel over the greater share of the blame.”

  “Yes, but, Elizabeth,” he slid his fingers up her cheek, under the edge of her bonnet, “I must ask you now to tell me—to be as forthright as you wish you had been earlier—if there is yet any obstacle left for me. Is there any other wrong you hold to my account? Any offense for which I have not atoned? Do not be afraid to tell me truly. I want nothing so much as to clear away all barriers between us.”

  “I know of nothing,” she said quite honestly.

  “Then perhaps you can tell me what I might do to ensure that the feelings you begin to feel become more sure?”

  She blushed again, and smiled a little, but could only shake her head. Her boldness ran in spurts this morning; she could not tell him the things she was feeling. She could barely recognize them herself. He let her go reluctantly, and they resumed their stroll in the direction of Longbourn. Now with so many apologies spoken there did not seem to be much more to say until—

  “So your cousin really proposed to you?”

  She laughed and, seizing the change of subject, spent the rest of the walk entertaining them both with a lighthearted account of Mr. Collins’s proposal, the comic aspects of which she emphasized for Darcy’s benefit. He was amused but also repulsed and inwardly winced to see the similarities between it and his own proposal: the assurance of her answer, the condescending remarks about her situation.

  “I wish,” he said, as she concluded and they both stopped just outside of Longbourn’s gardens, “that I could say my own offer of marriage was much better made, but I know it was not.”

  “It was better for the simple reason that your feelings were genuine. It was your words then—your expressions of love—which first convinced me that I had grossly misunderstood you—that my opinion of your character was based on my own perceptions rather than reality.”

  “And I realized that my opinion of your affections was based on my perceptions rather than reality. It was the beginning of my humbling, Elizabeth—the very just humbling I have received at your hands these weeks.”

  “Oh, do not say so! That was not my intent!”

  “I will say so; it is necessary.”

  But she stopped him with a raised hand, her eyes suddenly stinging again. “No, it is not necessary! Please, let us speak of this no more. Is it not enough already?”

  He caught her hand and kissed it. “Yes. It is, a thousand times over, enough already—but only if you are at peace with it—if you are certain—”

  “I am certain.” She looked into his eyes, willing him to believe it. “I want to be your wife.”

  “And so you shall,” he replied, pulling her close again. He wanted to ask her about the other matter where she was not so certain, but resisted. He had no right to press her, today of all days, when she had already given him so much. Then he saw her still looking up at him, her eloquent eyes begging kisses, and not all the world could have prevented him from answering them. They tarried long at the edge of the garden before Darcy forced himself to leave. Elizabeth knew her mother would be indignant at her long absence, but no amount of scoldings could weigh down her heart on this day.

  The next days passed quickly. There were engagements and visits and much packing of clothing. All Elizabeth’s new gowns were folded and put away into neat little trunks with the name Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy on them. She sat down with her old gowns and went through them, full of memories as she pulled some out to go with her and left some to hang in the wardrobe, no doubt to be confiscated by one of the other girls as soon as she left. They would be torn apart for bits of trim or lining and then handed off to a servant or relegated to the ragbag. Soon, no trace of the former Miss Elizabeth Bennet would be left but the framed sampler on the wall—the words “Love covereth all sins” wreathed in primroses that she had stitched so painstakingly when she was fourteen.

  She was not sorry to be leaving. Her old home seemed strange already, the company of her mother and younger sisters bearable only because it was so soon to end. She felt her love for them, even as she felt how unlike them she was, how eager to gain her own establishment, to form a new family. Even the feared separations from Jane and her father did not appear so painful as she once would have thought them; she was ready now to leave her parents and cleave to her husband.

  And he . . . he was ever present now, in her thoughts and in her heart, always at the edge of her consciousness. He had been so for weeks, but there was a heightened consciousness now, a racing in her heart, a fervent hope and eagerness anytime he was near or expected. She saw little of him, compared to their early engagement, yet he seemed to fill her days and fill the room, his very presence enough to distract her. His voice, his smile, his caresses . . . she knew that she was falling, she was falling quickly. She had been for some time, she supposed. Yet still she waited, unwilling to say the words unless she knew without question that they were entirely true—that she felt them with all the fervor and passion that he deserved.

  Darcy quietly prepared for the arrival of his sister and cousin, the only family he would have or cared to have with him at his wedding. He saw the difference in Elizabeth: heard it in her voice, saw it in her looks, felt it in her kisses. It made his heart thrum, yet still he waited, unwilling to draw from her professions not yet entirely sincere. She would come to him, he knew, when the time was right; he had her word, and he trusted her.

  They spoke a little about all that had gone before, but only a little; it was, as they had said, enough. In later times they would go over all of it again, rectifying every misunderstanding. For now, it meant more to simply be together without that veil of hesitancy and secrecy, and they both knew that the great unspeakable imbalance of their feelings was gently but inexorably correcting itself. So they looked, with long exchanged gazes across the parlor, and sought each other’s hands under the table; small notes flew between the houses; and when there was no privacy to be had of an evening, Elizabeth would find a piano, and Mr. Darcy would stand near her, or sit, if the piano bench allowed it, to turn her pages, while she sang love songs for his pleasure. This single-minded preoccupation with each other was looked at with amused indulgence by their neighbo
rs, gratified to find it a true love story after all, and if Darcy’s attempts to be polite were made awkward by his constant distraction at the sound of a musical laugh, no one thought the worse of him for it. They were finally, truly courting, but in quick time, as it were, as each day brought them closer to marriage.

  One night when the girls had retired to bed, Jane came and put her head in Lizzy’s lap. “Oh, Lizzy,” she murmured. “I’m so happy.”

  “Why, what has happened? Did Mr. Bingley—?”

  She nodded. “He said he had not meant to ask so soon—that he had intended to wait until after the wedding, but he couldn’t wait any longer.”

  “Of course he couldn’t! Anyone could see how utterly besotted he is; I’m only amazed he held out this long. So you are engaged?”

  She nodded again. “I knew, of course, what his intentions must be—that he would not pay me such particular attentions if he did not mean them honorably—but still, to hear him say it! To hear him say that he loves me, that he’s always loved me, that he wishes for me to be his wife—” She buried her face in the fabric of her sister’s gown. “I never knew I could be so happy.”

  Elizabeth fought back tears. “You deserve your happiness so much, dear,” she said, stroking her hair with a very tender hand. “I’ve never known anyone who deserved happiness so well as you do. Especially,” she added, “after putting up with all my tempers so patiently these last weeks.”

  Jane smiled. “I only wanted to help you if I could.”

  “You did, more than you know. But, tell me! Why am I just learning this now? Why has there been no announcement?”

  “We thought we should wait until you were married. Charles went to my father, of course, but we agreed to keep it quiet for now. I could not help but tell you, though, dearest Lizzy.”