Page 85 of Fortuitous Encounters

Darcy gasped but just gave her an expectant expression, hoping she might continue now that she temporarily seemed less likely to bite his head off.

“Mr Collins is the heir presumptive to Longbourn, since it is entailed on the male line, for the reasons I previously mentioned. He came specifically to ‘heal the breach’, meaning marry one of the Bennet daughters. My mother offered me up as the sacrificial lamb without asking me or anybody else—even though Mary would have been a much better choice. I had to refuse him three times, and he kept saying it was the ‘usual practice of elegant females’ to deny requests they mean to later accept. I had to get my father to deny permission before he finally gave up and proposed to Charlotte three days later.”

Darcy's mouth hung open as she continued, “I suppose your acceptance of ‘no means no’ is admirable—all things considered,” as she stared at the ground in embarrassment.

Darcy cleared his throat. “If I decided not to give up at the first obstacle, would I be fighting for something worthwhile or refusing to take no for an answer?”

She thought about it and sighed. “I would hope to vacate my current position as Mistress of Hypocrisy. I suppose it all depends on how you refuse to give up. Mr Collins just kept repeating the same arguments over and over, expecting to browbeat me into submission. My mother did the same, though she would have more success browbeating a rock.”

Darcy chuckled, glad to see her moving to less murderous humour.

With his own sigh, he said, “It is certainly too late to start over, but… my image of you has changed with this conversation. You are stronger than I realised. Perhaps, I can change your image of me and see where that takes us.”

She smiled slightly. “At the very least, we should be able to improve on mortal enemies ‘til the end of time.”

Darcy chuckled and smiled—surprisingly handsomely. Elizabeth doubted she had ever seen him truly smile, but she had seen this smile’s younger cousin occasionally when she caught him staring at her.

“I still fear obligation. Suppose we do this? Tell me what is in that letter you worked on all night in three sentences.”

He started. “Three sentences?”

“Yes, that should do the trick, I think.”

Darcy put his hand over the pocket holding the letter, as if trying to draw inspiration into his fingertips through the cloth. He took a deep breath.

“George Wickham is a criminal, liar, gambler, cheat and seducer, who was educated at my father’s expense, though all of it was entirely wasted on gambling, spirits, and women; who asked for and received three thousand pounds in lieu of a living my father bequeathed to him; which he subsequently spent along with another one thousand pounds he received outright in four years; then asked for the living again when it fell vacant unexpectedly; and when denied, he tried and nearly succeeded in seducing my fifteen-year-old sister to elope with him just to get her dowry of thirty thousand pounds.”

Darcy breathed hard at the end of it, and Elizabeth, shocked, turned pale and swayed on her feet.

Feeling bold, Darcy took her arm and led her off the main path into a trail mostly hidden from sight. He led her a few dozen paces to a small bench next to a pond, where he wiped off the seat with his handkerchief and helped her sit. He knew she was made of strong enough stuff to be fine without his intervention, but he reckoned a poor excuse was better than none, and getting her out of sight could only help his case, provided they were not observed.

Elizabeth sat for some time, giving way to every variety of thought—reconsidering events, determining probabilities, and reconciling herself, as well as she could, to a change so sudden and so important. At length, the story of Miss Darcy turned it from a rather fanciful tale she was only half-inclined to take at face value (though she had to sheepishly admit she had done so with Mr Wickham’s story) to the opposite extreme. Nobody would use his sister so abominably unless it was not only true but especially important to convince her of his veracity.

She looked at the gentleman; he watched her carefully with obvious concern.

She laughed, though it held no humour. “That is quite a run-on sentence.”

He chuckled, though his was just as brittle. “With only three sentences, I cannot waste breath or punctuation.”

She sighed sadly. “I believe you! I am ashamed to say I took Mr Wickham at his word, apparently only because you wounded my vanity, and he flattered it. I feel so very stupid. What a stroke would this be for poor Jane! She would willingly have gone through the world without believing so much wickedness existed in the whole race of mankind, as was here collected in one individual. Now I must work out how much of my disapprobation of you was directly fed by Mr Wickham’s lies, and how much you earned. I fear the result will not earn me any praise for my supposed discernment.”

He snorted. “It is not as if I can claim any cause to boast. I thought you were expecting my addresses. I fear I possess a monopoly on arrogance and stupidity. My father went to his grave believing in Wickham’s goodness, so you are in good company.”

She wanted to contradict him, but since he was not precisely wrong, it seemed disingenuous.

Instead, she said, “You have two sentences left, sir,” thus closing the book on George Wickham. If they managed to remain at least friends, she imagined there would be time to deal definitively with the cretin later. She must do something about him to protect her sillier sisters.

Darcy heaved a great sigh and started a sentence he did not expect to go quite so well.

“I observed your eldest sister most carefully at the Netherfield ball, once Sir William’s assertions and your mother’s endless boasting made me aware of a general expectation of a marriage; but the serenity of her countenance, and the way she looked at my friend with no more nor less approbation than anyone else, convinced me that her heart was not easily touched; which would be very bad for my kind-hearted friend, who deserves a match of equal affections, and who is not in a very good position to deal with that total want of propriety so frequently, so almost uniformly betrayed by your mother, by your three younger sisters, and occasionally even by your father.”

Elizabeth jumped from the bench and stomped around the small poorly tended pond in the centre of the glade, burning with rage. However, finding herself on the other side of the pond reaching for a rock, unable to determine if she wished to burn off her frustration by making a great splash or throwing it at Mr Darcy’s head—she paused and looked at the gentleman. Her ire was softened by the man’s countenance. He looked as if he was watching his life end before his eyes, and she realised she had been frightfully unfair asking him to summarise in one sentence what she could easily discuss for hours. Her family mortified her! She remembered thinking at the ball that, ‘had her family made an agreement to expose themselves as much as they could during the evening, it would have been impossible for them to play their parts with more spirit or finer success.’

She had twenty years to learn to deal with her family, while Mr Darcy had weeks. If she were truly honest, she would have to sheepishly admit that she would not willingly marry into her family either. That realisation put her into a complete state of shock. Mr Darcy had correctly identified her family as the worst behaved family of her acquaintance, yet he had volunteered to join it. How much more mortifying for a Mr Darcy than a Mr Bingley to join such a family, and yet he proposed marriage.

She quite surprised herself by running back around the pond, until she stood in front of him, breathing heavily.

“We will discuss Jane and Mr Bingley at another time, but, for the moment,” she paused in embarrassment, as if unsure of herself, but gathered her courage and continued, “let us just accept that you are partially right, and leave that sentence as-is. I imagine the longer description in your letter might have softened the blow?”