Page 40 of A Mismatched Compromise

“Aunt Catherine would object,” Darcy said. “Violently and at length.”

“Your aunt Catherine,” the earl said, some of his typical dryness returning to his tone, “would object to the sun rising in the east if she felt she had not been adequately consulted on the topic ahead of time. I do not believe that her opinion ought to govern your conduct in this or in any other matter. Moreover, I do not believe that you truly think so either, regardless of how you have used her potential objections in your own arguments to yourself.”

“No,” Darcy said low. “You are right, Uncle. I would not make my choices by Aunt Catherine’s opinions.”

The earl nodded. “I may flatter myself, but I also believe that you hold my judgement in a higher regard than you hold Catherine’s. For what it is worth, I have quickly developed a high opinion of Miss Elizabeth.”

“You do not know all her family,” Darcy said, but even he could hear that the protest was rather weaker than he intended.

“I do not,” the earl agreed, “but I know a great many families, and I have yet to encounter one that did not contain, somewhere within its ranks, a relation that the rest of the group would prefer not to claim publicly. Catherine is that relation for me, though I dine with her at least twice yearly, and doubtless will continue to do so until I die, as that is the nature of families.”

Darcy looked at him in surprise, distracted for the first time from his own woes. “I have never heard you speak so plainly regarding my aunt.”

“I do not generally find it necessary to do so,” his uncle said. “But I believe it is required today.” He settled deeper into the chair, his lips tightening in an expression considerably more grim than any Darcy was accustomed to seeing him wear. “I will tell you something that I have not spoken of often, Darcy, because I do not generally believe it serves much purpose to rehash it. But I think you might find it valuable today, so I shall make an exception.”

Darcy waited, his eyes narrowing slightly.

“When I married your aunt Beatrix,” the earl told him, “she was not considered a good match for me. Her father had been caught up in some unfortunate doings at the card tables — nothing so dramatic as ruin, but the affair was not handled in the way that gentlemen are expected to handle their losses, and it was enough that he was viewed unfavourably in certain circles for some time. Consequently, her dowry was far more modest than it might have been otherwise, and was in fact considerably less than what a man in my position was expected to consider worthy. Your aunt Catherine was opposed to the match from the first mention of it, and told me — and later Beatrix — so, at length, both before and after the wedding, on more occasions than I care to recall.”

Darcy stared at him. “I have never heard any of this.”

“Very few people have,” the earl said, “as it is not a story that those outside of the family need to know, nor is it one that reflects well on most of us within it. I should add that Catherine has never once in thirty years acknowledged that she was wrong, despite what I feel is abundant evidence that my choice was an excellent one, which is admittedly consistent with her character in general.” He smiled faintly. “Hers was the loudest opinion, but it was not the only one. Anne — your mother, Fitzwilliam — though younger than Catherine and I, had more sense than either of us, and told me to ignore Catherine, and eventually told Catherine to leave us alone. She asked me if the family’s opinion on Beatrix’s father’s card debt was what I would regret not caring about on my deathbed. I thought she made quite a bit of sense at the time, and her wisdom has held steady, for I’ve given very little thought to my late father-in-law’s gambling practices, and less each passing year, whereas the rightness of my choice in a wife has become ever more obvious with time.”

For a long moment, Darcy didn’t speak. In his experience, his aunt and uncle simply existed together as a single unit, and he had never really given much thought that there must have been a time when they were not one. It had never occurred to him to think of how they came to be married, much less to think that they had had to survive the type of family opposition that he had forced upon Elizabeth as though it were a fixed and immoveable obstacle that he was graciously navigating for her.

“Why do you tell me this now?” he asked at last.

The earl raised an eyebrow. “Most stories are better kept until they are pertinent rather than merely entertaining. It seemed to me that you might very well find it useful now.”

Darcy looked at his own hands, braced on the surface of the desk before him, and felt the weight of what he had done settle on him. “I think it is too late for me to learn its lesson now,” he said. “For I have ruined it. Whatever chance I might have had, I have ruined it entirely, through my own clumsiness and pride dressed up as honesty.”

“You may have ruined it for the present,” the earl allowed, rising leisurely from his chair. “I will not insult your understanding by pretending otherwise. From what you have told me, it seems you did conduct yourself rather badly, Darcy, and I imagine Miss Elizabeth’s opinion of you has suffered and will take time to recover.” He crossed the room and briefly let his hand rest on Darcy’s shoulder. “But the present is not forever. You would do well to remember that,” he said, then quietly crossed to the room and let himself out, closing the door behind him with the same deliberate care with which he had shut it upon entering.

Darcy remained at his desk for some time after his uncle had gone, forcing himself to look unflinchingly at every part of the day’s catastrophe.

He had been wrong, he had been prideful, and he had been cruel. He had given too much thought to the opinions of people who were not his main focus, and far too little to the one who was. Now that he had acknowledged that, it was very clear what he should have said — the correct words rose easily in his mind, abundant and eloquent and true and entirely too late.

He should have told her that he had loved her wit before he even knew he loved her, that Pemberley had felt like it was sitting, waiting, for years until she entered it, and then it felt like home again. He might even simply have asked her the question with no qualification at all, and let the asking speak for his feelings.

Instead, he had given her a list of deficiencies. He had said she degraded him. And the worst of it was, he could not see a way forward or find a way to make it right. Even an apology would come across as a kind of pressure, a re-issuance of the proposal disguised as contrition, piled onto a woman currently staying beneath his own roof, with nowhere to retreat to and no way to refuse him again without sacrificing still more pride by ending the visit and thereby revealing something of their bad blood to others.

Darcy groaned, knowing that he could not mend this simply by trying again. He had to find some way that did not ask anything further of her, that gave her room to be free of him before he could ask her to face another conversation with him. He tried to plan, to make a methodical arrangement as he was used to doing, but to no avail. Each time he tried, he saw the roses and heard the way her voice shook, and could go no further.

Chapter 20

Elizabeth sat in the chair beside the window, her hands folded in her lap, and waited for her heart to stop beating so frantically and for her breathing to return to its normal state. It seemed to be taking rather a long time.

The room was quite large, but today it felt terribly small. Even the tall windows that opened onto Pemberley’s famous gardens were doing little to diminish the feeling that the walls were closing in on her. The gardens were not supplying their usual calming effect.

Though as they were the same gardens where she had just refused a marriage proposal that could have saved her sister’s happiness, from a man who had made a point of explaining, in exhaustive detail, how much of a degradation it would be to marry her, perhaps that was not entirely surprising.

Elizabeth pressed her palms against her eyes and took in a deep breath, ignoring how it shook. She would not cry. Again. She did not cry, and even if she did, it would change the situation not at all. She wasn’t being selfish — how could anyone be expected to accept a proposal phrased as a list of one’s own deficiencies? She couldn’t do it — it was unthinkable, she had been in the right to refuse. And yet…

She could have freed Mr Bingley from this forced sham of an engagement, and freed him to pursue Jane, the woman he truly loved. This was what made her breath catch in her throat every time she thought about it: not so much that Mr Darcy had proposed in such a revolting manner, but that he had been right in what he had said afterward. Mr Bingley and Jane could have been married without anyone thinking less of them, or without either of them feeling that their happiness was built on her ruin. She would have been entirely secure, protected behind the solid walls of Pemberley and the even more stalwart shield of Mr Darcy’s wealth and importance. She would have had a home of her own, one that was beautiful beyond reckoning and with a library that would have occupied her for years. But to have that, she would have to wake up every morning beside a man who regretted her.

Of course, that would also be the case with Mr Bingley. So what, really, was the difference? That Mr Bingley was less cruel about it, and so he should be punished for being kind to her?

As her thoughts began to tumble back into the same spiral of anger and regret, they were interrupted by a soft knock at the door. Elizabeth hastily straightened her posture, smoothing her hair and dress with shaking hands and taking in a deep breath to calm herself before calling out her permission to enter.