No—that was not quite true. She had hated needing tobelieveit, for the letter had been only the beginning of her humiliation. She had read it in anger, reread it in disbelief, had continued reading it until every sentence seemed to accuse not Mr. Wickham or Mr. Darcy, but Elizabeth herself. She had thought herself clever. She had delighted in her accurate first impressions, in laughing at foolishness, but had never considered that her understanding might be flawed or incomplete. Was that not another sort of arrogance?
That letter had changed her, and Elizabeth could not deny that while the change had been painful, it had also been for the better.
She wondered if her words had somehow affected the same sort of change in Mr. Darcy, for she did not think that the man who had written that letter was the same man she had met today.
Or rather, hewas.
That was the difficulty. The pride which had once wounded her had not vanished, but she could now distinguish it from coldness or cruelty. The seriousness she had mistaken for contempt revealed itself, in a clearer light, as the gravity bestowed by the heavy responsibilities. His reserve, which inHertfordshire had seemed designed to humble and repel, now seemed more like restraint, consideration, and a concern that he not presume. Mr. Darcy had been flawed—he was flawed still—but Elizabeth had discovered that she had never rightly understood him. How could she when she had not even rightly understood herself?
Had she met the Derbyshire Mr. Darcy in Hertfordshire last autumn, had he spoken of her family with the respect he showed her aunt and uncle now, had he treated Elizabeth as one whose opinion mattered, there might have been no insult, no resentment, no quarrelling. If there had been a proposal offered bythisMr. Darcy, there might not have been a refusal.
The thought was so startling that Elizabeth blinked. How very absolute she had been, how very satisfied with herself, and how little she had truly known of him and of herself.
And now? Now Mr. Darcy was civil to her when he had no reason to be. More than civil, to tell the truth. Today he had watched her with an expression she could not recall without feeling all her composure wavering.
But whatever his present kindness, she must remind herself that he could not still think of her in that way. No man, after such a rejection, would expose himself again. His pride might be better governed than she had believed, but it was not extinct; nor, perhaps, ought it to be. She had wounded him deliberately. She had accused him unjustly. She had refused him not with regret, but with determination. He would not ask again.
This ought to have relieved her, but it did not.
Elizabeth sat down on the edge of the bed and laughed without much amusement. She had forgiven the man who wrote the letter because she had discovered enough of her own pride and conceit to make her less severe upon his.
But forgiveness was proving a poor defence againstlikinghim.
For shedidlike him. He cared for his young, shy sister and was pleasant to her aunt. He had listened to Uncle Gardiner’s observations on fishing, allowing that a gentleman in trade might possess knowledge worth having, and he had invited him to partake. When Mr. Darcy first saw her as he arrived home, he had been awkward. But then he had mastered himself, seeing to everyone’s comfort but his own.
Most inconvenient of all, she had liked the look of him coming up from the stables, dirty and wind-tossed and entirely unaware that linen could be so . . .
“No,” she said aloud.
Tomorrow, they would breakfast early. She would wear her dotted muslin, because it was fresh and becoming, she would speak to Miss Darcy with warmth, but she would not wait for Mr. Darcy or wish for him to notice her. She would behave with perfect indifference to the fact that he had left the river today merely because she had come to visit.
He had meant to greet herandher aunt, of course.
Elizabeth dressed for bed and lay down. For several minutes, she thought of nothing. Then she recalled an image of Mr. Darcy standing in the saloon, not proud, not severe, not aloof, but instead unmistakably pleased to see her.
Elizabeth turned her face into the pillow and released a brief, smothered scream.
CHAPTER 3
Darcy read the same sentence of his steward’s letter three times.
The fourth attempt was as fruitless as the others, though it had the advantage of confirming that the fault lay not in the steward’s prose but in the reader. He gave it up at length and turned his gaze out the window at the sky just beginning to brighten.
He had been at his desk since five.
This might have appeared industrious, an estate’s master tending to its business before his guests gathered.
It was not.
The servants were already up—many had begun their work not long after he woke. The lawn would soon be prepared, the rugs and side tables laid out, the wine cellar drawn upon with a liberality that would no doubt be noticed by Hurst if by no one else. He thought ahead to the carriages that would arrive at the appointed hour, one carriage in particular.
Until then there was nothing left to be done that requiredhis particular attention, which would usually have been a consolation but was today a trial. As a result, he had been sitting at his desk for two hours pretending to read the last quarterly summary of the home farm.
He pushed the letter aside. He selected a new sheet of paper, reached for his pen, and then recalled another letter he had written and nearly forced upon Miss Elizabeth. Darcy was convinced she had reached for it only out of surprise at his insistence—he did not even know whether she had read it, though her willingness to return to Pemberley yesterday made him think that she had.
I must make her think better of me.
He set the pen down.