Author's Notes: , sheesh. Guy's, I'm really, really, really sorry. I know what it's like to love a story or even be mildly interested in one and then have to wait half a year for an update. Eh, I can't really make excuses anymore. I'm sorry. I kind of stink. I know.
CHAPTER 11
Charlotte Lucas has always considered herself to be a sensible woman. Even in the first blossom of her youth she had never been prone to fits of fancy that so affected other young women of her class, even her own sister. Yet on an unusually bright and warm morning in the second week of December, she found herself awake with the dawn, a full smile already formed on her lips. It was Sunday, and though she always dressed with care for Church as was expected of everyone, on this particular morning Charlotte observed her toilette with fastidious attention. Today was the first Sunday on which the banns would be read announcing her marriage to Mr. Collins, and her heart fluttered with anticipation. The attention of the entire congregation would be on the her, and Charlotte was determined to look her best. She knew that behind closed doors there would be much gossip in the town as to how fortunate the plain, near-spinster had managed to secure herself a husband, but she would not let such thoughts disturb her. Today she would bask in the glory and triumph only a woman engaged could feel, and she would let nothing disturb her.
As Lucy, her maid, dressed her hair for services, Charlotte observed herself in the glass, musing on all that had passed. "Surely," she thought to herself with a smile, "When we were first acquainted I did not find Mr. Collins," she paused a moment, and mentally corrected herself, "no, William, to be a very fair prospect." How very wrong she had been! Oh, he was a silly man, there could be no question about that. She understood precisely why Eliza had not encouraged him in his suit and ultimately had rejected his offer. Someone as sharp and lively as her friend would never be content as the wife of Mr. Collins, and thankfully, Lizzy was self-aware enough to understand that, even if Mr. Collins had convinced himself that they were well-suited. Charlotte however, was sure that she and William Collins were very well suited indeed. Surely she was just as sharp as her friend, but Charlotte knew that nothing would be more pleasant to her than the quiet life of a country parson's wife.
What no one had taken care to consider, no one that is, but herself, was the question of why Mr. Collins behaved as he did. Everyone acted as they did for a reason, some kind of motivation encouraged their behavior and lead them to their actions. Just as she and many others had long understood that Mrs. Bennet's nervous temperament and desperate match-making came directly from her fear about the entailment upon Longbourne, to Charlotte it was very clear that the parson's overbearing, obsequious, nature was the result of some kind of incident that had occurred in the past, perhaps recently, but more likely in his youth. No child was born apologizing to his mother for inconveniencing her with his birth; something must have happened to turn Mr. Collins into the nervous, rambling man that he had become. Charlotte was positive that there was more to the Reverend than what one could learn from the brief, casual, acquaintance the people of Hertfordshire had known with him. She, at least, would not be ruled by a first impression. She would come to know her betrothed and find the man that lay hidden beneath his barriers of incessant chatter full of flattery, apologies, and talk of persons not himself.
"I know so little of him." The thought appeared unbidden in her mind as Lucy pulled at her chestnut tendrils and twisted them with expertise. "For all his talk, for all the conversations that he has dominated since his entering the county, he has not once spoken of himself."
This thought lead Charlotte to three possible conclusions; the first and the most obvious of these conjectures was that Mr. Collins was a man of insufferable pride who felt the need to brag of the illustrious company he kept in an effort to put himself above his company; the second, that Mr. Collins was man with almost no pride to speak of, at least in terms of self pride. It seemed quite possible that he spoke of Lady Catherine with such frequency because he believed that the company he kept could have little interest in him, a country parson born to a family of no consequence. Charlotte's third theory was that Mr. Collins was actually an intensely shy and private man, and to compensate for this defect he spoke at length on topics on which he could speak easily. Even when conversing on a subject entirely removed from Rosings Park, William had a habit of returning the conversation back to the one object with which he was the most knowledgeable.
Charlotte hardly noticed as Lucy finished with her hair and excused herself to go assist Maria, for she had become utterly lost in her thoughts. Was Mr. Collins truly to be blamed for his silly nature? Surely his journey to Longbourne could not have been comfortable for him. It was not an unknown thing that there had been a strong level of animosity between Mr. Bennet and the late Mr. Collins, William's father. How must he have felt to be staying in the home of a man his father disliked so adamantly? Added to the guilt and unease Charlotte was positive William must have felt in defying his deceased father, there was the knowledge that the Bennet family would not be happy to receive him. He was the man who was the cause of the family's every vexation, the very reason Mrs. Bennet had such anxious nerves. Though the entail was no fault of his own he was the cause of the Bennet family's misery.
They had all judged him, each and every person in the town. Some considered him ridiculous and insufferable, like Lizzy and Mr. Bennet, some forced themselves to like them for their own purposes; her own mother and father were clearly not happy with the man himself, but only grateful that they would finally have their eldest daughter wed; a few others liked him for his own merits, but Charlotte had begun to believe that those in the last category were numbered only by herself and Jane, who could dislike no one. With a sudden start, it occurred to Charlotte that she had never been a total stranger in another place. Though the Bennet's were Mr. Collins' relations, they had never met before this visit. He had come to Meryton quite friendless and alone, and they had all laughed at him, perhaps subtly, for there was no one in all of Hertfordshire who would dare to treat a parson without the utmost respect, but they had laughed all the same.
"Where is the justice in this!" Charlotte wondered, becoming vexed. "I know that I would not be wholly myself if I was amongst nothing but strangers. How can one be relaxed when they are so utterly alone? No," The eldest Miss Lucas decided, becoming steadfast in her resolve, "we none of us know the true William Collins, as he would behave in his natural state. I will bring out the man he is, and when my family visits me in Kent they will be glad for me at last." Making her way from her bedchamber to break her fast with her family before church, Charlotte contemplated what glimpses she had been privileged to witness as to the true nature of William Collins' character.
With some degree of tenderness, her mind instantly turned to William's proposal. That he was desperate for a wife had been obvious. For any man to offer his hand to six ladies in a single day seemed a preposterous notion. It had been mentioned on occasion that Mr. Collin's choosing a bride from his cousin's family was a direct order from his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. For all his talk of the great lady that had painted her portrait as an over-bearing and ridiculous woman, this was one piece of advice that had seemed quite on point in Charlotte's eye. Choosing a bride from that family would be the most economical decision, and the Christian thing to do, considering the entail. William had done his best by the family to make amends and follow his lady's order, but the Bennet sisters would not have him, even Miss Mary. Charlotte knew as he made his offer that it was done so from rejection. Lady Catherine would anticipate him coming home with a fiancé, and he didn't wish to return to Kent and face the humiliation of having been so utterly turned down, failing in in his assignment so miserably.
With a frown, Charlotte thought of how very close to rejecting him she had come. Stalling to give him an answer, she had wondered what people would think to know that she had accepted a man who had been rejected by five other ladies. She had thought of the great disappointment that Lizzy would feel when she told her. But then William had spoken, and it changed everything. He knew what it was to be a man with little to recommend himself. He was an unattractive parson from a family no one had heard of. He was to inherit a small estate in an obscure town. Ladies certainly did not flock to him and vie for his affections. Like Charlotte herself, he had never been an object of admiration to the opposite sex, had never felt true passion and had it returned to him in kind. Her heart had been touched in recognizing a kindred spirit. Perhaps it was easier on a gentleman to be plain than on a lady, for there were many people who considered a woman's only attributes to be her looks and her ability to manage a household, however; the discovery that men, too, suffered from such a plight had opened Charlotte's eyes to many things.
It was, Charlotte pondered, easy to decipher then that Mr. Collins was the sort of man who was eager to please, to the point of fearing to disappoint. She had seen much of this servile nature in his behavior to the people of Hertfordshire, herself included. That he had been so devoted to the idea of returning from the county with a future bride also spoke to how frightened failure made him. There were certainly worse characteristics that the companion of her future life could possess. She imagined that this quality, so inherent in his every behavior and action, could only lead to a generous and accommodating husband. His gratitude at her acceptance had been profound, and the eldest Miss Lucas instinctively felt that her fiancé would feel the need to thank her for it for a very long time.
With a slight blush, her thoughts turned to the morning he had called, arriving long before any others in the household were awake. Her long brown hair was unbound, spilling across her shoulders and down her back in unkempt waves. Mr. Collins…William, had looked at her with such an expression that Charlotte's stomach clenched in a painful, nervous, sort of pleasure even at the memory of it. Charlotte entered the dining room, where most of her family ate, chatting amiably amongst themselves. She filled her plate and bid her family good-morning, but did not pay much heed to the conversation at hand, as heat raced through her veins. She was attentive enough to speak when spoken to, but otherwise did not enter into the fray. Her mind was filled with thoughts of the ruddy-faced parson who was slowly worming his way into her heart.
She drank her tea and relished her inner thoughts, thinking of the moments with William that were between no one but the two of them. The early morning light in the dining room brought her back to that morning with even more vivid recollection, and she allowed her subconscious to be swept up in the memory. How he had looked at her in that moment! Her insides warmed just thinking of it. No one would suspect that the deferential reverend would be a man of passion, but Charlotte was anticipating some felicity in the marriage bed, if his kiss was any indication.
The walk to the church was one of the longest of her life, she could not wait for the first of the banns to be read. The more she thought of her intended, the more eager she became to be his bride. These weeks could not pass swiftly enough.
o0o0o0o0o
Baroness Olivia Watford was not a woman to be trifled with. In the years that Eleanor had known her, from their early days in finishing school, their brief time together as debutants in Bath, and now as young, fashionable, married ladies of London society, it was something she had seen evidence of a thousand times over. Glancing at her shrewd friend over the rim of the teacup she held, Eleanor immediately resolved to be as direct as possible. Disguise of any sort was the Baroness' greatest abhorrence, and Mrs. Alcott did not credit herself with acting skills she did not possess.
From the other side of the parlor, Baroness Watford observed her fair-haired friend behind a stoic veneer. She was well known in Town for her unflappable disposition, and the calm milieu she always presented when playing hostess would not be disrupted by some idle curiosity, despite the fourteen year old girl in her who was clamoring to hear Eleanor's gossip. Patting at imaginary crumbs on the corner of her mouth with a silk napkin, she waited patiently to hear what her friend would say, the slight upturning of her lips covered by the length of a pale, slender hand.
"Well Liviy," Eleanor began, settling her cup in it's saucer, "I do have one piece of news I have yet to share."
The Baroness' black brow lifted slightly in question, but she said nothing, allowing for Eleanor to continue directly by saying, "You know that in a fortnight I will enter my confinement in earnest, and will no longer be permitted to make social calls such as this one. That is why I was so insistent that we meet this week, for I have a great favor to ask of you."
"A favor, Elle?" She questioned teasingly, her voice lilting and pleasant in the way that only a truly gifted singer's can be. "Whatever would you ask of me? I have always known you to be an incredibly resourceful woman in your own right."
Eleanor smiled coyly, enjoying the lady's quick wit. "Is it not said, Baroness, that one's greatest and most powerful resource is one's allies? I am certainly in need of one."
The lady laughed then, honey brown eyes meeting Eleanor's crystalline blue in equal shares of mirth. "Are we to war, Mrs. Alcott?" She asked, her tone as even as if she had inquired about the weather.
Eleanor's smile turned somewhat grim. "Ah but we are, Liv, if you will help me! The machinations of my sisters' grows tiresome, and I plan to thwart all their best-laid plans."
The hostess sat straighter in her seat, her head cocking slightly as if to hear her guest more clearly. "You have me quite thoroughly intrigued, I assure you!" She exclaimed, reaching across the length of the table to pour more tea. "What have those two harridans concocted now?"
Eleanor snorted with amusement at the apt description of her sisters, yet admonished her friend all the same. "How you have not insulted all good society from your company truly amazes me, Olivia. It does not do well for a Baroness to speak thus. It is certainly not becoming in a lady."
"A lady of intellect knows in whose company she can speak freely; a bold lady acts upon her logic, and does so when the opportunity presents itself." Olivia smiled playfully. "Tell me what has occurred, and what my part in this will be. If it means vexing Caroline, I will be delighted to be of service!"
Eleanor swirled the sugar in her cup with expertise, thoughtfully choosing where to begin. "You know that my sister has long set her cap at my husband's cousin Darcy."
Baroness Watford rolled her eyes and commented with some derision. "Who does not know of it? She has all the subtly of a painted lady in that regard."
"My sister Hurst promotes the match also. My brother's gaming debts only ever increase, despite the fact they have leased both his town home and the estate. From what I understand of the situation, debtor's prison is becoming a very real possibility for the gentleman, as he is in such bad straights. Louisa will not ask Charles to aid her, as she already relies on his hospitality to put a roof over her head. From what I can discern, she lives off of Caroline's allowance and my brother's protection. I believe she pushes Caroline to greater acts of desperation in hopes that with Caroline's marriage to Darcy, she will have access to Caroline's pin-money, which undoubtedly would be substantial."
"But what of yourself, and your other sisters?" Olivia interjected, baffled by the idea of Louisa as the driving force behind Caroline's pursuit of Mr. Darcy.
"The Admiral is a very generous man," Eleanor answered, her voice colored with confusion at her own words, "he would not be pleased to help my sister and her husband, as he has no particular fondness for either party, but I know that to ease my own worry, he would do so. I can not speak for my sisters and what part they have to play with any true authority. I know that it is very difficult to stay in touch with Beatrice, with all the troubles on the continent, and letters are often lost or misdirected. It would be a very difficult thing for her to send funds to my sister, and that is why I do not believe she has applied to her for them. Julia, my youngest sister and so newly married simply does not have the amount sufficient to do any true aid to the Hursts. She and her husband are comfortably settled, but from what I know of his estate, there can be little room to be charitable. It seems then that it would fall on myself if she will not turn to our brother for aid, but Louisa has not approached me. I will not mortify her pride and broach the subject with her, but if she were to simply ask me for some assistance or to confide her troubles to me, I would willingly and gladly help her."
Thoughtfully sipping her tea, Olivia replied, saying, "I fear that I am somewhat uncertain of what it is exactly that you are aiming to do, Elle. There are many ways that you could stop Caroline's 'seduction' of Darcy." With a slight smirk, she added, "Though I sense that there is no need to, as the gentleman in question is highly unlikely to succumb to your sister's feminine wiles."
Eleanor frowned, her upper teeth dragging across her lower lip in that universal sign of consternation and contemplation. "I am afraid that the story grows even more complex, Liv." She continued, "You know very well that my brother Charles has leased an estate in Hertfordshire for some months, and that before I returned to Town, I spent the better part of two months as a guest there. During his time in the country, my brother met a young lady and has since fallen very much in love. She is gentleman's daughter, a darling girl, well-bred and with the kindest disposition you can possibly imagine. Unfortunately, the estate is entailed away from the female line, there is only a paltry sum in the way of a dowry. The family also has some connection to trade on the mother's side. None of this means anything to my brother, who is wealthy enough that he has no need of a woman's dowry, and feels no shame in his own connections to trade, but they mean a great deal to my sisters."
"But of course!" The Baroness cried in excitement, beginning to piece the puzzle together, "Everything has started to fall into place. Your sister Hurst must be most seriously displeased with your brother's preference, for if Caroline fails with Darcy completely, she will eventually have to turn to him for aid in Caroline's stead."
"While my brother is wealthy, he is certainly not wealthy enough to pay off Hurst's debts unassisted. If he forgoes all the liquid assets that a substantial dowry will provide, she could very well wind up with nowhere to turn to for assistance in this matter." Eleanor replied in a rush, the words spilling from her mouth.
"I imagine that in their eyes, Charles marrying a girl with connections to trade also materially lowers Caroline's chances of securing Darcy." Olivia added with relish, feeling quite satisfied to have worked out the mystery.
"Or of marrying well in general, I wager." Eleanor concluded, taking a tart from the tea-tray and biting into it with an unladylike gusto.
"Your sisters' logic is perplexing to say the least." Olivia mused. "Why should any gentleman, Darcy included, take offense to Caroline's brother's wife having a relative in trade, but be able to overlook her own parentage with ease? I can not comprehend it."
"Caroline has always had her own perspective of the world," Eleanor said, choosing her words carefully. "She has little regard to how others may perceive things, especially when their perception is in direct opposition to her own. The fallacies of her logic do not overly surprise me, but the new lows she has sunk to have begun to astonish me!"
"But what has occurred?" Olivia asked sharply, seeing her friend grow angry.
"Charles originally came to town on business. He had every intention on returning to Hertfordshire with all due haste, and making his young lady an offer. He called on me the day before last, as miserably down-trodden and despondent as I have ever seen my twin. You know Charles' cheerful disposition, everyone does. I have never seen my brother suffer such melancholia. He tells me he plans to remain in London indefinitely. That he shall not return to Hertfordshire. When I asked him why, he told me he was convinced that Miss Bennet did not care for him!" Eleanor cried, her eyes brightening in righteous fury. "This is my sisters' doing! They have convinced him that the woman he loves does not care for him, they have persuaded him to abandon that poor girl who adores him, and I will not stand for it! They would have two people suffer for their own selfish needs, but I will, with your help, stop them."
"Finally, we have arrived at the crux of the matter!" The Baroness said with satisfaction. "I am quite at your disposal, my dear. Whatever is in my power to do to aid you on this noble mission of yours, I will see it done."
The Admiral's wife chuckled lightly at the description of her 'quest'. "I suppose there is something of nobility in trying to bring together two people who love one another," She said lightly, "though I would hardly describe it thus. I am simply attempting to do what any good sister should. What would have become of this matter if the Admiral and I had remained in Bath? Without another sister present with Charles' best interest at heart, I imagine that Louisa and Caroline would have been quite successful in destroying Charles' happiness. I am more glad than ever that we came to stay at Netherfield."
"And how do you plan to thwart the 'superior sisters' plots and schemes?" Baroness Watford asked teasingly, amber eyes sparkling with amusement. "Beside talking to Charles and making him see the matter from your own vantage point, it seems there is little that can be done."
"I am already beyond those plans, my friend." Eleanor said with winsome laugh. "Why I expect the lady as my guest this very afternoon, her sister as well. During my time in that county I became very well acquainted with the young ladies, and I have invited them to spend my confinement with me. Considering my condition, the favor I ask you is a great one, but one that I sincerely hope you shall delight in."
"Oh, Elle." The hostess sighed with a mixture of amusement and exasperation, "You would have me take these sisters under my wing and introduce them to society, would you not? As if my social card was not already demanding enough as it were."
Eleanor simply smiled, blue eyes meeting brown in mischief.
"Very well!" The Baroness exclaimed, "Though I see little in how this will vex Caroline, which you did promise me!"
Eleanor's smile only broadened, and when she did not speak, Olivia pressed her, growing frustrated. "There is something you are not telling me, Elle, and I must know it if I am to partake in these schemes of yours."
Mrs. Alcott smiled, her eyes twinkling in a manner reminiscent to her husband's. "I will say only this, for I have no definitive proof on the subject, but it is my strongest belief that while my brother may be ardently in love with the eldest Miss Bennet, his friend, and my cousin, may hold even a greater regard for her sister, Miss Elizabeth."
And with those words, for the first time in her six-and-twenty years, Baroness Olivia Watford was rendered completely speechless.
o0o0o0o0o
Since arriving in London, Fitzwilliam Darcy had had many restless nights, but none so awful as the one he had just experienced. Peering at himself in the glass, he searched for a fleeting solution to his discontent within the depths of his own image. He looked at himself with the frank consideration that a man can only experience when utterly alone with his conscious, and found himself wanting. Despite the chill of the morning, sweat danced across his brow, which was furrowed with disquiet and vexation. His countenance was pale, haggard, and decidedly aging. The circles under his eyes were growing more an more predominant with the passage of several sleepless nights following one another in quick succession.
He filled his days with busy nothings, the typical route of young gentlemen in his class. He drug a despondent Bingley from one club to another, making the rounds of society as they were both obligated. He fenced with masters, he gamed with gentlemen, and by the time he reached Darcy House for an evening's respite, the hour was late and he was bone-tired. Yet despite his exhaustion, when the master of Pemberly laid his head down to rest, sleep did not come to him for many hours. It was often not until first-light when Fitzwilliam's eyes finally fluttered close of their own accord, and that was a time at which he was more accustomed to waking.
The rest he did manage to acquire was certainly not the blessed slumber of a man at peace with himself. His dreams were wild, fragmented, frenzied, often waking him in fits of panic only a few hours after sleep had managed to find him. These disjointed visions were seemingly random and yet they all filled him with an overwhelming sense of dread that carried out into his waking hours. Most commonly he saw Georgiana's tear-streaked face or his mother pale and still on her deathbed, her lifeless eyes somehow turning from him in shame, even after she had left her mortal shell behind. Yet of late, his dreams had become even more sinister in nature.
It started the same way each night.
His eyes would open as if he was waking up in his bed in Darcy House, and he felt the most peculiar sensation that he was truly awake, yet knew somehow that what he was experiencing was not reality. He was in the library of Pemberly, yet it did not look the way he had left it in September, when he had traveled with Bingley to Netherfield. The room was in horrible disrepair, as if no one had lived in the place for decades. It was pitch black, so black in fact that it was unnatural. He could only see a few feet in front of him before the rest was cast into darkness.
He whispered to himself that this was not real, that it could not be real, that he was laying in his bed in London, just two weeks before Christmas, but his rationality could not dispel the unease that threatened to overtake him. Suddenly, he heard his father's voice call to him desperately, and next thing he knew he stood in Pemberly's main foyer, yet he did not travel there himself. The grand doors swung open of their own accord and light poured in, light so vivid and visceral that he had to fully turn from it to shield his eyes from blindness.
Then he heard Her, the woman he had been racing to escape so long, that had so unknowingly ensnared him that he was utterly at a loss as to what to do; her laugh rang out in all it's glory, as melodious and heart-wrenching as the first time he had ever heard it uttered. He turned toward the light, looking out behind splayed fingers, for the color was truly more than what his eyes could bear. He blinked once, then twice, trying to adjust his eyes to the golden brilliance of the outdoors. When the picture finally came into view he found himself astonished, for instead of the well known courtyard of his grand estate, the doors opened to a corner of Netherfield park, a corner that had haunted him for weeks.
The She stood, exactly as he remembered her, the ethereal glow of morning sunlight caressing her skin. Her dark tousled curls escaped a loosely tied bonnet and swept about her face and played on her neck in the faintest breeze, teasing, dancing. The happy sun outlined her silhouette in her becoming morning dress, a tan muslin, cheaply made and faded with many washings. The hem was at least six inches deep in mud, and he noticed now which he had never noticed before, how though her volume was shut in her hand, she held it so that her index finger marked her page.
Elizabeth stared at him with a peculiar expression, her hazel eyes sparkling with the hints of gold he had first noticed those many weeks previously. He was lost to her, he wanted to cross the foyer of his ancestral home, reach back in time and make her his. She was unlike any other he had ever known and instinctively, he knew that no other would ever be what she was to him. He outstretched a hand toward her, but found that he could reach out all the way, his moves were lethargic and heavy, as if he had very limited control over his own actions.
She laughed then, not unkindly, and he heard her voice speak, though her lips did not move. "Mr. Darcy is all politeness." The disembodied voice spoke, lilting and teasing.
The words registered as ones he had heard before, though he could not place their origin. He attempted to speak, but no sound came out. In fact, his throat was tight and his mouth was dry, as if he had not had a sip of water in many days. It was a curious sensation, the rational part of his mind admitted, and yet he was unafraid when in her presence.
He took a step forward, then two, then four until he was on the very precipice of the doorway. But just then, as he was about to cross the threshold, to return to Hertfordshire and her side, his father's voice cried out his name in alarm, the sound halting his very step. It was a bellow unlike he had ever heard before, and the very walls of Pemberly shook with the reverb. His head whipped backward, toward the depth of Pemberly, yet when he looked away from the light, the oppressing darkness was all that he could see.
He turned back to look at Elizabeth, ignoring the way the very foundation was shaking, but he had lost her interest. She lay on the muddy Earth, her attention back to her book, her encounter with Fitzwilliam entirely forgotten. He tried to step toward her, to call out, but his father's voice rang out again, stopping him in his tracks.
The doors slammed shut, and would not open no matter how hard he tried. All of Pemberly was shaking violently now, and the roar of his father's call had become an over-powering and inhumane din.
The cacophony rattled the house and dust and debris began to fall as Fitzwilliam tugged and pulled against the door, shouting with despair. The large French windows on either side of the entranceway showed Elizabeth quietly reading, immersed in her volume, a delicate smile on her lips and she involved herself in literature. The walls of Pemberly began to crumble around him, stone after stone falling, the marble floor buckling and cracking beneath him, yet outside she read on, undisturbed.
It occurred to Fitzwilliam that he was being buried alive, that he would die in Pemberly, the place he loved above all others, that Pemberly had betrayed him. His father had betrayed him. Yet each night, as the last of the rubble descended upon him, the din and the noise over, the dust settling, he felt no pain and no loss on the score.
No, the pain he felt; the pain that woke him every night, the pain that made him cry out in his sleep, was the pain he felt as he glimpsed out of his the only small crack in his prison and saw her turning a page, her eyes never straying from her book.
Elizabeth was utterly blind to his desperation.
She did not see him.
She did not think of him.
She did not care.
It's been positively thrilling to see that there is still an interest in this story out in the world, so please, keep the comments coming. I really do love hearing from you all and seeing your insights into the characters and the story. Thank you all so much for reading!