"But a few days" was scarcely to be endured, when Lady Catherine de Bourgh was against you, as Elizabeth soon found out. She kept to her room as much as possible, prevented from the glorious outdoors by the torrential rain that began that very evening and continued, unabated, for two days straight. Meals, however, were not to be avoided, although Lady Catherine took the first few in her room and was, as she relayed via her servants, "far too unwell to take more than a morsel of food, and certainly did not wish to see anybody."
Had it not been for Anne, Elizabeth would have fled Rosings before the end of the day that she and Mr Darcy had announced their engagement. As it was, she felt uncomfortably as if she were outstaying her welcome.
"Nonsense!" Anne had dismissed her out of hand. "You are not to go anywhere, at least not until your family come. It's only a few days more and we are all so very pleased to have you." There was a thump from overhead, the sound of Lady Catherine grumpily rearranging her room, which she had done on an almost daily basis, as a way of showing her displeasure without having to actually be in the same room as Elizabeth.
If Elizabeth's response to Lady Catherine's reaction had been to falter, Darcy's was to hold ever firmer to their plan.
"I shall not be dictated to," he insisted. "She has held the spectre of a marriage I did not wish for over my head for more than half my life: I certainly shall not abandon my own wishes merely to appease her."
"Your own wishes?" Elizabeth turned his own words back upon him. "You said yourself it is but a business arrangement. Is any arrangement worth damaging one's family?"
"Did you consider the fate of your family when you flatly refused to marry Mr Collins?"
They were walking, as had become their tradition, despite the weather. Whenever there was a break in the rain, Elizabeth wished to be out of doors and away from the ministrations of Lady Catherine. Darcy had accompanied her on her first venture, evidently fearing she might do some injury to life or limb, with the agitation which compelled her into motion. Since then it had, much to Elizabeth's surprise, become the favourite part of her day.
"You know I did!" Lizzy protested. "But the situation is hardly the same. My family lamented me rejecting a marriage, yours wishes you would."
"I cannot reject what I have first sought," Darcy maintained. "No, Aunt Catherine will relent in time. In any case, it is not as if I am jilting my cousin to marry you. Neither one of us wished for the wedding. I rather fancy my own mother would have objected the union, had she lived long enough to know of it." Darcy grimaced. He had explained to Elizabeth how often Lady Catherine had held the memory of his mother over his head, as a compelling force in directing his activities. He had begun to wonder, of late, whether any of the wishes Lady Catherine attributed to the late Anne Darcy had indeed originated with his mother, or whether they were Lady Catherine's wishes only, given additional legitimacy with the invocation of Darcy's mother's name.
"Perhaps she sees Anne alone, and you and Colonel Fitzwilliam both matched," Lizzy began. She had long wished to raise the issue of Anne's secret romance with Mr Darcy, yet still feared what his response might be. Whilst she could appreciate the romance of keeping such a liaison secret, and the necessity of doing so, when faced with Lady Catherine de Bourgh, but she rather fancied Darcy would not view the matter so sympathetically.
"Yet Anne does not want for company," Darcy said, with a philosophical shrug. "In truth, she values her solitude, as do I. No, that cannot be it. It is merely her dislike of anyone or anything disrupting her plans." He grinned, and Elizabeth felt a sudden realisation that she rather liked this rebellious side to the usually upstanding Mr Darcy. "Well, we need not endure it much longer: tomorrow your parents and sisters arrive, and Mary and my cousin will marry, and thence to the north. We might accompany them, if you wish? I shall arrange for a special licence. How would you like to marry at Pemberley?"
Pemberley. The word was still something of a talisman to Elizabeth. She knew little of the place, although Darcy had at last been pressed to afford her some description. He spoke logically, gentlemanly, of acreages and maintenance and land value. He told her next to nothing of what she truly wished to know: the history of the place. Some description of its interiors, a picture she might hold on to before seeing the place for herself.
"Georgiana will be there, of course," Darcy continued.
Elizabeth's ears pricked up. "Your sister? Oh, I rather fear she will not think me suitable for her brother."
"Nonsense!" Darcy scoffed. "If anything, she will think me unsuitable for you."
"Will she know the - the true nature of our agreement?"
Darcy did not falter for a moment.
"I am yet to write, but shall do so this afternoon, in advance of our journeying there. She will no doubt be glad to hear of my marrying, for she, like many other women in my life, wish only to see me "settled". He grimaced. "As if I could not have achieved such a state as a single man."
There was a wistful note in his voice that Elizabeth fancied suggested that, despite his bravado, he, too, felt the impossibility of such a thing.
"I shall be glad to see Jane again," Elisabeth remarked, as they turned a corner and began their journey back towards the house. "I wrote to inform her of the news, as you know, although she is, at present, sworn to secrecy."
"And will she manage such a thing?" Darcy's voice was light, teasing, but Elizabeth leapt on him.
"My sister is the very soul of discretion!"
"Of this particular sister, I will indeed agree. She is undoubtedly the most sensible, excluding Mary and yourself, of course." He paused. "You did not write to inform your mother of the news?"
Elizabeth groaned.
"Had I done so, we would have heard the shrieks even from Longbourn. No, Mr Darcy, you must witness her rapture first-hand, when we tell them tomorrow."
"I wait with anticipation," he grumbled, in a tone of voice that suggested he could think of few fates he less wished for himself or any other.
"Our families notwithstanding," Elizabeth ventured, after a few moments of quiet progress. "You do not regret our plan?"
"I do not," Mr Darcy insisted. "I know you might have preferred the sweeping romance of some novel, but might security and companionship be balm enough, in its absence?"
Elizabeth nodded, although her heart sank a little at his matter-of-fact tone of voice. She had become swept up in the idea of marriage - and marriage to Mr Darcy. She had begun, oh so very slightly, to imagine it a marriage not of convenience, but of choice - of his choosing her, and she him. When she looked at him, she could not help but appreciate the handsome line of his features, the way his dark eyes contained multitudes of feelings he did not often share, and rendered all the more important when he did, as he had begun to do on these walks of theirs. She began to appreciate him more, and look forward to their life together. But I do not love him, she reminded herself. If we might be friends and spend our life together contentedly, that is more than I might have hoped for, either with Mr Collins or no man at all by my side. As Mrs Elizabeth Darcy she would have status and consequence, - and an aunt who despised her.
"Do you regret your acceptance?" Mr Darcy asked, seeing her face fall. "It is not too late, if you do -"
"I do not," she said, quietly, firmly. "I think - I think we might manage to be happy tougher, Mr Darcy."
"As do I, Miss Elizabeth."
