No time today for an author's note, guys - posting this on the dash! Aren't you proud, though? Regular updates three weeks running, if I'm not mistaken. And you guys have gotten me to 1,000 reviews. Love love love. So much love. I especially hope that you guys love this chapter. Must go! Review, review, review! I want to know what you think!
Handshakes
After a very strained and silent dinner, during the whole of which barely three words were spoken amongst the three diners, all of whom sat stiff and straight as tombstones, Darcy stopped Elizabeth with a request.
"Miss. Bennet, a word, please," he said, as she passed him on her way to retirement.
Georgiana stood in the doorway, wondering. Her brother shook his head. "I should like to speak with Miss. Bennet in private please."
Georgiana gave a knowing little smile and bobbed a curtsey.
"On matters of business," her brother stopped clarified loudly. It was too late, however. She had already gone.
The two adjourned to a small sitting room just off the main hall. They both sat very stiffly across from one another, as far as the furniture in the room permitted.
"I have something that I should like to say to you, Miss. Bennet," Darcy began.
"I had assumed as much," was her reply. Pertness! Bite your tongue, Lizzy, she reprimanded herself.
"It concerns my father. You know his condition."
"Yes," she said, silently seething at the formal pomp of Darcy's speech. It really felt as though they were complete strangers! "Yes, of course I know his condition."
"I know how much this…this…" he could not find the word but finally settled upon, "breach…between us pains him. I have long known his wishes – let me assure you that he has made no secret of them these past years." Darcy smiled bitterly. "But, knowing your own distaste for me…"
"Dear Lord, Darcy!" Lizzy said, unable to contain herself further, "you are such an ass!" She stood up, visibly moved, and began to pace the room. "I know it is not right to say so but you infuriate me to insufferable degrees! How can you possibly bear yourself?"
"Miss. Bennet!" Darcy began…
"Oh, please," she returned again to her chair, "we have known each other since childhood, Darcy. Must you insist upon addressing me by that dreary article? I am to be 'Miss. Bennet' now? I suppose I should accept it meekly and address you with my eyes downcast, but really there is only so much I can stomach within one evening!" She could not sit still and, rising, began to pace the room, twisting her hands together agitatedly. "I have practiced and practiced at being a lady. Really, you would have been amazed by my progress! I can sit silently at a dinner party and bat my eyelashes ever so delicately. I managed once to even work myself into a slight swoon – but that was, admittedly, due to the fact that I was climbing Vesuvius in a flannel wrapper. I did not feign to faint so much as droop due to the heat …But that is all beside the point. Why can you not forgive me? Why do you insist upon such formal terms? I can understand their necessity around others – but when are alone…"
He turned away, steadily regarding the clock face.
"And now you are starring straight into the Medusa's eyes and turning to stone. Sometimes I think you would make a better monument than a man, Fitzwilliam Darcy. You certainly have the cast for it! Look here!" Lizzy said, kneeling at his feet and taking his hand. "I want nothing more than to be your friend again. God knows these past three years have been dismal without you. I have done exactly all that I ever dreamed of doing, and yet it was not the same without you. Everywhere I went, I felt haunted by your absence. Darcy, I would rot away in an infernal charnel-house in the midst of a pestilent bog if it meant we could be together." She spoke quickly, fervently, and he did not snatch his hand away from her. "Oh, God!" she said again, releasing him and resuming her pacing of the room, "Did I injure you so greatly, Darcy, that you could not write me one letter? I wrote you twice a month and never once did I receive a response. Never once…It was torture – the purest, most sublime torture. I chose to ignore the 'breach,' as you call it. But perhaps that was wrong of me. Perhaps we should go once more into it, this breach…"
"I would rather we not," Darcy said, betraying nothing.
"Then why can you not forgive me? Is not three years an adequate amount of time? I have broken my heart over you, Fitzwilliam Darcy," Lizzy said, her voice breaking. She fell once more into her chair, suppressing a cry. Tears stood in her eyes. Darcy was alarmed – he had never seen her in such a state before. Here she was, plainly distraught. "Lizzy!" he exclaimed, the old familiar nickname escaping him unnoticed. She did not look up but shielded her face with her hand, ashamed to be seen by him. "Lizzy," he said again, reaching out a hand across the immense void that separated them.
All at once, he was gone. After she had managed to compose herself somewhat, Lizzy looked up to find herself alone. She leaned forward, clasping the arms of the chair and wanting to lapse again into sobbing. Fear of Georgiana overhearing, however, prevented her. She was preparing to rise and retreat to the comfort of her bedchamber when Darcy returned holding a thick packet of letters. "Here!" he said, pressing them into her hands, "here!" He began his own pacing, disheveling his hair.
Lizzy turned the letters over in her hands. They were plainly addressed to her from a Fitzwilliam Darcy, and yet they had never been sent. "What does this mean?" she asked, baffled.
"It means, Elizabeth Bennet, that I answered your every letter…I just could not bring myself to send them. Do not ask me why! I do not know myself. Call me a coward – call me whatever you like!" This was the most impassioned she had seen him, and yet she was not sure if this sudden burst of emotion proved more promising than his impenetrable façade. She felt frightened and ill at ease.
"You ask me why I have not forgiven you? Lizzy, I forgave you long ago. You were only sixteen then. I did not write because I was so ashamed of myself – of what I said to you and how I behaved. I left without even allowing you to explain. I was such a cur! My reasons were entirely selfish, and I threw away our long-standing friendship simply because my foolish pride was hurt. How could I be angry at you for telling the truth, Lizzy?"
She looked away, blushing and remembering how forcibly she had told him she did not love him. The truth? It was the biggest lie she, Elizabeth Bennet, chief prevaricator of the neighbourhood, had ever told.
"You say you have suffered. I have suffered, too. So much!" He pulled a chair close to hers and shyly reached to take both her hands in his. "All of my happiest memories are bound up in you. Those three years in which I kept away were desert-years. I think that's why I threw myself so whole-heartedly into my books! I just couldn't bear to go about living in the real world – without the hope of seeing you. And I honestly thought I never would allow myself to face you because I was so, so ashamed of the way I acted. I look back upon it as one of the blackest moments of my life."
"Don't say that, Darcy," Lizzy said, leaning forward. "I was every bit as wrong as you were. We were both to blame, truly. You have nothing to be ashamed of. You were hurt."
"But you are not angry with me? You'll forgive me?" he asked, suddenly hopeful and eager.
"Did you not read my letters, you dunderhead!" Lizzy said, smiling. "There was nothing to forgive! I wrote to you as my old friend – as though nothing had ever happened."
"And I thought them too good to be believed. They were my salvation in some moments." Darcy pressed her hands to his lips. "And we will be friends again?"
"If you will agree to it. In my own mind, we were never anything but friends. I will always be your friend, Darcy, no matter what happens," Lizzy said, very earnestly. She wanted desperately to say something more, but a sort of panic and embarrassment made her silent. She knew the consequences of speaking too freely of love.
"I did not think it would be this easy, Lizzy," he said, laughing and falling back into his chair though still retaining her hands. "I am so glad you had one of your outbursts and spared me the trouble of all my stiffness. I am so glad you called me an ass."
"Highly improper," Lizzy said, pursing her lips and straightening her spine, "I cannot think what came over me, young gentleman. I assure you that I am always the very pink of feminine perfection."
"Indubitably!"
"But that is all beside the point, Darcy. We have so much to speak of – but you must go first, of course. I've rambled on all about myself in my letters. I want to hear of Cambridge! What your fellow students are like and what you've been learning and…"
But Darcy shook his head. "When I said I had business to discuss with you, Lizzy, I was not entirely lying. I do have something that I would like to speak to you about…" He paled a bit…
"Oh, dear," Lizzy said, feeling somewhat nipped, "whenever I hear the word business, I immediately wilt in trepidation, as any self-respecting lady does."
"Well, do not 'wilt,' please," Darcy said, "as we haven't a fainting sofa roundabouts. It is very awkward, Lizzy."
"I think we are very adept at dealing with awkward situations, do you not?" Lizzy smiled. "Really, I am quite at my leisure. Let me hear this piece of business."
"It concerns…well…us, I am afraid."
"Oh, dear. 'Us.'" Lizzy shook her head. "The personal objective pronoun. How very terrifyingly awkward."
"I am serious, Lizzy. This matter is serious, I should say."
"Proceed, then, Graven-Faced."
He looked down at his hands, playing with a signet-ring. "I know how upset our separation has made my father. He has made no secret of his love for you, Lizzy, and has made me promise to provide for you when…" He could not bring himself to finish the sentence, and Lizzy did not want him to.
"Nonsense, really. I am perfectly capable of providing for myself, as he well knows," Lizzy said.
"I know you are," Darcy conceded, "but I also know how greatly it would ease his mind to be assured…You must know that he has long wanted us to marry, Lizzy," he said, and they both blanched and looked away from one another. "You are like a daughter to him, and he wants you to be tied to Pemberley and Netherfield and all the places he has loved. He wants you to be a Darcy. Surely he has made intimations of these desires to you…"
Lizzy shook her head.
"Or perhaps you just refused to see. Nevertheless, nothing would give him greater happiness in this life, Elizabeth, than to see us married."
"Are you actually proposing to me, Darcy?" Lizzy asked. "I am quite confused. All of the guidebooks say that the gentleman is to go down on his knee."
"Do not be so droll at this time, Lizzy!" Darcy said. "I well remember our conversation three years ago, and I have long moved past any ideas of that particular kind of love. We love one another dearly as friends, and I believe that love is justification enough to marry. It would be in name only, of course…a means of assurance for my father. We could play it up for him, you know. Just so he does not suspect that we are doing it to please him."
"How is this fair to you, Darcy?"
"I never want to marry anyone, Lizzy – I've quite made up my mind, you see. But, if I must marry, I think it would be quite fun to be married to you. If anything, you make life more interesting, and my life has been bleak for three years now. Best to keep you close."
"And you said in would be a nominal marriage?" Lizzy asked, afraid to broach the subject of 'that particular kind of love.'
"Yes, absolutely," Darcy said. "You may do whatever you like, Lizzy. It would be the best sort of independence. I am not much for grand society anyway, so I should not expect you to do too much entertaining. A little, at times, but nothing too taxing. The rest of the time you may spend as you choose. Just think of it! I should not bother you at all unless you wished it."
"But where will you be during all this time? Would we live together?"
"I will stay on at Cambridge – I am happy in my work, and it suits me. But I would come to visit on the long week-ends and during holidays and such. It would be just like old times…I mean…" He reddened somewhat and looked away.
"But you are forgetting the most important thing, Darcy…Is is really fair to marry without 'that particular kind of love,' as you call it?" Lizzy could not bring herself to imagine that Darcy was still in love with her much less admit to her own feelings, which were as strong as ever. Little did she know how similarly her old friend felt, how resolved he was against ever again confessing the feelings which had only strengthened with time. After her pointed rejection, he had promised himself, "Never again."
"I am perfectly happy to enter into his marriage, Lizzy," he said, "I've long resolved against marrying for romantic love – I feel it is all hopeless and foolish and fleeting. I make reference, of course, to my engagement to Amelia. But that is all in the past. No. I think the best kind of marriage is that made between steady friends. We know each other's quirks and foibles well enough by now. Indeed, we are both so stubborn and independently minded that I know we shall butt heads often. And I look forward to it."
"Elizabeth Darcy does have a very stately air to it," Lizzy said, "and I have been longing to get rid of 'Bennet.' It is too much like 'bonnet,' you know."
"That is reason enough for me," Darcy said, "as long as you are game."
"Oh, I am always game," Lizzy said, "and you are right – I want nothing more than to bring comfort and joy to your father. I, too, resolved not to marry anyone for those silly reasons – but we shall be more like two emperors consolidating our domains. Joint rulers, if you will. Yes, yes, indeed!" she said. Though she was blithe and brisk in her manner, Lizzy was secretly quaking – she knew her true reasons for accepting, and they had every bit as much to do with 'those silly reasons' as they did with any practical or strategic circumstances. "But you must allow me a moment's thoughtful pondering. All ladies must think over their offers, you know."
"Very rightly," Darcy said, attempting to contain his own jubilance. "Shall I retire to leave you to your thoughts?"
"That is not necessary. My thoughts are thought. I am prepared to accept. Shall we shake on it, sir, as gentlemen?" Lizzy cocked her head and gave him one of her old familiar saucy winks. She held out her hand, and he took it and gave it a firm shake. "I did not ask that we seal it in spit, as ladies never salivate," she added.
"Indeed, they do not!" he laughed.
"So, sir, when are we to celebrate this most blessed of occasions?"
"The sooner the better, Lizzy. We must make arrangements now."
Thus, the two who had entered the room as coldly as strangers left it arm and arm, restored to friendship…both madly in love with the other, yet both resolved forever against admitting their feelings.