A/N: Thank you thank you thank you. I would say I'm gobsmacked by the responses, but that's a British word and not Regency. Let's just say all the wonderful responses have touched my heart, and I really appreciate them.
The story just keeps expanding and expanding in my mind, so I'm not at all certain I'll ever finish it. So far, it has continually surprised me as much as it does you. I am going to push my luck yet again in the next 3 chapters, which are all about a single encounter.
Who's for a little bit of – well, I won't say – except I can promise a bit of backstory that I think might be interesting.
Wade
Elizabeth felt much better after a night of sleep. She was far less upset, but also, perhaps just a touch melancholy. She thought it might take a week or a month to work out what she was melancholy about. Was it that she had been required to endure one more awkward conversation? Was it that she had no doubt grievously wounded a mostly good though overly proud man? Was it that she feared she did not wound him at all, and he would take her advice and find a better or at least more suitable woman within the week? Was it that she was one day closer to spinsterhood, and had now rejected not one, but two quite eligible proposals of marriage? Elizabeth was at least wise enough to realize she would not work out those mysteries without some time and motion to think, and it was entirely possible she would never work them out at all.
After breakfast, she kissed Mary on the cheek and left to walk. Mary had told William the good news the night before, so she thought she could curtsy to him politely or bash him on the back with a spade without very much difference in effect. The man was practically babbling, but in a good way.
She left and wandered along her favorite paths without paying the slightest attention to where she was going. As she walked, she thought more and more about the Derbyshire gentleman. Even if it was impossible for him to occupy her home, he seemed perfectly able to occupy her head nearly all the time. It was as if he had taken up residence there.
As she walked along, she would occasionally feel her fingernails digging into her palm and look down to see her hand balled into a fist and shaking with anger so hard she might break a finger. At other times, she felt tears in her eyes, but usually had no idea why, and frequently did not notice them until they covered her cheek.
She found his voice going around and around and around in her head, over and over. 'Inferior', 'Degradation', 'Mother', 'Sisters', 'Admire and Love', and found that there were surprisingly few significant words. Broadly categorized, the offensive ones made her angry, and the admiring words lifted her heart for a moment, then sent it crashing back into either anger or dismay. Sometimes she thought she should count the words, make a histogram to categorize them, and put them into a pie chart by category, or review every interaction and figure out how she could have done better – or – well, it was always the same. Or Or Or Or Or Or Or Or Or! Could have! Should have! Would have! Might have! None were worth anything at all. Vexing Vexing Man!
Not paying the slightest attention to where she was walking, she found it either completely surprising or completely expected (she had no trouble with mutually exclusive expectations), that her feet carried her to the exact spot where Mr. Darcy had first 'encountered' her 'by chance'. Naturally, she found him there once again, completely by chance, of course.
The gentleman approached in a surprisingly timid manner, bowed deeply, and said, "Miss Bennet. I have been walking in the grove some time in the hope of meeting you. Will you do me the honour of reading that letter?"
Elizabeth noticed he was handing her a letter, with her name prominently on the front in a very handsome masculine hand.
Without pausing for thought, she snapped, "I most certainly will not! Put that away! What were you thinking?"
With a startled look, as if the thought that he might be risking harm to her reputation with the letter only occurred to him after her chastisement, he quickly withdrew it and put it into his waistcoat pocket.
Looking very contrite, he turned and said, "My apologies, Miss Bennet! You are right! You are absolutely correct! I was not thinking properly. I am so sorry. I shall trouble you no more."
With a very final looking bow, he turned and started to walk away. Elizabeth looked at him for just a few seconds, even more frustrated, and snapped at him once more, wondering how many more such exclamations lay between her current deportment and becoming a complete copy of her mother.
In the closest to a shout she had used in many years, she said, "Do not walk away from me!"
He stopped abruptly, paused a moment, then turned slowly around to face her but seemed singularly obsessed with her boots.
Elizabeth sighed in frustration, and said, "I apologize for my tone, Sir. That was uncivil and uncalled for. It is not my desire to order you about, lose your company or demand to keep it. You just startled me."
With a grim chuckle, he said, "Miss Bennet, you of all people need not reproach yourself for you 'tone', as you put it. In the entirety of our acquaintance, that is the first time you have raised your voice to anybody for anything within my hearing; and to be honest, it is but a tenth part of what I deserve."
Elizabeth moved a step closer, stared at him until he finally looked up at her face, and said, "Do not overcompensate, Mr. Darcy. That is as disingenuous as when that gentleman who shared Netherfield with us boasted of his poor penmanship and scattered thinking; and he thought to call it a virtue. Perhaps it is a quarter or half of what you think you deserve, but do not overstate your case. I fear I am fresh out of hair shirts."
The odd bit of humor made the man chuckle a bit, but still feeling extraordinarily confused, Darcy sighed, and said, "Miss Bennet, I am confused, and I make no bones about it. I feel like a lost and drifting sailor. However, as you have ten times my skill in social interaction, I will gladly accede to any suggestion you might make. I only wished to spare you any more pain."
Elizabeth sighed, and said, "Slinking away, with the last words you ever hear from me being words of chastisement, would not relieve me of any pain, Mr. Darcy. It would only compound it."
"Tell me what I should do, Miss Bennet."
Stated plainly like that, Elizabeth had to think a moment, because she did not actually know what she wanted him to do, aside from not handing her an improper letter, and not skulking away. She had not the slightest idea. She thought a few moments, and said, "Offer me your arm like any ordinary gentleman happening upon a lady of his acquaintance by chance and let us walk, Mr. Darcy. I think better when I am moving."
Out of habit and training, they adopted the generally accepted norms for a walk in the park, and they proceeded in silence for what Elizabeth estimated was 114 steps before she spoke.
"You said you were walking in the grove hoping to meet me, Sir. Why not just watch for me from the folly as usual?"
He chuckled, and said, "There is no fooling you, is there. How did you work it out?"
"It was rudimentary cartography, Mr. Darcy. Miss de Bourgh has a very nice map of Rosings. Converging lines of sight defined the vantage point, and timing verified it."
He sighed, and said, "I should never have imagined an aficionado of mathematics would believe our meetings to be by chance."
"No, Sir. I calculated the odds and updated my calculations with each meeting. The calculations are simple enough after I estimated your habits of walking from past observations. The odds of even two meetings by chance are vanishingly small. You were stalking me."
"How long did you know?"
"From the second day. Even that was quite unlikely."
"Did it worry you?"
Elizabeth paused a moment, and said, "If it had, Mr. Darcy, you would have known. I can be… abrupt when my temper is riled."
"And yet you did not mention it."
"Rules of propriety, Mr. Darcy. We were both cheating then, as we are now. If the meetings were acknowledged as planned, they become improper rendezvous. If they were by chance, they just barely pass the requirements. I assumed you were reasonably discreet, as what man would want to get leg shackled over a few walks in the park? It is all quite logical."
Darcy laughed a bit, and said, "Yes, what man indeed."
Elizabeth blushed, and said, "I am sorry, that was…"
He abruptly stopped her, and said, "No apologies, Elizabeth. Please."
She ignored his use of her Christian name, assuming he must have used it in that overcrowded head of his for months, thought about it a moment, then tugged him back into motion, and said, "I shall do my best."
"That shall be more than sufficient. Now, to answer your original question, I suspected you knew of my previous strategy and… well, I cannot decide on which excuse to use for simply waiting at that spot. I either did not want to frighten you should you work out how I had been 'stalking you' as you put it, or I figured that you might choose a different route and avoid my scrutiny altogether. To tell the truth, I came here hoping either serendipity or your own inclinations would deliver you to this place, eventually. I would have found another way to talk to you if this did not work, but all the other methods are… uncomfortable."
"Yes. Well, it worked so I imagine you have no complaint."
"None against you. For myself, I spent all night doing something that was once suggested to me. I recalled our entire acquaintance in my mind, beginning to end, except I replaced myself with an unknown gentleman, and yourself with my sister. I wrote the results in the letter you very sensibly did not take."
"And…"
"And if I could somehow move about in time, I would go back six months and beat my younger self with a stick."
Elizabeth could not help letting a giggle escape her lips, and said, "That is very specific, Mr. Darcy. How, pray tell, did you choose a stick?"
Darcy laughed along with her. The laughter for both was awkward and uncomfortable, but it did release their tension a bit.
He said, "It is an old expression I heard from a tenant as a child. I do not know its origins. I presume a stick is hard enough to hurt but not kill. Just the right compromise between a willow switch, a club and a rock."
Elizabeth smiled, and said, "Well, in the end, even without the stick beating, your younger self was not so very terrible, Mr. Darcy. I had mostly forgiven him by yesterday. I had even thought we might be some sort of friends."
"Truly."
"Yes, Truly. You may not have correlated all you know, Mr. Darcy, so I shall inform you. I am a very good prevaricator, but a terrible liar. I have avoided saying what I thought to you and your friends dozens of times, but I have never lied to any of you even once; unless you are a stickler for lies by omission."
As they walked along the path, Elizabeth was thinking and not particularly paying attention to where she was going. She noticed she was gradually being pulled to the side of the path, while Mr. Darcy was walking clear off the side, with his boots in a bit of mud. Curiously, she looked ahead and found some mud on her side of the path, but none on his. He was guiding her around it without even appearing to think about it. She could have stepped over the puddle with hardly a hop, but he was preventing even that.
She had to admit that she was slightly touched by the minor act of chivalry. She found to be sweet and endearing – and confusing.
