A/N: More story.
Leg-Shackled
Chapter Two: Apocalypse
Elizabeth was desperate to weep but refused to do so. Not with that man as witness, as partner, chained to her, two made one by machination, iron links…
A tumult of feeling: endangered, trapped, hated. And a deep, dull, unnamed unhappiness older than her current plight.
A shake of her head, a squeezing shut of her eyes, denying herself.
She would not supply Mr. Darcy the satisfaction of her weakness, not any satisfaction. Not ever. Not if we were the last two people on the earth.
His mouth sounded full of cotton, almost choked, when he spoke. "Elizabeth, who has taught you to believe I hate you?"
Why is he calling me 'Elizabeth'? He has been doing it since we awoke, she realized.
Who granted him such intimacy with me? Not me, and so no one.
She would correct him later.
"You!"
In response, the accursed man did what he did best: kept silent. Silence — and more silence, quickly gathering layers. A sad sigh, laced with disbelief and dread. He finally addressed her. "I have taught you to believe this?"
Her emotions finally overwhelmed her, not forcing out tears but words, a deluge. For a moment, she forgot everything but their maddening shared history.
"Who else? From the Assembly until…this afternoon, I have been forced to acknowledge, repeatedly to acknowledge, that you not only contemn me, my person, my choices, my manners, — but also my immediate family, my other relations, my neighbors, and indeed my entire community. In short, you contemn me and my world! You are malignant, Mr. Darcy. Here, at Rosings, you have done nothing but glare at me, fiercely, and in condemnation, brooding, baleful and belittling, deliberately spoiling my walks and overshadowing my conversations with your cousin!"
"This is how you rate me? This is how you have understood our time together?"
"Time together? What ending, Mr. Darcy, after such a beginning?" That deep, dull, unnamed unhappiness...
"Such a beginning?" He sounded lost. "What beginning?"
Before she could answer his question, he did, after a sharp, realizing intake of breath. "At the Assembly, my words to Bingley?"
She never expected to hear him ashamed. She would have reckoned the reaction foreign to him, outside his boundaries, his diligent, watchful boundaries. "The Assembly? Is that the beginning of which you speak?"
She tried to remove from him, but only tugged his leg with hers, and made her ankle begin to throb again. "Yes."
He blew out a long, slow breath as she held hers. "I deemed you tolerable, not tempting enough to dance with…You heard me?"
"Yes," she breathed out.
"I am sorry. Profoundly sorry."
He sounded sincere, his deep voice deeper than ever, but softer too. A meek rumble. She seemed not only to hear but to feel it, transmitted, tactile, by the leg shackle from him to her. It was a shock but she ignored it.
"It was unkind. You were unkind. Why were the words necessary?" Pain was in the question but she managed to conceal it. No weakness. But tears, finally, slow, two at a time, silently slipping down the sides of her face and into her hair.
Darcy moved; it seemed his free hand covered his eyes, his face. In the growing dark, though, Elizabeth was unsure. She should be worried about where they were, their immediate fate, but she wanted an answer to her question more. Unbelievably. Truly. He needed to account for himself, to suffer shame.
"They were unnecessary. They were false. I was wrong to speak them, it was vicious. Again, I am profoundly sorry. Not only that you heard them but that I spoke them at all."
She was still for a moment before continuing in an even voice. "You are tall, Mr. Darcy. I am short. You are broad, I am slim. You are dressed in the latest, richest fashions — 'purple and fine linen'. I am dressed in inexpensive gowns no longer in fashion. You are the owner and master of a vast estate. I am the second daughter of a small estate entailed away from my family, and I have no dowry of which to speak. If you do not marry, your life will continue as it is, privileged and opulent. If I do not marry, I face homelessness and poverty, a life of steadily strangling, 'elegant' economy. You are the most handsome man in any room; I am not the most handsome woman; my older sister outshines me; I am no classic beauty — "
Darcy, hurt for her and ashamed, angry at himself, interrupted. "To what does this tend? I confess that I regard you, and have for months, as the most handsome woman of my acquaintance!"
It took Elizabeth a moment to understand his confusing confession, and to disbelieve it (Now he attempts to placate me), and so, even longer to answer his prior question.
"At the Assembly, you were aware — as was I, as we both still are — that there is a great gulf fixed between us, our worlds. There is rarely any passage across it. But, even so, you chose to guard that gulf, all but snarling, enforcing the boundary. You danced only with the ladies of your party and made a show of snubbing all others — by your behavior alone…or, in my case, also by your words." She paused, but not long enough to allow him to gather himself, and respond. "With this first tuition, how could I fail to learn that you hate me?"
Elizabeth had not known until now how much Darcy's words at the Assembly had hurt her, or how carefully she had nursed that hurt. Her anger flared again. She had pretended (even to myself) that his words were a joke, that she found them only funny. She did not. Not then, not now.
"I — " Darcy tried to begin again.
Elizabeth pushed on, unwilling to hear him answer, her question rhetorical. "And since that evening, you have reinforced the lesson and refreshed my memory at every chance. You asked me to dance in mockery of me and of what happened at the Assembly. You paraded and then denigrated my lack of accomplishments; you studiously ignored me on a Saturday morning in the Netherfield library; you led Caroline Bingley, and the Hursts on an undignified flight from Hertfordshire, without leave-taking, without any sign of regard to the neighborhood, a flight that condemned Mr. Bingley to London, to keep him from Jane. According to your cousin, your intrigues against Jane were not yet finished: you not only kept Bingley from her by physical circumstance, by abandoning Netherfield, closing it behind him, but by abusing your personal influence over him, persuading him that Jane did not return his affections, that her reactions to him were dictated by my mother's ambitions, not by Jane's own soft, blameless heart. — Tell me, Mr. Darcy, that this is not lesson enough in hatred for me. For how could you so hatefully mistreat my most beloved sister and fail to hate me?"
Elizabeth felt Darcy take her hand, her unchained one, in his unchained one. She tried to pull her hand free, but he tightened his grip, not enough to hurt her but enough to prevent her from sundering the contact. "Please, Elizabeth!"
"Unhand me, sir!"
He pulled her hand to his chest and pressed it there. "Elizabeth, please, by this reckoning my faults are grievous indeed, unforgivable, but — "
"Stop using my name! Stop! Release my hand! I cannot be here with you. I cannot stay here with you! Oh, why are we here?" She turned her head, no longer facing the ceiling but him, changing the subject as she changed position. "Why were you walking to the parsonage in the rain, and not dining at Rosings?" Her speeches had robbed her of breath. She jerked her hand again and he surrendered it.
"I was walking to the parsonage to propose."
She took a deep breath, trying to understand. "Propose? But Anne was at Rosings, and your betrothal is a settled thing. Are you sure you were not given laudanum before your walk? What could account for your confusion?" These were questions to which she would hear the answers.
Darcy sighed, long, ponderous, defeated. "What, indeed?" His tone became self-mocking. "Confused I was. However, no drug was to blame. I was confused long before coming to Kent, it seems. My walk to the parsonage concluded my confusion, it did not begin it."
Elizabeth did not know what he meant.
A/N: Sorry to be behind with this. My teaching has kept me unexpectedly busy the last few days. I will likely add another chapter to Resurrection before I add another chapter to this.