A/N: More enshackled talk in the dark

Leg-Shackled

Chapter 3: Confession

Darcy was not easily frightened.

He had suffered much, endured much: his mother's death, then his father's, the sudden assumption of mountainous, delicate responsibilities: Pemberley and Georgiana. Riches did not ease responsibility, at least not for him; they added to it. — But at that moment, wherever he was, in that dark room, leg-shackled to the woman he loved but who hated him, Darcy felt terror.

She will never be mine. I shall have to live without her.

He felt a splinter of doubt before he decided to propose. His cousin had teased him days before: "Miss Elizabeth endures your visits, Darcy, but it is only because they are marginally preferable to Collins' vaunting self-debasement, his sermonettes of vain devotion to our aunt and Rosings. Otherwise…," Pleased with his wording, the Colonel shrugged, smiled.

Fitzwilliam was always teasing, and so Darcy was tempted to ignore what he said — except that afterward Darcy noticed that Elizabeth did seem more to endure than enjoy his mostly silent company. But Darcy had convinced himself, consoled himself with the thought that she was enduring his delay in addressing her, that she was growing impatient with the glacial pace of his courting. He had been painstakingly deliberate about it, torn as he was between his desire and the world's expectation.

But he had ended his deliberations. He had walked toward the parsonage, fully decided, no longer two minds but rather of one heart, bound to satisfy his desires and not the world's expectations. Love moved him much as wind might move a ship, blowing him from Rosings toward Elizabeth. The only expectations that mattered were his own and hers — the ones he erroneously believed she had.

Confusion. Good God! How confused I have been. My deliberations were all anchored in fantasy, in my stupid failure to see the reality in front of me.

Elizabeth's voice was puzzled, unsure. "I do not understand. You thought Anne was at the parsonage with me? You were planning to propose there?"

Darcy shut his eyes for a moment, then opened them, staring upward, unable to turn his eyes toward her, too shamed by his blind presumption. "I was planning to propose there, but I knew Anne was at Rosings, at dinner, with Aunt Catherine and with Colonel Fitzwilliam."

"Who did you expect to find there, sir? I was there with the servants, but no one else."

"No one else, right."

Somehow he felt her turn her face toward the ceiling so that they were both staring upward, neither facing the other. After a moment, he heard her sudden inhalation. "I was there…"

"Yes."

"And you were planning to propose?'

"Yes,"

"To me?"

In for a penny, in for a pound. "Yes, Miss Elizabeth, to you."

Terror — and defeat.

A hush, thick and thickening.

Darcy heard Elizabeth swallow, the movement slow and segmented, as if she performed it for the first time, following instructions. "Did anyone else know of your…errand?"

His smile was a wound in the dark. 'Errand', indeed. "No, I kept silent. I planned that others would know…when we told them together."

He covered his eyes with his free hand.

"Oh," she offered weakly.

The hush, again.

"But you planned to ask me and planned for us to tell others — so you were confident of my answer, confident of my yes?"

He uncovered his eyes. "Yes," Darcy said, the word exiting his lips jagged, painful.

His confession rendered the room a vacuum, as if the space were suddenly unoccupied by matter, by anything at all, as if he and she were no longer substantial.

Emptiness. Terror.

"You…do not hate me…" Her hesitant declaration was so softly spoken that Darcy almost failed to hear it, but it returned air to the room.

"No. Hardly."

"And you did not know I hate you."

Darcy sighed silently. "I was…unaware of the fact. You must know that even I — a man such as you take me to be, ungentlemanly — even I would not propose to a woman I believed loathed me. I am not so deranged."

"No," she finally agreed after an elongated moment, "I never thought you deranged. Ill-bred, uncivil, not complaisant. But not deranged. — Why would you believe I was disposed to accept your proposal? Were you completely sure of me?"

Darcy did face her then. "Almost. My cousin suggested you endured my visits rather than enjoyed them. His words worried me, but not enough, obviously. I love you. I did not believe your affections were equal to mine but I never imagined they were the opposite."

She was silent for a moment. "I suppose the person or persons who have shackled us did us one favor, one kindness, although undoubtedly it was not intentionally done. They prevented a desperately unhappy scene in the parsonage."

"You predict it would have ended badly, worse than with just your no?"

"Yes."

"Why so?"

"Because you would not have been satisfied with a simple no."

He frowned at himself. "No."

"You would have demanded my reasons, beyond my surprise at your affection, your declaration."

"I suppose so, yes. And you would have forced me to acknowledge my hateful treatment of your sister — and Bingley."

Her silence now and her fury earlier were his answer. Yes.

"But that is not all, Mr. Darcy. I would also have forced you to acknowledge your hateful treatment of Mr. Wickham. So, you see, your visit, had it happened, would have ended…unhappily."

"More unhappily than finding ourselves leg-shackled to each other in the dark?"

Oddly, she laughed at that, although her laughter held a trace of fear. "I don't know if it would have been more unhappy, but it would have been a different unhappiness."

Wickham. Darcy had hoped his warning to Elizabeth at the Netherfield ball, as well as her weeks of distance from Hertfordshire, would have removed the bastard gentlemen from her mind — or her heart.

The thought that she loved Wickham while hating him perfected Darcy's misery.

He responded, not to her laugh but to her comment about Wickham, his words spoken low, but hot and acrid, tasting of jealousy."Wickham. You take an eager interest in that man's concerns. Very eager." Do you love him?

She stiffened beside him. Chains rattled, transferring her reaction to him. "How could I not? How could I not take an interest after being acquainted with his suffering, and how can you be so cavalier about causing such suffering? I have fellowfeeling. Have you none? Perhaps this explains your intended proposal. How could you have believed me to feel something for a man who feels nothing? For you?"

Darcy sneered, raising his voice, unable to stop himself: "I am not the one devoid of fellowfeeling; Wickham is! He has no human sympathies, indeed no human emotions beyond self-love! That he has in unseemly abundance! He serves no other master! He is an abyss of selfishness!"

Elizabeth was quiet then, and she seemed to shrink in the darkness. Darcy had never spoken much to her in all the time he knew her, and certainly never raised his voice. "I am sorry. I did not mean to shout."

She moved her shackled leg and in doing so, moved his. She had turned herself and not just her face toward him — as much as she could. He cringed, expecting a rebuke but she instead asked a question. "But if you were going to propose to me, what of Anne? Lady Catherine's investment in your engagement and marriage could not be greater."

"No, but mine could not be less, nor Anne's. We do not wish to marry and never have. Allowing my aunt to persist in her delusion has been my way of shielding Anne. But I have done that long enough, borne my aunt's insistence for too long, and I will not sacrifice my happiness at her decree. I had hoped we would face her together, confront her as one, united by our…understanding."

She laughed again, apparently struck by the absurdity of their situation. "We seem now to be united by our misunderstanding."

"Miss Elizabeth," Darcy blew out a breath, hope leaving his body along with it, "I understand your feelings now, and I am ashamed of what mine have been. I arrogated too much to myself, and I walked to the parsonage too sure of the result. I never asked myself if I had pleased the woman I deemed worthy of pleasing." He paused. "But please know, Elizabeth — Miss Elizabeth — for the record: I do not hate you. Despite my many faults, I ardently admire and love you."

But you will never be mine.

A/N: More soon.