These Three Remain

“Can you deny that you have done it?” she demanded of him.

“I have no wish of denying that I did everything in my power to separate my friend from your sister,” he answered with an air of tranquil superiority, “or that I rejoice in my success. Toward him,” he emphasized, “I have been kinder than toward myself.”

Elizabeth appeared to bridle at his insinuation but abandoned the affront to launch against him again. “But it is not merely this affair on which my dislike is founded. Long before it had taken place, my opinion of you was decided. Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received many months ago from Mr. Wickham…”

Wickham! Cold, implacable hatred, easily distinguishable from that hot indignation which had previously engulfed him, rose to peer at Elizabeth from behind hardened eyes. “You take an eager interest in that gentleman’s concerns!”

“Who that knows what his misfortunes have been can help feeling an interest in him?” she countered.

“His misfortunes!” Darcy spat out the word contemptuously, his emotions rising dangerously at the intrusion of that hated name between himself and one he loved yet again. “Yes, his misfortunes have been great indeed.”

“And of your infliction,” Elizabeth cried. “You have reduced him to his present state of poverty — comparative poverty. You have withheld the advantages which you must know to have been designed for him…”

What tale had that devil told her? In what way had his name and character been abused that Wickham should so poison her, the woman he loved, against him? If ever the blackguard had dreamed of revenge, he had now surely achieved it, destroying Darcy’s deepest hopes and injuring him in the most intimate manner possible!

“…You have done all this! And yet you can treat the mention of his misfortunes with contempt and ridicule.”

Enough! Pushing away from the mantelpiece, Darcy strode quickly across the room. “And this is your opinion of me!” he thundered. “This is the estimation in which you hold me! I thank you for explaining it so fully. My faults, according to this calculation, are heavy indeed.” He checked in midstride and turned back to her, suspicion writ large upon his features. “But, perhaps, these offenses might have been overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by my honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design. These bitter accusations might have been suppressed,” he continued acrimoniously, “had I, with greater policy, concealed my struggles, and flattered you into the belief of my being impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination; by reason, by reflection, by everything.” She stood so still under his barrage, still and defiant of him yet. “But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence. Nor am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and just.” He stepped back from her and angrily gathered up his gloves, hat, and stick. “Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?”

Elizabeth’s voice was eerily composed. “You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.” Darcy started at her words. She might as well have slapped him across his face as presented him with such a charge. “You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it.”

He looked down at her in mute astonishment, his incredulity at her words vying with the creeping heat of mortification that was fast gaining ascendancy over his conviction of the justice of his position.

“From the very beginning, from the first moment, I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that groundwork of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike.” Elizabeth’s voice rose. “And I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”

She was lost to him — utterly, irretrievably lost! Darcy’s head reeled. Dear God — Elizabeth! The pain in his chest was growing intolerable. He must leave, get away. It was too much! “You have said quite enough, madam,” he managed to reply. “I perfectly comprehend your feelings, and have now only to be ashamed of what my own have been.” He bowed and backed away to the door. Laying a hand on the latch, he stopped, his head bowed, then turned to her, looking deeply into her eyes one last time. “Forgive me for having taken up so much of your time,” he said in a strangled voice, “and accept my best wishes for your health and happiness.” Without waiting for her curtsy or a reply, Darcy pulled at the latch and hastily left the room. He took the stairs at no slower a pace, and in bare moments he was outside, the door shut solidly, irrevocably behind him.

The meadow was little more than a blur as Darcy turned from the parsonage door and set his face for Rosings. By the time he gained the path through the grove, he was able to marvel that his legs should continue to carry him onward without his conscious direction, that his body was, to all outward appearance, still whole and hale with life. But appearances, had he not just so bitterly been taught, were not to be trusted. He pushed blindly on, his shoulders hunched against the racking pain in his chest while his mind spun in tight, shocked circles like a child’s top, unable to fasten onto anything other than the soul-wrenching truth that she was lost to him. Not only lost to him, but never his from the start. From the very beginning she had taken him into dislike, before Wickham had defamed him, before even he had moved to detach Bingley from her sister. The last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry. Her words repeated themselves again and again in his brain, knelling the death of all the hopes for happiness he had cherished. Would he ever be able to wipe from memory his parting sight of her, his lovely Elizabeth, so fiercely adamant in her utter rejection of him? “Oh, God!” The pain drove deep, obliterating thought and mercilessly flaying his emotions, rendering his chest so tight that he could barely breathe. Elizabeth…all his being groaned.

The tiny stones of the manor’s graveled lane went scattering when Darcy struck the path in a driven gait, but it was not until the steps of Rosings confronted him that he even comprehended where he was. He slowed to a halt, confused to find himself so soon arrived. Looking up at the cold reality of the marble steps leading to the manor house’s imposing facade, he was at last brought to himself. Thoughts of self-preservation surfaced, warning him that he must rise above his anguish, keep his head, if he was to gain his rooms without incident. His stomach lurched at the prospect if he did not. Rapidly mounting the stairs, Darcy passed swiftly across the threshold, so intent upon avoiding delay or discovery in the public rooms that he neglected his usual nod to the old manservant at the door. In moments, he was across the hall and bounding up the stairs, but at the first landing and turn, his flight was arrested.

“Darcy!” Richard’s call to him was too clear to be ignored. He stopped and looked vaguely down upon his cousin, whose untimely appearance could only mean that he had been lying in wait for his return. “Fitz?” Fitzwilliam looked up at him warily, a note of uncertainty in his voice. “Is it well?”

“Well?” he repeated, unable at first to attach any relationship between the word and his condition; then he almost laughed at the irony. Good God, would he ever be truly well again? “Well enough, but you must excuse me.” He turned away from the balustrade and continued up the stairs before anything more was offered. The humiliation of Richard’s condolences would be one more burning coal lodged in the pit of his stomach; he would rather put a gun to his head!

The corridor to his rooms was empty, and in a breath, he was at his door and then safely behind it. Closing his eyes, he leaned back against the solid mahogany, his limbs threatening to give way at last to the anguish that was consuming him. You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way. Darcy bit his lip against the moan that welled in his chest. No one, no one, must see him like this! He listened for any sound of occupation from his dressing room; all was silent save the ticking of the mantel clock. Pushing away from the door, he went to stand before the ornate timepiece. Was it possible? He glared disbelievingly into its face. Could it be that little more than an hour had passed since he had quit these rooms in a fever of expectation? He threw his stick and coat into a chair, his hat and gloves following soon thereafter. An hour! He snorted bitterly. More than enough time to lay waste to a man’s dreams.

Abruptly he turned his back on the clock and stalked into the bedchamber, his fingers plucking at his coat buttons and then the knot of his neckcloth. Pulling at it savagely, he unwound the length, dropping it on a table as he slowed to a stand in the middle of the room. What was he to do? he demanded to know. He looked about at the cold, aloof orderliness that was his life as if the answer lay there waiting to be discovered. A wave of revulsion washed over him. This grand sterility! It had sedulously fed his pretensions even as