Expecting His Proposal, page 7
Is a third proposal even a possibility? How likely am I to meet another gentleman whose acquaintance I have not made and whose presence I can tolerate? Another part of her whispered, “How likely is this supposed gentleman to be comparable to Mr. Darcy?”
This notion that she was somehow second-guessing her actions in Kent did not sit well with Elizabeth. She bolted up in bed, pounded her pillow once or twice, and then settled back down.
“Lizzy,” her sister Jane said, “I rather supposed you were asleep.”
“No—I am not.”
“Pray you do not mind my saying so, but I can’t help noticing that you’ve been particularly distracted since your return from Kent.”
“It is nothing to concern yourself with, I assure you, dearest Jane. Pray go back to sleep.”
Unwilling to be dissuaded as easily as that, Jane sat up in defiance. “Not until you tell me what is the matter. What is it that has you so distracted of late? Pray you are not still fretting over Papa’s decision to allow Lydia to go to Brighton with the Forsters. I am just as concerned as you are that Lydia’s wild spirits might be hard to contain, but we must trust the colonel will not allow her to meet with any harm.”
“It is not so much that I do not trust the colonel, but more his officers. The colonel has more important things to attend than a girl who is not yet sixteen. You and I both know how overjoyed Lydia was in describing to us how Mr. Wickham was safe from Miss King upon our return from town.”
“You’re worried about what Mr. Darcy said about the gentleman’s character, are you not?”
“With good reason,” Elizabeth said with energy.
She recalled her not having told Jane the entire story about Wickham’s past, but she had told her enough for Jane to question why Mr. Darcy would have told her anything. Why would someone of Mr. Darcy’s temperament divulge such intimate details of his personal life to someone so wholly unconnected with him, Jane had asked.
“Is there more … something more that you are not telling me about your time in Kent?”
While Elizabeth always supposed that her sister Jane rarely shared her true feelings with anyone, in truth, Elizabeth was hiding her feelings. Already she was gradually questioning herself, re-examining her sentiments, and showing some regret over having rejected Mr. Darcy’s proposal.
She supposed it was possible to confide in Jane some portion of what had happened and why she had acted as she did without mentioning others. There was the matter of the gentleman’s ill-treatment of Lieutenant George Wickham, which despite Elizabeth knowing better now, at the time, had been a strong inducement in her staunch refusal of Mr. Darcy’s hand.
Elizabeth sat up in bed. “Jane, you will not believe what happened to me while I was in Kent.”
“Does this have anything to do with Mr. Darcy?”
Puzzled, Elizabeth asked, “Why would you think that?”
“From my knowing he was there also. It is no secret that the two of you do not always get along, despite his having confided in you regarding Mr. Wickham’s true character.”
“Oh, dearest Jane, that is precisely the reason I find all this so troubling.”
“What happened? Did the two of you get into some sort of altercation?”
“In a manner of speaking that is exactly what occurred. That is to say, immediately after he offered me his hand in marriage.”
Jane gasped. “Are you—are you secretly engaged?”
“I most certainly am not!” Elizabeth stiffened. She thought she heard a thump from the other side of the door. “Did you hear that?”
Jane could not say that she did.
Elizabeth shrugged. “I suppose it is merely my imagination. Who would be afoot at this hour?” Having reasoned away the sound to her satisfaction, she resumed telling Jane all those things she could about the proposal.
“Why did you not tell me any of this before?”
“You cannot know how much I wanted to tell you, but I did not want to put you in the uncomfortable position of keeping secrets from Mama. Oh, Jane, you and I know only too well how impossible my life would be were our mother to learn that I spurned such an advantageous alliance.”
~*~
The moon was high in the midnight sky, and the lady of the house was quite restless. This must certainly account for Mrs. Bennet’s being out of bed at that hour when the house was otherwise still. That and a healthy dose of fate, for what she heard while passing by the slightly ajar door of her eldest daughters’ room might very well be the means of changing the rest of her life. Why, she was certain it would. She only needed to devise the means of using this newly discovered information to her best advantage. The first half hour after her startling discovery she spent pacing the floor.
“What a sly creature Lizzy is,” she cried to herself for she was the only one in the room. “Everyone in Meryton is aware that Mr. Darcy was in Kent at Easter. Sir William saw to that bit of information—he and his daughter Maria Lucas. Lizzy said nothing of his being there. Of course, no one expected her to. Everyone knows how much she has always hated the man. Nevertheless, is that any excuse to refuse such a man as Mr. Darcy? Oh, what on Earth was she thinking?”
Mrs. Bennet drifted to the window and stared out into the darkness. Fretting while watching the moon slip behind the clouds, she said, “Obstinate, headstrong girl! She has been the means of frustrating my hopes not once but twice. Who does she think she is always rejecting proposals of marriage from decent, respectable men?”
The aggrieved matriarch was half-tempted to march into her husband’s room, awaken him from his sleep, and consult him on the matter. Indeed, she made it to the door before the memory of what had happened last autumn halted her footsteps. Alas, recollections of the nasty business with Mr. Collins flooded her mind.
“I will not marry the odious man! You cannot force me to, either!”
Mrs. Bennet winched. It was months ago and yet her daughter’s defiance distressed her still and gave her cause to wonder what she had done to deserve such a disloyal child. She had thought that surely her husband would be an ally in forcing Elizabeth to be reasonable, even though he always considered their second born his favorite. His flippant reply had been the means of placating the latter and wounding the former.
“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day, you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.”
Mrs. Bennet, who had persuaded herself that her husband regarded the affair as she wished, was excessively disappointed. Her own husband had been a party to ruining her fondest wish that the next mistress of Longbourn would be one of her daughters owing to that ridiculous entail on the estate to the male line.
“I shall have no help at all in getting Mr. Bennet to force Lizzy to marry where she will not this time either.”
Such a marriage would be the means of saving us all, she silently lamented. “Why, even I would not have been so foolish as to refuse such a man as Mr. Darcy, even if he is haughty and above his company. The man has ten thousand pounds a year. How rich and how great she might have been! What pin money, what jewels, what carriages she might have had!
“If only I’d had the slightest hint of Mr. Darcy’s regard for Lizzy, I might have better spent my time encouraging a match in that quarter. Instead, I wasted my time on his inconstant friend, Mr. Bingley, and my Jane. Mr. Bingley is nothing to Mr. Darcy—nothing at all.
“Lizzy might have had a house in town! Everything that is charming! Ten thousand a year, and very likely more! ‘Tis as good as a Lord!”
A fierce motherly impulse infused Mrs. Bennet’s resolve. “I cannot stand idly by and allow such an opportunity as this to escape. Mr. Darcy proposed to my Lizzy once. Surely he can be worked on and thereby persuaded to do so again. I shall take matters into my own hands to see that he does.”
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Acknowledgments
A thousand thanks to Miss Jane Austen for her timeless classic, Pride and Prejudice, which makes all this possible. What a joy it is imagining different paths to happily ever after for our beloved couple, Darcy and Elizabeth, and then sharing the stories with all of you.
Special thanks to Betty and Regina for helping to make this story a pleasure to read.
Expecting His Proposal: A Darcy and Elizabeth Short Story
Copyright © 2016, 2014 P. O. Dixon
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, in whole or in part, in any form whatsoever.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters depicted in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Images Used in Cover Art :
Closeness © Dmitriv Shironosov | Dreamstime.com
Great house in the country © Geoffrey Allerton | Dreamstime.com
P. O. Dixon, Expecting His Proposal
