Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart (20 page)
Read Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart Online
Authors: Beth Pattillo
Tags: #Adult, #Contemporary, #Romance, #Young Adult, #Historical
H
arriet was in her front garden when I approached the cottage. She sat on a little stool near a lush bank of flowers, twisting off random bits and then reaching lower to pluck a weed or two from the ground below. She looked like a mother hen tending her brood of chicks. In fact, as I approached, I thought I heard her clucking to the plants.
“Good morning, Harriet.” I spoke softly so that I wouldn’t startle her.
She turned to me, her smile bright. “Claire? You’re early today.”
I stepped through the gate. “I know it’s not our usual time—”
“Never too early to greet a friend, dear.” She plucked one final dead flower from a large bush and levered herself up off the stool.
I stepped forward and reached out a hand to help her, but she waved me away.
“No, no. I can manage.” The stool was a collapsible, three-legged affair. She shut it and laid it across the wheelbarrow that stood next to her. “Now, then, tell me everything. What’s brought you here?” She gave me a long, measuring look. “Shouldn’t you be in Eleanor’s seminar?”
“Yes. But something’s happened.”
“Well, yes, of course. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Would a cup of tea help?”
I was learning, even in my brief time in England, that a cup of tea almost always helped. I didn’t know whether it was the caffeine, the warmth, or the simple fact of having someone else do something kind, but a soothing cup of tea in Harriet Dalrymple’s cottage was fast becoming my lifeline to sanity.
“Yes, it would help. Thank you.” Although I realized, at that moment, that simply being in Harriet’s presence helped more than anything. It had been many years since anyone had mothered me. And though Harriet may have been a relative stranger and not entirely clear in her mind, she was the closest thing to a mother that I had experienced in a very long time.
“Well, come along then.” She nodded to the wheelbarrow. “If you don’t mind putting that in the shed over there”—she waved in the general direction of the side of the cottage—“I’ll put the kettle on.”
“Okay. Sure.” I reached over and grabbed the handles of the wheelbarrow and started off in the direction she had indicated.
“Oh, and I’ve good news,” Harriet called over her shoulder as she moved toward the cottage ’s blue front door.
“What’s that?” I twisted around to look at her.
“I found more of the manuscript,” she said, smiling. “Never thought to look in the garden shed until this morning, but there it was.”
I looked down at the wheelbarrow in front of me and couldn’t help but grin.
Of course. A little Jane Austen mixed among the trowels and spades and potting soil. Where else would Harriet have kept it?
“I don’t know if these bits go together,” Harriet said when she handed me the pages this time. “They seem to be different sections.” She smiled. “They are two of the best bits, though.”
I’d thought what I’d already read were pretty good bits myself, so I reached for the pages eagerly. Armed with the manuscript and a cup of tea on the table in front of me, I put aside the turmoil of the day and focused on the elegant, if old-fashioned, handwriting on the page.
First Impressions
Chapter Seventeen
Elizabeth was walking about the park the next morning, delighted to have half an hour to herself, when she passed a large yew tree and followed an abrupt turn in
the path, only to find Mr. Darcy striding toward her. He had two large dogs with him for company and a ferocious scowl upon his face
.
“Miss Bennet.” He stopped and motioned for the dogs to come to heel. “Good morning to you.” Since the night of that infamous kiss, he had avoided her assiduously
.
“Mr. Darcy.” Her heart beat furiously beneath her pelisse, and she wished she’d not removed her bonnet. It dangled down her back, secured only by the ribbons still tied and now pressing against her throat
.
Silence fell between them until he cleared his throat and spoke once more. “Miss de Bourgh is in good health today, I trust?”
“Yes. She is with her mother. My presence was not required.” She kept her tone civil, even though her thoughts were not. “Is there anything I may do for you, sir, since I am at my leisure?”
Heat rose to Elizabeth’s cheeks when she realized that he might interpret her remark in quite a different manner than she had intended it. “I did not mean—” She could not prevent the flush that rose to her cheek
.
“Your countenance reveals far more than you would wish,” he said in matter-of-fact tones, “although I find that it is your eyes, for the most part, which give voice to your thoughts.”
“My eyes?” Elizabeth knew she sounded like the veriest slowtop, but she stumbled to find the right words. Or any words, for that matter
.
“They are quite expressive.” He moved closer, as did the dogs, and Elizabeth suppressed the urge to spin upon her heel and flee
.
“I’m sure I don’t mean to express… That is, I mean to say, I have no knowledge of—” She broke off and could only look at him weakly
.
Unexpectedly, Mr. Darcy lifted his arm and offered it to her. “Walk with me, Miss Bennet. It appears we have a great deal to discuss.”
“Very well.” She laid tentative fingers upon his sleeve and turned to walk with him from the way she’d come
.
“You have used your charms and inducements to great effect,” he said as they strolled at a leisurely pace. The dogs stayed obediently to heel, and Elizabeth wondered whether everyone in Mr. Darcy’s life did the same. “Great effect, indeed.”
“I’m sorry?” Surely she had not heard him correctly. “I have no idea what you mean.”
Mr. Darcy turned his head to look at her, although the height of his shirt points and the restrictive knot of his cravat made it rather a difficult exercise
.
“It was your design, was it not, to entice me into this folly? Fitzwilliam claims you are innocent of such a scheme, but I do not agree.”
Fitzwilliam? She collected that he meant the colonel. “I know of no scheme, sir, of which I am a part.”
Fanciful wishes, perhaps. Even the imprudence
of allowing herself to think at all of someone such as Mr. Darcy of Pemberley. But a scheme?
“Do you deny that you have set your cap for me?”
If Elizabeth had possessed any remnants of pride, his words surely destroyed them. Her hand tightened on his arm. He looked down at the point where her fingers rested upon his coat sleeve
.
“I have done no such thing, sir.”
“Do you mean to say you have succeeded in snaring me without conscious effort?”
“Snared you, sir?”
“Only the poor marry for love, Miss Bennet.” His eyes were fixed on Rosings. “My considerations are quite different.”
“Yes, obviously. You are certainly above such human considerations as love.”
He turned to look at her, his dark gaze fixed on her face. “You mock me, then, Miss Bennet?”
“No, sir, I do not.”
He released a heavy sigh and laid his free hand over her fingers. They were drawing closer to the house. Only a few moments were left before they would reach the terrace
.
“You would have me say it plainly, then?” He shook his head. “From the first day we met, you gained my notice. I knew you were beneath me in birth, fortune, and situation. Even had your father lived—”
Elizabeth gasped, and his hand pressed her fingers
more tightly. “You need not speak, Mr. Darcy, of such matters.” She pulled her hand away. “In fact, I insist that you do not.”
By this time, they had indeed reached the steps to the terrace. He drew her to a stop. She looked up at him to find an unexpected emotion in his eyes. If she hadn’t been acquainted with Mr. Darcy’s character, she might have labeled it as fear. As it was, she thought it might be strong apprehension
.
“I am in no position to offer you marriage, Miss Bennet.”
A door opened at the other end of the terrace, and she heard footsteps. Someone was coming
.
“I cannot ask for your hand. My duty to my family… Well, you are well enough acquainted with my aunt to know what is expected of me.”
“What reply am I to make to such a statement?” Elizabeth felt the first stirrings of anger. “You tell me that you have condescended enough to care for me, though I am vastly inferior in every way. You hint of strong affection. Of love. Yet you are ashamed of your feelings.”
“Is it not natural that I should be?”
Pain filled his gaze, and for a moment Elizabeth felt pity for him. He loved her. The realization tightened her chest and made her wish for a strong arm to support her. But his was the only arm close enough to lean on, and she could not ask for it
.
“I have never sought your good opinion, sir. And if you
have loved me against your will, against your judgment, even against your character, then you must look to your own heart for the source of such treachery. It was not I that led you down the garden path.”
“Elizabeth.” He reached for her hand once more. “If I could, I would allow my actions to follow my heart. If I were to ask … If I were free to ask …” He shook his head. “But I am not.”
Elizabeth drew herself up to her full height. “You are free, sir. As free as any man in England. And my answer would be—”
“Wait! Where’s the last page?” I looked up at Harriet in panic and then back at the single sheet of paper in my lap. I flipped it over, hoping that the rest of the sentence might have been written on the back, but it was blank.
“Oh dear, did I misplace the ending?” Harriet rose from her chair beneath the window and looked around the sitting room as if she ’d never seen it before. “There might be a few more bits about somewhere. Let me think.”
I wanted to leap up from the sofa and start to rifle through the room myself, but I didn’t want to scare Harriet. Here I had reached the climactic moment in the novel, only to find that I had no way to discover Elizabeth’s answer. And I needed to know her answer. The crumbling manuscript pages that had started out for me as a mere curiosity had become vital—perhaps the key to my own convoluted situation.
“Please, Harriet. Are you sure you don’t have the last page
here somewhere? Maybe it’s still in the garden shed.” I sprang up from the sofa. “I’ll go and check.”
“I suppose it might. Yes, have a look in the shed. I’ll see what I can find here.”
I didn’t waste any time on a reply but instead raced out of the room and out the blue door. In moments I was standing in the middle of the small shed at the bottom of Harriet’s garden.
I quickly scanned the shelves and stacks of odds and ends. A large window allowed me enough light to search, but ten minutes spent moving various implements and bits of detritus from one place to another yielded no results. I should have asked Harriet where in the shed she had found the last section of the manuscript. I had almost given up when I spied the corner of a yellowed piece of paper protruding from beneath a watering can. I squealed and reached for it, whisking away the watering pot lest it should drip upon the precious page. I held the paper carefully to the light.
“Yes!” I jumped in the air with delight. “There’s more.” I bent my head to make out the words.
Elizabeth knew she should have returned to Brighton to supervise Lydia’s flirtations with the parade of redcoats who took tea in Mrs. Bennet’s lodgings, but the inducement of a London respite with her beloved aunt and uncle Gardiner proved far too strong. She would have to rely upon her mother’s oversight of Lydia and Kitty. Surely a few
weeks would not matter. And she would find it far easier to procure a new situation in town where she might visit the agencies directly, since Lady Catherine had turned her out without a reference
.
“Elizabeth!” Jane waited at the door of her aunt and uncle’s home in Cheapside when the hackney deposited Elizabeth on the pavement
.
The comfort of Jane’s arms around her proved her undoing. She allowed the balm of sisterly consolation to pour into her heart even as she cried in her sister’s embrace
.
I looked up from the manuscript. “Sisterly consolation?” I turned through the yellowed page over as I had done earlier, but there was no further writing. “But what happened?” I asked the empty air around me. “Did she refuse Darcy? What about the colonel? How does it end?”
I needed to know. If I knew how Elizabeth found her happy ending, perhaps I might be able to figure out my own. Perhaps I might know what choice to make in my own life if I could just get a little guidance from a fictional character and from an author who had been dead for almost two hundred years.
