Page 22 of Penned By Mr Darcy
“Do you truly want an honest answer?”
He turned his head toward her, and in the flicker of the firelight she saw something vulnerable in his expression. She did not like it; she had never thought of him as vulnerable, for he seemed an impenetrable man without emotion or nuance. To see him here, without pretence, was an intimacy she did not like.
“Yes,” he said.
She swallowed her bite.
“I think… you make it very difficult for people to know you. You speak rarely, and when you do, it is often with the expectation of being misunderstood.”
“I see.”
“I do not say it to wound you. Only that I think… you expect people to think ill of you. And so you give them good reason.”
He didn’t answer immediately. His gaze returned to the fire, and for a long moment they sat in silence, save for the occasional snap of the logs.
“I do not enjoy being misunderstood,” he said at last. “But I find it easier to be misjudged than misrepresented. Silence gives me control.”
She nodded slowly. That, at least, she could understand.
“I have said things to you—harsh things,” he added. “I do not regret the truth of them, only the manner in which they were delivered.”
“An apology, Mr Darcy?”
“Something like it.”
She looked at him, and this time, her gaze lingered. He sat still as a statue, but the candlelight and fire cast his face in a softer glow. She wondered—again—what lay beneath the pride. And whether it was truly pride at all, or simply a man’s desperate armour against feeling too much.
“You are not easy to like,” she said, and saw him flinch. “But I think…I think there is a reason you have so many friends who display such loyalty towards you as to not notice any flaws you might possess.”
He looked at her then—not a glance, not a polite flick of the eyes, but a full, focused gaze. It landed on her like the weight of a hand, and for a moment, she could not breathe.
“I think,” he said slowly, “you are the only person who has ever spoken to me in this way.”
She felt herself flush, but not with embarrassment, but with something deeper. Warmer.
“I imagine most are afraid to,” she said.
He was still watching her. She felt it in her skin.
“I think you enjoy provoking me,” he said.
“And you enjoy being provoked, or you would not rise to it.”
That earned the faintest smile. It curved his mouth like something secret, almost boyish.
She looked away, not trusting herself to return it. Her eyes landed instead on the bookshelves lining the room—dark wood,rows of leather bindings, a world of knowledge she would never know entirely. But for now, she was drawn back to the man sitting beside her, eating cheese in the dead of night, offering her pieces of himself in rare, flickering moments.
She rose, brushing crumbs from her skirt.
“I should return to Jane,” she said.
He stood, setting the plate aside.
“May I walk you back?”
She hesitated, the consequences of being caught so late at night wandering the halls with a man she was not related to. Who would find them? Miss Bingley, perhaps, but neither she nor her sister would be in any hurry to cause a compromise that might result in the marriage of the man they so desired to make part of their family.
Elizabeth accepted his offer.
