Page 54 of First Impressions
Alone. Again.
Beth didn’t know for how long she sat on the bed, in shock from what had just happened.Darcy loves me.How can he love me if he doesn’t trust me with any information?He wants to marry me. How can he expect me to want to marry someone who I don’t know?She knew she was crying, but oddly enough she didn’t feel sad.
It was his fault that she couldn’t say yes; if he had just told her what had happened, she would have married him tonight. Jane was right; sometimes you just know when you are meant to be with someone, even if you haven’t known them for that long or know that much about them. There’s just the instinct that you are meant to be together, an instinct that she smothered when she refused him.
Or you could have just said yes because you do love him. As his fiancée, would he really have kept those things from you?She cringed, realizing that her heart had a point.
He obviously was the way that he was - pushy, proud, overbearing, demanding, the list goes on, for a reason, even if that reason was just a thirty-some year habit. She wasn’t trying to justify how he had treated her, but she couldn’t help but think that this was how he’d interacted with people probably for as long as he could remember. She didn’t know much about his mom, but she must have died when he was really young. And then his father clearly had very high expectations of his son, so how loving could he have been? Maybe he didn’t know that this isn’t how you treat people that you love and care about.
Did I make a mistake?
What had she done? Had she thrown away her chance at love and happiness, all for what? Pride? Because she wanted to know,hadto know. Was it that important? She really wasn’t so sure anymore and that scared her.
She got in the shower, letting the water obscure her tears. Deep down she knew that she couldn’t love Darcy like she did if she didn’t believe that whatever happened betweenhim and George was somehow George’s fault; and that whatever his reasons for separating Jane and Charles were because he had his friend’s best interests at heart. She may be a lot of things, but her gut was rarely wrong about people and her gut was saying to trust that whatever his reasons were, they were honorable.
As she packed up her things, she tried to believe that she had done the right thing but everything inside her said that she had been too stubborn, that she had pushed too far. She vacillated between feeling justified in her outrage and being overwhelmed with regret for not handling the situation differently; the worst part was even when she was sure that he’d deserved everything he had gotten, she was still left with the sense that she had condemned herself to life without love.
Good job, Beth, you cut off your nose to spite your face.
She had to get out of here. Everywhere she looked reminded her of what she had so carelessly thrown away. She needed to go home and talk to Jane. She hadn’t heard from her all week.Oh God, where was her phone?She hadn’t checked it since before the party last night.
She ran downstairs and found her small clutch on the floor by the front door to the guesthouse, where she had dropped it last night. Her breath caught, remembering Darcy begging her to just be with him.
She ripped open her purse and pulled out her phone. Missed calls from Jane and Char and a text from Anne.Ok, not so bad.She opened up the message from Anne, hoping that Mrs. DeBourgh didn’t expect to see her this morning; she knew she didn’t have the courage to face that woman right now.
“Hey, no worries about last night. I covered for you. Hope everything went well… I don’t know everything but William is as loyal as they come and I hope that when you guys talk, you’ll see that he would anything to protect the people he cares about.”
Beth burst out in tears, her back resting against the wall as she slid down to sit on the floor.What was she supposed to do?She loved him, but she also wouldn’t let him control her; she had a right to know why he had broken Jane and Charlesup, but that wasn’t the real problem. Anne was completely right. Whatever Darcy had done, he did it with his friend’s best interest at heart, and Beth knew she would never be able to fault him for it.
“Thank you. Things didn’t go quite as planned. I’m going to head back into the city before your mom decides she wants to see me; I need to go home. Tell her I’ll email her on Monday to follow-up.”
“Thanks again for everything.”
Dejected and needing her sister’s comfort, she went back upstairs to grab her stuff and call for an Uber. When the car arrived, she stared at the bed for a minute, replaying everything Darcy had said to her, about her, before she’d let her emotions overcome and control her and she let one last tear slip down her cheek.
She walked out of the house, leaving those memories and her hope for their future locked inside. In all her pride, in all her independence, she’d put herself before the man that she loved and pushed away the only man who would ever love her.
Chapter Thirty-Four
When Beth walkedin the apartment door, Jane immediately knew that something was wrong and she didn’t have the strength or desire to keep it from her sister any longer.
“Beth, you have to tell me what’s going on. I know you’ve been keeping things from me for a while but you need to talk to me, to let me help you,” Jane insisted immediately.
“I know, I’m sorry. Just let me set my stuff down and then I’ll tell you what’s been going on. Hope you don’t have any plans this afternoon - it’s a long story,” Beth replied and she went into her bedroom to unload her stuff.
When she came back out, Jane had already made tea and was waiting for her on the couch. Beth sat down with a deep breath, took a sip of tea, and began to tell her sister everything that had happened between her and Darcy, everything that she had kept from her before, everything that had happened this past weekend, everything right down to his involvement with Charles heading back to Boston.
Surprisingly, she didn’t cry throughout her entire explanation - she must have been fresh out of tears. The weight off of her chest, opening up to Jane, was a small balm to soothe her broken heart. When she was done, Jane took a minute to process everything. She’d kept quiet throughout the whole tale, not wanting to interrupt her sister who clearly needed to get everything out in the open. She leaned in, enveloping Beth in a hug that broke down her last remnants of reserve as the tears began to flow again.
“Do you love him, Beth?” Leave it to the ever-perceptive Jane to boil the whole ordeal down to the most important question of them all.
“Yes.” Her lower lip trembled as she admitted the truth. “But I don’t want to, after everything he has put you, and me, through.” She was beating herself up over an emotion that she knew she had no control over.
“Oh, B,” Jane grabbed a tissue and wiped the tears off of her cheeks, “I may not be quite like you, but I’m a strong woman. I don’t want to be the reason you are holding yourself back from happiness and torturing yourself for your feelings,” she said desperately. “Charles is a grown man who can make his own decisions; regardless of what Mr. Darcy said or did, it was his own choice to leave and if I know him, at least a little from our time together, I’m sure he would agree with me; he would never put the blame on Darcy or think that Darcy made him.”
She’s right; It was Charles’ choice to leave no matter what Darcy told him.The revelation only intensified the pain and regret that she was feeling, the full weight of the ramifications of her actions becoming clear. Her hand came over her mouth to stifle a sob.
“Shh, Beth, just breathe. It’s going to be ok,” Jane tried to comfort her before continuing, “I can’t imagine what Mr. Darcy said to him, but I know Charles would never have him as so close a friend if he didn’t believe that Mr. Darcy only had his best interests at heart; so, I’m sure that whatever transpired, Mr. Darcy thought that he was helping Charles.”
