Page 27 of I Have Faults Enough

Elizabeth was quiet a moment, then asked, rather bluntly, "And what consequence concerns you?"

Darcy did not wait for her to finish arriving at it herself. "You, of course. We must marry. There is no question of it, nor any use in discussing whether we wish it; the situation admits no other remedy, and I should not think of leaving you exposed to speculation on my account."

He said it plainly, as if it was a fact requiring only to be acknowledged, not debated or even asked. And, it did not appear to occur to him that it might be received any other way.

"Must we." Elizabeth's voice had gone very cold. "How fortunate, that you have settled the matter so entirely without me."

"I had not thought there was another course open to either of us," he said plainly, "nor did I imagine you would wish me to pretend otherwise"

"How could I think otherwise?" Elizabeth stared at him. "You have never behaved as though you thought of me as anything but a subject for fault-finding. You have always behaved as though you did."

"I suppose I was cold," he bit out, "because I did not trust myself to be otherwise."

Elizabeth blinked. “You did not trust yourself?”

He quickly responded, and she sensed some anger in his tone. "No, and I am not proud of it either."

"How very inconvenient for you." Her voice was light, but there was an edge beneath it, sharpened by something that was not quite laughter. "To find yourself so at the mercy of your own attention. I confess I had not thought you capable of losing command of anything, least of all yourself."

His jaw tightened, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Elizabeth expected, from the expression alone, that he might offer some carefully reasoned defense of himself, perhaps even one of those explanations in which he managed to make an unpleasant truth sound considerably more reasonable than she had thought it. Instead, what he admitted was altogether different.

“I suppose I was afraid,” he finally admitted.

Elizabeth blinked. “Afraid?”

"Not of you, precisely." His mouth tightened, as though the distinction mattered. "I was afraid of what my attention toward you might reveal. I did not know what to do with it, and I knew even less what you might do with it, if you discovered it."

"What I might do with it." She let out a short, disbelieving breath. "You imagined I would, what, Mr. Darcy? Laugh at you?"

"I imagined you would see it for precisely what it was, and find it as unwelcome as I did."

"Unwelcome?" She repeated the word as though it had a bad taste. "So you decided, quite on my behalf, what I should find unwelcome, and then behaved accordingly, and never once thought to simply." She broke off, pressing her lips together, and when she spoke again her voice had gone tight. "You let me think myself despised, Mr. Darcy, rather than risk being thought a fool."

"Yes." He said it without flinching, which was somehow worse than if he had tried to soften it. "That is precisely what I did."

"Then I do not know what you wish me to say to you now. That I am flattered? That it is a very great compliment, to learn I was disliked out of cowardice rather than contempt?"

"I do not wish you to say anything." His voice had risen, very slightly; the first real crack in his composure she had seen. "I am telling you because you asked, and because I find I am tired, Miss Bennet, of managing what you think of me."

She regarded him with open disbelief. "Why should a man so thoroughly acquainted with the world be tired of what a woman thinks, who has so little fortune, and much less consequence, than himself?"

Something in his expression eased, not quite into a smile. "That was precisely the difficulty. You are the one person wholly unimpressed by everything I had been taught to consider impressive."

Her eyebrows rose. "I confess I do not take your meaning."

He considered her a moment before he answered. "Most people, whether they will own it or not, are conscious of what I am. They seek my approval, or resent me for possessing what they do not. Even those who dislike me remain aware of me. You did not. You would contradict me, laugh at me, challenge me, and then walk away as though you had given the matter no further thought."

Elizabeth could not help smiling. "I did think of you afterward. Only not, I think, in a kind light. You were disagreeable, and insufferable, upon occasion."

"I have no doubt I was all of that, and worse." There was something warmer in his eyes than his voice allowed.

For a moment neither spoke. Then his expression settled again into gravity. "What I could not account for was why your opinion should matter to me as it did. I told myself it was vanity, that I wished only to prove you wrong. Then I told myself I wished merely for your good opinion. Neither answer served me long."

"What did you discover?" Her voice had gone soft.

"That I wished you to know me." He paused, as if the words cost him something. "Not Mr. Darcy of Pemberley. Not the man whose name and fortune you had heard of before ever you met the man himself. I wished you to know what lay beneath all that; though I hardly knew, myself, how it was to be shown."

Something shifted in Elizabeth's face. "You might have tried being agreeable."