Love and Laughter Read online

  “Good,” said Darcy, feeling his lips curve upward. He bowed and started to leave, but her voice called him back.

  “Mr. Darcy?”

  He turned to look at her. “Yes, Miss Bennet?”

  “Might I ask . . . that is, I have wondered . . . why is that my good opinion is so important to you?”

  There were several appropriate and safe responses that he could have made to her question. Instead, he chose a reckless one.

  “Because every man desires the good opinion of the woman he loves.”

  And then he disappeared out the door. He did not see her expression, but he could hear her gasp.

  The next day, Elizabeth’s head was still swimming with all the information Mr. Darcy had given her. His willingness to both acknowledge and fix his mistake with Jane and Mr. Bingley was surprising in light of his pride, and the fact that he had done it without any insistence from her was nothing short of astonishing. And after Elizabeth had given the subject of Mr. Wickham some thought, she had concluded that Mr. Darcy must have been in the right of it, for she knew nothing of the officer save what the man himself had told her, and she trusted Colonel Fitzwilliam would back up his cousin concerning the facts and not lie to her. The most convincing piece of evidence of all was what he had told her about his sister. It was impossible that any man would make up such a history about a beloved sister when merely the barest wisp of a rumor about the story could cause irreparable damage to her reputation.

  Of course, the most startling piece of information was Mr. Darcy’s unorthodox declaration of love! What sort of man would make such a proclamation without staying behind to see the effect it had brought about?

  Close consideration of the issue had led Elizabeth to believe that the sort of man who would do such a thing was a man who knew the reaction he would receive was not a favorable one. She wondered if Colonel Fitzwilliam had revealed her ill-disguised opinions of Mr. Darcy. If he had, then he certainly was quite the gossip! Of course, it had all turned out for the best, as it meant that Mr. Bingley would soon hopefully be reunited with Jane . . . assuming, of course, Mr. Darcy had been telling the truth.

  To sort through the erratic thoughts bouncing around in her head, Elizabeth decided to take a walk before she broke her fast. When she came upon Mr. Darcy, she was not certain whether she was disappointed or pleased.

  “Miss Bennet,” said he, tipping his hat. A hesitant smile touched his lips as he searched her face to determine what sort of reaction he would elicit from her.

  In spite of her desire to be cross with him for interrupting her period of reflection, Elizabeth felt a smile stretch across her face. “Mr. Darcy.” Suddenly, she decided what her reaction to him was. Pleasure. Yes, she felt pleased to see him. How strange that such a thing should come about so suddenly!

  “I had hoped I would find you. I wonder if you might be willing to allow me to join you in your morning walk.”

  She studied him for a moment, pursing her lips. “In the past, I had thought to dissuade you from joining me in my walks within the park by telling you that it was a favorite haunt of mine, but it did not dissuade you at all, did it? Those instances when you met me and joined me for my walks were intentional, were they not?”

  The man had the grace to look somewhat abashed. “I confess that I did seek you out, yes.”

  Elizabeth laughed. “I thought it was the perverseness of fate.”

  “No, merely the doings of a man who enjoyed the company of a charming young woman.” He held out his arm, his head tilted hopefully.

  “I know you cannot be speaking about me, Mr. Darcy,” said she as she accepted his arm. “I would readily take on the label ‘impertinent,’ but to call me ‘charming’ is to take flattery a step too far.”

  “Though I try to make it a point never to disagree with a lady, I fear I must respectfully disagree with your expressed opinions in this instance.”

  “Well, so long as your disagreement is respectful, I suppose I cannot complain!”

  Mr. Darcy smiled, and Elizabeth looked thoughtfully over at him for a moment before speaking. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Darcy, I had thought to disbelieve the last words you spoke to me yesterday. Yet I do not think I have ever seen you smile as much as I have this morning.”

  “I have relieved myself of a burden in revealing my feelings to you. While I know my sentiments are not returned, I have the hope that the state of things may one day change. After all, you are a lady of such decided opinions that I am certain you would have made an excuse to return to the parsonage if you truly did not desire my company.”

  “There are some who might call that rudeness.”

  “There are some who might call proclaiming one’s love and then fleeing the premises to be rudeness.”

  Elizabeth found herself chuckling once more. “I believe cowardice might be a more applicable term than rudeness.”

  “It is a difficult thing to conjure up the bravery to listen to the heart.”

  “And your heart is telling you that you have an interest in mine.”

  “It is positively shouting such a thing at me.”

  Elizabeth removed her hand from his arm and pulled away so she could study his face more properly. “Mr. Darcy, you must understand how surprised I am by all this. I always thought you looked at me to criticize.”

  “Perhaps my pride led me to do a little of that at first, but it did not take me long to realize the brilliancy of your soul. I am not a man who is prone to empty flattery, Miss Bennet. I had not known you long at all before I began to admire your spirit and your wit. Furthermore, it has been some months since I began to consider you one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance.”

  It was all Elizabeth could do to keep from raising her hands to cover up the heat that arose in her cheeks. “I had never before realized it, Mr. Darcy, but you are quite capable of speaking pretty words when you put your mind to it.”

  “There is no one to whom I would rather say pretty words than you, Miss Bennet.”

  A pert reply hovered on the edge of her tongue, but as she met his dark gaze, she felt a warmth unfurl within her that was utterly unexpected . . . but not at all displeasing.

  Yet she could not allow him to completely disarm her, and she said archly: “I feared you had merely found me to be tolerable, Mr. Darcy, and not handsome enough to tempt you.”

  He glanced away from her, the expression on his face a mixture of embarrassment and horror. “I wish you had not heard that. I confess I have found you to be entirely too tempting, and I have scarcely been able to banish from my mind the image of your pleasant figure, your fine eyes, and the impertinent curve to your lips . . . .”

  She gazed at him, feeling strangely warm as his eyes passed gently over her face. Then he suddenly reached forward to grab her hands and hold them in his, and she inhaled sharply in surprise.

  Such contact between them was a luxury she should not have afforded him—after all, her opinion of him was changing rather rapidly, and it would have been wise to be more cautious—but she found herself inexplicably craving his touch.

  He rubbed his thumbs lovingly over her knuckles as he stared into her eyes. “Miss Elizabeth,” said he, his mouth caressing her name, “I know I have a difficult road ahead of me to improve myself in your estimation, but I must beg you to allow me that opportunity.”

  As she stared at him, he brought her gloved knuckles up to his lips and pressed a kiss upon them. It felt almost like there were a sort of thrumming in the air, as if a magic spell were twining around them and tying their two souls together for eternity.

  Elizabeth could not help but shiver. She began to wonder if she had been mistaking attraction for dislike throughout the entirety of her acquaintance with Mr. Darcy. And while she was by no means ready to agree to marry the man, she did not want to let him go.

  And so she took in a deep breath and favored him with a smile. “I suppose I have no choice. If I do not allow you such an opportunity, then your goss
ip of a cousin shall no doubt canvass the neighborhood with news of my cruelty, and then where shall I be?”

  Mr. Darcy laughed, and he held out his arm to her. “Where would you be, indeed?”

  As she accepted his arm, she told him: “I should very much like to learn more about one Fitzwilliam Darcy.”

  “And I should very much like to acquaint you with him. I think you shall find that he is a rather dependable young man indeed, given to the precise performance of all his duties. A bit besotted, perhaps, but I like to think that a flaw such as that is one which is easily forgiven.”

  “You are fortunate, Mr. Darcy, for I am inclined to agree with you.”

  The End

  Be Careful What You Wish For

  by

  Jann Rowland

  Mrs. Bennet is not a sensible woman—of this, we have ample proof. But she is a desperate one, fearing the inevitability of genteel poverty should her daughters not marry, which results in her pushing them forward, even when, especially in Elizabeth’s case with Mr. Collins, she should not. But I’ve always wondered why she would not consider whether having Elizabeth as mistress of Longbourn is worth the price she might ultimately be forced to pay . . . .

  It had finally come, a day long dreaded, a day long feared. Her companion of more than three decades, Mr. Bennet, had finally thrown off this mortal coil and succumbed to the infirmity of age. The day before, his body had been interred in the ground at the cemetery behind Longbourn parish, and though he had now been gone for two days, today truly felt as if it was the first day of the rest of her life without her husband. The fact that he had been ill for some time before he had finally passed had not softened the blow in the slightest. He was dead, and that was all that signified.

  But whereas her imaginings of what this day could entail had sometimes been slightly morbid and had occasionally bordered on the morose, on this day, Mrs. Bennet merely stretched her arms and lay in bed for a few moments longer, reveling in the security she felt. Ten years earlier, the miraculous had occurred: Mr. Collins, that odious man who possessed the very great fortune of being the next heir to Longbourn, had visited with the express intention of admiring her daughters. And he had admired them, though perhaps he had set his intentions too high at first. Still, Mrs. Bennet had eventually managed to succeed in arranging a match with one of her daughters.

  In truth, Mrs. Bennet thought as she lay in bed that day, the absence of her husband was more of an ache in a joint than the searing pain she had always imagined it would be. Her relationship with Mr. Bennet had been, after all, a strange one, and her husband, a quick-witted and sarcastic man who was prone to avoidance of all social activities, had been very sparing in his demonstrations of affection to her over the years. She had never understood her husband—not from the beginning of their marriage and especially not in the years after Lydia’s birth, when he had begun to retreat from his family, hiding in his bookroom and maintaining a very aloof and contradictory manner on the occasions when he actually deigned to emerge from his sanctuary.

  No, though she missed the presence of someone by her side, she most certainly did not miss the man himself. Perhaps if he had . . .

  Well, no matter. It was what it was, after all, and Mrs. Bennet did not intend to dwell upon what might have been. She had her home, and her daughter would be arriving that day along with the new master. Mrs. Bennet knew what a daunting task it was to assume control of one’s own home, and she was determined to be of use. In fact, she had no intention of ceding her duties to her daughter at all—she had been mistress of the estate for more than three decades, and she was certain she would continue in this manner for the foreseeable future. It was the proper way of things, after all; a girl should respect her mother.

  Indulging in a little further fond remembrance of the past, Mrs. Bennet thought of the recent years of her life and, in particular, her greatest successes: the marriages of her daughters. Jane, of course, had married Mr. Bingley, just as Mrs. Bennet had immediately known would happen upon first hearing of the man’s arrival in the neighborhood. Clearly, Jane had not been so beautiful for nothing, for she had managed—with Mrs. Bennet’s enthusiastic assistance, of course—to snare the wealthiest and most amiable gentleman to have been seen in the community in years. And as Mr. Bingley had eventually purchased Netherfield, Mrs. Bennet still enjoyed the constant society of her eldest daughter and had been able to ease her into the role of mistress of her own estate.

  Lydia—bright, effervescent Lydia—had married a most handsome and successful officer, and she had followed him in his duties, at times to far-off and exotic places. The only disadvantage to Lydia’s situation was the fact that Mrs. Bennet was denied the society of her favorite daughter, as Lydia was very rarely close to home these days. As a point of fact, the young woman was currently living in a far-off place. Mrs. Bennet could never remember the name of the location, for it was a place she had never even heard of before. But as Lydia’s husband had risen in the ranks and joined a regiment very much in need of his expertise, there was nothing to be done. Still, Mrs. Bennet hoped that she would be able to convince Lydia to come for a visit, if only to condole over the loss of Mr. Bennet.

  Her two favorite daughters now dealt with, Mrs. Bennet’s thoughts turned to the three in the middle, two of whom there was not much to think upon. Kitty, eschewing her younger sister’s example, had married the rector of a small parish and was now living there with him, away from the bosom of her family. Mrs. Bennet found the loss of Kitty’s society easy to bear, as the girl had never been precisely visible . . . except when she had been agitating her mother’s poor nerves with her constant coughing. And Mary had never married and still resided at Longbourn. But while Mary’s companionship had remained constant, Mrs. Bennet had long desired her absence, as Mary’s tendency to moralize had become even more tiresome over the years, and her skills on the pianoforte had not improved appreciably. Mrs. Bennet imagined that the noise of two cats yowling at one another was a more melodic sound than listening to her middle daughter thrash the keyboard.

  Finally, Mrs. Bennet turned her thoughts to her second daughter, who was arguably her greatest failure while also being her greatest success. Elizabeth had not been pleased upon learning that Mr. Collins had chosen her for the very great honor of becoming the next mistress of Longbourn. In fact, it had been a near thing for some time, as their tête-à-tête had almost ended in disaster. However, the combined efforts of Mrs. Bennet’s insistence that she accept the man, Mr. Bennet’s indifference, and Mr. Collins’s refusal to believe that Elizabeth’s rejection had been serious—for the young woman could not expect a better offer of marriage, after all—had finally worn her down, and she had accepted with obvious reluctance. It truly had been a very close thing.

  Elizabeth had lived in Kent these past ten years with her husband, and though Mrs. Bennet knew it to be advantageous, she was still annoyed that her least favorite daughter had managed to do something which she, herself, had been unable: give her husband an heir. In fact, Elizabeth had managed to birth two boys, followed by a girl who, at the age of five, was reportedly as precocious and prone to making a nuisance of herself as her mother had been at that age. That, of course, was unacceptable, and Mrs. Bennet was determined that once the Collinses arrived at Longbourn, Miss Eleanor Jane Collins would be taken under her wing and taught the proper behavior necessary for any young girl. Regardless of the fact that Eleanor would always be secure due to her brother’s eventual inheritance of the estate, one could not be too careful of such things. True security was obtained through marriage, and it was never too early to begin preparing for one’s entrance in society.

  Sighing with relish, Mrs. Bennet turned and noted the glorious sunshine coming in through the windows of her room. It had all worked out exactly as she had planned, and now she was left to enjoy the twilight years of her life in true security. Rising, she peered with some distaste at the freshly dyed black dress which had been laid out for her by the ma
id. All this black was truly depressing, and she heartily wished she was not required to dress in such a dreary color. Still, there were appearances to maintain and society’s expectations to be met. And of course, it was not all bad; she would garner quite a bit of pity from her acquaintances due to her newly bereaved state. She would endure, as she had always done. For now, she would rise and visit her sister Philips, who would be in a position to recite all the latest gossip which Mrs. Bennet had not been able to hear since her husband’s death.

  With a smile and a light heart, Mrs. Bennet rose from her bed to begin her day.

  The first frisson of unease felt by Mrs. Bennet occurred upon her return to Longbourn later that day. Her reception at her sister’s house had been all that she had hoped for, and the gossip in which they had indulged and the visitors with whom she had spoken had been so engrossing that she had completely lost track of time and arrived back at Longbourn much later than she had intended. The carriage pulled up into the drive, and Mrs. Bennet observed that the house was in some uproar—it seemed apparent that her daughter and her family had arrived in her absence.

  Eager to see her grandchildren, whom she had met only a time or two in the years since they had entered the world, Mrs. Bennet stepped down from the carriage and hurried into the house. The hall was empty of any servants, but Mrs. Bennet did not allow that to deter her. She slipped her wrap from her shoulders, allowing it to haphazardly fall upon a side table, and then she rushed into the drawing room, eager to greet her family.

  What she met was not at all expected. The sitting room was occupied by just two people—her son-in-law and her second-eldest daughter. But while Mr. Collins was all sympathy and effusive condolences, Elizabeth merely eyed Mrs. Bennet with a disconcerting coldness evident in her eyes. Mrs. Bennet prided herself on her perceptiveness, but she would have had to have been a simpleton indeed to miss the veritable frigidity of the temperature in the room. That, more than anything else, stilled her words on her tongue and allowed Mr. Collins to enter into one of his infamous monologues.