Blinded By Prejudice by KaraLynne Mackrory
Chapter Twenty-Six
Iunderestimated the power of the memories that lived in the library, permeating its walls and scenting the air with the ghosts of conversations, laughter, and warm touches. The moment I stepped into the hallowed space, I felt assaulted by them. This was where I had learned to love, yet had also experienced the heartache of unrequited love. Over the course of the past month, I had spent more time in the quiet sanctuary of this room with Fitzwilliam than I had in any other. No wonder it now felt more like the sacred halls of a church than a library.
I ran my hand along the edge of the sofa where we had sat most times. Its rich leather had no real life to it, but I felt the stirring of those memories as my hand dragged along the surface. I contemplated the warmth with which he spoke of his home, the pride in the work he had needed to learn to be its master. He told of long-held servants that seemed dearer to him than some of his relations. I had felt then that he wanted me to love Pemberley as much as he did, I had been certain of it at one point. And as much as I was able, I did love it as I saw it through his eyes.
I wiped my cheek and became appalled at the wetness I found there. It was sentimental and foolish of me to dwell on what I knew very well would never be. Even as I chastised myself for this, I raged a little at the revelation I had gained that fateful day in the hall. It had felt such a shock because I had begun to trust Fitzwilliam and believed that I might one day have a marriage of affection. For certain, I had come to feel such for him. Hearing them speak felt so wrong, I could not trust it. And then I was ashamed at how it only showed how gullible I had been. If his wish to break the engagement despite the potential to ruin both of our reputations was such a colossal shock to me, it only meant that I had been wilfully blind the entire time.
I walked to the bookcase where we had embraced the last time we were together. With a heart breaking in two, I held on to the shelf there and let my head fall in quiet sobs. Behind me the door opened and the sound of the door clicking closed reached my ears. I did not need to turn to know who had entered here. My heart sung out to him and felt him near.
I listened to every careful step towards me, marvelling at the odd notion of this additional change with his returned sight. Fitzwilliam could come to me. While he was blind, I always had to go to him. I drew in breath and steadied myself. I was prepared, I thought, to listen to him speak his plans for us. Had I not resolved to accept it when I left my room again after my health returned?
“Elizabeth, we must speak.”
I purposely kept my back to him even when I felt his hands on my arms.
“Must we? Yes, I suppose we must.” I walked away, wiping at my wet cheeks and allowing the churning inside me to ebb and swell until it became a tidal wave of anguished, incensed thoughts. “Yes, let us. Out with it then! Speak, sir!” I spat in a sudden rage to see this finished. I cared no more for the drowning feeling I had experienced every day since I had heard him tell his cousin to seek a solution to our engagement.
I watched as my anger at first surprised him but then soon began to fuel his own. He paced again like the caged tiger, only this time there was a power in his walk that was both attractive and fearful. My heart sped at the fierceness of his face, the churning expressions flitting across it so quickly I could not catch them all. What his thoughts were, I could only guess, but I was sure to hear them soon. His anger was near the boiling point, I could tell, yet I could think of nothing that he had to be angered over. Nothing. I scoffed at the very notion that Fitzwilliam Darcy had anything about which to complain.
He had disliked me before the accident, and through some unlucky act of chivalry on his part, he was bound to me in a manner that he could not have been pleased with. It was not as though I had wanted this marriage either! However, I did not seek every day to push him away as I often felt inclined to. Instead, I had cared for him, listened to him, talked to him, and answered any number of his impertinent questions about my attire. And in return he, in concert with his cousin, wished to set me aside. Indeed, what had Fitzwilliam to be angered over?
He had succeeded in making me fall in love with his damnable self, and now, when his cousin must have surely found some way to spare Fitzwilliam from this burden of honour and duty, his sight returned. It would seem fate was on his side, yet he was unhappy about it? Every unwelcome coil that had befallen him due to his rash decision to save my life had resolved itself, and he would soon be free. He ought to be rejoicing. Instead his chest was heaving, and he was looking at me as if I had stabbed him in the back!
“It is clear you have something to say, Mr Darcy. So let us get this over with and speak it.”
At this speech of mine, he shook his head, a look of incomprehension on his face. He turned his back to me and appeared dejected as he used the wall behind him for support. I wondered briefly whether being this unsettled might cause a reversal with his health, but I dismissed the thought. I needed to learn to not forever be concerned with Fitzwilliam’s well-being. It would not be my privilege soon, and it was imperative that I become accustomed to that. Swallowing a lump of despair, I waited for him to speak. When he did, I was caught off guard by the calmness in his voice. I expected rage and anger. I expected barely-controlled emotion as I had just witnessed. His voice was instead flat, devoid of feeling, spent.
“I am in the unhappy state of almost wishing to be blind again, Elizabeth.”
At so illogical a statement, I could not help but blurt back at him, “Whyever for, sir?”
He filled his lungs and held his breath, his broad chest expanding while his face flashed through several expressions again. This time I caught pain, defeat, and frustration. He turned his head as if he could not bear the sight of me.
“Because at least when I had no vision, you were gentle to me; you were warm and caring. I had begun to convince myself I had succeeded in making you fall in love with me, fool that I am. At first I had told you I wished to delay setting a date for our union until I regained my sight, yet after weeks in that hell of darkness with the feel of your touch lighting my world, I could take waiting no more and was resolved I must have you, even if I could not see what you looked like as my bride!
“I had determined to speak to you last week about a date for our wedding. I was hopeful we might still find happiness with each other, even if I would always be a burden to you.”
He pulled a ring from his pocket. He looked at it, folded it into his fist, and his face contorted from pain to anger again in an instant, and I felt the slap of it.
What had he said? He had been hopeful that we might find happiness with each other? A memory pricked at my thoughts then. When he had emerged from my father’s study after seeking his blessing, Fitzwilliam had said he hoped that once I knew him better ‘you might find it possible for us to find happiness together in time’. Not we, but me. As if happiness with me had already been there for him.
“And now…now that I can see your beloved, enchanting face…an image I had despaired of ever seeing again, a sight that I was resigned would forever be lost to me…”
He began again to pace, and the disorder of my thoughts went with him across the space of the floor as I tried to comprehend this unreality, this dream spinning in my head. I could not be hearing him correctly, yet he was still describing the pleasure of seeing me again.
“My last memory of your face was of it reflecting the horror in mine when I saw the danger you faced as the collapse happened. I had thought I would live a lifetime of agony with that picture. Elizabeth, can you not see? I could not live with that image. I could not bear to think that the last time I beheld your countenance, it was at the moment you might have died. I believed that was the last image I would always have of your beautiful face. Every day until the day I offered for you, I raged at the doctor’s restrictions. I had to know you were well, for that moment haunted me. And it was utter torture!”
His voice changed then from plaintive to fuming despair.
“But now, now I can see you.” He scoffed humourlessly. “My eyes work once again, and I find in this a torture worse than before. For now you are cold to me, and I cannot help but wish I were a broken man again—especially if all I was ever to drink from your lips was your compassion, not your love. I would take it. I would take it.”
As speeches go, it was not entirely coherent, but it was lovely, and I gasped great gulps of air as I tried to gather the pieces of my heart that had been broken inside me and hold them together with his words. I could make no sense of them, yet I yearned for them to mean what I hoped they meant. How had I been the blind one?
“I do not understand.”
“Forgive me, I can see I have distressed you. You must forget I spoke at all. I should never have given so little credit to what your father said.”
I saw he intended to leave, and I tripped over my skirts to prevent it. My father? I had more questions now than ever, and while I had been given my first breaths of air in a week since that suffocating day in this very room, I was not about to allow them to go unanswered.
“Please, sir.” He would not look at me, and it shattered me. Never since the accident had he not sought to see me, even when his eyes would not comply.
“Fitzwilliam, please.”
The plaintive quality to my tone must have convinced him. I was nearly without words when he turned those dark eyes back to me, boring into me in such a searching manner that I could not help but allow all my defences to crumble and let him see what was in my heart. His gaze dug into me. Searching tentacles of questions reached into my chest and grasped my heart. I never felt so raw and exposed, yet relieved when his eyes gentled as his search yielded what he looked for—my heart revealed to him through my eyes what was inside.
“Elizabeth…” It was barely a whisper, a prayer upon his lips, but it spoke to my broken soul, and with a sob, I ran into his arms. God in Heaven as my witness, this was where I was always meant to be.
He held me to him with a reverence that mended some cracked, lost space inside me. I still had so many questions, and there was much more for us to speak of. However, for now, this was enough to calm the river of pain inside.
Fitzwilliam gently ran his fingers through the curls near my face, causing havoc to my coiffure. He murmured words of soothing that I could not allow myself to deserve right away.
“I have courted prepossession and ignorance and driven reason away where you were concerned,” I protested. “When my eyes were opened to your real character—”
“Shh, my love. Let us have no more of this.”
Ihad been the blind one all along. I deserved the pain I now felt at the realisation of how wrongly I had judged him. I had been truly blinded by prejudice, never allowing myself to trust in his honour or that he would offer for me after my reputation had been compromised from the accident. And when he came to offer for me—apparently against the wishes of his doctor and without a care for his health—I had been surprised. Still, I did not allow this proof of his goodness to clear my prejudiced blindness towards him. Time and again over the course of the many weeks of our engagement I had questioned his honour, if not directly, then within my heart. I mistrusted him when I assumed what his opinions would be about my family, when I misjudged his moods, and when, most egregiously, I listened to a private conversation.
“I owe you many apologies. They are too numerous to count.”
“Nonsense, Elizabeth. Only please tell me what I did to push you away this week. To see you again and have you so closed off to me…”
“I overheard your conversation with Colonel Fitzwilliam in this very room last week.”
He looked down at me, clearly not following, yet eager to absolve me of any wrongdoing. I could not let him do so. I had listened where I ought not to have, and it had caused us both suffering. Together we walked to the sofa where we had always sat. I took up his hand as we had often done and nearly cried when he thanked me for the small gesture.
“I came to visit you and heard you say my name before I entered. Colonel Fitzwilliam admonished you against a match with me and the degradation it would be to you for a lifetime. He advised you to allow him to resolve it, and you agreed as long as he did not harm my reputation. You see, Fitzwilliam, that is why I have been so wretched to you. I still cannot comprehend the declaration you just made and the incomprehensible gift of your love, for I cannot reconcile it to this shameful eavesdropping and what it revealed to me of your feelings towards our marriage. I want to believe the one, but my heart is afraid to trust in it.”
He was shaking his head before I had even finished, his eyes traveling over every inch of my face as he did so. As though he could not help himself, he reached for my cheek and gently caressed it. I closed my eyes at the touch, pleasure skipping along the nerves there.
“I cannot understand what you think you heard, Elizabeth. I did not advise Richard anything of the sort. To do so would have cut me in half. And besides, it has been he who has championed my fondest wish to try to win your heart.”
“But I was here; I heard you say it. You said there was no honourable way around it, and your cousin reminded you that your emotions clouded your judgment in this case.”
His face cleared, and his lips parted in a heart-breaking smile. His hands left where they held my face to slip into my hair once more, and with gentleness, he pressed his lips to my head and held me there. Tears slipped out of my eyes at this tenderness. It made my heart soar to believe that perhaps, between the two of us, we might manage a way to listen to our hearts and ignore what others might think of our match. Did not our hearts matter most?
“Dearest, loveliest, Elizabeth. Could this really be true? I feel as if I am still casting with no hope for a such a gift as your regard. But if you were injured by what you heard—and I see that you were—then I am both sorry for your pain and reeling with happiness for what it means.”
I began to pull away, needing to see his eyes to understand such a confusing explanation. But he held me to him, pressing his lips to my head again and inhaling my scent. I felt time stopped, but it was only a moment before he moved.
Groaning, he pulled away, putting space between us and determinedly using my hands as anchor for his own. He shrugged at me with a boyish grin as he said, “I am only human. But let us clear this misunderstanding first. Elizabeth, we were not speaking of you. We were speaking of Mr Wickham. You must have heard your name when Richard told me about encountering you in the village before he discovered Wickham. He was correct that every time I am required to endure the unpleasantness of my former friend, I am too emotional to make sound judgments. I have been perhaps too lenient with him. Richard was asking me to allow him to handle Wickham as he saw fit. I knew Richard would not go easy on Mr Wickham, and the remembrance of my father’s preference for the reprobate gave me pause, as it always does.”
He shook his head and gazed at me earnestly. “However, you heard me relent, allowing Richard to conjure a plan to rid us of Wickham. And as you must know, his plan has worked. George Wickham set his own trap before falling into it. And Richard was able to do it all without a hint of anything towards Georgiana’s reputation.”
I looked into his eyes for any deception and could not see any. I felt all at once the idiocy of my assumption. Yet it was further proof of how little I trusted in Fitzwilliam’s goodness and affection. Or perhaps I wished to be wilfully blind to it, keeping myself safe from my own growing feelings. Once again I had assumed he would act dishonourably towards me. My insecurities about my family’s improprieties haunted me long before I met one Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley. I let them colour my vision, rule the rationality of my mind, and blind me to the truth. They nearly cost me my happiness with him as well.
“You have been without sight, yet I have been the one to allow my prejudice, pride, and fears blind me to everything. How can you wish for such a foolish wife?”
“Very easily, Elizabeth. Very, very easily. But you are not foolish, only misinformed. And you have not been the only one to have been blind in some manner. Though I have had your father, at least, to thank for helping me to see.”
Relieved beyond measure at his clemency, I allowed myself to be calmed. His mention of my father reminded me of my other questions.
“My father? Do you mean you might tell me what you learned that was so enlightening when you asked him for my hand?”
Fitzwilliam laughed quietly as I had hoped. I loved the sound of his laugh.
“You are teasing me again, and I cannot tell you how it pleases me, my love. Yes, if you are willing to hear it, I shall tell you a story of a man far more blind than the one you cared for so sweetly these past months.”