Attempting Elizabeth (17 page)

Mr. Darcy didn’t deign to answer his aunt. I could see the dull crimson infusing his cheeks again and I knew he was ashamed of her. His cheekbones were really amazing, giving his face a sort of chiseled out of stone appearance. Mark had great cheekbones too. I shook my head. Wait a minute, why was I even thinking about Mark again? Dreaming about him at night was one thing, or even ruminating on his words about knowing myself while I was getting dressed, but thinking about him while Mr. Darcy was
in
the room? Unacceptable.

Luckily, we were all saved from having to respond to Lady Catherine’s outrageous proclamation by the coffee being served, after which Colonel Fitzwillaim reminded me that I had promised to play for him.

I sat down at the piano and the Colonel seated himself near me. I took a deep breath and willed my mind blank as I let Elizabeth’s fingers move over the keys. It worked like it had when I was Georgiana, although Elizabeth was nowhere near that level of skill. I was concerned that once Darcy removed himself from his aunt, who after listening to me play for a few moments had returned to questioning him and dispensing advice about goodness knows what, and came towards us that I would not be able to think and play at the same time as I knew I must for the scene to progress properly.

Making my mind as blank as possible was beginning to backfire on me. Every time I let my thoughts drift, even just a little, I started thinking about Mark. I actually felt like smacking him at the moment. How dare he keep invading my thoughts, especially at a time when I needed them to be as much my own as possible? I felt my fingers faltering on the keys and willed Mark back out of my head.

Darcy eventually made his way toward us in a very determined fashion. He stood quite near the piano and directly in my view.

Ignore him. Ignore him.
I focused on a point slightly above his head, shoving all other thoughts from my mind as my fingers finished out the song. Once it was done, I sighed in relief, paused for a moment to mentally locate my place in Austen’s script and then smiled up archly at Mr. Darcy.

“You mean to frighten me, Mr. Darcy, by coming in all this state to hear me? But I will not be alarmed though your sister does play so well. There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.''

Darcy raised an eyebrow and looked down at me with a half-smile. I’d actually seen Mark look at me in a similar way.
Curse you, Mark, get out of my head!

“I shall not say that you are mistaken,'' he replied. “Because you could not really believe me to entertain any design of alarming you; and I have had the pleasure of your acquaintance long enough to know, that you find great enjoyment in occasionally professing opinions which in fact are not your own.''

I laughed at Mr. Darcy’s description of Lizzy, as I knew I ought, and then turned to Colonel Fitzwilliam. “Your cousin will give you a very pretty notion of me, and teach you not to believe a word I say. I am particularly unlucky in meeting with a person so well able to expose my real character, in a part of the world where I had hoped to pass myself off with some degree of credit. Indeed, Mr. Darcy, it is very ungenerous of you to mention all that you knew to my disadvantage in Hertfordshire—and, give me leave to say, very impolitic too—for it is provoking me to retaliate, and such things may come out, as will shock your relations to hear.''

“I am not afraid of you.” That damn half smile again. On Mark it looked different, more relaxed and less sardonic. I blinked. My vision blurred for half a second and I could see myself running after Mark like I had in my dreams. Running after him and reaching out for him.

“Pray let me hear what you have to accuse him of.” Colonel Fitzwilliam’s amused voice brought me back to the present, and I blinked a few times in rapid succession to clear my vision again. “I should like to know how he behaves among strangers.''

I leaned in toward Colonel Fitzwilliam, as if I was about to share a secret, but I kept my eyes on Darcy. He kept his warm, hazel eyes trained on me as well. How could Lizzy not have known he was into her? That smoldering look would very likely send me up in flames at any moment.

“You shall hear then—but prepare yourself for something very dreadful. The first time of my ever seeing him in Hertfordshire, you must know, was at a ball—and at this ball, what do you think he did? He danced only four dances! I am sorry to pain you—but so it was. He danced only four dances, though gentlemen were scarce; and, to my certain knowledge, more than one young lady was sitting down in want of a partner. Mr. Darcy, you cannot deny the fact.”

Mr. Darcy shifted slightly, and I could tell that I’d scored a direct hit. “I had not at that time the honor of knowing any lady in the assembly beyond my own party,” he replied.

I smiled again and shook my head. “True; and nobody can ever be introduced in a ball room. Well, Colonel Fitzwilliam, what do I play next? My fingers wait your orders.”

Before the Colonel could reply, Darcy took a step forward, adding in almost an urgent manner: “Perhaps, I should have judged better, had I sought an introduction, but I am ill qualified to recommend myself to strangers.''

He looked so earnest and sincere in that moment that I wanted to stop the entire conversation and assure him that I knew he was rather shy and that this compounded his sort of natural arrogance. That everything would work out and once he attempted to fix the latter the former would be easier to overcome. Of course, I couldn’t quite do that so I continued on with the script addressing the Colonel.

“Shall we ask your cousin the reason of this?'' I asked still looking up at Darcy, with barely a sideways glance for the poor Colonel. “Shall we ask him why a man of sense and education, and who has lived in the world, is ill qualified to recommend himself to strangers?''

As soon as I said “man of sense and education” I thought of Mark again. It was almost like I could see him, as if he were not quite physically in front of me, but if I reached out for him I would be able to grab him. My fingers twitched against the keys and I had to keep myself from lifting my arms. I was barely heeding Colonel Fitzwilliam’s reply, focused as I was on my own bizarre internal meltdown and not letting it ruin the scene.

“I can answer your question, without applying to him. It is because he will not give himself the trouble.''

I watched Darcy’s face color a bit, but there was now a sort of hollow rushing sound in my ears that I was fighting against. I shook my head slightly to try to dispel it and the annoying image of Mark that was stuck behind my eyes.

“I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,'' began Darcy after a moment’s pause, “of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested—”

The rushing sound in my ears suddenly stopped. At the same time Darcy broke off. He seemed to almost shimmer in front of me for a moment and I was afraid that I was going to pass out. What was happening? Why did he stop talking? He was supposed to say “appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done,” but instead he was glancing about the room in what seemed like confusion. His eyes darted quickly from me to the Colonel then to the group on the other side of the sitting room.

I paused, not sure what to do. Should I just continue on with Lizzy’s next line as if he hadn’t stopped mid-sentence? I’d never had this happen before. The only time Austen’s characters ever strayed from their lines was if I had done something to mess up the storyline. Then once we hit midnight it was back into the same scene again so I had a chance to get it right. The hiccup in the dialogue was always,
always
my fault.

I decided to forge ahead as if nothing had happened.

“My fingers do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do.” Mr. Darcy stopped glancing about the room and focused on me as soon as I started speaking. The look in his eyes was one of utter confusion and I stumbled over the next phrase. “Th-they have not the same, um...force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault—because I would not take the trouble of practicing. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman's of superior execution.''

Mr. Darcy’s only response was to shake his head slightly and to reach up and tug on one ear, almost as if he’d been underwater and was dealing with the aftereffects.

“Mr. Darcy?” I asked quietly. My voice was filled with more fear than Lizzy’s likely should have been, but as Kelsey I was suddenly afraid that something far beyond verbal sparring over the top of a piano forte was at stake.

“I—I’m sorry, are you speaking to me?” Mr. Darcy asked. A look of surprise flitted across his face and he cleared his throat, twice, rather loudly.

The edges of my vision started to blacken.
Don't freak out! Don't freak out!

“I say Darcy, are you feeling quite well?” Colonel Fitzwilliam’s concerned voice cut through my internal drama. His face reflected the same level of concern as his voice, and as Darcy continued to stare at him for a moment without responding, the Colonel half rose from his chair.

Darcy took an odd half-step backward. “No, I mean, er, yes that is, I am feeling fine. I think I’m dreaming.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed heartily at that as he stood up, although to my ears his laughter sounded strained. “No, cousin, you are not dreaming, though I could see how you would think so with such a vision of loveliness as Miss Bennet before you.” Darcy blinked at me again and I managed a half-hearted smile.

“Our ride this afternoon must have been too fatiguing,” the Colonel continued. “Perhaps you should retire for the evening and I shall make your excuses to our aunt?”

Mr. Darcy nodded slightly, then looked around the room again, as if not sure which way to exit. Colonel Fitzwilliam, now looking extremely worried, grabbed him securely by the elbow and directed him toward a door that would let him exit the room without passing by Lady Catherine. “This way, Cuz,” I overheard Colonel Fitzwilliam say in a low voice.

“I'm afraid I can't explain myself, sir. Because I am not myself, you see?”

I sat at
the piano in a state of absolute shock and confusion. I bit my lip in indecision. I’d never had to guess quite like this before. Either scenes played out according to plan, or I was the one in charge of plotting the temporary new course.

“Where are my nephews going off to?” Lady Catherine’s shrill voice cut through my panic. “I say, Miss Bennet, what have you done to make them run off like this?”

I stood up from the piano and walked back over to where the others sat on the opposite side of the room.

“I am sorry Ma’am, I believe Mr. Darcy suddenly felt ill and Colonel Fitzwilliam is assisting him.”

It was basically the truth, and the only explanation I had to give. The problem is that people here didn’t get sick unless it fit the plot. I’d been in pieces of
Pride and Prejudice
for weeks on end without even seeing a case of the sniffles. The only real illness had been Jane Bennet’s cold at Netherfield and that was because Austen had written it in. In a way it was kind of a perfect world. Bad things only happened if they were necessary for the story to develop. Almost everyone (except characters that had been written deliberately unpleasant looking like Collins or specifically said to be plain like Colonel Fitzwilliam) was rather annoyingly attractive. People could eat too much without worrying about getting overly fat—they’d still just look however they’d looked when Jane Austen imagined them in her head and wrote them down with her pen.

Which left with me with absolutely no explanation of why Darcy had wigged out. I had a sinking, sick feeling in my stomach that I’d finally broken the book somehow.

“Ill? My nephew? We must call for a surgeon immediately!” How Lady Catherine’s voice managed to get even more shrill I have no idea. I’d really thought that she’d already reached ten on that particular scale, but count on Lady C to find a way to crank it up to eleven.

“Perhaps it may be best to see what Colonel Fitzwilliam advises when he returns. I am sure he will join us any moment.” Everyone in the room wore almost identical expressions of shock at my talking back so directly to Lady Catherine, including the lady herself, whose mouth gaped open like a fish. “However, it may be easier if we were to leave you for the evening now. I confess, I am feeling a bit fatigued, and I dare say Ma—” here Maria shook her head, begging me not to pull her into my mutiny against Lady Catherine, “my dear Charlotte,” I said instead, “must also be tired from all of our Easter celebrations today.”

Charlotte looked confused but readily nodded her assent. “Yes, Lady Catherine, we are so exceedingly obliged to have been invited to your home on this holiest of days, but we would not want to overstay our welcome. Do be so good as to give our respects to the Colonel when he returns.”

Lady Catherine and Mr. Collins both protested, but ineffectually. When Charlotte had her mind set on something she managed it quite nicely, and she trusted Lizzy enough to know if I said we should go that we should go. I doubt that Lady Catherine really wanted us to stay (Mr. Collins would have stayed all night if allowed), but she wanted to be the one to suggest our leaving. Heaven forbid anyone
want
to leave Rosings before she dismissed them.

There was much hustle and bustle, but we managed to finally make it out the front door. Colonel Fitzwilliam still hadn’t returned to the drawing room. I was becoming more and more frantic in my anxiety for Darcy’s wellbeing.

Mr. Collins chastised me, and his wife, the entire way home for daring to leave Rosings before we were dismissed. I felt bad for Charlotte. I could escape to my room when we got back to the parsonage, but she was stuck with Collins.

I lay awake in bed, going over the evenings events in my mind. It had to be something I had done, but what? I was pretty sure that I’d nailed all the dialogue word for word. Was it such an important section that how I spoke the lines, or how I looked at Darcy, could have caused a problem if I hadn’t been perfectly like Lizzy?

Well, if it was something I’d done, I had until midnight to worry about it and then I’d be bumped back. To where I wasn't sure, either to the drawing room if I was lucky, or back several weeks to when I’d first made the jump as Lizzy. Crap. More time staying with Mr. Collins. Every girl’s dream.

There wasn’t a clock in Lizzy’s room, but I knew it was already past eleven. I waited quietly until all the sounds in the house had stopped and I was relatively sure that Mr. Collins and Charlotte had gone to bed. I opened the door to my bedroom as quietly as possible. It creaked a bit and I was surprised that Lady Catherine in her grand sweep of the parsonage before Mr. Collins's marriage hadn’t ordered it oiled or fixed. I crept down to Charlotte’s little sitting room in the back of the house where there was a clock.

It showed 11:43. I curled myself into a chair and watched it tick down the last few minutes until twelve. Midnight passed without incident. I was neither magically transported back to the piano at Rosings, nor to my first day at Lizzy. I sat, confused and upset, in Charlotte’s sitting room, until I finally drifted off to sleep.

~

I woke with a horrible crick in my neck. It was five am, and still dark outside the window with not even a glimmer of dawn. I felt sick to my stomach as I crept back up to my room.

The story had kept going. Time hadn’t stopped. And yet, what was supposed to happen last night in the drawing room hadn’t happened. Well it had partially, but we hadn’t finished our conversation and I had a feeling that the
entire
conversation was vital to the story line of
Pride and Prejudice
.

I slipped back into bed, the sheets cold against my skin as I pulled them up over my head. I didn’t know what to expect. I felt like I was flying as blind as I had been the first time I’d made the leap. Even more so, because I’d figured out the pattern pretty quickly and had been able to adjust my reactions. Even when I was stuck as Caroline everything had followed the same predictable patterns.

Now I had no idea.

Today Mr. Darcy was supposed to visit the parsonage. Charlotte and Maria would be out and Lizzy would be there by herself and we’d have one hell of an awkward conversation. As a reader, I knew that just a few days later Darcy proposed for the first time, so today’s little piece of awkwardness was his futile attempt at testing the waters—trying to see if Lizzy would be open to his proposal. Lizzy must have just been totally confused by the whole thing.

I had to assume he was still coming. Time had continued on, so therefore, whatever had happened last night in the drawing room hadn’t damaged the plot enough for a restart to happen.

With this in mind, I dressed with extra care once I got up, and declined to go walking into the village with Charlotte and Maria. I set up shop, letter-writing and all per Austen’s description, in the little back sitting room and waited.

And waited.

He never came.

I tried not to panic. I really did. Gave it the good old college try and everything.

Why didn’t he come? It didn’t make sense. We made it to the next day so things should have progressed. What would it mean for the plot that he hadn’t come? Could I have somehow finally changed
Pride and Prejudice
? And not, apparently, for the better. But what did I do?

I was still in the sitting room when Charlotte and Maria returned from their business in the village. I was calmly employed in writing my letter—I’d rushed back to it when I heard them coming up the walk, the rest of the afternoon having been spent in frantic pacing and self-recriminations. If either of the other ladies thought it odd that Lizzy was still working on the same letter (apparently the wordiest in history), they declined to mention it.

“Did you see anyone from Rosings during your walk?” I finally ventured after the first few minutes of chatty news from the village had been offered by Charlotte.

She looked surprised. “Why no. Although we do not often see either Lady Catherine or Miss Anne in the—Oh, you mean the gentlemen, I suppose. It would make sense that they might be out more than the ladies. No, I cannot say that we saw them.”

I settled into a moody silence. If Darcy wasn’t here, where he should have been, then where in damnation was he? After today’s little visit, Austen states that Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam are frequent visitors to the parsonage—the guy comes to propose Thursday (it was now Monday) so that left only a few opportunities for these frequent visits. Should we expect him tomorrow? And if not tomorrow than definitely Wednesday...

The next day brought no visitor to the parsonage and no invitation to Rosings. Something was beyond wrong. I needed to talk to Darcy, but how? It wasn’t like I could just walk over and ask to see him: that would be the height of impropriety. On the other hand, maybe if I did something like that, the story would finally reset itself. I debated with myself endlessly. Both Charlotte and Maria commented on my unusually dull mood. I was trying as hard as I could to maintain Lizzy’s upbeat demeanor, but it wasn’t until Mr. Collins mentioned at dinner that he had seen Mr. Darcy walking in the woods near Rosings that morning that I formed a plan of action.

I rose especially early. Elizabeth was an early morning person. She loved to take walks before most of the rest of the polite world was up out of their beds, and I was lucky enough to have acquired her body clock, so it wasn’t too hard to be up and out of the parsonage before almost anyone else was awake.

The air was cool and soft. I tromped toward a stand of trees to one side of the park, I figured there wasn’t anyone around to comment on my unlady-like gait so I let myself just enjoy being by myself outdoors. There weren’t many opportunities for a Regency Miss to be truly alone.

I walked around the grove a few times without success. I eventually headed down toward the little pond I’d discovered on an earlier walk. It was a bit farther out, but I had nothing to do but walk.

By the time I’d made a circuit of the pond the sun was significantly higher in the sky and had begun to burn off the last remnants of the pearly grey fog. I trudged back toward the stand of trees. Stray hairs were starting to stick to the back of my neck and I’m sure my face was turning an unbecoming shade of bright red.

I saw him half a second before he saw me. He was standing under a tree holding his hat in his hands as he absent-mindedly turned it over and over. I stopped short in confusion, just a few feet from him. He looked different. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but something was different about the way he was standing. Something different and familiar at the same time.

He turned and looked at me. A quick moment of confusion passed over his face, as if he couldn’t quite place me—at which my heart plummeted to my feet.

“Miss Bennet, is it?” He said offering me a half-hearted bow. It was really not much more than a dip of his head.

“Mr. Darcy,” I replied, my flush of mortification at being so easily dismissed heating my cheeks. “I did not expect to meet with anyone else this early.”

“Is it early? The sun seems high enough.” He turned his face up toward the sky and the bright sunlight glinted off his dark hair.

Something was desperately wrong. In fact,
everything
was wrong. The way he was standing, the way he was speaking, the fact that he thought it wasn’t early—any decent Regency gentleman would have been surprised to see a woman exerting herself before breakfast.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

“Mr. Darcy, is something the matter? Are you not feeling quite yourself?”

Mr. Darcy laughed. It was a weird sound, somewhere between desperate and resigned. “No, I can most definitely say that I'm not feeling quite myself.”

I recognized that tone of voice. I’d used it myself previously.

It wasn’t possible. Was it?

“I am sorry to hear that,” I said carefully, watching his expression intently. “I have felt like that myself sometimes. As if I have woken up in someone else’s body or that I could not quite wake myself from a dream.”

Mr. Darcy visibly started, he stared at me, narrowed eyes raking over my face, searching for something.

“Is it a dream, then?” he asked. “This whole thing? Can I still wake up?”

The world was tilting on its axis. The ground under me felt unstable and I’m sure if I looked up at the sky I would see it swinging in drunken circles above me.

“Mr. Darcy,” I took a tentative step forward on legs that seemed no longer able to fully support me, stumbling a bit before catching myself. “Are you, in fact, not Mr. Darcy at all?”

He puffed out a frustrated breath, although his hazel eyes held a light. “No, I’m not your Mr. Darcy at all. Not that I can get anyone to believe me.”

“Did you get in through the book?” I asked hoarsely. I needed something to hold onto before the earth, or my knees, completely failed me. I made it the next few steps to the nearest tree and leaned gratefully against its trunk. I pressed my gloved hands against the bark, hoping I could somehow ground myself.

He looked confused for a moment. “The book? Oh, you must mean
Pride and Prejudice
, that’s where we are, right? God, as if I haven't had enough of that in the last few days.”

I nearly passed out at his casual mention of the title of the book. I’d never said it out loud before while actually
in
the novel. I wondered if he would somehow spontaneously combust or something now that there’d been an open acknowledgement of where we were. “I don’t know what you mean, but no there wasn’t a book.”

“How—how did you get in then?”

“I don’t know. I was just sleeping. At least I think I was sleeping. I’m not sure, I think I was—then there I was, watching you play piano and stuck in this Darcy character.” Darcy crossed his arms over his chest and leaned casually against a tree. I’d never seen Darcy look so naturally relaxed, and here was this guy, his world totally upside down and inside out completely at ease. “I’m not really sure what’s going on. I haven’t quite figured out yet how to wake up or get out, or whatever.” He shrugged one shoulder to punctuate this statement.