An End to Estrangement - A Pride and Prejudice Variation

Part 32

A/N - Last chapter! Thank you so much for reading along - I will be back soon with book #2 which picks up where this leaves off.

Have a great weekend! xx

"Marry?" Elizabeth choked out when nobody had spoken for a long moment. "What do you mean?"

"He was just sharing with me his excitement about the wedding," Darcy said. This was not strictly true. Having scarcely listened to a word Collins had said to him, he could not accurately surmise what he had been talking about, but this seemed as logical a conclusion to draw as any, and certainly, from the shade of deep pink that tinged Elizabeth's cheeks it seemed a fair guess.

"Lizzy?" Jane Bennet eyed her sister warily. "What does this mean?"

"Nothing," Elizabeth stammered, her eyes meeting Darcy's in confusion and hurt before darting away again. "I haven't - we haven't - I'm not sure what you mean, Mr Darcy. I assure you that you are quite mistaken. Excuse me."

She turned, poised to flee, and Darcy, throwing all pretence of politeness to the wind, hurried to keep pace with her. They were in sight of their friends, still, but far enough away that they might speak and not be overheard. They might speak honestly, without pretence, at last.

"Then you are not engaged?" he asked, his voice low and urgent, demanding an answer and hopeful that it might be true. "You will not marry Mr Collins?"

"He has not asked me!" Elizabeth shot back. "And if he did...I do not believe I would accept. We barely know one another and have even less in common." She seemed to grow in confidence as she spoke, daring, at last, to meet Darcy's gaze and not look away.

"Regardless, my business is my own and nothing to do with you." Her voice dropped to a low whisper. "Something you have made abundantly clear since your arrival in Hertfordshire."

"I did not realise you expected me to care, still, after all these years." Darcy's tone was cutting but he found, now that he was giving voice to the hurt he had nursed during their long separation that he could not make it less so. Elizabeth Bennet had hurt him, persuaded him to care when he had once thought all notions of love nought but a fairy-tale. When he had dared to open his heart to her, she had crushed it and then fled happily home to Hertfordshire where doubtless she and all her sisters had enjoyed a merry laugh over his folly. "I assure you, in that you are to be disappointed. I do not care for you at all."

Elizabeth recoiled as if his words had been a blow, and the instant he said them he regretted them, but it was too late. They were spoken, now, and could not be taken back.

"Dinner!"

Sir William Lucas made the announcement and all too soon his guests shuffled themselves into appropriate pairings to make the short journey to the dining hall.

Silently, seeing no alternative, Darcy offered Elizabeth his arm and she took it without looking at him. His heart thundered in his chest as they followed the line of guests into dinner, and he sought for some way to undo the damage his words had caused. Elizabeth was unwilling to afford him a single opportunity, however, for she only looked at him once, examining his face as if she might be able to trace some shadow of the man she had once known, or thought she'd known, in the man he had become.

"I ought not to have spoken so flippantly," he murmured, low enough that she and she alone might hear him. Neither of them looked at one another, but he thought he could tell, from the way her breath caught, that she was listening. "It shall not happen again. Let us pretend it never did. None of it. We might be strangers. We are strangers."

He wasn't sure who he most needed to convince, but when she looked at him, her face was blank, devoid of all emotion, every spark of recognition gone.

"Very well, Mr Darcy," she said at last, as they crossed the threshold into the dining room. Her voice was flat, lacking the music he had once craned to hear, the melody that danced through his memories. He dipped his head low enough to hear her and immediately wished he hadn't, the coldness of her words chilling him to his core.

"We are strangers."

A/N - Again, thanks so much for reading! I have a bunch of comments to catch up on - and will come back here to begin posting book #2 soon!