Mr Darcy’s Valentine: A Short and Sweet Pride and Prejudice Variation by Moll Heather

Author:Moll, Heather
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781735186665
Publisher: Excessively Diverted Press
Published: 2023-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

On Saturday morning, Elizabeth pled a headache to stay in her own chamber. Her head had ached last night while she finished the evening at Mr Darcy’s home, but that was not what made her desirous of being alone today. Mortification—and weariness from being up all night thinking on that mortification—kept her from company now. Mr Bingley had called at the earliest possible hour, but she could not bear to see him and be reminded of his friend.

How humiliating to learn how vain, and how blind, I have been.

Regret and compassion mingled with her feelings of shame. Wickham being so very bad was almost past belief, but the words had come from Georgiana herself. What a thing for her to have to relate, and to a stranger. She was a considerate girl; but more surprising was that Mr Darcy had returned not just to console his sister, but to confess the entire history his sister had just related, and all for the sake of a woman who had acted weakly, vainly, and nonsensically.

He was still proud, still above being pleased, but he was neither selfish nor cruel. I threw unjust accusations against him, and he still wanted to preserve me from Wickham. Even in Hertfordshire, Mr Darcy had hinted to her not to trust Wickham’s report of him. Elizabeth felt humiliated anew every time she thought of it.

Her feelings toward the man who wrote that valentine were at times widely different. When she read the lines and remembered what Mr Darcy said, she was still full of indignation; but when she considered how unjustly she had condemned and upbraided him, her anger was turned against herself, and his disappointed feelings became the object of her sympathy.

But I cannot approve of him, nor for a moment repent my refusal. In her own behaviour, there was a constant source of vexation and regret, and in the unhappy defects of her family, a subject of chagrin. But none of it could make her regret refusing the man who insulted her family and acted so coldly toward anyone he deemed inferior.

These silent meditations could not last all day, and if Mr Bingley was still here, she ought to greet him. She went down the stairs and, to her surprise, found her aunt with her two eldest children standing on the landing.

“What are you—”

The two girls hushed her, although they were bouncing on their toes and one of them asked her mother if it had been long enough. Mrs Gardiner nodded and sent them in. They were eight and six, and burst into the room to ask Jane if she could now read to them.

The door closed behind them, and Elizabeth looked at her aunt to explain.

“I felt that my presence was a hindrance to conversation,” she said, smiling, “so I took my time to do a household errand and then slowly walked up to the day nursery to ask the girls if they wanted to read with their cousin Jane.”

“A hindrance?” Elizabeth asked, laughing.

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