The Subsequent Proposal by Starnes Joana

Author:Starnes, Joana [Starnes, Joana]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2013-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

‘So, my friend, will you not join me when I call in Gracechurch Street this morning?’

Bingley’s warm entreaty tore through him, hours later, tormenting him in ways his well-meaning friend could scarce imagine.

Had he believed in the Oriental religion of reincarnations, Darcy would have been justified in thinking he must have committed unspeakable crimes in each one of his previous lives, to warrant such relentless agony in this one.

Every form of misery he had endured since April paled in the face of a torture such as this. Elizabeth in Gracechurch Street. Elizabeth no more than three miles from his home. Elizabeth wishing he would call. Elizabeth regretting – if his friend was in the right, Elizabeth perhaps regretting having spurned his addresses in the spring. Elizabeth willing to make his happiness, in every way that he had dreamt of. Elizabeth’s own happiness centred upon him.

Elbows on the desk, Darcy dropped his face in his hands, struggling to stop himself from imagining the perfect bliss that might have been his, this very evening, if Bingley’s suspicions held a grain of truth – and had he not been a promised man.

How many times had he advised some wretched other not to make irreversible decisions on the heels of loss and disappointment? He had thought himself in full command of his reason when he had made an offer to Miss Anne. If anything, it had been an offer sprung from reason and not sentiment – and any sentiment involved had not been of the ardent kind. He had offered for her out of gratitude for her kindness to Georgiana and himself – and out of the candid wish to give her the sort of life and recognition that her excellent nature and elegant mind deserved.

What was he to do now? Break a generous heart that had been already injured by past sorrows? Inflict another wound into a soul that deserved none?

The reverse burned through him with all the searing agony of a branding iron. Keep his word to Anne – marry Anne, when Elizabeth wanted him? Leave Elizabeth to suffer from what she would perceive as a withdrawal of his affections? Make a life with Anne and know, for the rest of his days, that he could have had the best happiness a mortal could be allowed to hope for, had he not been so thoughtless, so full of bitterness, so rash?

A couple of hours had passed since the time when Bingley left him, confused and disappointed by his refusal to join him in Gracechurch Street that day, and every second’s passing had relentlessly slashed through him as he could not fight the heart-rending thoughts of what might have been.

He could not forsake her! Heaven help him, he could not! Even in the harshest hour of her rejection he could not see her suffer – and now, to know that she was perhaps hoping for a renewal of his offer, to choose the path of duty and leave her behind?

Every honourable instinct

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