Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart Read online

  What was I supposed to say? What could I say?

  “All right.”

  The fact that Neil would want me within ten feet of him after what had happened with James amazed me. And frightened me a little too. He wasn’t the vengeful type—not in the least. But I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d succumbed to the temptation to tip the punt over—and me into the river.

  “Watch your step.” He held out his free hand while the other gripped the pole that held the boat steady.

  I scrambled to my feet and slung my purse over my shoulder. Then I reached out and took his hand.

  A bolt of pure sensation shot up my arm and stunned me.

  “Claire? It’s okay. I’ve got you.” His gaze locked with mine, holding me as firmly as his hand held mine.

  I forced myself to breathe. To move my feet and step into the boat. To release his hand as I sank onto one of the wooden planks that served as seats.

  Neil? I’d felt a zing with Neil? In the eighteen months I’d known him, that had never happened before. A pleasant warmth, maybe. A sense of comfort and connection. But not this kind of energy or awareness. There had never been a zing.

  “I’m fine,” I said, more to reassure myself than him.

  “Good. All right, then. Let’s see if I can get this thing moving.”

  I looked up at him. His hair, backlit by the sun, was edged with gold, and his face was in shadow. His forearms flexed each time he pulled the pole up and then dropped it down again to push us farther down the river. I was mesmerized by them.

  “Why are you even speaking to me?” I managed to ask when I finally tore my eyes away from his arms.

  He hesitated in his movements for the briefest fraction of a second. If I hadn’t been watching him so intently, I would have missed it. I’d always found Neil to be an open book, but I knew at that moment that I’d been wrong to assume there wasn’t more to him than what he revealed to the world. Was it that I had missed the obvious signs, or was it that I hadn’t wanted to know more about what went on in his head? Shame washed over me, because I knew the answer to that question, and it wasn’t a flattering one. I hadn’t consciously been keeping him at arm’s length, but the effect was the same.

  “Claire?” He pulled the pole out of the water, but instead of dropping it again, he turned it horizontally and laid it along the length of the boat. Then he lowered himself to the plank opposite mine. The punt drifted toward the bank, grazed it, and then came to a stop. “We have to talk about what happened this morning.” He looked at me, and I could see the hurt in his eyes. Guilt poured over me. “Do you want to start or should I?” he asked.

  I had known that the moment of reckoning would come, but that didn’t make me dread it any less.

  “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say. Well, I did, but I didn’t want to say it. I wasn’t used to looking like a villainess. I’d always imagined myself a heroine, like Elizabeth Bennet.

  “I understand you’re sorry. What I don’t understand is why you let it happen.”

  I looked up into his eyes and saw that he genuinely meant what he said. “Why are you being so calm about this?” I asked.

  He reached out and took my hand, and there was that zing again. I wanted to snatch my hand back. I didn’t deserve his tenderness, but I needed it more than I was ashamed to receive it.

  He cleared his throat. “You may want to wait to decide how calm I am. Right now I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on.”

  I left my hand in his and stared at the bottom of the punt. “I don’t really know how it happened. One moment I was sitting there, in the Junior Common Room, looking over the list of attendees. And the next thing I knew, James showed up and…”

  I couldn’t believe I was telling him the truth. If ever I was going to lie, now would have been the time. But I couldn’t. Not while Neil was looking at me that way.

  “He’s a good-looking guy, I guess.” Neil’s tone was gruff. “I know I haven’t paid you as much attention as I should have. Maybe you just needed—”

  “It’s not just because you took me for granted.” I shocked myself as much as Neil with those words. “Maybe I was feeling ignored. I don’t know. I guess I swallowed my resentment. But that’s not the reason I developed… feelings for James.”

  “Then why?”

  I hung my head and studied the bottom of the punt. “I don’t know.”

  He paused, and I saw the shadow of pain in his eyes. “I just wish you’d been honest with me. That would have been a lot easier.” He gave a crooked smile. “It would have saved me a lot of money on a plane ticket too.”

  “Why are you here?” I hadn’t really had a chance to ask, since everything had happened so quickly. “You never said anything about coming over. In fact, I wasn’t even sure you were paying attention when I said I was leaving.”

  He scowled now for the first time since I’d gotten in the punt. “After you left, I realized—” He broke off and cleared his throat. “I realized that maybe I haven’t put as much time into our relationship as I should have.”

  “Neil, I’m so sorry.”

  He let go of my hand and rested his forearms on his knees. They were well-muscled from his regular workouts and his weekly pickup basketball game. I’d always taken his strength for granted. He was terrific around the house. He’d replaced the facings on my kitchen cupboards, helped me to retile my bathroom, changed my flat tire when I’d gotten stuck in the rain. But now I looked at his arms and realized that where I really wanted them to be was around me.

  The thought shocked me. Neil and I had a comfortable, easy relationship. Maybe too easy. And suddenly I was feeling zings and having carnal thoughts about his forearms.

  Confusion and shame are a potent cocktail and never do much for a woman’s good sense.

  “I guess it happened because… well, because I suspected that you don’t really need me,” I blurted out.

  He jerked back as if I’d slapped him.

  “Need you? No, I don’t,” he said, anger streaming into his voice for the first time. “Not to take care of me. Not like Missy needs you just to get through the day. To function.” He paused. “But I want you, Claire. I want to be with you. Build a life with you. I want that very much.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not the only one who got taken for granted in this relationship. You can only think about what you should do. For your sister. For your job. Not about what you really want to do.” He took my hand again. “And that’s the question, isn’t it? What do you want, Claire? Do you want this James guy on the strength of a few days of flirtation? Do you want me? Or do you just want to go on hiding behind your sister, pretending that you have no needs of your own? Because someday you’ll wake up and Missy’s kids will be grown. Maybe Missy will be too.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Someday she might not need you anymore, not like she does now. And you’ll be alone.”

  “That’s not fair.” My response was automatic. His words hurt, but only because they had the sting of truth. “Since when is it a crime to be responsible for people you love?”

  He reached up and ran a hand through his hair as he had done earlier that morning, and once again the strands stood on end. “It’s not a crime, Claire, to want the best for the people you love. But it’s not an escape hatch either.”

  “What do you think I’m escaping from?” I flung the question at him out of my own hurt, but it didn’t make his observations any less true or any less painful.

  He shrugged. “I wish I knew. Maybe I could help you get away from whatever it is if I did.”

  The sorrow in his voice was my undoing. “Could we just keep going, please?” I said. “I’m going to be late.” I reached for the pole and nudged him with it. “Maybe we can finish the psychoanalysis later.”

  I couldn’t look at him after I said that. Instead I focused on the thick, green surface of the river. After a long moment, Neil stood up and, taking up his position at the back of the boat, slid the pole once aga
in into the water.

  “Just tell me when we get where you need to be,” he said in a flat, emotionless voice. “Because I have no idea where that is.”

  All I could do was nod and try to keep from falling apart before I could get away. By the time we reached the next landing where he could put me ashore, the silence had grown into a living entity. I scrambled from the punt, relieved to have firm ground beneath my feet again.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked him.

  He frowned and leaned against the pole. “I don’t know. A lot of thinking, I guess.” He lifted the pole and used it to push away from the bank again. “I’ll find you later.”

  “Okay.” What else could I do but agree? “I’ll be back at Christ Church in a couple of hours.”

  He nodded. “I’ll look for you.”

  We both hesitated, gazes locked, each of us desperately trying to understand the other. After a long moment, he sighed and turned his attention to the punt.

  “Good-bye.” With one strong push, he sent the little boat back into the current. “Good-bye.”

  I stood there on the bank and watched him drift into the distance for the second time in one day.

  Neil was right. I had taken him for granted, just as he had me. The vein of weakness in our relationship had been exposed, and I knew, as well as anyone, that a weak spot was always where you would expect something to break. I just hadn’t expected that weak spot with Neil to feel as if it were smack-dab in the middle of my heart.

  Harriet was in her front garden when I approached the cottage. She sat on a little stool near a lush bank of flowers, twisting off random bits and then reaching lower to pluck a weed or two from the ground below. She looked like a mother hen tending her brood of chicks. In fact, as I approached, I thought I heard her clucking to the plants.

  “Good morning, Harriet.” I spoke softly so that I wouldn’t startle her.

  She turned to me, her smile bright. “Claire? You’re early today.”

  I stepped through the gate. “I know it’s not our usual time—”

  “Never too early to greet a friend, dear.” She plucked one final dead flower from a large bush and levered herself up off the stool.

  I stepped forward and reached out a hand to help her, but she waved me away.

  “No, no. I can manage.” The stool was a collapsible, three-legged affair. She shut it and laid it across the wheelbarrow that stood next to her. “Now, then, tell me everything. What’s brought you here?” She gave me a long, measuring look. “Shouldn’t you be in Eleanor’s seminar?”

  “Yes. But something’s happened.”

  “Well, yes, of course. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Would a cup of tea help?”

  I was learning, even in my brief time in England, that a cup of tea almost always helped. I didn’t know whether it was the caffeine, the warmth, or the simple fact of having someone else do something kind, but a soothing cup of tea in Harriet Dalrymple’s cottage was fast becoming my lifeline to sanity.

  “Yes, it would help. Thank you.” Although I realized, at that moment, that simply being in Harriet’s presence helped more than anything. It had been many years since anyone had mothered me. And though Harriet may have been a relative stranger and not entirely clear in her mind, she was the closest thing to a mother that I had experienced in a very long time.

  “Well, come along then.” She nodded to the wheelbarrow. “If you don’t mind putting that in the shed over there”—she waved in the general direction of the side of the cottage—“I’ll put the kettle on.”

  “Okay. Sure.” I reached over and grabbed the handles of the wheelbarrow and started off in the direction she had indicated.

  “Oh, and I’ve good news,” Harriet called over her shoulder as she moved toward the cottage ’s blue front door.

  “What’s that?” I twisted around to look at her.

  “I found more of the manuscript,” she said, smiling. “Never thought to look in the garden shed until this morning, but there it was.”

  I looked down at the wheelbarrow in front of me and couldn’t help but grin.

  Of course. A little Jane Austen mixed among the trowels and spades and potting soil. Where else would Harriet have kept it?

  “I don’t know if these bits go together,” Harriet said when she handed me the pages this time. “They seem to be different sections.” She smiled. “They are two of the best bits, though.”

  I’d thought what I’d already read were pretty good bits myself, so I reached for the pages eagerly. Armed with the manuscript and a cup of tea on the table in front of me, I put aside the turmoil of the day and focused on the elegant, if old-fashioned, handwriting on the page.

  First Impressions

  Chapter Seventeen

  Elizabeth was walking about the park the next morning, delighted to have half an hour to herself, when she passed a large yew tree and followed an abrupt turn in the path, only to find Mr. Darcy striding toward her. He had two large dogs with him for company and a ferocious scowl upon his face.

  “Miss Bennet.” He stopped and motioned for the dogs to come to heel. “Good morning to you.” Since the night of that infamous kiss, he had avoided her assiduously.

  “Mr. Darcy.” Her heart beat furiously beneath her pelisse, and she wished she’d not removed her bonnet. It dangled down her back, secured only by the ribbons still tied and now pressing against her throat.

  Silence fell between them until he cleared his throat and spoke once more. “Miss de Bourgh is in good health today, I trust?”

  “Yes. She is with her mother. My presence was not required.” She kept her tone civil, even though her thoughts were not. “Is there anything I may do for you, sir, since I am at my leisure?”

  Heat rose to Elizabeth’s cheeks when she realized that he might interpret her remark in quite a different manner than she had intended it. “I did not mean—” She could not prevent the flush that rose to her cheek.

  “Your countenance reveals far more than you would wish,” he said in matter-of-fact tones, “although I find that it is your eyes, for the most part, which give voice to your thoughts.”

  “My eyes?” Elizabeth knew she sounded like the veriest slowtop, but she stumbled to find the right words. Or any words, for that matter.

  “They are quite expressive.” He moved closer, as did the dogs, and Elizabeth suppressed the urge to spin upon her heel and flee.

  “I’m sure I don’t mean to express… That is, I mean to say, I have no knowledge of—” She broke off and could only look at him weakly.

  Unexpectedly, Mr. Darcy lifted his arm and offered it to her. “Walk with me, Miss Bennet. It appears we have a great deal to discuss.”

  “Very well.” She laid tentative fingers upon his sleeve and turned to walk with him from the way she’d come.

  “You have used your charms and inducements to great effect,” he said as they strolled at a leisurely pace. The dogs stayed obediently to heel, and Elizabeth wondered whether everyone in Mr. Darcy’s life did the same. “Great effect, indeed.”

  “I’m sorry?” Surely she had not heard him correctly. “I have no idea what you mean.”

  Mr. Darcy turned his head to look at her, although the height of his shirt points and the restrictive knot of his cravat made it rather a difficult exercise.

  “It was your design, was it not, to entice me into this folly? Fitzwilliam claims you are innocent of such a scheme, but I do not agree.”

  Fitzwilliam? She collected that he meant the colonel. “I know of no scheme, sir, of which I am a part.”

  Fanciful wishes, perhaps. Even the imprudence of allowing herself to think at all of someone such as Mr. Darcy of Pemberley. But a scheme?

  “Do you deny that you have set your cap for me?”

  If Elizabeth had possessed any remnants of pride, his words surely destroyed them. Her hand tightened on his arm. He looked down at the point where her fingers rested upon his coat sleeve.

  “I have done
no such thing, sir.”

  “Do you mean to say you have succeeded in snaring me without conscious effort?”

  “Snared you, sir?”

  “Only the poor marry for love, Miss Bennet.” His eyes were fixed on Rosings. “My considerations are quite different.”

  “Yes, obviously. You are certainly above such human considerations as love.”

  He turned to look at her, his dark gaze fixed on her face. “You mock me, then, Miss Bennet?”

  “No, sir, I do not.”

  He released a heavy sigh and laid his free hand over her fingers. They were drawing closer to the house. Only a few moments were left before they would reach the terrace.

  “You would have me say it plainly, then?” He shook his head. “From the first day we met, you gained my notice. I knew you were beneath me in birth, fortune, and situation. Even had your father lived—”

  Elizabeth gasped, and his hand pressed her fingers more tightly. “You need not speak, Mr. Darcy, of such matters.” She pulled her hand away. “In fact, I insist that you do not.”

  By this time, they had indeed reached the steps to the terrace. He drew her to a stop. She looked up at him to find an unexpected emotion in his eyes. If she hadn’t been acquainted with Mr. Darcy’s character, she might have labeled it as fear. As it was, she thought it might be strong apprehension.

  “I am in no position to offer you marriage, Miss Bennet.”

  A door opened at the other end of the terrace, and she heard footsteps. Someone was coming.

  “I cannot ask for your hand. My duty to my family… Well, you are well enough acquainted with my aunt to know what is expected of me.”

  “What reply am I to make to such a statement?” Elizabeth felt the first stirrings of anger. “You tell me that you have condescended enough to care for me, though I am vastly inferior in every way. You hint of strong affection. Of love. Yet you are ashamed of your feelings.”

  “Is it not natural that I should be?”

  Pain filled his gaze, and for a moment Elizabeth felt pity for him. He loved her. The realization tightened her chest and made her wish for a strong arm to support her. But his was the only arm close enough to lean on, and she could not ask for it.