Revelations an adaption of Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 1

Darcy carefully closes the door behind him, he has been humiliated enough, he is not going to add to his shame by slamming the door with the anger he feels. For anger is the feeling foremost on his mind, as he legs it through the little garden of the parsonage, across the road, into the park.

Doesn't he have every right to be angry? Hasn't he been made a total fool of by a very young lady who is very much beneath him? She has been playing with his feelings for months, flirting shamelessly, whipping up the flame of his ardour with her witty remarks to his friends and his cousin, and her veiled allusions to himself.

'This is one of my favourite haunts, Mr Darcy', her very words, weren't they an invitation to meet her in the park, one he took her up on like she wanted him to, nearly sick with love and anticipation each time? Didn't he meet her there as often as he dared, keeping himself from going every day with utmost discipline, afraid of her forming expectations of him before he was ready to commit himself, his reason still so much at discord with his feelings?

How dared she encourage him if she didn't want him, despised him, actually?

At the pace he's keeping, he will be at the house in minutes, but he's not ready to face anyone right now, let alone his aunt. He takes a left turn, into the very park where Miss Elizabeth Bennet invited him to walk with her, as cunningly as any city-bred lady.

Except that is not like her at all.

A tiny part of his enraged mind reminds him that she is not cunning, quite the opposite, she is frank and outspoken, the main reason he couldn't forget her, however much he tried. He remembers his devastating realisation almost five months ago now, that the woman who finally made him feel the exultation of love and the fever of passion was not a highly schooled, beautiful and accomplished noble lady from his own sophisticated class, but a country girl of very minor nobility, nearly ten years his junior, not even really beautiful but merely very pretty, and without formal education, just naturally gifted with supreme intelligence and an irresistible authentic charm. Within a few meetings, this audacious slip of a girl made his entire female acquaintance seem pretentious and overbearing. Yet a connection to her and her family would make his friends, family and acquaintance look at him and talk of him with pity and veiled scorn.

And what would he brave the ridicule of his friends and family for? Of course he wants an heir, children in general, and someone to finally share his baser needs with. But that was not what made the thought of Miss Elizabeth Bennet slowly take over his waking hours, to finally start invading his dreams.

It was her mind. Her breathtaking intelligence, her sharp wit, her loving attachment to her sister. His deepest wish has ever been to have an equal partner in life, someone he can really talk to, someone who will understand everything he says, who can relate to his innermost thoughts and feelings, whom he can discuss his ideas and opinions with. And the only woman he has met, in ten years of adulthood, to ever stir his feelings like that turned out to be decidedly beneath him.

He knew from the first there would not be another like her, but still his sense of right objected to a permanent association with her. What about his obligations to his name, to his family, could he put them aside to indulge in the selfish pursuit of finally finding personal happiness? Could he lower himself to be with the woman of his dreams? It took him months to realise that the answer was a decided 'yes', and this very evening he worked up his courage to throw away family-honour and decency and embrace for the first time the woman who he was certain loved him already, had been encouraging him steadily whenever chance threw them together.

For despite his conviction of her superior mind, still he underestimated her, judged her as if she was one of those other women, out to get his approval, his attention. He seriously thought her encouraging towards him, aiming for his addresses.