Prejudice and Rewritten Fate

Rosings Park had always been a monument to excess. Each room seemed to echo Lady Catherine's sense of entitlement, her belief that refinement and authority were her natural inheritance. Yet even amidst the high windows and marble pillars, I could not help but feel the subtle strain that seemed to hum beneath every conversation.

Our visit to Rosings extended beyond its original expectation. Lady Catherine insisted on it with the sort of command that made refusal impossible. She had taken a pronounced interest in me—not for my company, I suspected, but for the weight of my name. As the only daughter of the Baron of Ashworth, and perhaps more significantly, a girl who read Latin and quoted Tacitus without error, I was a curiosity she could not resist examining.

"Your accomplishments are unusual," she remarked one evening over tea, her eyes sharp. "Unfeminine, perhaps, but not without merit."

"I find knowledge to be neither male nor female, only useful," I replied, then sipped calmly from my cup.

Elizabeth, seated nearby, gave me the faintest of smiles.

Lady Catherine had begun to direct her attention to Elizabeth as well, often in the form of thinly veiled critiques disguised as advice.

"Do you play the pianoforte, Miss Bennet?"

"A little, ma'am."

"That is well. But I suppose you have not had the advantage of proper instruction."

Elizabeth bore it all with a composed grace that I admired. But in private, I knew her frustration grew.

"She is impossible!" Elizabeth whispered to me after dinner one night, as we lingered in the drawing room while Lady Catherine attended to a letter. "How you endure her, I cannot comprehend."

"I observe her," I said simply. "And observation is far easier than reverence."

---

Mr. Darcy arrived at Rosings shortly after we did, along with his cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam. The latter was all charm and conversation, a pleasant counterbalance to Darcy's more somber presence.

Elizabeth and Darcy spoke only when prompted, their exchanges formal and few. Whatever tentative understanding they had shared at the library back in Hertfordshire had clearly withered under the weight of Wickham's narrative.

It hurt to see it. Elizabeth had grown cold in his presence. And Darcy—guarded as ever—retreated further behind the curtain of pride that Elizabeth now firmly believed defined him.

"He thinks himself above all of us," she said to me as we walked the garden path behind Rosings. "His silence speaks volumes, and none of it is kind."

"Has he spoken unkindly to you?" I asked.

"Not precisely. But what kindness is there in hauteur? What humility in aloofness?"

I thought of the book he held that afternoon in the library, how his fingers had lingered on the page of Richard II.

"Some hearts are built like towers," I said, "meant to withstand siege. Not all of them seek to look down upon others. Some only know how to defend."

She looked at me askance but said nothing more.

---

It was during our stay at Rosings that I began to see how Elizabeth's admiration for Wickham had become something stronger. She did not speak of him often, but when she did, it was with a softness that betrayed the early signs of attachment.

"He is honest," she once said. "And brave. How cruel that Mr. Darcy should have denied him his rightful living."

"Do you believe Wickham entirely?" I asked, keeping my tone mild.

"He had no reason to lie. And Mr. Darcy has given me no cause to doubt the tale."

But I had my doubts.

Though I had not yet encountered Wickham again since our first meeting in Meryton, I knew his type well. I had met such men in both lifetimes. Their flattery masked their hunger. Their tales always placed themselves as the victim of another's cruelty. And their truth, if it existed at all, was bent always toward advantage.

Yet I remained silent. Not out of fear, but because I understood something essential: Elizabeth had to learn the shape of deception by walking through its shadows herself. No word of mine could hasten that lesson without becoming another point of pride she might resist.

---

Colonel Fitzwilliam, though sociable and easier of temperament, soon became more observant of my presence than I had expected.

"You are unlike most girls your age, Lady Clara," he said once during a stroll.

"I should hope so, or else I've wasted several lifetimes."

He laughed, assuming it a jest.

"Do you think your friend Miss Bennet would ever take kindly to my cousin?"

I met his glance with care. "That would depend greatly on what truths she chooses to believe."

His brow furrowed slightly, but he let it pass.

---

Toward the end of our stay, Darcy began to withdraw even more. He paced the gardens. He avoided dinner when he could. His usual gravity took on a weight that concerned even Lady Catherine, though she voiced it only in small remarks about the duties of heirs and the need for marriage.

Then one morning, I discovered Elizabeth in the drawing room, standing near the window with a letter in hand. Her expression was unreadable.

"You look troubled," I said gently.

"Mr. Darcy has proposed," she said, her voice flat.

For a moment, I could not respond. Of all the paths the story might have taken, I had not expected it to arrive at this milestone so soon.

"And?"

"I refused him."

I stepped closer. "Why?"

"Because he insulted my family, my station, and in the same breath asked for my hand. Because I believe he wronged Wickham. Because he is arrogant, and because..."

"Because you were wounded."

She looked at me then, as if surprised.

"Clara... what do you see in him that I cannot?"

I wanted to say everything. That he admired her wit. That he respected her intelligence. That his silence was not disdain, but self-discipline learned from a thousand expectations. That Wickham had lied. That the truth was more complicated than pride and prejudice.

But I could only say: "Time will tell."

---

That night, I stood beneath the stars on the stone terrace behind Rosings and let the cool air sting my cheeks. The story was shifting. Darcy had spoken his heart too soon, Elizabeth had refused too swiftly, and Wickham's poison still ran deep.

I did not know how it would all resolve. Perhaps differently now. Perhaps not. But one thing was certain:

This was no longer the tale Austen had written. It was ours now—Elizabeth's, Darcy's, and mine.

And every word from this point forward would be hard-earned.

---

As we prepared to return to Hertfordshire, I watched Elizabeth in the carriage. Her posture was composed, but her eyes held a distance I had not seen before.

"You believe I have made a mistake," she said without prompting.

"I believe," I replied, "that your story is far from over."

She turned her gaze to the window, and for the first time, she did not argue.