Chapter 35: Much Explanation About Ado
The next day, Elizabeth is still pretty shaken by Mr. Darcy's proposal, so she goes out for a walk, mostly hoping to evade Mr. Darcy. He finds her anyway and passes her a letter, asking her to just read it. Then he skedaddles.
Largely out of curiosity, she reads the letter, which was written by Mr. Darcy that morning. He prefaces the letter by saying, don't worry, I'm not going to discuss what happened last night. But I'm an insecure boy and I need you to know that I'm actually not that big a dick, so let me tell you my side of the story on a couple things.
First, your sister: I've seen Mr. Bingley flirt with girls before, but Jane seemed like the first one he was really serious about. But I got nervous once everyone started to suggest they'd be getting married soon, because Jane was friendly and all, but she didn't really seem SUPER into him, and Mr. Bingley's sisters thought the same thing. So I was just trying to protect my friend from an unhappy marriage. But based on what you told me, it kind of sounds like I misjudged her, and that she actually did like him. So I made a good decision, but it was based on bad information. So, uh... that's my bad, I guess. Also since I'm coming clean, I hid the fact that your sister was in London from Mr. Bingley, I'm not proud of that either.
Now for the thing with Mr. Wickham. Yes, in his will, my father set Mr. Wickham up with the parsonage on the estate, because he wanted Mr. Wickham to enter into the church. But literally everybody else was aware that Wickham didn't want to be in the church, and after daddy passed, he asked if he could just take the cash value of his inheritance to go study law. So I paid out the cash like he requested. I'm pretty sure he just spent all the money on partying; he never got the law degree anyway. Then he came back to me a few years later asking if he could have his inheritance after all. I told him no, and he got pissy. Then he tried to elope with my fifteen-year-old sister so that he could take her inheritance instead. So yeah, if I'm pissed at him, it's rightfully so.
Anyway my cousin can confirm all of this if you don't want to take my word for it. And I don't know how to end a letter, so... bye.