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Trapped for a week at Ms. de Bourgh's cold estate while she visits Charlotte, Lizzie keeps colliding with the last person she wants to see: Fitzwilliam Darcy, who turns out to be de Bourgh's nephew and keeps 'happening' onto her path. He is stiff, watchful, and — she's sure — as arrogant as ever, while his aunt makes it witheringly clear that Darcy is promised to his own kind. At a frigid family dinner Lizzie refuses to shrink, and something in Darcy cracks. Then, on an evening she's begged out of an outing with a headache, he appears at the cottage door, undone, and it all pours out — an admiration he's fought for months, delivered as a backhanded confession that everything sensible about her family and station said no, and yet here he is. Lizzie refuses him. When he asks why, she stops being polite: he broke Jane's heart on a guess (he doesn't deny it — he defends it), he ruined George Wickham (his face turns to ice), and from the first moment they met his arrogance made him the last man in the world she could ever be talked into wanting. He leaves white and formal, the wall slamming back up. The next morning he presses a thick sealed letter into her hands — read this, then think what you like of me — and walks away. Alone with the unopened envelope, Lizzie's cold certainty about exactly who Darcy is flickers, for the first time, into doubt.
第 1 頁
Caption: Ms. de Bourgh's estate. Day four. A wide establishing shot of Ms. de Bourgh's imposing stone-and-glass country estate under a grey sky, a tidy little cottage off to one side of the cold manicured grounds. Inside the cottage, Lizzie stands at the window, arms crossed, looking out toward the manor. Lizzie (thinking): 'Of all the houses in the world, he's staying in that one.'
第 2 頁
In the warm cottage kitchen, Charlotte hands Lizzie a mug. Lizzie: 'You could've warned me Darcy would be here.' Charlotte, shrugging, sipping: 'His aunt IS Ms. de Bourgh. He visits every spring.' Lizzie, incredulous: 'His AUNT. Of course she is.' Charlotte, dry and pointed: 'He's been by the cottage three times this week. He never used to.'
第 3 頁
Mr. Collins ushers a stiff Darcy into the cottage, fawning. Collins: 'Mr. Darcy! Ms. de Bourgh's own nephew, in our little home!' Darcy, a curt nod, eyes flicking to Lizzie: 'Collins.' Lizzie, cool and guarded from an armchair: 'Mr. Darcy.' Darcy, off-balance: 'Your family. They're well?' Lizzie, a barb under it: 'My sister Jane's in the city now. You remember Jane.' Darcy goes still as it lands, while Collins beams obliviously between them: '...I do.'