Swipe Left on Mr. Darcy — Are You Sure?, Page 15
By Suha · Published
Log in to see this page
Page 15 of Are You Sure? is for signed-in readers. Logging in brings you straight back here — and an account is free if you do not have one.
Transcript
Panel 1. Lydia and Kitty both shriek with delight in the kitchen, leaning into each other. Panel 2. Mary sits at the table, headphones around her neck, entirely unmoved. MARY: Wealth is not a virtue. Panel 3. Jane and Lizzie hold on to each other beside the kitchen counter, both laughing, foreheads close. Panel 4. Mrs. Bennet is already halfway out of the room with a phone held low in one hand, mid-broadcast to somebody. MRS. BENNET: You will not believe who called on us today. Panel 5. Mr. Bennet leans in the kitchen doorway, glasses pushed up on his forehead, surveying the wreckage, perfectly dry. MR. BENNET: If any young men call for Mary or Kitty, send them in. MR. BENNET: I am quite at leisure.
Image description
Five panels of aftermath in the kitchen. Lydia and Kitty shriek, Mary is unmoved, Jane and Lizzie hold each other laughing, Mrs. Bennet leaves to broadcast the news, and Mr. Bennet offers to receive any young men who call for Mary or Kitty.
About this chapter
Lizzie comes home from the leafy lane engaged to the one man nobody in that house would believe she could want, and discovers the hardest part is not saying yes: it is being believed. Jane laughs, certain it is a joke, until the whole reordered story comes out in the dark of their bedroom, and asks the one question Lizzie has never let herself answer out loud. The next morning Darcy is at the front door in his charcoal overcoat asking, of all people, for her father. Behind a closed living-room door two men have a conversation Lizzie is not in, while her mother speculates about lawsuits and Mary offers wisdom nobody requested. Then it is her turn, and Mr. Bennet, dry and unbothered for twenty-two chapters, is not dry at all: he wants to know whether his sharpest daughter has sold herself to a rich man she cannot respect. So Lizzie tells him everything, including the part that was never hers to tell, and says the words she has never once said about anybody. Her father takes off his glasses. Downstairs, Mrs. Bennet goes silent for three unprecedented seconds before the house detonates, and the chapter closes where it opened: the same porch steps at golden hour, except she is not walking up them alone.