Oh, I understand you completely. I tend to comment on stories I like best but have something what I think is imperfect. It's always a compliment.

It's a good point about Lizzy's reputation of course. It's just when I'm writing it I'm always torn between what I know and what would Darcy feel, and Laura has exactly the same problem with Lizzy. Very often we feel that doing what’s proper isn’t the right thing to do. I don't think he realises just now that it might be a problem. Mostly because it's all very fresh to him, and apart of all his insecurities he's in heaven. He isn’t yet in a certain place, he’s going there, and the destination is foremost in his mind. Even if he tells himself he’d be a good friend, and I believe he would be, he still hopes he can win her love. I don't think also that he might feel he's a threat to her reputation, since he himself would propose at once if she only wanted to accept him. It limits her choices of course, but he cannot seriously bring himself to think of any other choices for her.

I think that the additional factor here is that the story is very detailed. Every chapter is one day, or even only a part of a day. It seems like a lot has happened, because we describe almost everything that happens. But in fact it hasn’t been even two weeks since they met, and much shorter since they started the lessons. We're soon getting to a point in the story where he would propose and she'd most likely accept.

He is so insecure because there was no Lady Catherine's confrontation with Lizzy. He knows that Lizzy likes him, trusts him, and wants him to be her friend. He just doesn't know if she loves him, or whether she herself knows it at this point. He went to Scotland in the first place because he thought she could never love him. Now, he doesn't really have any plan, he just lives the moments he is granted. Actually I think it would be easier for him if that was he who went to Netherfield to look for her. If he had a plan he would stick to. If he could see if the plan works. But here the whole situation was created for him without his input. He doesn’t feel he has any control over it. Also, he’s neither on his nor her ground. He’s living at his friend’s place, it makes things more difficult for him, sometimes even annoying, esp. in moments when he desperately needs privacy to rethink things and Brougham asks him questions he doesn’t want to answer, Lizzy isn’t at her place either. Actually, even though Darcy was never fond of Mrs. Bennet, he at least knew his enemy. He knew that this woman would keep at a distance from him. But here his relationship with Arabella doesn’t look any better, and moreover she has the one thing Mrs. Bennet didn’t display. She’s all curious about Darcy and he doesn’t take it lightly. So generally he feels very much alienated there and those moments with Lizzy he can steal are crucial. It’s a bit like he lived in a dream world that is different from reality. In the world Lizzy is almost his, and I think he feels more and more like this about her, in the other, real world Brougham reminds him that he has nothing, and Arabella is a discouraging factor in his calling on Lizzy. The only place he feels good at is where he’s out with her.

On one hand he knows of course that Brougham is right, on the other he has too much to lose. Brougham's advices aren't really helpful, because Brougham makes his opinions on very little evidence. Darcy knows that and that makes him discard them. If Brougham was more careful and show more trust in Darcy's own judgement Darcy probably would give him more credit in return. But Brougham was wrong in his assumption as to what Darcy was thinking at this point, so Darcy discarded also his other opinions (not that Darcy was really sincere in this conversation or wanted to share). Here is also the rivalry between the guys. Each of them wants to be the wiser, but in this one thing Darcy isn't going to act hastily only to best his friend, and at this point it looks from Darcy’s POV just as Brougham wanted to push him without giving him the time Darcy thinks is needed. If she was going to accept him it isn’t so important for Darcy whether that would be a week sooner or later. It’s all his life that is at stake. Time doesn’t matter. But he doesn’t want to screw it.

Darcy is writing letters to Georgiana, however, we don’t include them in the story. This story is very long even without them, but also, it’s partly because of the detailness of this story. It would take at least a week between the letters, and that would make them very outdated in reference to what would happen in the meantime.

So you also stay up at night!

Thank you very much for your comments. It’s always good to know how our story is read. S&S was our first story, and written in a very unorthodox way. We didn’t have any control over some of the characters, what also limited our control over ours. Perhaps in some places it makes the story more real, because we had to deal with situations we wouldn’t create for Lizzy and Darcy otherwise. That’s also what prompted us to create the riding lessons at all. It was so difficult to bring Lizzy and Darcy together even for a short private conversation that we started to understand how vexing any attempt at courtship must have been for the Regency people. However, normally one could count on Mrs. Bennet, who’d do anything to push Lizzy with Darcy outside so that he wouldn’t be in Bingley’s way. Here we didn’t have the comfort.

Sylwia