Read Pride and Prescience for Free Online Page A

stiffly.
    Perhaps referring to
Hamlet
had been a bad idea. She searched her mind for another example. “Do you ever make decisions based solely on intuition?”
    “Never.”
    Exasperating man! And yet she knew him to be telling the truth. Even his first marriage proposal to her—as badly worded and poorly tendered as it had been—revealed the extensive deliberation he’d done before allowing his feelings to override material considerations in choosing a wife. Her husband was a man guided by reason. Rational judgment formed the core of his character, whether or not she agreed with all the conclusions to which it led him.
    “I’m only saying that I believe—no, that I acknowledge the
possibility
—that there are elements of this world beyond mankind’s ability to comprehend them. Perhaps the people who created these ‘mysterious articles’ had a better understanding of them than do you or I.”
    “Elizabeth, look at those items again. They are nothingmore than ordinary objects created by ordinary people in futile attempts to control things about their lives that no one can control. That so-called dreamcatcher is a web of twigs with no more ability to prevent bad dreams than a child’s doll; the circlet holds less medicinal value than a good posset. And, far from demonstrating power, the pentagram thing on that beam probably got its owner hanged.” He gestured toward another item. “What is that, resting on the end?”
    She looked at the object, a long wooden staff with a fork at one end. The richly hued, flawless oak was so highly polished that she could almost see her reflection in the wood. She glanced at the display card. “A canceling rod,” she read, then winced. “Used by village cunning men to nullify spells.” She felt foolish speaking the words aloud.
    “It’s a stick.”
    She stared at the rod. Intellectually, she knew Darcy was right about it. She no more believed that stick could ward off spells—or believed in spells, for that matter—than she believed in Father Christmas. Incantations were a far cry from the kind of intuitive perception she struggled to define. Besides, she didn’t want to quarrel with her husband any longer, particularly on a subject so wholly unconnected with their daily lives.
    She cast him a smile. “But you must admit, it’s a really shiny stick.”
    His sober expression lifted and he returned her smile. “That, I will grant you.” The tension had passed. As if to physically close the breach between them, he lifted a hand and reached toward her cheek. He stopped himself before actually touching her face—propriety, as always, restraining sentiment in public. But he completed the caress with his eyes. “I do love you,” he murmured.
    “And I, you.” She took his hand in hers. “Though tell me, husband,” she said, her spirits once more rising to playfulness,“if you don’t believe the slightest bit in magic, how then do you explain love?”
    Despite her teasing tone, he regarded her in all seriousness. “Elizabeth, if it is possible that you fell in love with me, married me, will spend the rest of your life with me, then I believe nearly anything is possible.”
    His hand at her back guided her from the room. “But not magic.”

 
     
Five
     
     
“I think it no sacrifice to join occasionally in evening engagements. Society has claims on us all.”
    Mary Bennet,
Pride and Prejudice,
Chapter 17
     
     
    A t precisely seven o’clock Saturday evening, the Darcys arrived at the home of Lord and Lady Chatfield. The butler led them up a grand staircase to the drawing room, where their hostess greeted them and introduced their fellow guests. Darcy had told Elizabeth to expect a diverse assembly, and she was not disappointed. The company included an elderly botanist and his wife, a physicist, an American archeology professor, a poet, a middle-aged gentleman and his daughter, and the countess’s mother, the Dowager Duchess Beaumont.
    The gentleman, she