Have you found yourself longing for a Pride and Prejudice and Gone with the Wind mash-up, now that the latter is in the public domain?
Well, prepare yourself for what I have to say.
My upcoming new release, Love is Here and Now Gone, is not that.
Then what’s with the blog post title may be your next question?
Actually, it has to do with an interesting connection between Mr. Darcy, in Love is Here and Now Gone, and Mr. Rhett Butler himself.
Readers of Love is Here and Now Gone will quickly spot the familiar terrain: emotional restraint and longing concealed by pride.
I’ve said before that my literary first loves are Mr. Darcy and Rhett Butler. What unites them, in my mind, is not their charm or their social position—it is their tendency to love fiercely, and to protect themselves even more fiercely in the face of rejection.
In Gone With the Wind, Rhett is remembered for walking away—uttering those classic words, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
But what about how long he stayed? From the beginning, he loved Scarlett with a passion she never returned in equal measure. And yet, instead of pleading or posturing, he protected himself—through distance, humor, bravado. Like Darcy in Love is Here and Now Gone, he masked vulnerability with control. He tried to win her love without ever fully lowering his guard. Not because he loved less—but because he feared the cost of laying one’s heart and soul bare and being dismissed anyway.
Darcy, in Love is Here, does not leave. But emotionally? Well, that’s something for interested readers to find out. I will say he feels the sting of Elizabeth’s rejection most painfully and in a manner he does not soon forget. His way of dealing with his wounded heart is where I see Rhett’s shadow most clearly.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, is no Scarlett. Her challenges in Love is Here and Now Gone are nowhere near as dire. However, she is surely tested. Her strength comes with its own price: one she willingly pays. She will stand still and wait—but for how long?
In Love is Here and Now Gone, familiar paths lead to unexpected turns. I hope the following brief excerpts will surely whet your appetite for the story.
§ The first question posed is: What if Darcy is persuaded to travel to Hertfordshire within days of his failed proposal in Hunsford?
Fitzwilliam, ever the optimist, persisted. “I understand your pride is wounded, Darcy, but elegant young ladies often refuse initial proposals, preferring to keep respectable gentlemen in suspense. You ought not to dismiss a future with Miss Elizabeth altogether so easily as that.”
Darcy regarded his cousin in disbelief. “She left no doubt as to her disdain … founded upon willful misunderstandings and misplaced trust.”
“Then correct the misunderstandings,” Fitzwilliam urged. “Upon our arrival in town, inform Bingley of your error regarding Miss Bennet, go with him to Hertfordshire, and properly court Miss Elizabeth. Surely, if your feelings prompted a proposal of marriage, you must love her. What is a little hardship compared to the reward of winning the woman with whom you meant to spend the rest of your life?”
Darcy’s eyes narrowed in contemplation, a fresh resolve emerging from wounded pride.
Rejecting my hand in marriage is surely the greatest mistake in her life. The least I can do is put myself directly in her path, allowing her to see what she is missing and reconsider her stance.
I shall go to Hertfordshire. I shall court her properly, make her fall hopelessly in love, and then marry her. And this time, I shall guard my heart, ensuring she never again possesses the power to wound me so deeply.
Not ever again.
Darcy straightened in his seat, the tension in his jaw giving way to a look of fixed determination. When next she sees me, she will find not the man she spurned, but the man she will find herself unable to resist.
§ Hmm. That leads nicely to the next question: What if his underlying motive for returning to Hertfordshire is not what it seems?
The road to Hertfordshire stretched ahead, but it was not the distance that gave him pause—it was the memory of another silence, long ago—entirely a different time and place. One having to do with another woman in his life—his mother, the late Lady Anne Darcy.
Even as a boy, Fitzwilliam Darcy had understood that there were two versions of his mother. One belonged to the world: poised, admired, radiant in her silks and pearls. The other existed only within Pemberley’s walls—restless, elusive, fashioned by a restraint that softened on occasion, only to harden again without warning.
Some days she would laugh with abandon and draw him into her joy, holding his hand as though she meant never to let go. Other days, she would vanish into her rooms for hours, sometimes days, and the only sound from within would be the slow turn of pages or the clink of glass upon porcelain.
Darcy had once believed he could temper her moods with affection. He remembered it all too painfully—he was eight, perhaps nine, and she had just returned from London, overwrought and exhausted. When she passed him in the corridor, distracted and silent, he had followed her into the sitting room and placed a hand over hers.
“I missed you, Mother,” young Darcy had whispered.
Her hand had stiffened beneath his. Her smile faltered. “Do not make a scene, Fitzwilliam,” she had said in stark dismissal, pulling her fingers away and retreating behind the cover of a nearby letter.
He had learned much at that moment—how swiftly warmth could cool, how love, even when freely offered, might not be wanted. Her withdrawal had not been cruel, but it had wounded him all the same. From that day on, he never reached first.
He grew up indulged, protected, and deeply instructed—but never again a victim of unguarded emotions. What he felt, he kept hidden. What he longed for, he rarely named. In society, they praised his reserve. At home, they respected it. And in solitude, he fortified it.
It was no accident that he had mastered self-control. It was survival.
And now, close to two decades later, he found himself riding beside Bingley on a quiet road to Hertfordshire, his purpose cloaked in the guise of friendship. But it was not mere friendship that brought him back.
He had proposed to a woman who had refused him with bitter disdain. A woman who had known the full extent of his feelings—and returned none of them. He had overcome his struggle, bared his soul to another, and for it, he had been wounded—dismissed.
§ Surely it must be asked: What if the man Elizabeth rejected is not the man who returns to Hertfordshire?
The next day, there the gentlemen stood in Longbourn’s modest parlor, the older of the two every inch the gentleman he had always been, and yet so altered in manner that Elizabeth scarcely knew what to make of him.
“Miss Elizabeth,” he said, bowing. His greeting was courteous, even warm by his standards, bearing none of the stiffness she recalled so vividly. He spoke to her with the same steady reserve he used for everyone else—nothing more, nothing less.
“Mr. Darcy,” Elizabeth said, careful to match his tone and demeanor.
Just as his voice betrayed nothing—neither did hers.
There was nothing in his expression to suggest he remembered the things she had said—or the things he had said. One would never have known what had happened between the two of them in Kent—the bitterness, the recriminations. She knew and understood he meant to keep it that way.
When, throughout the course of the visit, it was Mr. Darcy’s turn to speak with Mr. Bennet, the younger man made some polite remark about the grounds, which the man of the manor house received with a nod and a hint of amusement. Darcy’s conversation was impeccable, his composure unshaken. There were no missteps, no breaches in conduct.
His performance, were one to consider it such, was masterful—worthy of admiration and unfettered observation.
And observing him is precisely what Elizabeth found herself doing—studying him more closely than she wished to admit. The man who once declared himself above his company now showed no evidence of disdain.
Both listening and engaging, he asked after Kitty and Lydia’s pursuits, even invoking his own sister, Miss Georgiana Darcy’s similar proclivities as a frame of reference, no doubt—sign of his sincerity. He complimented Mary on her playing, though he must have recalled her exhibition at the Netherfield ball well enough to know what he was about. At one point, he had offered to turn the pages for her, eschewing her insistence that she did not wish to impose on him.
This is not the proud man who simultaneously insulted my character and proposed in the same breath.
He seems changed, Elizabeth allowed. And yet, she did not trust the change. She could not.
There was something in his manner—too perfect, too deliberate. A man might feign charm. A man might learn what to say and when to say it. But a man simply could not un-feel what he had once so keenly felt.
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