Chapter 20 #2
He must have felt it. She was certain of it. His head shifted slightly, enough to prove he knew where she sat, but his eyes remained upon the page before him. It was a small thing. Too small to wound anyone sensible.
Elizabeth felt it keenly.
Miss Bingley, perhaps weary of finding no reward at the desk, came toward her with sudden animation. “Miss Eliza, shall we take a turn about the room? Sitting so long after dinner is very dull, and one must have a little movement.”
Elizabeth had no desire to walk. Her legs were perfectly content where they were, and her pride had taken quite enough exercise for one evening. But refusal would look petulant, and Miss Bingley’s manner, though not warm, was not openly unkind.
“If you wish it,” Elizabeth said, setting the book aside.
They walked the length of the room together, Miss Bingley speaking of the benefit of movement after meals and the tiresomeness of country evenings when there was neither a proper concert nor a tolerable number for cards.
Elizabeth answered as required, but her attention betrayed her.
At the second turn, she allowed herself one more glance toward the desk.
Surely he would look up now.
Surely there might be one moment—one flicker of understanding, one shared amusement at Miss Bingley’s performance, one sign that the last two days had not been entirely erased by her mother’s folly.
Darcy’s pen moved steadily across the page.
He did not look up.
The disappointment was so sharp that Elizabeth almost missed Miss Bingley’s next remark.
She answered without knowing what she said.
Her throat had begun to tighten, and the room seemed suddenly too warm, too bright, too full of people who could see nothing and everything at once.
She would not cry there. She would not. Not before Miss Bingley, not before Darcy, not before Jane, whose gentle heart would immediately blame herself.
“I beg your pardon,” Elizabeth said when they reached the end of the room again. “I find I have a headache. I believe I shall retire.”
Jane turned at once. “Lizzy?”
“It is nothing,” Elizabeth said quickly, forcing a smile. “Only a little fatigue. Pray remain where you are. You are comfortable, and Mr. Bingley has gone to such effort to arrange you by the fire that it would be a pity to defeat him so soon.”
Jane was already reaching for the arms of her chair. “No. I shall come with you.”
“Jane, truly—”
“I am tired as well,” Jane said, with more firmness than her weak voice suggested. “And I should like to go up.”
Mr. Bingley stood immediately. “Shall I call Mrs. Nicholls? Or the maid? Miss Bennet, you must not exert yourself.”
“You are very kind,” Jane said, “but I assure you, I shall do very well with Lizzy’s arm.”
Elizabeth wanted to protest. Jane had wished so much to come down; she had been smiling only moments before. But Jane looked at her with quiet understanding, and Elizabeth knew she had not hidden nearly enough from the one person in the room most inclined to see her.
Jane rose to her feet, Bingley at her side. In the small bustle of shawls and concern, Elizabeth kept her eyes away from the desk. She did not know whether Darcy stood. She did not know whether he watched her leave. She did not want to know.
Jane leaned upon her as they moved into the hall. They had scarcely gone three steps before Miss Bingley’s voice followed them, bright and careless through the half-open door.
“I hope there is not to be another one ill. At this rate we shall be invaded by every Bennet in Hertfordshire and never have the house to ourselves again.”
Elizabeth’s steps faltered.
Jane’s hand tightened around her arm.
For a moment neither sister spoke. Susie, who had been waiting for them outside the door, looked down in embarrassment at the candle she carried.
From inside the drawing room came no reply that Elizabeth could distinguish. Perhaps there had been silence. Perhaps someone had reproved Miss Bingley. Perhaps Darcy had looked up then.
It did not matter.
Elizabeth helped Jane up the stairs, every step taken with careful attention to her sister’s weakness because such care was easier than feeling anything else. At Jane’s door, Jane paused.
“Lizzy,” she whispered.
Elizabeth shook her head. “Let me see you settled first.”
They entered Jane’s room, and Susie put her candlestick down on the bedside table. Between them they eased Jane back to bed, adjusted the pillows, and wrapped the shawl more closely about her shoulders. Jane kept watching Elizabeth with that soft, troubled look that made concealment impossible.
“I should not have gone down,” Jane said.
“Nonsense. You wished for a change, and it did you good.”
“It did not do you good.”
Elizabeth busied herself with the coverlet. “I have only a headache.”
“Lizzy.”
That single word nearly undid her.
Elizabeth bent and kissed Jane’s forehead. “Rest. I shall be in my room if you need me. Susie will stay with you until your maid returns, and then I shall look in again before I sleep.”
Jane caught her hand. “Do not think about Miss Bingley. She speaks thoughtlessly.”
“I am not thinking about Miss Bingley.”
Jane’s eyes filled with more understanding than Elizabeth could bear.
She withdrew gently before her composure failed, murmured some instruction to Susie, and crossed to her own chamber. The moment the door closed behind her, the tears she had been holding back spilled over.
She pressed both hands to her mouth, furious with herself for every one of them.
It was foolish to cry over a gentleman who had never offered more than civility, foolish to grieve a hope she had not been willing to name, foolish to feel cast off when she had never been claimed.
Yet the tears came all the same, hot and silent and mortifying.
She sank into the chair beside the dressing table, bowed her head, and let them fall.
Her mother had not meant to hurt her.
Darcy had not promised anything.
Miss Bingley’s words should not matter.
None of that made the ache less real.
By the time Susie slipped in some minutes later, Elizabeth had wiped her cheeks and straightened in the chair, but Mrs. Thompson’s face softened at once.
“Oh, miss.”
Elizabeth tried to smile. It trembled and failed.
Susie closed the door quietly behind her. “Shall I fetch anything?”
“No.” Elizabeth drew a breath that did little good. “Only stay a moment.”
Susie came to her side without another word.
Elizabeth looked toward the window, where the glass reflected candlelight instead of the dark grounds beyond.
Somewhere below, the drawing room conversation would continue.
Darcy would return to his letter, if he had ever left it.
Miss Bingley would walk and praise Georgiana. Mr. Bingley would think of Jane.
And tomorrow, Elizabeth would ask for the carriage.
She could bear one more night beneath Netherfield’s roof.
She did not think she could bear another day of discovering how quickly warmth could turn to distance.
∞∞∞
Darcy did not sleep well.
He had earned the discomfort, which made it no easier to bear.
For much of the night, he lay awake in the dark with the memory of Elizabeth’s face returning again and again, not as it had been in the library, bright with wit and warmth, nor across the dinner table, alive with laughter over Miss Bingley’s unknowingly absurd praise of the mysterious discoverer of Roman treasure.
No.
What would not leave him was the look she had worn the previous evening when she stood beside Jane in the drawing room and searched, with visible uncertainty, for some place to belong.
He had seen her hesitation.
He had felt her eyes upon him more than once.
Not boldly. Elizabeth was too proud for that.
But she had looked to him, he knew it, as if expecting the small spark of shared understanding that had begun to grow between them.
A glance over Miss Bingley’s maneuvering.
A silent smile over some absurdity. Some assurance that the ease of the last few days had not been imagined.
And he had denied her all of it.
He had kept his eyes upon his letter like a coward.
The word stung because it was true. He had told himself he was acting with prudence, that after the revelation of his own heart he required distance, thought, restraint.
Mrs. Bennet’s visit had only sharpened what he already knew: connection with Elizabeth would draw him into a family noisy, exposed, and imprudent in nearly every particular.
More than that, it would draw him away from the course he had laid out for Pemberley, from the marriage of fortune he had long considered inevitable, from the sacrifice he had believed himself prepared to make.
So he had retreated.
He had retreated, and Elizabeth had suffered for it.
Her headache had been no headache. Darcy had known that the moment she spoke.
Her face had gone pale, her voice too steady, her eyes too bright.
Jane had known as well; even Bingley, in his innocent concern, had looked uneasy as the sisters left the room.
Then Miss Bingley’s voice had followed them into the hall with that careless remark about another Bennet invasion, and Darcy, who had already inflicted enough injury by silence, had done nothing swift enough to prevent the words from reaching them.
Bingley had rebuked Miss Bingley after the door closed, but it was too late.
Now morning had come, and with it no relief.
Darcy dressed before Bates arrived and then dismissed him with unnecessary brevity after the man had finished.
He did not go to the library. He did not walk outside, though the air beyond the window looked crisp and clear after so much damp.
He remained in his room until the hour for breakfast like a man sheltering from a danger he had created himself.
He did not trust himself to meet Elizabeth alone.
Worse, he did not trust that she would wish to meet him at all.