ELEVEN
Netherfield.
Darcy
Darcy was at the window when he saw her.
He had been there some time already, watching the Netherfield grounds recover from the previous night’s rain.
The lawns were dark with it still, the gravel paths soft and waterlogged, the hedgerows bowed beneath the weight of lingering damp.
The whole estate wore the exhausted look of something that had endured a thorough battering and not yet determined whether it meant to recover from it.
It was movement at the edge of the drive that first drew his attention.
A solitary figure was making her way up from the road, walking with a briskness that suggested she had observed the mud and elected to disregard it entirely.
There was no carriage, no servant attending her, no horse.
Only a young woman with her pelisse drawn close against the cold, striding through the wet autumn morning with steady purpose.
He found himself watching her longer than he intended.
There was something familiar in the way she moved.
Not elegance precisely, though she possessed that as well.
Something more particular than elegance.
A complete absence of self-consciousness.
She crossed the drive as though the distance, the weather, and the state of the ground were merely inconveniences to be endured and already settled in her mind as unworthy of further consideration.
The window glass had fogged slightly with the warmth of the room behind him, blurring the finer details of her face, yet before she had reached halfway up the drive he was almost certain he knew who she was.
He sat with that certainty a moment longer before ringing for Marsh.
His valet did not keep him waiting long. Marsh entered quietly, as he always did, and paused just within the room.
“You rang, sir?”
“There is a guest outside,” said Darcy, without looking away from the window. “Miss Elizabeth Bennet, I think.”
“Yes, sir.”
Darcy was silent a moment. “Did you hear the reason for her visit?”
“I did, sir. Miss Bennet took ill during the night. Miss Elizabeth has walked over from Longbourn to attend her.”
Darcy’s expression altered very slightly.
He had almost forgotten Miss Bennet was in the house at all.
She had arrived the previous afternoon whilst Bingley and Hurst were absent at the officers’ dinner.
Darcy himself had declined the invitation without apology and without regret.
He had no wish to be conveyed into a crowded dining room and displayed before a table full of curious strangers.
Netherfield, with only the Bingley sisters for company, had seemed the considerably lesser trial.
Then Jane Bennet had arrived, pale and rain-soaked after travelling through dreadful weather, and the household had briefly ceased revolving around Caroline Bingley’s complaints long enough to carry her upstairs. Since then the matter had passed largely from his mind.
“How unwell is she?” he asked at last.
“The apothecary has been sent for, sir. Mrs. Goddard believes she has taken a severe chill.”
Darcy inclined his head once.
“And Miss Elizabeth?”
Marsh allowed himself the faintest hesitation. “She appears chiefly concerned for her sister, sir.”
Something about the answer made Darcy almost smile, though the expression never fully formed.
“How long does she mean to remain?”
“I could not say, sir. If Miss Bennet is fit to travel once the apothecary has seen her, perhaps only the day. Otherwise, I imagine Miss Elizabeth will stay.”
“Hm.”
Marsh waited, recognising the sound for what it was, not agreement, not dissatisfaction, merely thought continuing elsewhere.
After a moment he said carefully, “Mr. Bingley and the ladies are still at breakfast, sir. If I speak to the cook now, something may yet be sent up whilst it is warm.”
“No.”
Marsh hesitated. He had evidently decided, having been summoned already, to attempt the matter once more.
“Sir, you have eaten very little these past several days.”
“That will be all, Marsh,” Darcy said, the words leaving little room for further argument.
There was a brief pause. Then Marsh inclined his head. “Very well, sir.”
He withdrew without another word.
Darcy watched the door close behind him, aware that his valet’s persistence upon the subject of meals had increased noticeably these past months.
Marsh employed subtlety where he could, firmness where he thought he might risk it, and silence where he knew better.
Darcy tolerated all three because the concern beneath them was genuine, and because there were very few people left whose concern he trusted.
Turning back toward the window, he found his attention returning at once to the place where Elizabeth Bennet had disappeared from view.
He remained there longer than any reasonable purpose required.
Before Marsh entered, he had already determined not to leave his rooms that morning.
He had no appetite for company, no desire to submit himself to Caroline Bingley’s careful attentions or Bingley’s relentless cheerfulness.
He was weary of rooms falling silent when he entered them.
Weary of the brightness people adopted in his presence, as though determined by force of politeness to conceal their discomfort at the sight of him.
All these were perfectly valid reasons.
They were not, he admitted to himself, the only reasons.
Now, he did not particularly wish to be in the same room as Elizabeth Bennet.
The assembly had been more than a week ago. He had said what he said, coldly and deliberately, and at the time he had fully intended the slight. He had come to Hertfordshire to silence Bingley’s endless concern, not to cultivate the acquaintance of every lively young woman in the county.
Yet the look she had given him afterward had remained with him in a manner he found deeply inconvenient.
He had attempted, with all the discipline he ordinarily brought to unwelcome thoughts, to dismiss it entirely. Instead, it returned to him at odd moments, in the quiet of the library, in the sleepless interval before morning, in pauses where his mind ought to have been occupied elsewhere.
Steady eyes. Fine eyes . Not wounded, though she had every right to be wounded.
Not timid, not embarrassed, not pleading for him to reconsider his opinion.
She had looked at him with the composed self-possession of a woman who had been insulted and had instantly resolved the offender would derive no satisfaction from knowing it had hurt her.
It had hurt her nonetheless.
And, increasingly to his irritation, the recollection unsettled him.
He turned from the window at last, though he did not move far.
There had been something in her expression he could not comfortably account for.
A directness that was neither challenge nor softness, but something more difficult than either.
He had spent years observing people whilst permitting them to observe very little in return.
Most looked away from him eventually. Out of discomfort. Out of pity. Out of uncertainty.
Very few people had ever met his gaze so steadily.
Clara had.
The thought came suddenly and without mercy, as thoughts of Clara always did. For a moment he allowed it to remain.
Clara had looked at him from the beginning with that same impossible steadiness, as though she saw him perfectly clearly and had already decided she would not retreat from what she found there.
He had loved her for it almost immediately.
Loved her for a hundred other things besides.
Then he had married her, placed her beside him in a carriage on a summer road in Yorkshire, and watched the world tear itself apart around them.
And now here he was.
At Netherfield. In Hertfordshire. Watching a woman he had insulted walk alone through mud and cold to nurse her sister, and discovering, against all reason, that he could not stop thinking about her eyes.
Displeased by the direction of his thoughts, Darcy reached for the book beside him.
He resolved not to leave his room that day.
* * *
“You are still here?”
The observation escaped Darcy before discretion could prevent it.
Every eye in the room turned toward him.
Elizabeth Bennet sat nearest the fire, one hand extended toward the warmth, her posture composed though weariness lingered about her eyes.
She looked at him directly, and for one brief instant Darcy had the uncomfortable impression that she knew perfectly well he had not intended the words to be spoken aloud.
Bingley recovered first. He generally did.
“Darcy.” He rose at once, his countenance brightening with unaffected pleasure. “Come in, come in.”
Bingley had already visited Darcy twice that day under various transparent pretences, each time bringing news of the household as though reporting to a man confined by illness. Most of it Darcy had already heard from Marsh.
“Miss Bennet is worse this evening,” Bingley continued, more for Darcy’s benefit than anyone else’s. “Mr. Jones says she ought not to be moved for several days at least, not until the fever breaks.”
“And Jane wished particularly for her sister,” said Caroline from the sofa. “So naturally I insisted Miss Eliza remain at Netherfield.”
Elizabeth inclined her head. “Miss Bingley has shown us every kindness.”
“You were going to the library, I suppose,” said Caroline, turning toward Darcy with the softened expression she reserved for him alone. “Do remain with us instead. The library can spare you for one evening.”
“You have scarcely sat with us since we arrived,” said Bingley. “Come, Darcy. Give us this one evening.”