THIRTY-TWO
Netherfield
Elizabeth
“Mr. Bingley. Mr. Darcy.” Mrs. Bennet’s announcement from the doorway caused Elizabeth to rise before she had consciously resolved to do so.
She had not heard a carriage approach. Nor had she heard horses upon the drive. The embroidery which had occupied her moments before lay abandoned upon a wooden stool as she turned toward the door.
Then the gentlemen entered.
Her eyes settled first upon Mr. Bingley and then upon Mr. Darcy.
He was walking. No stick. No support.
Elizabeth froze, something bright and startling swelling suddenly within her chest.
She had seen him only four days before. His steps had improved then, certainly, yet the walking stick had still remained.
Standing now without leaning upon any support whatsoever, he appeared considerably taller than she had properly understood.
His face was fuller too. Proper nourishment had plainly done much for both his body and spirits.
“Miss Elizabeth,” he said, inclining his head in acknowledgement.
“Mr. Darcy,” she managed. Then, because nothing more coherent presented itself immediately, she simply looked at him and marvelled privately at how much handsomer he was.
A smile crossed his face as though he had somehow read the thought. Elizabeth immediately lowered her eyes just as Jane entered the drawing room from the hall to greet Mr. Bingley.
“You appear very well,” Elizabeth said at last, turning back toward him.
“I am considerably better than when you last saw me.” He lifted both hands briefly and swayed faintly from one side to the other. “As you perceive.”
He took the chair beside her while Bingley soon settled himself across the room near Jane.
Mrs. Bennet declared Darcy’s recovery the most remarkable thing she had ever witnessed and continued upon the subject at considerable length.
While she spoke, Mr. Bennet emerged from his study to greet the gentlemen, and Mary, who had been in the music room with Lydia and Kitty, soon joined the party as well.
The drawing room settled in little time into its usual animated disorder, conversation wandering easily from one subject to another.
When Mrs. Bennet expressed surprise that the gentlemen had come without horse or carriage, Darcy replied with quiet amusement that a man newly restored to the use of his legs ought to make proper use of them whenever possible.
Lydia immediately wished to know what Mr. Darcy enjoyed most now that he could walk again without support.
“Silence,” Mr. Bennet answered before Darcy could speak. “The ability to remove oneself from unwanted conversation at will must surely rank very high among its advantages.”
The entire drawing room dissolved into laughter. Even Darcy made no attempt to suppress his own.
It was Darcy who, after some twenty minutes of general discourse, turned the conversation toward matters of greater consequence.
“I received word from my cousin yesterday,” he said to the room generally. “Regarding Wickham.”
The room fell immediately still. Even the humblest inhabitants of Hertfordshire had heard before Christmas that Wickham was a wanted man.
“He was found dead in Liverpool three days ago,” Darcy said.
“What!” Mrs. Bennet exclaimed, with more drama than Elizabeth would have anticipated.
Elizabeth did not realise her own mouth had fallen open until she turned again toward Darcy, whose expression suggested he intended to continue.
“Apparently, he was attempting to board a merchant vessel bound for the Americas. He had altered his appearance considerably and travelled under a false name.”
“Good heavens,” Jane said softly.
“He did not board the vessel.” Darcy paused briefly. “Men to whom he owed money, and who had been searching for him rather longer than the militia, found him first.”
Silence settled over the room then, every eye turning uncertainly from one face to another.
“So, they just killed him?” Kitty asked, her brow furrowing with a disgruntled, utterly bewildered look.
“He tried to escape,” Bingley from beside Jane. “He entered into a brawl with one of them, and it... it ended poorly.”
The silence was thick with something unspoken — half relief that the man was gone, half unease at the sordid violence of his end.
“I may never confront him now,” Darcy said at last, “but I take some consolation in considering it a form of justice. For me, the matter is closed.”
Elizabeth watched him carefully as he spoke.
The cold, controlled anger which had long appeared whenever Wickham’s name was mentioned remained present still.
She suspected it always would. Yet, the bleakness which had once accompanied it was gone.
He spoke the name, recounted the circumstances plainly, and his countenance remained, if not wholly at peace, then certainly nearer to it than she had seen before.
“Mary is right,” Lydia declared, shaking her head at nobody in particular. “There are indeed wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
Elizabeth wished she might laugh. She felt no remorse whatsoever for Wickham’s death.
So far as she was concerned, providence had merely administered justice where the law might well have failed to do so.
Her father had already explained that neither her own account nor Colonel Fitzwilliam’s enquiries in Harrogate would likely have proved sufficient for prosecution.
A magistrate would scarcely credit a woman of easy virtue, whose stained reputation ruined her standing as a witness.
Furthermore, Elizabeth’s own hearsay account would be completely discounted, given her obvious partiality toward Darcy.
Wickham had fled from guilt and from the numerous debts and offences he had accumulated in Hertfordshire.
Otherwise, he might very well have escaped entirely.
Mary lowered her eyes beneath the attention Lydia’s remark had drawn toward her.
“I did say so,” she observed quietly.
It had taken Lydia rather longer than the others to accept that Wickham was genuinely wicked.
The process had accelerated considerably in late December when Mrs. King discovered correspondence between her niece and Wickham, proposing an elopement arranged with the same easy charm which had rendered him so persuasive in Meryton.
Then had come accounts of three other young ladies in Hertfordshire whose families had similarly intercepted his designs.
After that came the creditors, gentlemen of various stations who had lent him money upon the strength of his pleasing manners and officer’s commission and had received nothing in return.
Lydia had absorbed each revelation with mounting indignation and by the new year condemned him with a thoroughness that nearly surpassed Elizabeth herself.
“A man fleeing his sins only to be overtaken by them at last,” Mr. Bennet remarked dryly. “I am thankful Meryton was rid of him before greater harm was done.”
The conversation soon resumed the easy movement of a Longbourn morning. Mr. Collins and Charlotte’s January wedding was briefly discussed after Elizabeth mentioned a recent letter from the new Mrs. Collins.
After some time, Darcy turned again toward Elizabeth.
“Now that I walk tolerably well,” he declared with a faint smile, “I find myself capable of managing a turn about a garden without excessive difficulty.” He paused briefly.
“The grounds at Longbourn appear remarkably well kept. I wonder, Miss Elizabeth, whether you might be persuaded to show me more of them. I confess I have never properly seen the extent of the grounds before.”
Elizabeth looked at him.
“I should be very happy to,” she said.
Jane and Bingley immediately offered to join the walk. Neither Elizabeth nor Darcy objected.
* * *
Longbourn’s garden was not at its finest. The flowerbeds lay bare, the hedgerows stripped, the paths firm and faintly frosted beneath their feet. It was a cold, clear morning, the sort which made the air sharp in the lungs and cast a pale, colourless light across the grounds.
Darcy walked beside her.
Not behind her. Not at a distance requiring a chair between them. Beside her upon the path, matching her pace, his breath visible in the cold air.
Elizabeth found herself obliged to direct her attention deliberately toward something other than the simple fact of it.
They walked in silence for a time, the sort of silence which had become, over four months of conversations, visits, and shared excursions, merely the natural manner in which they occupied the same space.
Then Darcy stopped.
The frozen ground crunched faintly beneath his boots. Elizabeth halted beside him, her breath misting in the sharp winter air. She looked up and noted at once the way his hands rested entirely loose at his sides.
He turned toward her. The pale February light fell across the strong lines of his face, but his expression was the most unguarded she had ever seen it.
It was not the careful, fleeting almost-smile she had catalogued so diligently during her stay at Netherfield.
Nor was it the bleak exhaustion of November, when the crushing weight of Wickham’s malice and Lady Catherine’s cruelty had nearly broken him.
Neither was it the defensive pride which had first distinguished him at the Meryton assembly.
It was simply himself.
Standing there in the fading chill of her father’s garden, his hands relaxed at his sides, his face entirely open to her.
“Miss Elizabeth,” he said, his breath clouding faintly between them, “I find I must say something, and I would ask you to hear me fully before you answer.”
Elizabeth met his gaze steadily, the absolute finality of the moment settling quietly over her.
“Of course.”
He looked at her directly in the manner she had long since come to recognise as meaning he intended to speak with complete honesty and to conceal nothing.