TWELVE
Longbourn
Elizabeth
Heavy rain arrived shortly after midnight on Friday and continued for the next two days.
By midday the following morning, the lanes were impassable, and the Bennet household had been reduced to its own company.
Elizabeth had formed her initial opinion of Mr. Collins within the first hour of his arrival.
Two days of enforced proximity had done nothing to revise it and a great deal to confirm it.
He had opinions on everything and knowledge of very little, a combination she found particularly exhausting.
He spoke of Lady Catherine with the devotion of a man who had found religion and chosen an unusual deity.
He complimented everything in the house, including the card games.
Knowing her mother would steer him away from Jane and might still encourage his attentions towards her, Elizabeth had braced herself for Mr. Collins's advances, particularly after the way he had lingered during their introduction.
Yet by the end of the second day, it became apparent that Mr. Collins had either thought better of Elizabeth altogether or had been redirected by some external force.
He had attached himself to Mary, praising her reading of Fordyce and extolling her skill upon the pianoforte, which he declared superior to that of the organist at his parish.
Mary received these attentions with such indifference that Elizabeth began to suspect she had no wish to receive them at all.
Elizabeth made several attempts to observe conversations between Mr. Collins and her mother, hoping to overhear some mention of his intentions. All had proved futile. It was Kitty who eventually brought the intelligence she sought.
She appeared in Elizabeth's bedchamber on the afternoon of Mr. Collins's second day at Longbourn, while Elizabeth and Jane were passing the time together, with the breathless energy of someone carrying news she considered of the utmost importance.
"I heard Mr. Collins talking to Mama," she announced, dropping onto the bed beside them. "In the small parlour. He did not know I was in the hall."
"Kitty." Jane raised her brows in gentle warning, suggesting that accuracy and Kitty were not always intimate companions.
"He said," Kitty continued, entirely undeterred, "that Elizabeth is afforded too much liberty. That she speaks too freely and has opinions she expresses without invitation.
Elizabeth stared in shock at her. Then she laughed, a genuine, unguarded laugh that surprised even herself. "He said that?"
"Yes." Kitty paused, watching their faces for effect. "I think when Mama told him that Jane was as good as spoken for by Mr. Bingley, he insisted upon you instead."
Jane tapped Kitty's arm impatiently. "Then how did he come to speak of Lizzy in the manner you first described?"
"Mama told him that Mary was considerably more biddable and that Elizabeth was..." Kitty frowned, trying to recall the exact wording. "Difficult. I believe that was the word."
"Difficult," Elizabeth repeated with considerable satisfaction.
"I thought you should know," Kitty said, rising. "Mary, however, says she could not marry him either."
"Mary said that?" Elizabeth grimaced.
"This morning. To me." Kitty nodded. "She said..." Again, she paused to remember. "She said that a man who speaks so frequently of another woman's virtue has very little of his own to recommend him."
Jane seemed to considered this thoughtfully. "I think that means she does not like him."
"I think it does," Elizabeth agreed.
Kitty soon departed when she realised that, having delivered her news, she was no longer of particular interest to either of her sisters.
Once she had gone, Jane looked at Elizabeth with a small smile. "You look relieved."
"Enormously," Elizabeth said, making no attempt to conceal it.
? ? ?
9-10th November 1811
Netherfield
Darcy
The rain that had arrived shortly after midnight on Friday continued through Saturday, giving Darcy far more time indoors than he found useful.
He had been thinking about his visit to Longbourn ever since returning to Netherfield.
He was still thinking about it now, standing at the window of his sitting room and watching the rain sweep across the grounds, with a book lying open upon the desk behind him that he had not touched in over two hours.
He thought about the walk in the gardens.
About the ease with which Elizabeth had walked beside him, free from the careful management she employed in company, as though the afternoon had lowered her guard without her realising it.
He thought about what she had said, that she would not marry a man she did not love or respect, spoken with a certainty that was neither performance nor bravado but merely the conviction of a woman who knew her own mind and expected to be taken seriously.
He thought, too, of what he had said in return, words that had escaped more plainly than he had intended and which she had received without embarrassment and without pretending she had not heard them.
He admired her greatly.
The admission no longer seemed worth avoiding.
Indeed, he had admired her for some time.
If he was honest with himself, it had begun the night of the Meryton assembly, moments after he realised she had read his lips.
Since then he had disguised the feeling beneath concern for Georgiana and convinced himself that every effort to spend time in Elizabeth's company was motivated by his sister's welfare.
That explanation had served its purpose. He was now finished with it.
The previous day had brought a letter from Fitzwilliam.
His cousin intended to come to Hertfordshire as soon as his obligations allowed and investigate the matter of Wickham personally.
Darcy was grateful that Georgiana remained ignorant of it all.
If she suspected that something troubled him, she had not said so.
He attributed that chiefly to the happiness she had found in her friendship with Elizabeth, a friendship which seemed to occupy much of her thoughts these days.
The following morning the rain eased somewhat, though not enough to tempt anyone outdoors. Darcy was spending an hour in the library when Georgiana sought him out.
"You have been distracted for some days," she observed, taking the chair opposite him.
Whatever gratitude Darcy had felt for her apparent reluctance to question him vanished immediately.
"I have had matters to attend to."
"You have been keeping to yourself and staring out of windows," Georgiana replied. "That is not attending to matters. That is worrying about them."
Darcy closed the book before him and offered a smile he hoped might discourage further enquiry.
"And how long have you been this observant?"
"I have always been this observant." She shook her head, making it plain that she recognised the deflection. "You simply do not always notice." She folded her hands in her lap. "Is it Miss Elizabeth?"
Darcy blinked.
Of all the conclusions she might have reached, that had not been one he was expecting.
Elizabeth was not troubling him in the least. Wickham was.
Yet Wickham was not a subject he intended to discuss with Georgiana, and so he found himself answering a different question entirely.
"Partly," he admitted.
Georgiana waited.
"I find that I..." He stopped and looked towards the window before beginning again. "This may sound rather sudden, given that we have been in Hertfordshire barely a month. But I am considering courting her."
The smile that crossed Georgiana's face was warm and not entirely guileless.
"Does it sound sudden to you?" she asked.
Darcy considered the question with care.
"No," he said at last. "It does not."
"Nor to me," she said. "She is remarkable, Fitzwilliam. I think you know that."
"I do."
Silence settled between them for a moment. The fire shifted in the grate. Rain tapped steadily against the windows.
Then Georgiana spoke again.
"Have you told her?"
"That I intend to court her? Not yet. I had thought—"
"Not that."
Darcy looked at her.
Georgiana met his gaze with a directness that had become increasingly familiar over the past week. "Have you told her that you know? About her hearing?"
The humour vanished instantly from Darcy’s expression.
"Because if you have not," Georgiana continued carefully, "and you begin courting her in earnest without telling her, she will eventually discover it.
When she does, she will wonder how long you have known and why you said nothing.
" She tilted her head slightly. "That is not a small thing, Fitzwilliam. To her, it may feel like deception."
Darcy said nothing. The difficulty in speech was that she was right.
She was entirely right, and he had known it long before she voiced it.
"You are wiser than I sometimes give you credit for," he said at last.
Georgiana laughed softly. "You give me a great deal of credit."
"And not always enough."
"Perhaps not." Her smile softened. "I learnt from the best brother."
Darcy's own smile returned despite himself.
"I intend to tell her," he said.
"Soon?"
"When the opportunity presents itself. When it can be done properly." He glanced towards the rain-streaked windows. "I wish to do it correctly."
Georgiana nodded.
She did not press him further. She understood, as she always had, when enough had been said.
They sat together quietly while the rain continued outside, and Darcy found his thoughts returning once more to Elizabeth Bennet, to what he needed to tell her, and to how he might do it.
He told himself the opportunity would present itself soon enough.
He did not yet know that something else would present itself first.