EIGHTEEN
Longbourn
Elizabeth
For the next two days, Elizabeth spent each morning at Oakham Mount.
She had arrived at the decision on the night of Georgiana's visit.
Upon reflection, she could not deny that she had left Darcy very little opportunity to speak for himself.
Nor was it difficult to suppose that he might find calling at Longbourn awkward after their last exchange.
If he did not know how to come to her, she would meet him halfway.
It was a small concession, and she made it without ceremony, merely resolving as she put out her candle that the mount would serve the purpose well enough.
He was not there on the first morning.
She was not any better satisfied on the second. She waited far into the morning, longer than was sensible, before finally walking back down the path.
On the Wednesday morning she went again. She waited as long as the cold permitted before starting down and turning toward home.
She came in from her walk later than usual barely paying attention to anything, and therefore did not notice the extra horse tied at the stable.
She pushed open the door to the drawing room, hoping to find some warmth, and stopped.
Mr Darcy was sitting across from her father in the chair beside the fire. He rose the moment she entered, looked at her, inclined his head, and settled back into conversation with her father as though her arrival were the most natural thing in the world.
Mr Bennet looked up at his daughter with a gleam of satisfaction across his countenance.
"Lizzy," he said. "Mr Darcy came very early and has been keeping me excellent company this past hour and a half. I have nearly forgiven him for not taking me up on the chess."
"I believe the offer remains open," Darcy said, his eyes fixed on Elizabeth.
Elizabeth stood rooted to the spot where she had stopped, not knowing quite what to do or feel. She had gone out hoping to encounter him, and here he was. His gaze did not leave her, as though he feared she might disappear if he looked away for even a moment.
Mr Bennet rose with unhurried ease. "Lizzy, Mr Darcy has sought my permission to speak with you on a matter of some importance.
I shall leave you to it." He collected his book from the side table.
"I shall leave the door open in the interest of propriety and remain within earshot in the interest of your mother's peace of mind.
" He paused at the door. "Lizzy, do try not to frighten the man off entirely.
He is the finest conversationalist I have encountered in some years and I should like to keep him. "
He was gone before Elizabeth could form a reply.
She stood where she was for a moment. Then she resumed walking, took the chair her father had vacated, folded her hands in her lap and looked at Darcy.
He remained seated. He looked, she thought, like a man who had prepared something and was now uncertain whether any of it was adequate.
"Miss Elizabeth." He looked directly at her. "How do you do?"
"Considerably better, I thank you," she said.
"Georgiana told me of her visit to you." His eyes brightened when Elizabeth's expression shifted in alarm at the notion that Georgiana had reported the visit to her brother.
"She cannot dissemble when questioned directly.
When I enquired of Mrs Annesley in her presence where they had gone so long with the carriage, she confessed the whole of it. "
"You will forgive her, sir," Elizabeth said. "She was only caring for her brother and her friend."
He inclined his head in agreement, though his gaze fell briefly to the floor.
"I owe you a great deal more than I said on the mount," he said after a moment.
"You do," she agreed.
He leaned forward slightly, his elbows resting on his knees, and looked at her in the direct manner she had come to understand was simply how he attended to things he considered important.
"I noticed your hearing at the Meryton assembly," he said.
"You read my lips from across the room and repeated my words back to me, and I recognised it immediately because my mother managed in precisely the same manner in her last years.
Lady Anne lost her hearing gradually, over the course of my childhood.
By the time Georgiana was born it was gone entirely.
" He paused. "I watched my mother manage it for years.
The positioning, the attention, the particular care with which she read a room before she entered it.
She did it with such composure that most people never knew until in her last years.
I knew because I was her son and I had learned to watch her. "
Elizabeth followed him but said nothing.
"When I saw you do the same," he continued, "I could not look away. Not from curiosity, but because it was familiar. In a way I had not expected and did not know how to account for." He met her gaze. "And then there was Georgiana."
He told her everything Georgiana had told her, though in considerably greater detail.
Ramsgate. Wickham. Mrs Younge. A letter from a ship's captain of Darcy's acquaintance — a man Wickham had approached about passage to Gretna Green — who, recognising Georgiana's name and suspecting something was amiss, had written to Darcy at once.
The letter that had sent him racing from London.
His sister's face when he arrived. The words Wickham had planted in her mind that a year of Darcy's best efforts had failed to dislodge.
He told her of the year that followed. The silence.
The fear that Georgiana was retreating somewhere he could not reach her.
And the gradual, desperate understanding that what she required was not reassurance but proof.
Living proof. Proof that the future Wickham had described was not the only future available to her.
He told her of the promise made beside a sickbed to his mother. The words shaped with great care because there had been no other way left between them. And how he had felt he was failing to keep the promise.
"And then I came to Hertfordshire," he said, "and I met you.
And you were everything I had been looking for and considerably more than I had any right to expect.
" He looked at her steadily. "I should have told you from the beginning.
I know that. I told myself there would be a right moment, then that I needed to be certain first, then that I would tell you soon, and the time passed and I never did.
" He stopped for a while. "Just as I had finally resolved to do so was when I saw you with Wickham.
Georgiana has told me she confided in you the full truth of that matter. "
"She did," Elizabeth said.
"I will not excuse what followed," he said. "There is no excuse. I was wrong and I was proud and I permitted my prejudice against Wickham to accuse you of something of which you were entirely innocent."
"I did not know the man at all," Elizabeth said. "Beyond that single encounter in the street."
Darcy swallowed. "Georgiana told me as much. And you had every right to say what you said on the mount."
Elizabeth looked at the fire for a moment.
"You said it became something else," she said at last. "On the mount, you said your reason became something else."
"Yes."
"Tell me what you meant."
He did not move, yet the air between them altered at once. When he spoke, his voice was quieter than it had been.
"I meant that somewhere between Lucas Lodge and Oakham Mount and your father's garden, I ceased thinking about Georgiana entirely.
" His gaze settled directly on her eyes.
"I thought about you. What you said and what you did not say, and the way you laughed when you were not managing it, and the particular look you gave me when I was being ridiculous, which was rather more often than I would care to admit. "
Something shifted in his expression.
"I meant that I looked forward to seeing you in a way that had nothing to do with my sister and everything to do with the fact that you are the most remarkable person I have ever known, and I could not imagine not knowing you.
" His eyes fell for a moment before returning to hers. "That is what I meant."
The drawing room was very quiet. The fire shifted in the grate.
Elizabeth looked at him for a long moment. She thought of the occasion on which he had defended her without being asked. Every conversation. Every morning on the mount.
She thought of Georgiana two days ago, steady and honest and entirely herself, asking only that Elizabeth hear him out.
She had heard him out. But one thing remained.
"Why did you tell Miss Bingley of my condition?" she asked.
Darcy shook his head before she had finished the sentence. "I never told Miss Bingley anything of the sort. I have taxed her with it, and she denies having had any such conversation with you."
Elizabeth's mouth fell open slightly.
"I know it to be a falsehood," he continued, "because Miss Bingley will do whatever she considers necessary to injure me with any lady she perceives as a rival.
I have been aware for some time that she has fancied herself a candidate for my regard, but I did not take her for one so desperate as this. "
He looked away, as if unable to meet her eyes.
"As to how she came to know the particulars — I have given it considerable thought since you told me what she said, and I can arrive at only one conclusion.
She must have overheard my conversation with my cousin Fitzwilliam.
He was urging me, in my private parlour, to reconsider my ill-founded opinion of you, and I told him everything of how we had met.
Miss Bingley has a habit of listening at doors and making use of what she discovers.
It is the only way she could have obtained such precise intelligence. "