Chapter 5
The posting inn at Northampton was near bursting with travellers.
Carriages jammed the yard, horses stood steaming in their traces, and inside the common room every table was taken by men stamping the cold from their boots.
Darcy pushed through the throng with Richard close behind, neither man speaking until they had secured a plate of mutton and found space enough at the end of a long bench.
The meat was tough, the ale sour, the room loud. Darcy cut at his portion with rigid determination, though he scarcely tasted a bite. Around them, voices rose in complaint—roads blocked, coaches overturned, more snow coming.
Richard wiped the steam from his mug with the edge of his sleeve. “Cheerful company,” he said dryly. “If I were not a soldier, I’d think the French had invaded and cut off every post road in England.”
Darcy gave no answer.
His cousin studied him, then took another swallow of ale. “I’ll not let your silence fool me, cousin. It is not only the weather that sets you in such a humour.”
Darcy set down his knife. “The weather is reason enough.”
“Perhaps. But you have worn the same expression since before we left Derbyshire, and the snow had not yet begun to fall then.”
Darcy looked away, toward the frost-blurred panes. “You mistake me.”
“I do not think so. Georgiana has grown distant from you—yes. That would sour any man. But it does not explain the shadow in your eyes, or the way you sit as if the world had already sentenced you.”
Darcy’s grip tightened on his mug. “Leave it.”
Richard’s brows rose. “Ah. Then I have struck nearer the mark.” He tipped the mug toward him. “Come, Darcy. We have been shut in a coach together for three days. You cannot expect me to ignore the obvious.”
“Which is?”
Richard pushed his plate away and leaned back, watching his cousin with a soldier’s patience. “You are worse company than the storm itself, Darcy. Even your silences carry more weight than snowdrifts.”
Darcy’s knife scraped against his plate. “We have both endured worse.”
“Yes, in Spain. And with men who had cause enough for gloom—shot through, or hungry, or certain to be so by nightfall. You, however, are merely riding south for Christmas. What excuse have you?”
Darcy looked toward the window, unwilling to answer.
“You wear a face like a mourner, yet no one is dead. Georgiana is well, if cool. Your estates prosper. The world has not ended, though you look determined to prove it otherwise.”
Darcy’s hand tightened on his mug. “You know nothing of it.”
“Then tell me.”
Darcy said nothing, and the fire hissed into the pause.
Richard studied him, then spoke more shrewdly. “This has the look of shame about it. You bear yourself like a man condemned, but it is not your sister who condemns you. Who, then?”
Darcy’s head snapped round, eyes narrowing, but he held his tongue.
“Ah.” Richard sat forward. “So, there is someone. Not Georgiana, not Pemberley—someone else. A woman?”
Darcy’s jaw tightened.
Richard’s brows rose. “There is only one, then. Hunsford.”
Darcy rose sharply, pushing his chair back. “Enough.”
Richard did not move. “It is her. Elizabeth Bennet.”
Darcy turned away, every line of his body taut. He did not answer.
Richard lowered his voice. “I had wondered. You never spoke, but your eyes gave you away often enough. What has happened? Did she refuse you?”
Darcy’s breath caught. At last, he said, in a tone edged with iron, “You presume too much.”
Richard leaned on the table. “Then I am right.”
Darcy’s hands curled into fists at his sides.
“You know what befell her family. All England knows it. Wickham’s name in every mouth, and hers by consequence.
I could not protect her from it. I cannot change it.
And so—” His voice broke off, the words seeming torn from him.
“—so, whatever I once thought possible is lost. Entirely lost.”
Richard stilled, the jest gone from him at last. “Wickham again.”
Darcy’s hand curled into a fist upon the table.
“It was inevitable, once the gossip began. The world delights in scandal, and none were inclined to judge with fairness. Her family bears the shame, and she with them, though she deserves it least of all. What chance has a noble and innocent woman, when one foolish girl’s folly is enough to condemn them all?
If I had once entertained a hope—” He broke off, bitterness hardening every word. “—it is extinguished.”
Richard regarded him a long moment, then said quietly, “Because you are unwilling to overlook a bit of gossip?”
His fist banged the table. “It is not that simple!”
“Indeed?” Richard crossed his arms. “Enlighten me.”
Darcy sighed, rubbing his forehead. “You are right that her family’s…
position… gives me pause. No one could be insensible to the complications that would arise, and even less myself, who knows…
well, far more of Wickham than I would like.
It is too late to restore Miss Lydia, and the world knows it. ”
Richard frowned. “Do you know what became of her?”
Darcy nodded. “Wickham abandoned her in London. And someone—it is not clear who—found an establishment for her in Dunstable, just twenty miles of good road from Longbourn. Near enough to comfort her family, far enough to let her memory fade from the town’s gossip.”
Richard shook his head. “Goodness. I wonder who that thoughtful soul was who saw her situated there.”
Darcy scowled. “It does not matter. If I were to pursue Elizabeth Bennet, even now, it would be she who suffered for it, not I. You know very well what would be said of her. She would be ridiculed, humiliated at every turn. I could not…” He heaved a sigh. “I could never ask that of her.”
“I think,” Richard said as he picked up his fork again, “that what truly holds you back is your reluctance to accept her gratitude. Does she know of…”
“No,” Darcy cut him off sharply. “No one does, and I will have it that way.”
“Gratitude does not necessarily preclude affection,” Richard pointed out. “In fact, often they are found together.”
“You know nothing of it,” Darcy insisted. “I said there is nothing there, and so it remains.”
Richard drained his ale mug and set it down with a clatter. “Very well. At least you have admitted true source of your gloom. You think her lost to you because of a sister’s folly,”
“Because of my own,” Darcy growled.
Richard’s brow creased in confusion. “I sense another story there, but one you will not tell me. Very well then, perhaps she is lost. But you mean to bury yourself for it? To let Wickham’s vice and a girl’s recklessness govern the rest of your life?”
“It is decided already.”
“By you, or by them?”
Darcy shoved back his bench, unwilling to be pressed further. He strode for the door, calling for the horses.
Richard caught up with him in the yard, breath smoking in the cold. “Still bent on pushing through the storm?”
“Yes.” Darcy drew his cloak close, eyes on the harnessed team. “Better the road than this.”
As the ostlers struggled with the traces, Darcy slipped a hand into his pocket.
His fingers brushed the ribbon coiled there—soft still, though frayed at the edge.
A breath caught in his chest. He closed his fist around it until the memory dulled, then thrust it deep again before Richard could glance his way.
“Very well,” Richard said at last, with a soldier’s shrug. “Lead on, then. But I warn you, Darcy—if your gloom grows any heavier, the horses will refuse to pull.”
Darcy climbed into the coach without reply.
Morning laid a pale hush over the inn yard, as if the night had pressed its hand upon everything and left the print behind.
The troughs were rimmed in white, a cart stood half-buried to its axle, and the yard dog, stung by the cold, barked once and thought better of it.
Elizabeth stood at the window and watched a boy struggle to clear a path with a shovel that was plainly too large for him.
He leaned his weight into it with such grim determination that she almost laughed, then checked the impulse; she felt much the same herself.
Mr. Gardiner came in with his greatcoat already buttoned and a drift of snow clinging to the brim of his hat.
“News from the yard is no news at all,” he said, rubbing his hands.
“Northward is poor, and southward no better. But poor is not impassable, and we cannot lodge here forever. If we go slowly, we may yet reach Towcester.”
They went out to the yard, where the coach stood with its traces mounded in white and the horses blowing steam. The ostler shook his head as he offered his arm to Mrs. Gardiner. “Road’s thick as suet, sir. Begging your pardon. The ladies might be better off staying here.”
Mr. Gardiner glanced at his wife, then at Elizabeth. “I think they would mutiny if I turned back,” he announced, and helped his wife inside.
The first mile or two went by with the steady patience of winter travel: jolts that seemed to climb into the bones and take up residence there, a muffled world beyond the glass, the rhythm of hoof and wheel softened by snow.
Hedgerows rose out of the white like ink strokes on paper.
In one field a man trudged thigh-deep with a sack over his shoulder, leaving a wavering path behind him.
At a cottage door a woman shook a hearthrug so energetically that the snow fell from it in a great veil; a child crowed, clapped mittened hands, and promptly tumbled backward into a drift.
Elizabeth smiled and looked away before the mother could see she had witnessed it.
If there was to be indignity, it was kindest for it to pass unremarked.