Chapter 2
Elizabeth had smiled for nearly two miles before she realised it.
The hills, softened by the cool weather and rains this summer, rolled away in shades of green.
The fields lay in every stage of August abundance.
Here a meadow close-shorn and sweet with hay, there a slope of standing grain turned pale and heavy under the sun, and beyond both a stubble field where the crows had already taken possession.
The air came warm through the carriage window, smelling of hay, dust, and leaves, with a cool breeze where the road dipped near the river.
“Lizzy,” said her aunt, “I have made three remarks to you and have yet to receive a reply. I begin to fear we have left some part of you at Pemberley. Shall we send back for it?”
Elizabeth blushed. “There is nothing to send back for,” she said. “I was only admiring the scenery.”
“Indeed?” said her aunt, looking up innocently. “Then I must congratulate Derbyshire on its sudden improvement in your opinion. Before we came for the tour on Tuesday, if I remember rightly, Pemberley was a house no sensible person need be in any haste to see.”
“I only thought it presumptuous to appear at Mr. Darcy’s home without a proper invitation.”
“Well, we had one today, and it was a very pleasant call,” Aunt Gardiner observed.
“It was indeed, Aunt.”
The two of them had travelled to Pemberley to visit with Miss Darcy and Mrs. Annesley, knowing that Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst would also be in attendance. Elizabeth had prepared herself for that.
She had not prepared herself for Mr. Darcy.
He had been with the gentlemen, including her uncle, at the river. Yet he had left his companions and come up to the house to greet them. He had contrived, somehow, to be most often near her, and Miss Bingley had contrived, with less success, to appear unaffected by it.
“Mr. Darcy was very—”
“Yes. He was.” Mr. Darcy had been amiable and gracious and, even more provokingly, kind.
Elizabeth felt all the injustice of it, for she had already made up her mind that Mr. Darcy was not an amiable man, though she had been forced to admit he was a good one.
She had not wished to visit his home because she was ashamed of how wrong she had been about him, and here was more evidence that she wronged him still.
On Monday, the maid at the inn had assured them that the Darcy family was not at Pemberley for the summer. On Tuesday, Elizabeth had learned the folly of trusting any intelligence that had not been updated within the last quarter hour.
For immediately following their tour of the house, Elizabeth had seen Mr. Darcy as he came up from Pemberley’s stables.
He carried his hat in one hand and his coat over the same arm.
There was dust on his boots, colour in his face, and his hair was charmingly dishevelled.
But what she had been unable to forget was how the fine linen of his shirt, dampened by exertion, did less than it ought to preserve the usual mysteries of a gentleman’s figure.
Elizabeth had found herself wondering whether he always appeared this way after riding, whether his hair was often so ill-behaved, whether his shirt—
“Shall we have a glass of wine with your uncle, Lizzy?” her aunt said gently. “He is sure to have returned from fishing by now.”
Elizabeth turned to Aunt Gardiner and discovered, to her mortification, that she had once more abandoned the conversation without taking formal leave of it. She did not know what was wrong with her—or rather, she was beginning to know but could not yet admit it.
Their private parlour upstairs was light and warm.
Uncle Gardiner was indeed already there, halfway through reading a letter that was likely from his clerk in London.
He looked up at them, his expression that of a harassed but cheerful man who had promised his wife to take time away from his business but had not quite got the knack of it.
“Well, my dears! And how was your visit with Miss Darcy?”
“Very pleasant,” Aunt Gardiner said again.
“Lizzy?”
“It was a very fine visit, Uncle. The Pemberley saloon is a stunning room, and the food was wonderful.”
“I am sure it was. And the company?”
Her aunt sat with her bonnet on her lap and pursed her lips.
“Miss Darcy was wonderful, though rather shy. Miss Bingley was also there,” Elizabeth said. “With her sister.”
“Ah,” said Uncle Gardiner.
“We are all invited again to Pemberley tomorrow for a picnic,” her aunt informed him.
“Are we now?” Her uncle was clearly delighted. “I presume Lizzy is willing?”
Elizabeth nodded.
“Lizzy was there when I accepted. Mr. Darcy was most insistent that we should come.” Aunt Gardiner glanced at Elizabeth and then back at her husband.
“Most particular,” Uncle Gardiner repeated with a small smile. “I shall order the carriage for tomorrow morning when I walk to the post, then. Shall I post your letter to Lydia, Lizzy?”
Why she bothered writing when Lydia was visiting Brighton and would not bother to write her back, Elizabeth did not know. She hoped Lydia was behaving herself. She nodded. “Thank you, Uncle.”
That was all the conversation they were to have for a while. Aunt Gardiner read a book, Uncle Gardiner worked on his letter, and neither said anything more.
Elizabeth took the chair nearest the window, accepted that she was to be observed for the rest of the evening—perhaps the rest of their time in Derbyshire—and gazed down into the inn yard.
There was nothing there but the ostler, a post-chaise, and a very ordinary stretch of road, and yet, by some defect in her imagination, it still managed to lead directly back to Pemberley.
The evening passed more quietly than Elizabeth expected.
Aunt Gardiner spoke of Miss Darcy with warm approbation, Uncle Gardiner contributed several particulars about his time at the river, the weather, and the joys of fishing.
Yet Elizabeth, who had formerly prided herself upon having an answer ready for every subject, found herself unequal even to this simple conversation.
She ate her supper, agreed when agreement was required, and once gave an opinion on the road to Matlock when the subject under discussion had been the merits of Miss Darcy’s interest in Italian airs.
This, naturally, did not escape Aunt Gardiner.
“Tomorrow,” she said at last, “we shall breakfast early, if you have no objection.”
“No, I have no objection,” Elizabeth said.
It was a very simple sentence and ought not to have produced any sensation whatever.
But at once she was back at Pemberley with Miss Darcy shyly anxious to please, Mrs. Annesley kind and sensible, Miss Bingley with her excellent posture and false civility, and Mrs. Hurst, elegant and composed, whose contribution lay chiefly in proving how nearly a lady might resemble the sofa she occupied.
And then there was Mr. Darcy.
Uncle Gardiner, who had been reading a book, looked up with an innocent expression. “I hope you will not find the early hour too difficult, Lizzy.”
They all chuckled at that, for while her uncle rose with the sun each day to see to business matters, Elizabeth awoke not long after.
She was not fooled. Her aunt and uncle were forming certain opinions. Elizabeth could have laughed at open teasing. But affection, quietly observant and gently amused, was a very serious enemy.
At length, pleading fatigue from the day’s excursion, she retired.
As she prepared for sleep with the help of the inn’s maid, she found herself watching the long evening light still soft upon the distant hills.
“You had fine weather for Pemberley today, miss,” said the girl, taking down Elizabeth’s hair.
Elizabeth glanced over. “We were fortunate. It has been a cool summer.”
“It is a grand place, is it not?”
“Very grand.”
The maid smiled. “They say Mr. Darcy has returned now?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “We have seen him, in fact.”
The maid smiled. “My mother shall be glad to hear it. It is a different town when the family is at home.”
“How so?” Her curiosity was unseemly, and yet the maid did not seem to mind.
The girl gathered up Elizabeth’s hair pins as she spoke.
“Even in the years when the harvest is poor, Mr. Darcy makes certain his tenants are cared for and the tradesmen are paid. Half of Lambton would have a rather thin winter this year without Pemberley’s custom.
” She put the pins away. “Will there be anything else, miss?”
“No. Thank you.”
The girl bobbed a curtsy and withdrew, the door closing softly behind her, leaving Elizabeth alone with her thoughts.
She stood where she was for several moments, listening to the ordinary sounds of the inn below—the murmur of voices, a footstep on the stair, the faint chatter of the guests in the common room—in the hope they might dissuade her from her current observations. But they did not.
Elizabeth had been wrong before. She had been partially wrong about Mr. Darcy, completely wrong about Mr. Wickham, and sadly wrong about her own supposedly excellent judgement. It was uncomfortable indeed to discover that one’s powers of discernment might be little more than vanity.
Mr. Darcy had told her hard truths. He had told them badly at first, with all the arrogance of a man accustomed to being believed even when he deserved to be contradicted—but then his letter had followed.
The letter had been a little heated but also exact and dreadful.
In it, he had confessed to separating Mr. Bingley from Jane for which he had offered no apology, had, in fact, confirmed his belief that it had been right.
He described the Bennet family’s impropriety with a plainness that had burned when she first read it.
It burned still, but not because of him.
Mr. Darcy had defended himself against Mr. Wickham with facts so wretchedly convincing that she had been forced, line by line, to watch her own opinions crumble.
She had hated him for that letter.
No—that was not quite true. She had hated needing to believe it, for the letter had been only the beginning of her humiliation.
She had read it in anger, reread it in disbelief, had continued reading it until every sentence seemed to accuse not Mr. Wickham or Mr. Darcy, but Elizabeth herself.
She had thought herself clever. She had delighted in her accurate first impressions, in laughing at foolishness, but had never considered that her understanding might be flawed or incomplete. Was that not another sort of arrogance?
That letter had changed her, and Elizabeth could not deny that while the change had been painful, it had also been for the better.
She wondered if her words had somehow affected the same sort of change in Mr. Darcy, for she did not think that the man who had written that letter was the same man she had met today.
Or rather, he was.
That was the difficulty. The pride which had once wounded her had not vanished, but she could now distinguish it from coldness or cruelty.
The seriousness she had mistaken for contempt revealed itself, in a clearer light, as the gravity bestowed by the heavy responsibilities.
His reserve, which in Hertfordshire had seemed designed to humble and repel, now seemed more like restraint, consideration, and a concern that he not presume.
Mr. Darcy had been flawed—he was flawed still—but Elizabeth had discovered that she had never rightly understood him.
How could she when she had not even rightly understood herself?
Had she met the Derbyshire Mr. Darcy in Hertfordshire last autumn, had he spoken of her family with the respect he showed her aunt and uncle now, had he treated Elizabeth as one whose opinion mattered, there might have been no insult, no resentment, no quarrelling.
If there had been a proposal offered by this Mr. Darcy, there might not have been a refusal.
The thought was so startling that Elizabeth blinked. How very absolute she had been, how very satisfied with herself, and how little she had truly known of him and of herself.
And now? Now Mr. Darcy was civil to her when he had no reason to be. More than civil, to tell the truth. Today he had watched her with an expression she could not recall without feeling all her composure wavering.
But whatever his present kindness, she must remind herself that he could not still think of her in that way.
No man, after such a rejection, would expose himself again.
His pride might be better governed than she had believed, but it was not extinct; nor, perhaps, ought it to be.
She had wounded him deliberately. She had accused him unjustly.
She had refused him not with regret, but with determination. He would not ask again.
This ought to have relieved her, but it did not.
Elizabeth sat down on the edge of the bed and laughed without much amusement. She had forgiven the man who wrote the letter because she had discovered enough of her own pride and conceit to make her less severe upon his.
But forgiveness was proving a poor defence against liking him.
For she did like him. He cared for his young, shy sister and was pleasant to her aunt.
He had listened to Uncle Gardiner’s observations on fishing, allowing that a gentleman in trade might possess knowledge worth having, and he had invited him to partake.
When Mr. Darcy first saw her as he arrived home, he had been awkward.
But then he had mastered himself, seeing to everyone’s comfort but his own.
Most inconvenient of all, she had liked the look of him coming up from the stables, dirty and wind-tossed and entirely unaware that linen could be so . . .
“No,” she said aloud.
Tomorrow, they would breakfast early. She would wear her dotted muslin, because it was fresh and becoming, she would speak to Miss Darcy with warmth, but she would not wait for Mr. Darcy or wish for him to notice her.
She would behave with perfect indifference to the fact that he had left the river today merely because she had come to visit.
He had meant to greet her and her aunt, of course.
Elizabeth dressed for bed and lay down. For several minutes, she thought of nothing. Then she recalled an image of Mr. Darcy standing in the saloon, not proud, not severe, not aloof, but instead unmistakably pleased to see her.
Elizabeth turned her face into the pillow and released a brief, smothered scream.