Chapter 12
Elizabeth woke before the inn had begun to stir. She lay watching the ceiling pale from grey to white. When lying still was no longer possible, she rose.
Whenever her mind would not quiet itself, walking was the cure—the road, the air, the steady work of putting one foot before the other until thought wore down into distance—it soothed her.
This morning in particular, she stood in need of such a remedy.
She had one half-boot in her hand before she stopped.
If she went out and he came, she would not be there.
She set the boot down.
This was foolish. There was no reason to suppose Mr. Darcy would come.
They had made their farewells. He had handed her into the carriage and wished her a safe return.
A man did not pursue departed guests five miles into Lambton the next morning merely to finish a sentence he had thought better of completing.
To sit at a window all morning on the chance of a gentleman who had not the smallest intention of appearing would be folly.
But Elizabeth did not put the boot on. She compromised by doing nothing at all, but doing it anxiously.
Her aunt and uncle went to look at the church after breakfast, but Elizabeth did not accompany them. She pleaded a letter owed to Jane. Aunt Gardiner accepted the excuse without the least sign of believing it, but she bore Uncle Gardiner off without comment.
Elizabeth watched them go from the parlour window, her aunt’s hand at her uncle’s elbow, the two of them pausing at the corner to disagree comfortably about something of no importance. That morning, it seemed to Elizabeth very nearly the most enviable condition in the world.
Over breakfast, Uncle Gardiner had mourned a little over having left his fish at Pemberley, but observed that Mr. Darcy would very likely call before they left Derbyshire.
Aunt Gardiner had said nothing, but she did smile.
Then she had carried her husband off to the church, leaving the field clear with a delicacy Elizabeth was grateful for.
But if Mr. Darcy did not come, she did not know what she would tell them when they returned.
Her uncle and aunt were sure he would come. But they did not know what she knew. They had not been at Hunsford in April. They had not heard her refuse him so completely that she still could not think of it without blushing, nor had they seen his face when she did it.
The rules of propriety were plain. A gentleman made his offer once.
If he was refused, he accepted the answer and troubled the lady no further.
To come again, to ask a second time, to lay himself once more before a woman who had told him he was the last man in the world she could ever marry—that was not what a gentleman did.
And Mr. Darcy was the very model of an English gentleman.
Everything she had been taught about marriage proposals said that he would not come, and that she had no right to wish he would.
But she still wished it with all her heart.
She did not write to Jane. She sat at the window and watched the green as the residents of Lambton went about their Saturday business—a carter, a dog, two children rolling a hoop with more enthusiasm than skill. All the while, she argued with herself.
Mr. Darcy would come. He had seemed about to say something before Miss Bingley had cut in to issue her insincere farewells, and she did not think he would allow them to depart without another word. He would come to take proper leave, at the least.
Or so she told herself. It was equally possible that she had entirely mistaken him—she had done it before.
Everything he had done the day before—the lemonade, the kindness to her uncle, the rush to save Henry Atherton from his own determination, his gentleness with Miss Atherton, the patience and quiet support he showed his young sister, his rush up the slope in the storm to gather his guests and help lead them out of danger, the constant, steady care he had shown them all the whole day—might be no more than the conduct of a man resolved to prove he was not who she had believed him at Hunsford. A vindication, and nothing more.
Miss Bingley’s voice came back to her, unwanted, and Elizabeth thought it might be worse still—that this was simply the man that he had always been and that his behaviour had nothing to do with her at all.
But no. She did not think Mr. Darcy’s character would allow him to be petty. Even if the look had been her own imagination, fashioned from nothing more than wishing, he would not be cruel. She went to the window to observe the sun and found herself watching the road.
If he had meant to come, he would have come by now, for it was full morning. The shadows on the green had drawn in to almost nothing. If he were coming, he would be here.
By the time she had turned all of this over some forty times, she was thoroughly wretched, had come to hate the word Monday, and had made up her mind that he was not coming, though she had not been able to persuade her heart.
This was ridiculous. She would not sit here all morning waiting for a gentleman who had given her no reason to expect him. She would walk to the church, find her aunt and uncle, admire the stained glass with all the composure she could command, and think no more of Mr. Darcy.
She had one boot on, and the other in her hand, when a groom called out in the yard.
Elizabeth moved back to the window, her boot dangling from her fingers, and saw a man on horseback. She knew the figure. She had, after all, spent time the previous morning becoming acquainted with the breadth of his shoulders.
Her heart did something foolish and painful as she sat down, shoved her foot into her boot, and stood.
Her head told her that he had come to take his leave. It was the correct thing. A gentleman did not allow an acquaintance to leave his county without a civil farewell, and Mr. Darcy did the correct thing as regularly as other men breathed.
She had perhaps three minutes to prepare herself for nothing more, and then he was at the parlour door. The maid announced him, and he was in the room, and the maid was gone. They were alone, which they ought not be, and which neither of them mentioned.
“Miss Bennet.”
“Mr. Darcy.”
They stood silently for a second or two before Elizabeth said, “My aunt and uncle are at the church. They will be sorry to have missed you. They will not be above half an hour, if you—”
His eyes were . . . oh, his eyes. “I did not come to see your aunt and uncle,” he informed her, his breath coming slightly faster than it ought.
His voice was very level and exact, just as she recalled it from the parsonage in Kent, on the worst evening of both their lives.
“I lay awake most of the night,” he said, “unable to decide whether I had any right to come to you. This morning, I wondered still. I dressed, ate, walked out, and even then had not settled my mind. But then I was on the road to Lambton without actually having decided. Do you know why, Miss Bennet?”
She could not speak, and so she simply shook her head.
“Because I would rather do this poorly in an inn parlour, than perfectly a fortnight hence if it meant I spent that fortnight not knowing.” He stopped, his hands very still at his sides. “I resolved in April never to importune you again. It would make me the worst sort of—”
“Mr. Darcy—”
He shook his head in a quick, sudden motion. “Allow me, I beg you. If I do not say it now, I shall lose my nerve, and I have very little to spare. May I?”
She nodded.
He drew a breath. “Have I any hope?”
For one moment, the room fell away from her.
There was no inn parlour, no church across the green, no Monday waiting to take her south.
There was only the man before her, pale with the effort of asking her something very important, and the astonishing knowledge that the question she had thought she had lost all right to hear had been offered to her again.
All her doubts, all her arguments, all the long miserable morning at the window, went silent at once.
“All you need do is ask,” said Elizabeth.
“I already have.”
This startled a laugh from her. He had managed to ask her without breaking the rules of propriety. How very Mr. Darcy.
The question she had refused in Kent was still open, still hers, waiting only to be answered differently. And this time, she would not make him stand one moment longer in doubt.
“Then I accept,” she said.
For a moment neither of them moved, the only sound in the room the ragged breathing that Elizabeth was surprised to discover did not entirely belong to her intended.
Mr. Darcy crossed the small distance between them and took her into his arms.
It was not like the day before, in the rain, when he had placed his hand at the small of her back, for he had done the same for Miss Pelham.
There was no river now. No storm. There was only Mr. Darcy, quite steady and not steady at all, taking her into his arms. Permission, once given, had undone the last of his restraint.
His arms came round her fully, one hand spread firm on her back between her shoulders, the other at her waist, and she felt him take one breath against her hair, then another. He had not understood, until that moment, how much of himself had been held in suspense.
“Elizabeth,” he whispered.
For several seconds she stood with her cheek against his coat, both hands clutching the lapels of it and allowing herself to feel the strange, astonishing fact of feeling safe there.
Safe from uncertainty, from wondering whether the warmth in his eyes had only been kindness, or the terrible possibility that she had imagined him still loving her.
“You are sure?” he said, so low that the words were almost lost against her temple.
She drew back just far enough to look at him. “Are you?”
“Entirely.”
“Then so am I.”
That did something to him. She saw it—relief, disbelief, joy—and then his hand came up, careful despite everything, to touch her face.
“Elizabeth,” he said, this time in a voice so low that something fluttered in her chest.
She put her hand over his where it rested against her cheek.
He kissed her then.
The door was not six feet away and the inn was full of servants and travellers, but Elizabeth doubted that one thought of that was in his head. And when his lips touched hers, all thoughts fled from her as well. She had spent a great many days being sensible. Now she gave it up and kissed him back.
They stepped apart at last, though not very far.
“I should like it understood,” she managed, “that I am not in the habit of kissing gentlemen in inn parlours when that gentleman has not spoken to my father.”
“You have my word it shall not become a habit.”
“A fair promise, for—”
She did not finish.
The maid had come back to the door.
It was Hannah, the girl who had brought up their dinners all the week. She was scarlet to the roots of her hair and twisting her apron in both hands.
“I beg your pardon, miss. I beg it most sincerely. I did not know how I came to do such a thing—”
“Whatever is the matter?”
“The letters, Miss Bennet.” The girl produced two letters from her apron pocket, both directed in Jane’s hand, both still sealed.
“They came yesterday by the post, the both of them. You was out, so I set them by on the side table to give you, and I clean forgot them till I was cleaning up the breakfast just now and saw them still sitting there. A whole day. I am that ashamed. If there was anything in them as wanted answering—”
“You are not to fret about it,” said Elizabeth, taking them. “A day is nothing. There. It is forgotten already.”
Hannah did not look convinced, but she dropped a curtsy and fled.
Elizabeth looked down at the letters. Jane’s hand. Two of them. Both still sealed. One of them very difficult to read.
The sight of them brought the rest of the world back with uncomfortable speed.
Her aunt and uncle would return at any moment.
The door had only just closed behind Hannah.
Mr. Darcy still stood near enough that she could feel the warmth of him, and neither of them, she suspected, looked as composed as they ought.
“I suppose I should read them,” she said, assessing the hand. “This one was delayed at first.”
“Of course,” said Mr. Darcy. “I shall give you the room.”
“No.” The word came too quickly.
He stopped.
She looked down at the letters, suddenly shy of what she had betrayed. “I mean—there is no need. They are only from Jane. And my aunt and uncle will be back directly.”
His expression softened. “Then I shall stand here and pretend to examine the inn’s mantelpiece until we are both under better regulation.”
Despite everything, she almost smiled.
“I wish you success. It is not a very interesting mantelpiece.”
“I shall endeavour to find it so.”
He moved away from her, but not far, turning with great seriousness towards the mantel. Elizabeth sat again, the letters on the table before her.
She broke the first seal. This was Jane’s script at its most careful, which Elizabeth had long ago learned to read as her sister at her most frightened. She read, and for several lines could not understand what Jane was saying. She read them again.
Lydia was gone from Brighton. Gone in the night, and not alone. Gone with Mr. Wickham.
There was hope, Jane wrote at once—Jane, who could not bear to leave such news unsoftened—that they had gone to Scotland.
That all would yet be made right by marriage.
Colonel Forster had set out after them, had come personally to tell her father, Elizabeth was not to be too anxious. All might still be well.
Elizabeth fumbled with the second letter.
Here, Jane had given up the pretence. The couple were not gone to Scotland.
They had been traced as far as London and no farther.
There was no marriage, and no longer any reasonable expectation of one.
Even Jane could not deny the ugly truth.
Mr. Wickham’s character was such that it was doubtful he had ever intended to marry Lydia at all.
Papa had gone to town to search. Mamma had taken to her bed. Jane begged her uncle’s assistance and for all of them to return to Longbourn.
Elizabeth read it once. She read it again, but could not catch her breath, so she stood with two sheets of paper in her hand while understanding that the foundation of her life had very quietly given way.
“Elizabeth?”
She had forgotten, in the shock of the letters, that Mr. Darcy was here. She looked up. Whatever was in her face, it took the levelness out of his at once.
“Good God, what is it?”