Chapter 7
Elizabeth
Jane left Netherfield on Sunday, once the apothecary had declared her fit for a short journey.
Bingley offered his closed carriage, his mother's old travelling carriage, and a phaeton which even he admitted was unsuitable before anyone had the chance to say so themselves.
Mrs. Nicholls selected the closed carriage without discussion.
The household accepted her decision the way households accept weather.
Sarah packed Jane's medicines and Elizabeth's borrowed gowns with brisk efficiency. She wrapped the blue shawl last, folding it with a care that seemed almost ceremonial.
Sarah tested the fringe between finger and thumb, frowning. "The fringe is dry now. The silk may fade before the wool does, mind."
"Then I shall know which part of it is Netherfield."
Sarah's hands rested on the folded shawl a moment longer than necessary. "I hope you will come again, miss."
"Mr. Bingley means to give a ball. My mother will permit no illness, flood, or French invasion to keep us away from it."
"That is not what I meant."
Elizabeth looked at her properly then. The maid had risked a scolding for marking books and suggesting a walk.
She had also cooled Jane's fever through two bad nights, mended clothing until her fingers must have ached, and stood close by whenever Caroline started talking of appearances.
Matchmaking, Elizabeth thought, was very much the least of what this girl had done for them.
"I hope so too."
Sarah smiled, relieved. "Mr. McKeever says the south path will be repaired before then."
"Mr. McKeever may keep his paths to himself."
"Yes, miss."
"He may also keep selecting poetry, however."
Sarah's smile widened into something close to a grin. "I will tell him."
Downstairs, Bingley waited in the hall with Darcy.
Caroline had chosen not to witness the departure at all.
Mrs. Hurst sent her compliments from upstairs.
Hurst sent a bottle of cordial whose medicinal purpose was, at best, doubtful.
Bingley helped Jane into the carriage himself.
He arranged the rug twice, asked whether the cushion was sufficient, and gave the coachman instructions Mrs. Nicholls had already given twice over.
Darcy approached Elizabeth while Sarah and McKeever supervised the luggage between them. He stood closer than habit required, though not closer than manners allowed. Elizabeth noticed both the distance and the evident care with which he had chosen it.
"May I call at Longbourn with Bingley tomorrow, if your sister remains well?"
The question was proper, and plain enough to need no interpretation at all.
"My mother will be delighted."
"I did not ask about Mrs. Bennet."
Elizabeth folded her gloved hands together to keep them still. "You may call."
"Thank you."
McKeever carried the last portmanteau to the carriage. Sarah followed with the medicine basket. They passed each other at the step with matching, suspicious solemnity.
"All secure," McKeever said.
"Everything accounted for," Sarah said.
Their gravity made Elizabeth suspicious. She checked the carriage herself: Jane, luggage, basket, shawl. Nothing had been added, so far as she could tell. Nothing but a volume of Cowper, tucked beside her seat.
She lifted it out.
Darcy looked at McKeever. "I did not order that."
"No, sir. Miss Elizabeth had not finished it."
"How did you know that?"
"Sarah told me, sir."
Sarah found the carriage wheel suddenly fascinating.
Elizabeth opened the cover. A list had been tucked inside, written in two hands. One was neat and compressed. The other leaned unevenly to the right, as though written in a hurry, or standing up.
Cowper. Burney. Edgeworth. No messages. Only titles.
"Your servants are very determined readers."
"They have exceeded their instructions."
"Only by a page or two."
Darcy met her gaze. "Will you permit it?"
She placed the list back inside, smoothing the cover down over it. "I shall read the recommendations and judge the offence afterwards."
"That seems fair."
The carriage moved away. Through the glass, Elizabeth saw Sarah and McKeever standing beneath the portico, side by side. They did not wave. Servants did not wave to departing guests, whatever they might be feeling.
They looked, all the same, thoroughly satisfied with themselves.
Longbourn received Jane with noise, as Longbourn received most things.
Mrs. Bennet lamented the severity of her illness, the inadequacy of Netherfield's nursing, and the excellence of Mr. Bingley's carriage, all without pausing for breath between subjects.
Mary recommended a sermon on gratitude that nobody had asked for.
Kitty coughed again, for no reason anyone could determine.
Lydia wanted to know whether any officers had called during Jane's confinement, as though this were the only question that mattered.
Mr. Bennet waited in the library, as he generally did when the house grew loud enough to require it. Elizabeth went to him once Jane was settled. He looked at her over the top of his spectacles.
"You have returned with one sister, two books, and a repaired shawl. I assume Netherfield charged no additional fee for the shawl."
"Mr. Hurst sent cordial. That may be punishment enough for the lot of us."
"How is Jane, truly?"
"Truly better. She must rest for several days yet."
His expression softened, the teasing dropping away for a moment. "And you?"
"Tired."
"Only tired?"
Mr. Bennet had watched Elizabeth conceal broken china at eight years old and a forbidden novel at twelve. Concealment had never once worked well upon him. He waited her out.
She sat opposite his desk, arranging her skirts to give her hands something to do. "Mr. Darcy offered me marriage."
His book closed with a soft thud.
"I refused him."
"The order of those two sentences is reassuring. Do go on."
Elizabeth gave him the whole account. She described the storm, the pavilion, the witnesses, and Darcy's fear of gossip.
She repeated the terms of the proposal without cruelty, and the substance of his apology without praise it had not quite earned yet.
Mr. Bennet listened all the way through without interrupting once, which was, for him, a considerable feat.
"Does your mother know?" he asked, when she had finished.
"No."
"Then civilisation may yet survive the night."
"He intends to call tomorrow, with Mr. Bingley."
"After being refused." His eyebrows climbed.
"He said he would make no second offer unless he had reason to think it welcome."
"A sensible position, for once. Are you likely to give him such a reason?"
Elizabeth looked at the Cowper on the side table, its spine worn soft. "I do not know."
"Do you wish to know?"
That was a different question entirely. At Netherfield, Darcy had occupied her thoughts because he was near. Impossible to avoid, in a house that small. At Longbourn, distance had not removed him at all. If anything, it had only clarified the exact size of the space he had taken up.
"Yes."
Mr. Bennet leaned back in his chair, a dry glint in his eye. "Then I shall endure his visit tomorrow. I may even manage to stay awake for it."
"Papa."
"A man who proposes before he has properly courted a girl must expect a certain amount of examination."
"He did not intend insult by it."
"You defend him very quickly."
Elizabeth stood, smoothing her skirts. "I report accurately."
"Naturally." He picked his book back up, but Elizabeth caught the corner of a smile before the pages hid it.
Jane waited in her room, propped against pillows with more colour in her cheeks than she had had in days. She had heard the carriage arrangements discussed below, and knew perfectly well that Bingley meant to call.
"Tomorrow is very soon."
"He visited you three times a day at Netherfield. One day apart may feel like an absence to him."
"Mr. Darcy is coming too."
"So I understand."
Jane watched her a moment. "You changed your gown."
Elizabeth looked down at herself. She had put on the green muslin rather than the older brown one Hill had laid out that morning.
"The brown needed brushing."
"Hill brushed it this morning."
"Illness has made you unkind."
"Only observant."
Elizabeth spent the evening reading Cowper by candlelight.
She disagreed with two of the servants' selections and approved of the third.
Beside Edgeworth, Sarah had drawn a small blue knot in the margin.
Beside Burney, McKeever had written, in his neat compressed hand: Too much company; useful warning.
That line made her laugh aloud, alone in her room, loud enough that Jane called through the wall to ask what was so funny.
Monday morning became an exercise in the whole household pretending very hard that no gentleman was expected.
Mrs. Bennet ordered the drawing-room fire rebuilt, though it had burned perfectly well since breakfast. Kitty moved a vase from the mantel to the table.
Mary moved it straight back again, on the principle that symmetry encouraged disciplined thought.
Lydia wanted to know whether Mr. Darcy might bring officers with him.
"Why would he bring officers?" Elizabeth asked.
"He may know some of them."
"Acquaintance is not friendship."
"Officers are friendly with everyone."
Mr. Bennet looked up from his newspaper. "That is not always a compliment, Lydia."
"Papa, you have not even met any of them."
"Then my ignorance is complete, and I intend to preserve it carefully. You and Kitty will not walk into Meryton without one of your elder sisters."
Lydia protested. Kitty echoed her, a half-beat behind as always. Mrs. Bennet accused Mr. Bennet, not for the first time, of ruining their daughters' every chance at marriage.
Elizabeth watched her father over the rim of her teacup, hiding her smile in the steam.
His attention to the younger girls had sharpened lately, though he would never say so.
He had not forbidden Meryton outright. He had simply set conditions, and let Lydia exhaust herself hurling protests against them like a wave against a rock that had no intention of moving.
"Why are you smiling?" Lydia demanded.
"I am not."
"You are. Jane, Lizzy is smiling at nothing at all."
Jane glanced towards the clock. "Perhaps it is not nothing."
Elizabeth escaped upstairs before the conversation could go any further.
Hill had laid the brown gown out again. The green muslin hung beside it, freshly brushed and ready despite Elizabeth's earlier lie about it.
Elizabeth reached for the brown. Then stopped, her hand hovering.
Choosing the less becoming gown would not prove indifference.
It would only prove she had dressed to prove something, which was, if anything, worse.
She wore the green.
Jane came in while Hill arranged Elizabeth's hair, pinning it with quick sure fingers. "He asked permission to call."
"I remember."
"Then why do you look as though the visit has surprised you?"
"Expectation and arrival are two very different things."
"You have been speaking with Mr. Darcy far too often."
"He says there is a difference between them. I say things are still not the same thing at all. Our methods remain entirely distinct, I promise you."
Hill caught Elizabeth's eye in the looking-glass and looked away, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
Longbourn's servants knew perfectly well a gentleman was expected.
They simply lacked Sarah's particular interest in managing the outcome.
Elizabeth found that, in the same breath, both restful and faintly disappointing.
"What will you say to him?" Jane asked.
"Good afternoon."
"After that?"
"I shall depend upon civilisation to carry the rest."
"And if civilisation fails you?"
Elizabeth thought of Darcy standing in a wet pavilion, asking what would help rather than insisting he already knew. "Then perhaps honesty will have to do instead."
The sound of wheels reached the front of the house. Jane went to the window at once, though Bingley's carriage was familiar to her by now, down to the particular creak of its axle.
Elizabeth stayed before the mirror one breath longer. The woman looking back at her seemed neither indifferent nor conquered.
She looked curious. That, Elizabeth thought, will have to do.
That afternoon, Bingley's carriage stopped outside Longbourn. Mrs. Bennet reached the hall before the servant could so much as open his mouth to announce them.
Bingley entered first, his eyes finding Jane at once, as though the rest of the room had simply ceased to exist. Darcy followed behind him.
He bowed to the room, greeted Mr. Bennet properly, and looked at Elizabeth only once every courtesy owed had been paid in full.
It was as though he had made himself wait for it on purpose.
He had come because she had permitted it. Not because the weather demanded it, or Bingley had dragged him, or any reason but the one that mattered.
That knowledge did more, somehow, than his proposal ever had. It left, for the first time, real room for choice.