Chapter Seven
Silence stretched between them, and if not a comfortable silence, neither was an unbearable one.
Elizabeth could be grateful for that much, at least. They had shared worse silences in the study, and those had eventually resolved themselves into something functional. She supposed this one would, too.
She looked at him directly. He had his composure back, which she had catalogued over a week at Netherfield, that careful steadiness she had once mistaken for indifference and now read as something more like self-discipline.
Beneath it, if she looked, there were signs of a poor night’s sleep.
She suspected she bore similar signs, though she had no intention of drawing attention to them.
“I believe I owe you my thanks,” Elizabeth said at last, keeping the bitterness out of the words as best she could. “Both for myself and for all my sisters. Society being what it is, the damage to my reputation could have been the ruin of us all.”
Mr Darcy shook his head. “No, you must not thank me for doing what is right. I would have insisted that another gentleman do as much for my sister in similar circumstances. How could I do less myself?”
Elizabeth looked at him, a little surprised.
His words had been plain and unlovely, yet surprisingly generous.
It seemed impossible that Mr Darcy meant to offer everything while wanting nothing, not even her thanks, and yet it appeared it was so.
“So, we are engaged,” Elizabeth said at last, letting out a held breath.
“That is the public fact, and we cannot alter it at present. The damage is done. The engagement is the plaster over it, and removing it before the wound has closed would make things considerably worse.”
“Quite so,” Mr Darcy said quietly.
“But neither of us chose this. And I have no interest in entering into marriage solely to contain the damage of a scandalous accident if the accident can be accounted for and its consequences addressed by some other means.” She met his eyes. “Do you agree, Mr Darcy?”
“I understand you precisely,” he said, and something in his voice shifted very slightly.
A quality of relief so brief and so well-contained that she almost missed it.
“If the engagement can be honourably dissolved, if we can determine what occurred and satisfy the demands of reputation in another way, we should not allow convention to bind us to a permanent arrangement neither of us sought.”
“Yes,” she said, relieved that he had the same sentiments about their engagement. “Exactly that.”
He was quiet for a moment. Outside, a cart went along the lane, the rattle of its wheels suggesting that it had seen better days. The fire crackled in the hearth.
“Then we are in agreement,” he said. “The engagement stands for now. We shall conduct ourselves accordingly and give no one further cause for talk. But privately, we will investigate. The door was locked — how, and why? It seems to me it may have been no accident.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “I have wondered the same myself.”
The circumstances of their compromise had weighed considerably on Elizabeth’s mind, for something there did not add up.
She had gone over the sequence more times than she could count: the handle turning freely when she entered, the same handle immovable five minutes later, and the crowd of witnesses present to see them.
Was it all truly nothing more than a coincidence? Elizabeth did not think so.
But it would not do to say as much to Mr Darcy, not yet.
She had no proof, only an arrangement of facts that looked suspicious when examined in a certain light.
Yet Elizabeth knew well that such conclusions might come to mean very little.
The suspicion that had gradually begun to play on her mind might be nothing more than the merest illusion.
What she said instead was, “I should like to look at the lock. It would be most instructive to return to the study and see if our accident can be replicated, and is therefore more likely to have been mere coincidence.”
“An excellent notion,” Mr Darcy said. “When shall you come? It would be better not to delay too long.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Tomorrow, then,” she said. “My mother will want to call at Netherfield under the guise of wedding planning, and I think we should let her. If you could arrange for the planning to require some time in the house’s interior, I might find occasion to visit the study.”
The corner of his mouth moved. Not quite into a smile, but the possibility of one. “You have considered this already.”
Elizabeth nodded. “It had become apparent that this would be…a problem, shall we say. And had you not offered me your hand, a solution would have been a matter of even greater urgency.”
Mr Darcy’s expression darkened briefly. Elizabeth had the sense he was reassessing something, though she could not have said what.
“Until tomorrow, then,” he said.
“Good.” She smoothed her skirt and took a breath. “And Mr Darcy, whatever we find, or do not find, I intend to conduct this engagement with all the propriety the situation requires. I will not embarrass you.”
“The thought had not crossed my mind,” he said. From the openness and slight surprise of his tone, it was obviously nothing more or less than simple truth. Elizabeth smiled at him easily for once, while filing that away to consider at a calmer moment.
With their engagement and plan in place, Mr Darcy bid Elizabeth farewell and made to return to Netherfield Park.
The rest of the day felt long, and the evening longer still once Elizabeth had suggested the possibility of visiting Netherfield the next day to her mother.
Though it was convenient that Mrs Bennet took up the suggestion at once, her raptures were lengthy and delivered at considerable volume, and Elizabeth had tired of them long before Jane could lead their mother into another avenue of conversation.
It was a considerable relief when she could at last escape upstairs to bed.
She lay awake longer than she would have liked. Elizabeth thought about locks, and keys, and Caroline Bingley’s face in the corridor. She thought about what she hoped to find the next day, and what she would do with it if she found it. Then she thought about what Mr Darcy had said.
The thought had not crossed my mind.
How little it resembled anything she had expected from him. Mr Darcy…was not what Elizabeth had thought him, in more than one regard. And there was something in that small statement that left her feeling strangely warmed by the unhesitating quality of his respect.
Eventually she slept, which felt like a small achievement.
∞∞∞
The following morning saw Mrs Bennet, Jane, and Elizabeth on the road to Netherfield, accompanied by Mrs Bennet’s opinions on table linens for a wedding breakfast, which occupied considerable space in the carriage.
Upon their arrival, their welcome was a rather mixed affair. Mr Bingley, at least, greeted Jane with uncomplicated delight, and seized the opportunity of steering her towards the morning room at once.
Miss Bingley greeted Elizabeth with a smile that showed all her teeth. “Why, Miss Eliza! How delightful that we will have so much more occasion to see each other now.”
Elizabeth did not attempt to make her own smile more than merely polite. “Indeed, it will. I thank you for your hospitality, Miss Bingley.”
Mr Darcy appeared in the hallway as though by coincidence, though Elizabeth very much suspected it was not. “Mrs Bennet, good morning. Good morning, Miss Elizabeth.”
“Good morning, Mr Darcy,” Elizabeth returned softly, wondering how they might make their escape to the study.
“Miss Elizabeth, I should greatly appreciate having your opinion about one of the downstairs rooms and its suitability for the wedding breakfast,” Mr Darcy said then, naturally enough. “It is a question of the light. If you would allow us, Mrs Bennet?”
Mrs Bennet waved them away, already absorbed in a conversation with Mrs Hurst about floral arrangements. Mrs Hurst’s expression suggested she had not fully anticipated what a Bennet visit would require of her.
Elizabeth followed Mr Darcy down the eastern corridor, a housemaid trailing far enough behind for some privacy and close enough to satisfy propriety — what a case of locking the barn door after the horses had run away!
Elizabeth was aware of the distance between herself and Mr Darcy: two feet, approximately, the distance of business rather than intimacy.
She was keenly aware that two weeks ago she would have found his proximity irritating.
Somehow, it was irritating no longer. Elizabeth could not quite put words to it. It seemed nothing so much as comfortable, perhaps even comforting, an impossible thought.
He opened the study door.
It seemed wrong, somehow, that the space that had utterly transformed her life had nothing extraordinary about it at all.
Everything was the same as it had been when she first entered the study.
The same window, the same grey east light, the same smell of old paper and cold grate.
Elizabeth stood in the doorway for a moment and then went directly to the lock.
She crouched before it. Mr Darcy crouched beside her. The housemaid remained in the corridor and studied the ceiling with professional dedication.
The lock was old and well-made, and must have been at least a score of years old.
From inside, without a key, there was nothing to show whether the bolt had been engaged accidentally or deliberately.
Elizabeth examined the escutcheon, the striker plate, the seat of the mechanism, and sat back on her heels.
“It has the appearance of perfect innocence,” she observed. “Which, I suppose, proves nothing. Villains rarely advertise themselves.”
Mr Darcy’s mouth curved slightly. “You suspect the lock itself of moral failing?”