Chapter Fourteen #2
Then Mr Darcy said, with what seemed only easy composure, “I believe when the situation is clear, there is little advantage in delay,” and picked up his wineglass with a finality that said more clearly than words that the subject was closed.
Seated across from him, Elizabeth said nothing.
She could not have done so if she wished, for she was forcing back an almost irresistible impulse to laugh.
The laugh had arrived, unwanted and entirely genuine, at the collision of Mr Robinson’s blithe delivery and Mr Darcy’s perfectly pitched reply, which was both the correct thing to say and also, from the inside, absolutely absurd.
She caught his eye for the second time that evening.
He was holding the same thing she was holding, with the same composure, and she could see in the very precision of it exactly what it was covering. Their eyes met and held for a beat that was one beat too long.
Then she looked at her wineglass and he looked at his, and neither of them laughed, and it was the closest thing to genuine happiness she had felt since their long nightmare began.
It was this thought that undid her.
She excused herself at the end of the course, citing the beginning of a headache, which was not true, and went upstairs.
Elizabeth sat on the edge of her bed, not troubling herself to light a candle.
Closing her eyes, she grappled with the unmanageability of her feelings.
She could not go back and rejoin the supper; she could not bear it.
She did not think she could face the warm, persistent comfort of the shared look and the almost-laugh and the completely ordinary, extraordinary ease of meeting eyes with a man who understood, without exchanging so much as a word, exactly what was funny and why.
She had found a gentleman with whom she might truly share understanding, but that connection had been created by a vicious scheme gone awry and was being maintained by a lie.
Sitting alone in the dark, Elizabeth felt the weight of it.
All her obligations seemed to go in a circle, until it was impossible to do right by one without failing another.
Anything she might do, or even refrain from doing, seemed to violate some essential principle.
She could have her reputation and her freedom, but only at the cost of ruining Miss Bingley and destroying Jane’s fledgling happiness.
She could have Mr Darcy, but only at the cost of allowing the damage to their reputations to stand and, worse still, of withholding the truth from him. How could she justify such a thing?
Withholding the truth meant closing the investigation, which was the path they had agreed led to freedom, which was what she had wanted.
What, in all likelihood, Mr Darcy wanted still.
She was protecting Jane, which was right.
She was protecting Miss Bingley, which was not justice, but was certainly mercy.
Elizabeth rested her head in her hands, wishing she could simply stop thinking.
What was the point of thinking when every choice was equally impossible?
After a few minutes, she heard footsteps on the stairs. The door opened, and Jane came in. She sat beside her on the bed without ceremony.
“Headache?” Jane asked.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. It was the truth, if not the whole truth.
“Whatever this is, you should not have to carry it alone,” Jane said softly.
“Perhaps not,” Elizabeth agreed ruefully. “But I do not know what else I can do. Someone must make a judgement in the case, and I believe the responsibility is mine. It would not help matters to burden you with knowledge that you cannot act upon.”
“Perhaps Mr Darcy should be told?” Jane’s voice was careful. “He might be able to help.”
“Perhaps. I may have to, in time. Only I am not yet certain what is the right way forward. Whether it would be an act of courage or cowardice to tell him.”
Jane put her arm around her, her silence a welcome kindness, and they sat in the dark for a while without speaking.
∞∞∞
Darcy was careful not to look too long at the empty place where Elizabeth had sat. The last thing they needed was more rumours, and to look either plaintive or angry at her absence would be a sure way to start them.
For once, Mrs Bennet had shown relatively good breeding in managing her daughters’ premature departure from supper.
She had explained to the table at large that Elizabeth was overwrought with excitement at her coming wedding and had a headache, and that Jane would see to her sister.
Though obviously at best an optimistic interpretation of events, it required no response beyond a murmur of sympathy and therefore served its purpose.
Darcy did not murmur sympathy. He was sitting with the stillness he brought to things that required him not to act when his instinct was to do so. Though carefully not looking at the place where Elizabeth had been, he was thinking of nothing else.
She had been there, and then she had not been. The headache was possible. It was also consistent with a woman who had reached the limit of something and removed herself. He had watched her nearly laugh, pressing her lips together, and something had passed between them.
In the same moment, he had seen something else cross her face that he had not been quick enough to read.
Whatever the headache was a cover for, it had arrived in the immediate aftermath of a moment of unguarded warmth.
What might that sequence mean? Darcy could think of several possibilities, some more disastrous than others.
She had been withdrawing from the investigation for some time.
He had observed it and told himself it was fatigue, or caution, or the natural pace of inquiry stalling as inquiries sometimes stalled.
But there was a quality to her deflections that had been consistent and deliberate, and sitting at a supper table with her empty chair and the remnants of their shared look still warm in his chest, he found himself questioning whether what he had been reading as caution was something else entirely.
Elizabeth had not chosen this engagement. Neither had he.
But if he had the choice to make now, freely and openly, he might well do so. Darcy’s perception of her, and his feelings about their engagement had gradually shifted, becoming almost unrecognisable.
Did Elizabeth know he no longer wished to prevent their marriage, but welcomed it? And if she learned how his feelings had changed, would she receive the knowledge with happiness, or cold dread?
At that thought, Darcy winced. He picked up his glass, but did not drink.
He turned over this new consideration with unflinching honesty.
Though he did not like the conclusion at which he arrived, it was unavoidable.
Continuing to pursue an engagement she found repugnant, out of his own growing attachment, was not honour.
It was the opposite of honour. He had proposed to protect her, not to bind her to something that made her excuse herself from supper tables before her composure could break.
He set his glass down.
Yet if Elizabeth wished entirely to be freed, why had she seemed to lose interest in their investigations? He had thought it discouragement at the lack of results, but what if there were another answer?
Perhaps she had found something, but if so, why had she kept it a secret?
She had not wished to take him and his ten thousand a year regardless of mutual affection when he first proposed, and Darcy did not imagine that her motivations would have become more venial now.
None of Elizabeth’s actions were consistent with a woman who was glad to marry a man of fortune and consequence without the more substantial benefit of love.
Then, too, she was a woman of principle.
If Elizabeth had a simple answer to resolve their compromise, she would share it with him.
What could she have found that would place such a burden on her?
Looking at the wall above the empty chair, Darcy at last arrived at a conclusion. If she had found a way out and was not taking it for reasons of her own, the most honourable thing he could do was not add himself to the weight she was carrying.
That was a way forward, if a difficult one.
He would not press the investigation, nor yet his personal feelings.
Instead, he would give Elizabeth the room that she was asking for, in the only way she felt she could ask for it, and he would conduct the remainder of this engagement with careful integrity.
That, at least, he could do. The question of what he had begun to feel, and what it might mean, would remain unasked.
The fish course was removed and replaced.
Bingley said something cheerful beside him, and he answered it.
The supper continued, and Darcy looked at neither the empty chair nor his wine glass.
He attended carefully to the conversation, all the while feeling that his interior and exterior had come entirely uncoupled.
∞∞∞
Caroline had excused herself for five minutes on the pretense of retrieving her shawl. As she walked to the parlour, she heard two voices drifting down from the top of the landing.
She had not missed the manner in which Mr Darcy gazed at Elizabeth Bennet. She did not like the attentiveness in his gaze, the way he tracked her every movement with care.
Miss Eliza had excused herself from supper rather abruptly, in a manner most unlike herself. That was most suggestive. How happy Caroline would have been in her place, with Mr Darcy securely hers, and half the conversation around the table about the lavish arrangements of the wedding to come!
It was only too obvious that Elizabeth Bennet did not feel the same.
She did not glory in the chance to become Mrs Darcy — did not even appreciate what she had.
She had doubts, and in those regrets was surely an opportunity.
A woman doubting the wisdom of her engagement was not a woman moving toward marriage.
She was a woman who could be helped toward a door she already wished to find.
Caroline turned to her right and made a bright, complimentary comment about the soup to Mrs Bennet.
She did not trouble herself to listen to the answer before turning to Georgiana and enquiring about her latest piece on the pianoforte.
Those exchanges led to others, each offering Caroline the chance she sought to exhibit her grace and charm to that gentleman who ought to have noticed it by now.
All the while, she thought very carefully about Elizabeth Bennet, who needed help to reach the obviously correct decision, and about the shape of the help she intended to provide.