Chapter 13 #3
The words seemed to fall between them and strike the floor.
Bingley’s eyes widened.
At the same moment, the young lady looked down.
Darcy’s stomach clenched.
He had spoken too loudly. Not greatly. Not enough to carry across the whole room. But enough. Enough that she had heard. Enough that the faint color rising into her cheeks could not be mistaken for anything but mortification.
For several seconds, he could not move.
Bingley recovered first. “Darcy,” he said in a low, appalled voice, “I cannot believe you just said that.”
Darcy closed his eyes briefly. “Nor can I.”
“When did you become such a snob?”
The question struck with all the more force because Bingley, of all men, had reason to know how little Darcy respected inherited arrogance when it injured the undeserving.
Had he not once defended Bingley from the same sort of contempt?
Had he not despised Wickham’s pretensions and his father’s vanities?
Had he not spent years choosing duty over appearance precisely because the worth of a person could not be measured in ornament or income?
And yet he had just wounded a young woman for no better reason than his own discomfort.
“I am sorry,” he said.
Bingley’s expression remained unusually stern. “It is not I to whom you should apologize.”
“No.” Darcy looked again toward the chair.
It was empty.
The glass of lemonade remained on a small table beside it, but Miss Elizabeth Bennet was gone.
Panic, absurd and immediate, pressed against his ribs. “Ask your partner to introduce us. I will apologize properly.”
Bingley nodded at once, his displeasure giving way to action. They crossed the room toward Miss Bennet, who had just returned from the dance and stood speaking to Charlotte Lucas. Bingley bowed with less of his usual ease.
“Miss Bennet, forgive me. Might you tell us where your sister is? Mr. Darcy wishes to speak with her.”
Miss Bennet looked past them in surprise. “Lizzy? She was seated just there.”
They all turned.
She was not there.
Miss Bennet’s expression grew faintly anxious, and she looked about the room. “Perhaps she is with Charlotte’s mother. Excuse me.”
Darcy remained where he was, the knot in his stomach tightening with every passing moment.
He saw Miss Bennet speak to Miss Lucas, then to one of her younger sisters, and finally approach her mother.
Mrs. Bennet, whose attention had been fixed upon Bingley with unwavering satisfaction all evening, seemed startled by the question, then answered with a little flutter of her fan.
Miss Bennet returned, her face calm but her eyes not quite so serene as before. “My mother says Lizzy was seized with a sudden severe headache. The carriage has taken her home and will return for the rest of us at the end of the evening.”
Darcy felt the full weight of it then.
She had left because of him.
“I see,” he said, though his voice sounded distant to his own ears. “Miss Bennet, I must ask you to convey my apologies to your sister until I may offer them myself. I spoke thoughtlessly. Unkindly. I fear she heard me, and I am ashamed of it.”
Miss Bennet’s face softened at once. There was no triumph in her look, no feminine satisfaction at seeing a proud man humbled. She reminded him unexpectedly of Georgiana in that moment—gentle, hesitant to condemn, inclined by nature to soothe discomfort even when another had caused it.
“I am certain it was a misunderstanding, Mr. Darcy,” she said quietly. “Lizzy is quick to feel, but she is also quick to forgive when she believes regret is sincere.”
“I shall not presume upon that,” he replied. “But I would be grateful if you would tell her I intend to call and beg pardon when propriety allows.”
“I will tell her.”
The next statement emerged from Darcy’s lips before he considered it. “Miss Bennet, if you are not engaged for the next set, may I have the honor?”
She looked surprised, then pleased in her soft way. “Thank you, Mr. Darcy. I am not engaged.”
The dance was quiet, though not awkward.
Miss Bennet did not chatter, which he appreciated.
She answered when he spoke, asked after his journey, expressed a gentle hope that Netherfield would prove comfortable, and said nothing of her sister unless he did.
Her composure steadied him. By the end of the set, Darcy had resolved that if he could not undo his offense that evening, he could at least cease adding to it.
So he made himself behave better.
He spoke to Sir William with more courtesy than his mood invited.
He listened to Mr. Goulding’s account of the neighborhood roads.
He asked after the harvest when introduced to a gentleman whose name he immediately feared he might forget.
He bowed to Mrs. Bennet without retreating when she spoke of Netherfield, though he could not help noticing she regarded him now with less interest than before.
He even managed a civil answer to one of the Lucas boys, who asked whether Derbyshire had better hunting than Hertfordshire and seemed prepared to argue no matter what answer he received.
It was not enjoyment.
It was penance.
By the time the assembly ended, Darcy was exhausted in a way no day of militia reports had ever made him.
Bingley remained bright and delighted all the way back to Netherfield, though he was mercifully too occupied praising Miss Bennet to renew his scolding.
Miss Bingley declared the evening provincial, the company vulgar, the room overheated, and the music barely tolerable.
Darcy gave such answers as politeness required and nothing more.
When at last he reached his chamber, Bates had already laid out his night things and retired. Darcy dismissed the candle, undressed with mechanical efficiency, and lay down in the unfamiliar bed, staring into the darkness.
Miss Elizabeth Bennet had looked down.
He saw it again and again: the color rising in her face, the quick fall of her lashes, the empty chair afterward.
Tolerable.
Lack of dowry.
He pressed a hand over his eyes.
He had meant to guard himself and had struck someone else instead.
Sleep came late and uneasily. When it came, it brought not peace but a confusion of candlelight, music, and mud. He dreamed of a woman with fine eyes standing just beyond his reach, refusing him her hand each time the dance began.