Chapter 17
“Will we be seeing Lord Grantchester today, Jane?” Mrs Gardiner asked her eldest niece conversationally as Jane finished reading the letter that had arrived at Gracechurch Street for her that morning.
Mr Gardiner had already left the house to deal with his day’s business, and the ladies were finishing a leisurely breakfast after their late night at the Suttonfield ball.
Much of the evening now felt like a series of bad dreams to Elizabeth, especially Mr Darcy’s forceful persuasion of Lord Grantchester against Jane, and his inexplicable semi-proposal of marriage.
How strange, how ridiculous, and yet how sincere he had been in stating his wishes! In the carriage home, Elizabeth had simultaneously wished to laugh, cry, and shout at the sheer absurdity and awkward tension that had marked the occasion.
It had been as absurd as Mr Collins’ equally bewildering proposal in the boot room at Longbourn, although in that case the man himself had been as ridiculous as the offer.
Mr Darcy was not ridiculous. He was…something else entirely.
Elizabeth could not understand Fitzwilliam Darcy at all, but she was certain that everything was his fault.
Even the next morning, Elizabeth still felt the occasional urge to laugh wildly each time she thought of Mr Darcy talking so fantastically of marriage.
What had possessed him to even consider such an offer?
They could barely manage a civil exchange of views.
Imagine if she had said yes, and they had to face each other across the breakfast table every day for the rest of their lives…
She pictured Mr Darcy’s handsome face staring at her, his midnight-blue eyes cross and bewildered by Elizabeth’s presence in his house.
While she had to disguise a giggle as a yawn, considering the scenario oddly did not feel merely comic.
No sooner had Elizabeth thought of it than she felt distracted and breathless, at once restless and strangely yearning.
That would not do at all. With great effort, she focused her attention on her sister.
“No, I don’t believe we will be seeing him,” Jane answered her aunt in even tones, folding the paper carefully back into its envelope shape and laying it on the breakfast table beside her teacup without further explanation.
“Shall we take the children to the park after their lessons this afternoon, Aunt?”
Jane’s pretty face was pale and oddly blank today, as it had been so often of late, and Elizabeth could deduce nothing of the letter’s content from either her expression or her tone. It was plain from the handwriting that the letter came from the Earl of Grantchester, but there were no other clues.
Mrs Gardiner nodded in answer to Jane’s question, seeing no cause for particular interest or concern about the letter.
In London, Lord Grantchester often sent over brief notes about social engagements.
Only Elizabeth had overheard Mr Darcy’s conversation with Lord Grantchester last night and understood the threat posed by his opposition to his friend’s marriage.
After weighing the decision carefully, Elizabeth had concluded that no good and much harm could come of telling her aunt or her sister what she had witnessed.
Elizabeth did not regret her choice, but it did mean that she was the only one who had feared for what this morning’s letter might contain as soon as she had seen it on the letter tray.
“Dear me, how tired I am after last night’s ball,” their aunt remarked with a yawn. “I am too old for such merriments, I fear, my dears. I shall spend this morning at my desk, answering my correspondence, and we will all go to the park this afternoon, when your uncle comes home from the warehouse.”
“I am going to walk to the lending library this morning but will be back by luncheon,” Elizabeth spoke up. “Would you like any books while I am there, Aunt?”
“No, I have quite enough to read at the moment, thank you, Lizzy. Do take Jane with you, though. She needs the exercise to put some roses in her cheeks, I think.”
Though Jane seemed at best unresisting rather than enthusiastic at the prospect, she nodded in response to Elizabeth’s enquiring glance.
Then, thinking that Elizabeth was no longer watching her, she let out a long sigh.
It seemed to combine relief and sadness in equal measure, so that Elizabeth did not know whether to be concerned or not.
∞∞∞
“You have not told me anything about Lord Grantchester’s latest letter,” Elizabeth said to Jane as they set off from Gracechurch Street toward the lending library to which their aunt belonged. “You need not, of course, for letters are personal, but normally you do.”
Jane’s sky-blue eyes grew large in her pallid face, and she bit her lip before turning away from her sister.
“Oh, Lizzy,” she cried after a few moments of walking in silence. “I must tell you if no one else, for I do not know what to make of it all.”
“Why? What has happened?” Elizabeth asked with growing urgency and a sense of foreboding in her stomach.
“Lord Grantchester has written asking me to break off the engagement,” Jane admitted very quietly but with deep feeling. “He says it will look better for me if I end it, rather than if he does.”
“What?” Elizabeth demanded, her wrath rising on Jane’s behalf and almost snatching the letter now produced from her sister’s pocket.
A plague on Fitzwilliam Darcy! Even though Lord Grantchester’s hand had held the pen, surely it was Mr Darcy who was truly responsible.
“You had best read it yourself and see if you can make more of it than I,” said Jane. “I did not want to tell Aunt and Uncle Gardiner until I had decided what to do. I do not know how I shall ever break it to Mother.”
Opening the letter as they walked along a quiet side street, Elizabeth read quickly. Lord Grantchester was indeed writing to request that Jane end their betrothal.
Please understand that although I now believe our marriage to be impossible, I pledge you my eternal friendship…
…I must also ask you to trust me that releasing me from our betrothal is for your own good, more than mine…
I beg you, for both our sakes, and for our families, not to insist on the marriage, nor to bring a breach of promise suit…
“How could he?” Elizabeth muttered as she read these words. “I did not think Lord Grantchester so inconstant, nor so easily influenced. Oh, Jane… How awful! He gives no reason at all. That horrible, interfering man!”
As she looked back at Jane, Elizabeth heard the woe in her own voice and supposed that it could only be a tiny fraction of the pain her sister must be experiencing. Beneath it all roiled a raging anger at Mr Darcy, who had presumably caused the rupture.
“Do not distress yourself, Lizzy,” Jane responded with what seemed an unnatural calm, and a very welcome lack of questions about which interfering man was the subject of her sister’s ire.
“I am really not very upset, although I know I ought to be. Perhaps it will hit me later when I have decided how to respond.”
“Jane, you are always so very good. Lord Grantchester did not deserve you, and he has now proved that. But what if we went to him now, straight away, instead of to the library? He might change his mind when he sees you and take all of this nonsense back.”
“No!” Jane said at once with unusual firmness.
“I do not want to… Oh, I do not know what I want. I can hardly make sense of anything. It is only that when I first opened and read the letter, I was…relieved! What can that mean, Lizzy? I cannot say, especially when I dread so much writing to Mother. She sets so much store by this marriage and so much rides upon it for our family.”
Elizabeth frowned, unable to shed any more light on such a reaction than Jane herself.
“Lord Grantchester may still change his mind on his own account,” she said at last. “He may send another letter, or call in person. You need not be too hasty in replying, Jane, nor in writing to Mother.”
“Who can say what is in his mind any more than mine?” Jane offered rather vaguely. “Please do not tell Aunt and Uncle Gardiner yet, for all the reasons you state, as well as my own muddle. I cannot bear to discuss this with anyone but you, Lizzy, and even that is almost too much for me.”
Seeing a silent tear escape Jane’s eye and trickle down her cheek, Elizabeth offered her handkerchief and then took her sister’s arm. “Then we will talk of this no more now,” she said softly. “Only know that I am here whenever you need me.”
∞∞∞
Over the next few days, Jane wilted noticeably. Elizabeth had noticed her sister fading slowly since the earliest days of her engagement, but its likely ending now seemed to have radically speeded up this process so that it could no longer be hidden from anyone.
Losing her colour, her spirit and her appetite, on the third day, Jane did not even rise from bed in the morning. When Elizabeth’s gentle encouragement failed, she went downstairs to inform her aunt and uncle that Jane was indisposed.
“What is to be done, Lizzy?” asked a worried Mrs Gardiner, emerging from the bedroom after examining the invalid.
“Jane says she does not need to have the physician, and nor will she be sent home, but she is very ill, it seems to me. Is something bothering her? Is it that Lord Grantchester has not called this week?”
Elizabeth nodded slowly and soberly. “You may be right, Aunt,” she said carefully, not wishing to reveal the content of Lord Grantchester’s last letter, if Jane herself had chosen not to do so. “Lord Grantchester has indeed been absent this week.”
“But Jane has said nothing to you about what is troubling her?”
Hesitating, Elizabeth considered her words. She could not lie to her aunt, but nor could she reveal Jane’s secrets. “I will go in and speak with Jane again,” Elizabeth replied, skirting around a direct answer. “Do go and eat your breakfast, Aunt. I will come downstairs and join you shortly.”