Chapter Twenty-Seven
Oakham Mount
Darcy
On Saturday morning, Darcy found himself once more upon the road towards Oakham Mount. He had not seen Elizabeth since she and her sister had taken tea at Netherfield, and although only a few days had passed, the interval had proved considerably more troublesome than he cared to admit.
Another letter addressed to Somerset might arrive at any time, supposing Elizabeth had written to Miss Harding since the beginning of the month, and Darcy knew that he would read it when it came.
The knowledge sat no easier upon his conscience for being acknowledged.
Yet whatever satisfaction he had once derived from receiving her thoughts upon paper had altered since coming to Hertfordshire.
He no longer wished merely to know what Elizabeth thought.
He wanted to hear her tell him herself, to watch her expression change as she spoke, to answer her and be answered in return.
Before leaving Netherfield, he had entrusted two letters to his valet to be sent by the morning post. One was addressed to Richard, in reply to the intelligence his cousin had lately sent concerning a hired carriage which might have conveyed the Hardings from Somerset.
The other was for Georgiana, who had written with increasing warmth of Mrs. Annesley and of the greater ease she had begun to find in her new companion's society.
Darcy was relieved by the improvement. His sister had been so subdued in the months following Ramsgate that every indication of returning confidence gave him more satisfaction than he could readily express.
Darcy chose to walk rather than ride, for the morning was fine and he wanted the distance in which to order thoughts that had become increasingly difficult to govern.
He might, of course, have gone directly to Longbourn.
Bingley required very little encouragement to call upon the Bennets, and Darcy's own presence there had become sufficiently frequent that another visit would hardly occasion surprise.
Yet there was something about meeting Elizabeth upon the hill which he had come to prefer.
At Longbourn there were always other eyes, other voices, and Mrs. Bennet's increasingly obvious satisfaction whenever he addressed her second daughter.
Upon Oakham Mount, when fortune favoured him, Elizabeth was simply Elizabeth.
It had been scarcely three weeks since Sir William Lucas had spoken Elizabeth Bennet's name at the Meryton assembly and transformed a woman he had never seen into one he already knew.
Three weeks since he had first looked upon the face belonging to the mind which had occupied his thoughts for months.
The brevity of their actual acquaintance ought, perhaps, to have given him pause.
It did not.
Darcy could no longer pretend ignorance of his own feelings.
Whatever name he might once have preferred to give his attachment, curiosity had long since ceased to explain it.
He loved Elizabeth Bennet. He had loved her, he now suspected, before ever he came to Hertfordshire, though then he had possessed neither the honesty nor the courage to call the feeling by its proper name.
What remained uncertain was what he intended to do about it.
He wanted to court her openly. The desire had strengthened with every conversation between them, until the caution which had once seemed reasonable began to feel very much like cowardice.
Elizabeth welcomed his company now. She teased him without reserve, sought his opinion, and spoke to him with a confidence which had deepened considerably since their first dance.
Even without the contents of the last letter he had read, Darcy might have allowed himself to hope that his attentions were not unwelcome.
The letter made hope considerably more dangerous.
Elizabeth had written of anticipating their meetings.
She had remembered things he had said and wondered what he might think upon matters they had not yet discussed.
There had been no declaration in any of it, nothing upon which an honourable man could presume, but there had been enough to tell Darcy that he occupied her thoughts when he was absent.
He ought not to have known that.
The reminder checked some of the pleasure which threatened whenever he recalled her words.
Darcy could not use knowledge obtained without Elizabeth's consent as proof of an affection she had never chosen to reveal to him.
Whatever encouragement he permitted himself must come from the woman herself, not from letters intended for another.
Still, he could not deny what he had observed with his own eyes.
Elizabeth was pleased to see him. She sought his conversation as readily as he sought hers, and lately there had been moments when her expression softened upon him in a manner which made restraint considerably more difficult than it had any right to be.
Whether she loved him, Darcy could not know.
Whether she might one day do so had become a hope he was no longer willing to dismiss.
By the time Oakham Mount rose ahead of him, Darcy had accomplished very little of the clear thinking for which he had chosen to walk.
His thoughts remained fixed upon Elizabeth, as they had been when he left Netherfield, and he found himself searching the familiar path ahead for the first glimpse of a figure he had come there expressly to find while still pretending, with diminishing success, that he had merely come to walk.
Once Darcy had cleared the trees which obscured the summit of the hill, his breath caught at the sight he had been hoping to find. Elizabeth sat upon a fallen log overlooking Meryton and much of the surrounding country, idly tossing small pebbles towards some mark below.
He drew a quiet breath, endeavouring to master the sudden happiness which rose in him as he approached.
He had come to Oakham Mount hoping to find her, whatever pretence he had maintained upon leaving Netherfield, yet the success of his design affected him with an absurdity he could neither excuse nor entirely regret.
Whether Elizabeth heard his steps or the breaking of a twig beneath his boot, he could not tell, but she turned before he had gone much farther and rose upon seeing him.
“Mr. Darcy.” There was a warmth in her greeting which he hoped he did not merely imagine.
Darcy bowed. “Miss Elizabeth. Good day to you.”
“You have chosen a fine morning for your walk.” She resumed her seat upon the log and, with the easy familiarity which had grown between them during the past weeks, indicated the space beside her.
“Though I confess I begin to wonder whether Oakham Mount has become rather less mine and rather more shared property of late.”
“I shall gladly surrender whatever claim I have acquired, if you wish to preserve it entirely for yourself.” Darcy accepted the place she offered, near enough for conversation while leaving between them the distance propriety required.
“I did not say I objected to sharing it.” Elizabeth tossed another pebble and watched it disappear amongst the growth below. “Only that I begin to suspect coincidence has very little to do with how often we contrive to meet here.”
“Very little,” Darcy admitted.
Her mouth curved, and the sight of it rewarded his honesty more than it deserved. She did not press him further, however, but turned instead towards the prospect before them, where the fields and hedgerows lay bright beneath the autumn morning.
“I myself escaped Longbourn on account of our cousin. He arrived yesterday to pay us a visit.”
“Your cousin who is to inherit Longbourn?”
The words escaped Darcy before caution could prevent them, and the instant they were spoken he knew his mistake.
Elizabeth's brow lifted. “Yes, Mr. Collins. I do not recall telling you anything about that.”
Darcy's thoughts moved rapidly. He had known for months that a cousin stood to inherit Longbourn, having encountered a single mention of the gentleman in one of the letters intended for Julia, but nothing in his acquaintance with Elizabeth entitled him to possess that knowledge.
“You did not,” Darcy replied, recovering quickly.
“However, I know you have no brother, and when you spoke just now of a cousin arriving to visit the family, I concluded he must be the gentleman upon whom the estate is entailed.
Had you meant one of your Aunt Gardiner's children, I imagine you would have spoken of the Gardiners coming to Longbourn rather than of a cousin alone.”
It was not the means by which he had learnt the truth, but the reasoning itself was sound. Had Elizabeth never written a single letter to Julia Harding, he might easily have reached the same conclusion from what she had since told him.
She regarded him for a moment, and Darcy disliked how keenly he watched her face for the first appearance of suspicion.
“That is a remarkably fortunate conclusion from so little information, Mr. Darcy. It seems you have been exceedingly attentive to our conversations, if you can discover a gentleman's inheritance from the mere mention of a cousin.”
The amusement in her voice allowed him to breathe more easily.
“I should prefer to call it fortunate guessing. I would have looked exceedingly foolish had your cousin proved to be an entirely different gentleman.”