Chapter Thirty-Four
Longbourn
Elizabeth
Monday morning found Elizabeth in the small sitting room at Longbourn with a book open upon her lap and very little knowledge of what she had been reading.
She had made the attempt for nearly half an hour, but whenever footsteps sounded in the passage, her eyes lifted from the page before she could prevent them, and each time she was irritated with herself for doing so.
Mr. Darcy would not come. She had expressly forbidden it, and if there was one thing she could still depend upon, it was that he would respect a request once she had plainly made it.
The knowledge ought to have brought relief. Instead, Longbourn seemed unusually quiet, and Elizabeth turned another page without having finished the one before it.
Sunday had been easier in some respects.
The habits of the day had demanded church, dinner and the usual occupations of the family, while Mrs. Bennet had spent much of it lamenting that Elizabeth's sudden indisposition had deprived her of half the Netherfield ball. Lydia and Kitty had supplied everything she had missed in exhausting detail, from the officers who had danced most often to the supper, the gowns of every young woman present, and how Mr. Wickham’s arrest was discussed among officers, a fact which Lydia still insisted could be nothing more than a malicious falsehood.
Little had been said of Darcy beyond his failure to join the ball, a circumstance Mr. Collins in particular had lamented, having apparently formed several subjects upon which he had hoped to converse with him.
Elizabeth had been grateful for the omission.
She was more grateful still that her father had not pressed her for the true reason she had wished to leave Netherfield, though his restraint did not mean he was deceived.
During the journey home he had asked more than once whether Darcy had done something to distress her, and when she refused to answer, he had allowed the matter to rest.
Mr. Bennet had been obliged to send the carriage back for the rest of the family after Elizabeth insisted upon returning home with him. She had gone directly to her room and cried until there seemed very little left in her capable of tears.
She had cried several times since, though only in private. The fierce indignation she had felt while listening to Darcy’s confession had diminished somewhat, but her anger had not. If anything, two days of reflection had given it firmer ground upon which to stand.
How dare he? He had read words she had written in perfect confidence, continued reading after there could no longer be any pretence of accident, and then entered her life carrying a knowledge of her she had never chosen to give him.
Worse still, he had allowed her to trust him.
Every time she had confided something personal, every time she had been touched by how readily he understood her, he had permitted her to believe that intimacy was being formed between them honestly.
And she had loved him for it.
That was the thought which still had the power to bring tears to her eyes.
Darcy had not merely invaded her privacy.
He had left her questioning some of the happiest weeks she could remember, and Elizabeth was not yet certain whether she was angrier with him for deceiving her or with herself for continuing to love him after discovering it.
Elizabeth’s eyes darted towards the door as Jane entered carrying her needlework and settled into the chair opposite her.
Mary was napping upstairs, while Kitty and Lydia had gone to their aunt Phillips’s in the hope of learning more about the truth of Mr. Wickham’s arrest. Elizabeth returned her attention to her book, though she was conscious of Jane watching her over the top of it.
For several minutes Jane said nothing, and Elizabeth was grateful for the silence until she noticed that her sister had not taken a single stitch.
“You are staring at me,” she lowered the book and focused on Jane out of frustration.
Jane's expression remained innocent. “Am I?”
“Yes.”
“I was wondering whether you intended to turn another page before reading that one.”
Elizabeth looked down at the book. “It is not particularly engaging.”
“You said yesterday that you liked it.”
“I have altered my opinion.”
Jane lowered her needlework into her lap. “Lizzy.”
Something in her tone made Elizabeth close the book. “What?”
Jane had simply asked what was wrong when they returned from the ball, and Elizabeth had given her the same answer she had given her father.
She was fine. Her mother and most of her sisters had accepted the explanation and soon moved on, but Elizabeth suspected that Jane, like her father, had never quite believed her.
“I have tried not to ask.”
“Ask what?”
Jane gave her a look which made pretending ignorance impossible. “What happened at Netherfield?”
“Nothing happened. I was unwell.”
“So you have said.”
“And yet you continue asking.”
“Because I do not believe you.” Jane leaned forward slightly while Elizabeth stared at her, surprised by so uncharacteristically direct a declaration.
“Two evenings ago you arrived at Netherfield happier than I had seen you in weeks. Before the first dance had even begun, you found Papa and asked to return home.”
“I had a headache.”
“Papa said your eyes were red.”
Elizabeth looked away, and Jane's voice softened.
“I asked him yesterday whether you had seemed ill before we arrived. He said you had plainly been crying, but that he respected you too much to demand an explanation you did not wish to give. You have scarcely spoken since Saturday unless someone speaks to you first, and whenever I ask whether something troubles you, you insist that everything is well.”
“It will be.”
“That is not the same thing.”
Elizabeth rose and crossed towards the window. Outside, the November morning was grey and still, the lawn damp from rain during the night. She folded her arms and fixed her attention upon it, wishing Jane had chosen almost any other morning to become so determined.
“Mr. Bingley called this morning while you were out walking.” Jane said.
Elizabeth's shoulders stiffened. She kept her attention upon the window. “Did he?”
“Yes.”
“I hope you had an agreeable visit.”
Jane did not answer immediately. “He told me Mr. Darcy left Netherfield yesterday.”
Elizabeth's breath caught before she could control it. She had known Darcy would not call because she had told him not to, but somehow she had not considered that he might leave Hertfordshire entirely. “Where has he gone?”
The question escaped too quickly, and the silence behind her told Elizabeth that Jane had noticed.
“London, Mr. Bingley believes. He left yesterday morning and gave no certain date for his return.”
Elizabeth pressed her fingers against the windowsill.
She ought to be satisfied. Had she not told Darcy she did not wish him to call upon her again?
He had done precisely what she asked, yet the knowledge that he was no longer at Netherfield produced an ache so immediate that she despised herself for feeling it.
“Lizzy,” Jane said softly, “did you quarrel with Mr. Darcy?”
Elizabeth closed her eyes. “No.”
Jane said nothing, and somehow the silence was worse than another question.
Elizabeth had spent two days carrying the whole miserable affair alone, retreating to her room whenever the tears threatened and emerging only when she could trust her face again.
She could not even seek relief in writing to Julia.
The very thought of putting her private feelings upon paper now made her stomach turn, and the one person she had lately come to speak to with an openness almost equal to Julia was the very man who had caused it all.
Her eyes opened and settled upon Jane. Jane, who would listen without judgement, who would not repeat a word, and who had been waiting patiently for two days rather than forcing a confidence Elizabeth was not ready to give.
The resistance went out of her.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said quietly. She lowered herself onto the sofa and pressed her fingers briefly against her eyes. “Yes, Jane. I quarrelled with Mr. Darcy, and I think if I do not tell someone what happened, I shall go quite mad from thinking of it alone.”
“Oh, Lizzy.”
“Please do not look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“As though my heart has been broken.”
Jane rose and came nearer. “Has it?”
That was considerably harder to answer. Elizabeth blinked rapidly as tears threatened to fill her eyes and looked away from Jane. “I do not know.”
Jane sat beside her without pressing for more.
Elizabeth stared at her hands, trying to decide how to begin an account she had imagined giving a dozen times since Saturday.
Each attempt required her to speak aloud facts which still seemed impossible, and worse, to admit how completely she had trusted Darcy before discovering how much he had concealed from her.
“I discovered something about Mr. Darcy at the ball,” she said at last. “Something he should have told me himself.”
“Did Miss Bingley tell you?”
Elizabeth looked sharply at her. “Why would you ask that?”
“I saw her speaking to you shortly after we arrived.”
Elizabeth sighed. “Yes. She told me something, and I did not believe her.” Heat crept into her cheeks at the recollection.
“I defended him, Jane. That is perhaps the most humiliating part. I stood there inventing explanations for Mr. Darcy because I was so certain he would never deliberately deceive me.”
“And Miss Bingley was telling the truth?”
“Enough of it.”
Jane reached for her hand. “What did he do?”
Elizabeth hesitated before forcing the words out. “He read my letters to Julia.”
Jane stared at her. “Your letters?”
“All of them, or nearly all. Mr. Darcy was at Willowbrook before coming to Hertfordshire. My letters arrived there while he was in residence, and he read them. Even after he came here, the letters I continued sending to Julia were forwarded to him.”
“I do not understand.”
Neither had Elizabeth when Caroline first told her.
She gave Jane an abbreviated account of what she had discovered at the ball, from Darcy's stay at Willowbrook to the letters he had admitted reading and his knowledge of her identity before Sir William ever introduced them at the assembly.
By the time she finished, Jane's mouth was agape.
“He tried to explain,” Elizabeth said, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice, “but I could not bring myself to hear him.”
Jane's fingers tightened around hers. “Perhaps you should have.”
Elizabeth pulled her hand free and rose. “Jane!”
“I do not mean that what he did was right.”
“He knew me before I knew him.” Elizabeth turned upon her, the words coming more quickly now that she had begun.
“At the assembly, when I believed Sir William was introducing two strangers, Mr. Darcy already knew who I was. He knew of Julia, he knew things about our family, and he had read thoughts I never intended anyone but Julia to see. Then he stood before me and behaved as though none of it had happened. An omission may deceive as thoroughly as a lie when one knows the truth is being deliberately withheld.”
Jane's expression had grown troubled, but Elizabeth could no longer stop.
“And then he courted me. He allowed me to tell him things he already knew and let me believe every confidence was being freely given for the first time. All those moments when I thought he understood me so remarkably well...” Her voice weakened, and she looked away. “He must have taken me for a fool.”
“Oh, Lizzy. I cannot believe he thought you foolish.”
“I do not know what he thought.” Elizabeth pressed her lips together, fighting the tears already threatening her. “And the worst of it is that I still...”
Jane came to her, and this time Elizabeth did not move away. “You still love him.”
Elizabeth's eyes closed. “Yes.”
Jane's arms went around her, and the embrace destroyed what remained of Elizabeth's composure. She pressed her face against Jane's shoulder, angry at the tears which came almost immediately and more angry still that Darcy remained capable of causing them.
“I wish I did not,” she said when she could speak again. “It would be so much easier if discovering what he had done had simply ended everything I felt for him. I was furious with him, Jane. I still am. Yet the moment you said he had left Netherfield, all I could think was that he was gone.”
Jane stroked her back. “Love does not disappear merely because one has been hurt.”
“Then it is a remarkably inconvenient emotion.”
The observation drew the smallest laugh from Jane, and Elizabeth managed one of her own before drawing away and wiping her cheeks.
“Did you end the courtship?”
Elizabeth nodded. “I told him not to come to Longbourn again.”
Jane was quiet long enough for Elizabeth to narrow her eyes. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You have never in your life said ‘nothing’ while meaning it so obviously.”
Jane hesitated. “I only wonder whether you meant never.”
Elizabeth looked towards the window again.
On Saturday night she had meant it, or at least she had believed she did.
She remembered Darcy standing before her, his face growing paler as the truth emerged, and the moment he finally ceased trying to explain himself.
More than anything, she had wanted him away from her.
Now he had given her precisely what she asked for.
“I do not know what I meant,” Elizabeth admitted.
Jane took her hand again, and this time Elizabeth held it.
Beyond the window, the road leading past Longbourn remained empty, and Elizabeth watched it for several moments before forcing herself to look away.
She had asked Darcy to leave her alone, and he had obeyed her.
She had simply never considered how much his absence would hurt.