Chapter Six
Lady Catherine de Bourgh arrived at Longbourn without warning, her carriage rattling up the drive on a raw January afternoon while the family sat at their needlework, and the whole house fell briefly and completely silent at the sound of it.
"Good heavens," said Mrs. Bennet, half-risen from her chair. "Who can that be?"
Elizabeth knew before the housemaid announced the name.
Something in the particular arrogance of the carriage's approach, the way it did not slow for the ruts in the lane, told her exactly who had come, and why, before Lady Catherine swept into the drawing room in a great deal of purple and an expression that could have curdled milk.
"Miss Bennet," she said, without preamble, without so much as a nod to Mrs. Bennet's flustered curtsy. "I would speak with you. Alone."
"Of course, your ladyship." Elizabeth rose, steadier than she felt. "Shall we walk in the garden?"
The garden in January was bare and cold, the beds cut back for winter, and Lady Catherine did not wait for the door to close fully behind them before she began.
"You know why I have come."
"I confess I do not."
"Do not play games with me, Miss Bennet.
I am not accustomed to it, and I have very little patience for it today.
" Lady Catherine's eyes were hard as flint.
"A report has reached me, from a source I trust, that my nephew has shown you particular attention this autumn.
I have come to learn whether that report is true, and to inform you, whatever the truth of it, that any hope you entertain of an alliance with Mr. Darcy is entirely without foundation. "
Elizabeth felt something rise in her, quick and hot, the accumulated hurt of a season's silence finding, at last, somewhere useful to go.
"I entertain no hope at all, your ladyship, foundation or otherwise.
Your nephew has made his indifference plain enough that I require no reminder of it from you. "
"Indifference." Lady Catherine's mouth twisted.
"Do not think me a fool. I have heard how he watches you.
I have heard how his conduct this autumn has alarmed the very committee entrusted with the protection of his sister's inheritance.
Whatever indifference you imagine, I assure you it is not shared. "
Elizabeth's breath caught, some small, treacherous hope flaring before she could stamp it out. "I do not know what you mean by a committee."
"No," Lady Catherine said, with grim satisfaction.
"I did not suppose you would. There is a great deal you do not know, Miss Bennet, and I have not come to enlighten you.
I have come to secure a promise. You will tell me now, plainly, that you have no design upon my nephew, and that you will discourage, in every way available to you, any renewal of his attentions. "
"And if I will not?"
Lady Catherine's expression sharpened into something almost pleased, as though Elizabeth had finally given her the fight she had come for.
"Then you condemn a girl of sixteen, who has suffered enough already, to a diminished inheritance, all for the sake of your own vanity.
I had thought better of you, Miss Bennet.
I had thought you a young woman of some sense, whatever your connections. I begin to think I was mistaken."
"You speak of vanity," Elizabeth said, her voice shaking now, though not with tears, "and yet it is your nephew's silence, not my ambition, that has governed every hour of my acquaintance with him.
If there is a girl's inheritance at stake in this, your ladyship, it is not I who put it there.
I have asked nothing of Mr. Darcy. I have received nothing from him but coldness and unfinished sentences.
Whatever promise you wish me to make, I can make it freely, because I have nothing to renounce. "
Something flickered in Lady Catherine's face, some brief and unwelcome uncertainty, quickly suppressed. "Then we understand each other."
"I believe we do."
Lady Catherine studied her a moment longer, as though searching for a lie in Elizabeth's expression and finding, to her evident frustration, none. "See that it remains so," she said finally, and turned back toward the house without another word, her purple skirts snapping in the cold wind.
Elizabeth did not go in with her. She stood alone in the bare garden until the sound of the carriage receded down the lane, and then a while longer after that, her arms wrapped tight around herself against the cold, her mind turning over one phrase until it had worn itself smooth.
A committee entrusted with the protection of his sister's inheritance.
It explained everything. The silence. The coldness.
The unfinished sentence in the bookshop, Miss Bennet, I, cut off before it could become anything dangerous.
He had not stopped loving her, whatever else was true.
He had stopped himself from saying so, again and again, for reasons that had nothing to do with her and everything to do with a sister's security and a father's dying wish.
She felt, standing there, something she had not expected: not relief exactly, and not renewed hope either, but a kind of furious grief, that a man might love her enough to say nothing at all, and that his silence, however well intended, had cost them both a season they would never get back.
"Lizzy?" Jane's voice, from the doorway, gentle and worried. "You must be frozen. Come in."
Elizabeth went, finally, her face composed by the time she reached the warmth of the drawing room, though something in her had shifted irrevocably in the cold garden, some resolve hardening into shape.
She would not chase him. She had too much pride left for that, whatever Lady Catherine believed of her vanity.
But she would no longer assume the worst of his silence either, and she found, turning the fire's warmth against her cold hands, that this small correction of judgment felt like the first honest ground she had stood on in months.
She did not yet know that four hours away, in a London nursery long since returned to its ordinary use, a letter still lay forgotten beneath a pillow, its ink faded only slightly, its words unchanged, waiting for a hand that would not find it for many months yet.