Chapter 19
The Twins Take Command
Darcy encountered the twins on the road to Oakham Mount on a ride taken to escape the antipathy Miss Bingley seemed intent to spread around Netherfield.
The meeting was almost certainly planned.
Thomas and Toby stood beside the stile at the edge of Longbourn’s lower field, each armed with a walking stick and an expression of extraordinary determination.
Their caps sat askew. Mud clung to their boots.
Toby bore what appeared to be blackberry jam upon one cuff, though how blackberry jam had become involved in a December reconnaissance Darcy could not begin to imagine.
He drew up his horse and peered down at them.
“I am beginning to suspect,” he said, “that you maintain sentries throughout Hertfordshire.”
“We do,” Toby replied at once.
“Lydia assists,” Thomas added.
Darcy dismounted.
Experience had taught him that conversations with the Bennet twins were never conducted satisfactorily from horseback.
He looped the reins over the stile and put his gloves into one hand. “Have I been summoned for praise or censure?”
The boys exchanged a glance.
“Chiefly censure,” Toby said.
Darcy suppressed a grin. “Then I am prepared to receive it.”
Thomas planted his stick in the frozen ground like a general indicating troop positions. “Mr. Wilson nearly proposed.”
“I am aware.”
“And you permitted it.”
Darcy regarded him. “I possess no authority over Mr. Wilson’s conduct.”
“That is beside the point,” Toby said impatiently.
“The point,” Thomas continued, “is that you are proceeding far too slowly.”
Darcy had heard variations of this complaint before. Somehow, spoken beneath a gray winter sky by two eight-year-old strategists, it carried more force than any reprimand from his aunt.
“I had been given to understand,” he said dryly, “that marriage requires the lady’s consent.”
“Certainly it does,” Toby replied with the weary patience of a man explaining arithmetic to an especially dull pupil.
“We are not fools.”
Darcy bowed slightly. “My apologies.”
Thomas crossed his arms. “The difficulty is that if you continue thinking forever, Mr. Wilson may ask first.”
The bluntness of the observation carried weight.
Darcy had spent several days attempting to avoid precisely that image.
Toby stepped closer. “And Lizzy may accept him.”
The words were delivered without dramatic flourish, as calmly as one might comment upon approaching weather.
Darcy’s hand tightened around his gloves.
The boys studied him closely.
Thomas nodded once, apparently satisfied by the reaction.
“Exactly.”
Darcy exhaled slowly. “You appear remarkably invested in my future.”
“Not your future,” Toby corrected.
“Lizzy’s,” Thomas said, pointing his stick toward Longbourn, visible in the distance through the bare trees. “She deserves to be happy.”
The simplicity of the statement robbed Darcy of his prepared irony.
“I am in complete agreement.”
“Then why do you move so slowly?”
Darcy rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Because matters of consequence should be approached with care.”
Toby pulled a face. “That sounds very much like Mary.”
“And Mary is almost always sensible,” Thomas admitted, “but she occasionally takes too long to reach the interesting part.”
Darcy laughed despite himself.
The boys remained perfectly serious.
Toby spoke first this time, his voice more earnest than teasing.
“When Lizzy talks to you, she laughs differently.”
Darcy raised an eyebrow at the boy.
Thomas nodded vigorously. “She laughs with everyone. But with you it is different.”
“How so?”
The boys considered.
“At other times,” Toby said, “she laughs because something is funny.”
Thomas took up the explanation. “With you, she laughs before she remembers she is supposed to be sensible.”
Darcy found no immediate reply.
Toby shifted his stick from one hand to the other. “She listens to you too.”
“She listens to everyone.”
“Yes,” Thomas said, “but she argues with you.”
“That is a very good sign,” Toby added.
Darcy had, in truth, come to cherish her contradictions.
Thomas continued, warming to his subject. “You also listen to her properly.”
“Most gentlemen listen only until it is their turn to speak,” Toby said.
“Or they nod without hearing.”
“Mr. Wilson listens.”
The concession seemed difficult.
Thomas scowled. “Yes, but he listens because he likes what Lizzy says.”
Toby nodded. “You listen because you like that she says it.”
Darcy stared at them.
It was absurd.
It was uncomfortably accurate.
Thomas leaned closer. “There is another thing.”
Darcy braced himself.
“When you are at Longbourn, Mama smiles more.”
Toby added, “Papa comes out of his library.”
“Jane looks happy because Mr. Bingley is there.”
“Mary brings her best books.”
“Kitty talks about gowns.”
“Lydia behaves for almost seven minutes.”
Thomas lowered his voice. “And Lizzy stops worrying.”
Darcy’s throat tightened unexpectedly.
The boys had turned the matter over with all the solemnity they usually devoted to forts and campaigns and arrived at a conclusion no adult had stated aloud.
Toby dug the toe of his boot into the frozen earth. “You make the house better.”
“That is all,” Thomas said, as though he had merely summarized a household inventory.
Darcy stared beyond them toward Longbourn.
Smoke rose from the chimneys. Somewhere behind those walls Elizabeth would be reading, laughing with Jane, or disentangling her brothers from some fresh difficulty. The image came with such immediacy that his chest ached.
He had spent weeks considering practical objections, family expectations, and the distinctions society treated as immutable. He had examined her origins, his own position, and every argument caution could supply.
The boys had ignored all of that.
They had asked a far simpler question.
Did he make Elizabeth happier?
Darcy pursed his lips tightly. “I love your sister.”
The words emerged without preparation.
Without flourish.
They hung in the cold air between them.
Thomas and Toby exchanged triumphant looks.
“We know,” Toby said.
“That was obvious,” Thomas added.
Darcy gave a short laugh. “Apparently to everyone except myself.”
“That is what we have been saying.”
Thomas straightened, all business once more. “Then you must stop waiting.”
“Immediately,” Toby said.
Darcy mounted his horse.
The boys stepped back to allow him room, their faces bright with the satisfaction of generals whose campaign had at last achieved a decisive breakthrough.
As he gathered the reins, Thomas called after him.
“If Mr. Wilson proposes first, we shall do our best to prevent it.”
Darcy frowned. “I should prefer,” he said, “to settle the matter without requiring sabotage.”
Toby considered this. “That seems less interesting.”
“Probably.”
“Very well,” Thomas said. “But do not be too noble.”
Darcy agreed and touched his hat before riding on.
The road curved toward Netherfield, but his thoughts remained fixed upon Longbourn and the woman who had become inseparable from every image of home, comfort, and future he allowed himself to entertain.
For the first time, the question before him was no longer whether he ought to speak.
It was whether he dared wait another day.
Elizabeth sat before her dressing table that evening with her hair half unpinned and her brush motionless in her hand.
The house had quieted gradually after supper.
Jane and Mr. Bingley’s wedding plans had occupied much of the conversation.
Kitty and Lydia debated trimmings for bridesmaids’ gowns with an earnestness suggesting state affairs.
Thomas and Toby, newly restored to favor after several days of relative obedience, argued over whether a Christmas goose could be defended like a fortress.
Mr. Bennet retreated to his library at the earliest opportunity.
Ordinary sounds.
Comforting sounds.
Still, Elizabeth had carried a restlessness with her upstairs.
She set the brush aside and drew her knees onto the window seat, wrapping her dressing gown more closely about her. Frost feathered the corners of the glass. Beyond the window, the lawn lay silver beneath moonlight.
Mr. Wilson offered what many women would accept without hesitation.
He was prosperous. Industrious. Intelligent in practical matters. He respected her father’s memory and her own history. He admired her openly, and his intentions could not be doubted. A life with him would be secure. Useful. Perfectly comprehensible.
She could picture it.
A large house in Lancashire. Accounts to oversee. Workers’ families to assist. Children who would inherit both business acumen and stubbornness. A husband who valued her opinions and would never ask her to be ashamed of her origins.
There was much to recommend such a future.
Yet whenever she attempted to imagine it in any detail, her mind slipped away from furniture, income, and even children to smaller things that ought not to matter so much.
A dry remark offered across a dinner table.
A serious conversation in the winter garden.
The way Darcy listened when she spoke, as though every sentence deserved consideration.
The slight change in his expression when she laughed.
His unexpected ease with Thomas and Toby.
The memory of his hand steadying Toby at the pond.
She rested her forehead against the cool glass.
This was not a question of choosing between two men as though selecting ribbons from a box.
It was a question of the life she wished to lead.
Mr. Wilson belonged to a world she understood instinctively. His success had been earned rather than inherited. His ambitions were practical and readily visible. Were she to become his wife, she would understand her place from the very first day.
Darcy represented something far less certain.
His world was larger, grander, and infinitely more demanding.
Among his relations were titled ladies who might regard her with astonishment—or with disdain.
Society would examine her parentage with a degree of interest Hertfordshire had never shown.
Even if he cared for her, and some stubborn part of her believed that he did, affection alone might prove insufficient to bridge every difference between them.
Or might it?
Elizabeth pressed her fingers lightly to her temples.
The most troubling truth was that she did not fear Darcy himself.
She feared the world that surrounded him.
She feared entering rooms where she would be measured against standards she had never expected to meet.
She feared discovering that admiration and attachment, however sincere, could falter beneath the daily weight of expectation.
Whenever she imagined the years ahead, the future that drew her most strongly was one in which she and Darcy debated books, debated over the absurdities of family, and walked together as equals.
The prospect remained uncertain.
Its uncertainty only made it more compelling.
A knock sounded at the door.
Jane entered in her wrapper, her expression as warm and perceptive as ever.
“You are still awake.”
“And so are you.”
Jane smiled and joined her on the window seat. For several moments they watched moonlight spread across the lawn.
“At some point,” Jane said, “you must decide whether you prefer certainty or possibility.”
Elizabeth turned toward her. “That is a very unfair distinction.”
“I learned it by observing you.”
Elizabeth grinned.
Jane took her hand. “Whatever you decide, choose the life in which you believe you will be most fully yourself.”
The words lingered long after Jane had gone.
Elizabeth returned to bed still uncertain.
When sleep finally overtook her, the future that rose in her imagination was not in Lancashire.
It was Longbourn, and later the North. And a tall gentleman standing in the midst of its noise and disorder as though he belonged there as naturally as she did.