Chapter 4
MR. DARCY
Darcy stood in Netherfield's entrance hall and waited for Bingley as a man waits for a tool he needs but does not particularly enjoy using.
The hall smelled of fresh paint and beeswax, the hasty preparations of a house reopened at short notice. Through the tall windows he could see the drive, empty for now. He checked his watch. Half past three. Bingley was late. He was always late. It was among his lesser failings.
Elizabeth's letter sat folded in his breast pocket.
He had read it twice, once for content, once for tells.
Her penmanship was controlled except in the fourth line, where the pressure of her nib had thickened on the word "compliance.
" Agitation. She was angry when she wrote that word.
Good. Anger he could manage. It was indifference he feared.
She had not signed it. He should have been irritated. Instead, the omission stirred reluctant admiration, or its more dangerous cousin.
Mr. Bennet had received him that morning. The interview had not gone as Darcy expected. The pointed questions and shrewd pauses were predictable; the refusal to be hurried was not.
"You may have secured my paternal consent, sir," Mr. Bennet had said, "but I suspect there remains much you haven't revealed regarding this sudden attachment."
"Every marriage contains its private understandings, does it not, sir?"
Mr. Bennet's mouth thinned. "Mine has taught me the danger of entering one while determined not to see what's before you. I shall not let my failures serve as your defence."
Darcy had no answer ready for that.
Mr. Bennet had given that consent only after confirming, twice, that Elizabeth still insisted upon the match. Even then her father leaned across the desk and said, "If she asks me for aid, today or ten years hence, neither your name nor your fortune will keep me from giving it."
"I'd expect no less," Darcy replied. It was the truth, and the truth unsettled him more than victory would have done.
Carriage wheels on gravel. He straightened his coat.
Bingley descended first, affable, eager, transparently delighted to be back in Hertfordshire. The man wore his heart like a cravat pin. It was his greatest charm, and Darcy felt an old, familiar affection sharpen into something less comfortable: the awareness that he was about to use it.
"Darcy! What a pleasure! Though I confess your letter quite astonished me."
"Charles." Darcy clasped his hand. Bingley's grip was warm and genuine, and Darcy felt the familiar twinge of something that was not quite guilt but occupied the same neighbourhood.
He was using his closest friend as a means to an end.
He had done it before, separating Bingley from Jane Bennet last autumn to protect him from a disadvantageous match.
Now he was reuniting them for the opposite reason: the courtship would provide cover, create natural proximity between families, and give Elizabeth opportunities to play her part.
Bingley's happiness was a welcome consequence. Darcy would take it.
Miss Bingley emerged from the carriage with the expression of a woman arriving at a party she considered beneath her. She looked at Darcy, then at Netherfield, and her purpose might as well have been written on her face.
"Mr. Darcy. What an unexpected pleasure." She extended her hand. He bowed without taking it. "And with such... extraordinary news."
"Miss Bingley. Mrs. Hurst. I trust your journey was comfortable?"
"Tolerable." The word was a needle. Caroline was good at needles. "Though I confess myself curious about this sudden attachment to Miss Elizabeth Bennet. I hadn't observed any particular regard during our previous acquaintance."
"I cultivate discretion in all matters of importance."
He had used this line at Lucas Lodge. The repetition was deliberate: establishing a consistent narrative was essential, and Darcy had learned that most people stopped questioning a story once they had heard it told the same way twice.
Caroline's eyes sharpened. She saw through him.
He had expected nothing less. What mattered was that she lacked the evidence and social standing to challenge him directly.
She would settle for spite, delivered in the small, precise doses that were her speciality.
He had anticipated that much. Caroline Bingley was a nuisance, not a threat.
Unless she became one. He would watch.
"The servants have prepared your rooms. We dine at Longbourn this evening."
Bingley lit up. The mention of Longbourn, meaning Jane, produced in him a visible brightening. It was endearing, the word arrived before Darcy could replace it with something more useful, and also exactly as predicted.
In his chambers, Darcy reread Elizabeth's letter a third time.
He held it to the light. He studied the angle of her script, the spacing between lines, how her hand had pressed harder on certain words, compliance, arrangement, obey, the pressure of the nib a substitute for the protest her words were not permitted to contain.
She was learning to encode her resistance. He found this fascinating. Also dangerous.
He crossed to the window. Longbourn lay somewhere beyond the fields, too far to see, but he looked in its direction anyway.
She was there. Three miles away. Writing a letter she did not sign, dressing bruises she had not earned, preparing to smile at a man she had not chosen.
The thought of Elizabeth Bennet moving through her day with his name hanging over her like a sentence tightened something behind his sternum. He no longer tried to name it.
He wanted her. That was simple. The complications sent him to the brandy, which he poured and left untouched, before he checked his watch and read her letter a fourth time.
The carriage ride to Longbourn passed in Bingley's cheerful monologue about hedgerows and hunting. Caroline stared out the window. The set of her mouth promised difficulty.
Mrs. Bennet's welcome hit them at the door like a storm. Darcy had endured her since Hertfordshire and could now stand inside her enthusiasm without visibly flinching. The skill would serve him in the years ahead, a thought he preferred not to pursue.
He found Elizabeth standing slightly apart from her family.
Her posture was immaculate, the carriage of a woman who had rehearsed her ease.
Her shoulders were set. Her smile was precise.
Her eyes, when they met his, contained nothing he could use against her and everything that kept him awake at night.
"Mr. Darcy. How good of you to join us this evening."
"Miss Elizabeth." He took her hand. Held it one beat longer than propriety allowed. Felt her pulse jump against his fingers and thought: There. That is the truth of it, whatever your unsigned letter might claim. "You are looking well."
The emphasis on "well" was private, a reference to the salve, the marks, the shared knowledge of damage and concealment that bound them.
She coloured. The flush sat high on her cheekbones, and the sight of it, that involuntary warmth beneath her careful concealment, stirred his blood in a way he managed to keep off his face.
He positioned himself near her in the parlour. Near enough to claim. Not so near as to alarm. He had learned the precise distance that communicated possession to onlookers while preserving the fiction of courtship: close enough to suggest attachment, far enough to avoid remark.
Caroline struck within minutes.
"Miss Eliza, what a pleasure. And in such altered circumstances! I understand we're to wish you happy on your engagement?"
Elizabeth's expression held. Darcy watched her face and saw nothing, which was itself remarkable. A month ago, she would have shown the hit. Now she absorbed it as a good fighter absorbs a jab, turning the force of it into energy for the return.
"You are most kind. Circumstances have evolved in unexpected ways since our last meeting."
"Most unexpected. One might almost say... miraculous. To secure the affections of a gentleman of Mr. Darcy's standing, with nothing but... conversation to recommend you."
Darcy stepped forward. Elizabeth spoke first.
"Conversation can be a powerful medium. Particularly when it reveals truths about character that might otherwise remain hidden."
He stopped. The retort was better than anything he would have delivered.
Sharper. More dangerous. It carried, beneath its social grace, a veiled reference to Collins's death and Darcy's role in concealing it, a reminder that Elizabeth possessed information that could destroy him as thoroughly as he could destroy her.
She used the truth like a fencer finding an opening, and the effect on Caroline, who understood nothing of the subtext but felt its force, was immediate.
Darcy marked the moment as both advantage and danger.
Dinner. He watched Elizabeth act. She laughed at the right moments, deflected questions with grace, managed her mother's excesses with practised ease.
She was good. She was better than good. She was performing with a fluency of manner that most wives achieved only after years of practice.
She had learned it in three weeks, under duress, because he had required it of her.
He kept the observation to himself and returned his attention to his plate.
Mr. Bennet, over port, went straight for the throat.
"You are unusually attentive this evening, Mr. Darcy. One might almost suspect you fear my daughter will vanish if not continually observed."
"I find Miss Elizabeth's company stimulating."
"Natural, certainly. I confess I was slow to see the attraction, though my wife assures me the signs were always plain. Women observe these matters better than men."
Meryton. The assembly. Mr. Bennet's mention of attraction brought back tolerable, the single stupidest remark Darcy had ever made in public, and he had said some remarkably stupid things. He let the blow land. Absorbed it. Returned serve.