Chapter Fourteen
Miss Bennet had excused herself not long after the ladies withdrew from dinner, pleading her sister’s fatigue with gentle insistence and a smile that admitted no argument.
Bingley had protested—briefly, earnestly, and without effect—and soon the door had closed behind her, leaving the room altered in a way no one remarked upon aloud.
The fire crackled. Mrs Hurst reclined with her eyes half closed, her attention fixed nowhere in particular. Mr Hurst had surrendered entirely, his head tipped back, breathing slow and untroubled. Miss Bingley sat with a book open in her lap, the page unmoved for some time.
Darcy crossed the room to the small writing desk near the window.
A servant had intercepted him as they left the dining room, murmuring that a letter had arrived during the meal—addressed in a hand Darcy recognised at once. He had acknowledged it with a nod and said nothing more. He did not wish for an audience.
He seated himself, broke the seal with care, and unfolded the page.
Grosvenor Square
October, 1811
My dear Darcy,
I trust this letter finds you well settled in Hertfordshire and enjoying, if not repose, at least a change of scene. Though I would ordinarily spare you correspondence on matters that can wait until your return, circumstances have persuaded me that delay would serve no one.
You will have heard, no doubt, that Richard has been ordered back to the Peninsula.
The summons came with a haste I did not expect and an explanation I do not find entirely satisfying.
I am told—very earnestly—that his presence is required owing to “altered conditions” and a need for “continuity” and “experience” among the men.
Such phrases are admirably flexible, and I have learned over the years how often they are employed to conceal inconvenience or someone else’s incompetence rather than danger.
Still, the manner of it troubles me more than I care to admit.
I do not mean to burden you with a father’s unease, but this redeployment is not the only irregularity that has come to my attention of late.
I have received a number of small reports—trifling in themselves—from estates and holdings not my own.
Trees failing without obvious history of blight.
Pigeons not returning where they ought. Men complaining, half in jest, that the harvest was not a third what was expected.
All of this has been dismissed, quite sensibly, as weather, ill luck, or imagination. I have dismissed it myself.
Yet it has been suggested to me—quietly, and not by those inclined toward legend—that certain irregularities have been remarked upon beyond Derbyshire.
My steward, in the ordinary course of correspondence, has noted reports from several quarters that echo what I have heard nearer home.
Autumn advancing even as early as July, and winter falling long before the first snow.
Nothing dramatic. Nothing that cannot, taken singly, be attributed to chance or neglect.
But enough, in their accumulation, to warrant attention.
It is for this reason that I write to you now.
You are, at present, removed from your own lands and from the habits of ground you know as well as your own hand.
Hertfordshire is not governed by the same soil, nor the same weather.
And yet, if the reports I have received are accurate, it is precisely there that certain expected signs have failed to appear.
While elsewhere the season asserts itself with increasing insistence, Hertfordshire appears, oddly, to have been spared the worst of it.
I do not offer this as proof of anything.
I merely observe that absence may be as instructive as decay.
If, in the course of your stay, you have noticed anything that strikes you as inconsistent, I would ask that you note it carefully.
Not with an eye to explanation, still less to significance, but simply as fact.
I do not wish to encourage conjecture. Nor do I think it prudent to dismiss patterns merely because they suggest conclusions we would rather avoid.
Your aunt Catherine has, as you might expect, formed her own interpretation of these matters.
She is firmly persuaded that they point toward a personal resolution, and has been unrestrained in advancing her views regarding what she terms the proper completion of certain family expectations.
On this point, I must be plain: I consider her reasoning unsound, her confidence misplaced, and her interference deeply unwelcome.
Whatever is amiss, and I do not yet concede that anything is, it will not be remedied by matrimonial enthusiasm.
What concerns me more is the question of timing.
Your cousin’s orders were altered with an abruptness that admits of no satisfactory explanation, and I do not care for coincidences that arrive in clusters.
I am not prepared to say that these things are connected.
But neither am I content to pretend that they are not.
Write to me when you are able. Say what you see, and no more.
Above all, do not allow yourself to be hurried into anyone else’s conclusions.
I write because I trust your judgment, and because you have always possessed the rare ability to observe without haste and to act without noise.
If there is nothing to report, I shall be content to hear it so.
If there is something—however small—I would rather know it plainly than have it softened by good intentions.
Give my affection to Georgiana when next you write. I hope you will forgive the length of this letter; it has been composed with more care than ease.
Yours ever,
M
He read once, straight through, his expression giving nothing away.
He read again more slowly, his attention catching on certain phrases—altered conditions; suggested quietly; observe without dismissal.
By the third pass, he had ceased to see the words as correspondence at all and began to read them as one reads a ledger whose sums do not reconcile.
His uncle’s hand was almost artistic. The phrasing was careful—his uncle was a politician, after all. There was no alarm in it—no claim, no declaration.
Which was precisely what made his stomach turn.
Darcy folded the letter once, then again, and set it beside the inkstand. He did not reach for pen or paper immediately.
Across the room, Miss Bingley turned a page that made no sound. “How gratifying,” she said lightly, “to receive letters from town when one is buried so far from civilisation.”
Darcy did not look up.
“I take it Lord Matlock writes on business?” she asked, as though merely curious. “Or family matters? One never knows which will prevail with gentlemen.”
He uncapped the ink and examined his quill tip. “My uncle writes rarely without cause.”
Miss Bingley smiled, closing her book at last. “I hope it is nothing tiresome. You have looked positively distracted all evening.”
Darcy dipped the pen and tested it against the paper. The first line he wrote was bland, formal, entirely unremarkable.
“I am rather occupied than distracted. It concerns matters beyond Hertfordshire,” he said.
“Ah.” Miss Bingley leaned back, studying him with renewed interest. “Then it must be important indeed.”
Bingley, who had been stirring the fire into needless enthusiasm, glanced over his shoulder.
“Good news, I hope? Your uncle does not write merely to complain about the weather, does he? I declare, he ought to come to Hertfordshire. Best autumn weather in the country, or I will eat my hat. We shall have a crisp day tomorrow with not a cloud in sight.”
Darcy paused, pen hovering. For a moment, he considered offering the easy answer. Instead, he lowered his head and wrote, the reply forming with care.
He thanked his uncle for his confidence. He acknowledged Richard’s orders without comment. He addressed the question put to him directly—whether he had observed anything out of the ordinary in Hertfordshire—and found himself choosing his words with uncommon deliberation.
Miss Bingley’s gaze had not left him. “So very studious you are, Mr Darcy,” she remarked. “One might suppose you and the earl were plotting something grand!”
He did not lift his eyes from the page. “If I were, I should hardly do so at Bingley’s escritoire.”
“That is true,” she conceded. “You would prefer privacy for such things.”
The pen paused.
Darcy finished the sentence he had begun, then set the pen down. He read what he had written with a critical eye, weighing omission as carefully as inclusion.
I have observed nothing that cannot be accounted for by season, circumstance, or coincidence, he had written.
It was almost accurate. It was also incomplete. He folded the letter without sealing it and rose. “You propose an excellent idea, Miss Bingley. I will finish this in my room and shall send it down in the morning.”
Bingley crossed the room. “Is everything… quite all right?”
“Entirely.”
It was true, in the narrowest sense. No illness. No loss. No crisis demanding immediate remedy.
Nothing urgent at all, in fact.
Elizabeth had not intended to leave her room.
That, at least, was what she told herself as she crossed to the wardrobe and drew out a gown.
It was not the one Jane had laid ready the night before—too neat, too expectant—but an older favourite, plain in cut and forgiving in colour.
One that suggested comfort rather than recovery, and would invite no comment should she be seen in it.
She dressed with care that bordered on caution. Not haste, exactly, but an awareness of every fastening, every small exertion. When she reached for her shawl, she paused, testing herself without movement. Her head was clear. Her limbs answered her without protest—too easily.
She froze and glanced at the open door leading to Jane’s room, then slowed her movements.