Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Jane, my dear, you have scarcely touched your tea,” Mama said for the third time, pressing the cup nearer as though appetite were a moral obligation. “You must keep up your strength! One never knows how much conversation the day may require.”
Jane smiled faintly and complied, though Elizabeth could see the effort behind it. She looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with the hour or the way they had passed the night.
“I should not be surprised,” Mama continued, lowering her voice with a theatrical air that failed to diminish its reach, “if we were to receive a visitor before luncheon. Indeed, I should be quite astonished if we did not. Such attentions are not paid twice without intention, and Mr Bingley is nothing if not decisive.”
Elizabeth paused with her spoon halfway to her mouth. She set it down again. She would rather not eat, if this was to be the course served.
Mary nodded from across the table. “It would be the natural progression,” she said. “Affection, when properly guided, seeks resolution.”
Kitty almost knocked over her poached egg as she reached for the tea. “Do you think he’ll bring flowers?”
“I think,” Mama replied, “that he will bring a question. A most important question, indeed! Is that not right, Mr Bennet? Oh, for mercy’s sake, that man has gone off to his library again.
Kitty, darling, do stop coughing! Jane, go upstairs and put on your pink gown.
It does so much for your complexion. Yellow only makes you look ill, and we cannot have Mr Bingley fearing the Bennet girls are forever taking to their beds for the least little thing. ”
Elizabeth pushed her chair back a fraction. “Really, Mama,” she said, “it seems premature to speak as though—”
“Premature?” Her mother turned. “My dear Lizzy, one must be practical. Nothing is gained by pretending ignorance when everyone can see what is before them. Jane is admired. Mr Bingley has been constant. We must make of it what we can!”
Mary glanced at Elizabeth over the rim of her teacup. “It is unwise,” she said, “to resist conclusions that recommend themselves so plainly. Excessive doubt is as much a failing as rashness.”
“I am not resisting anything,” she said. “I merely think it best not to decide matters before—”
“Before what?” Mama demanded. “Before opportunity passes? Before misunderstandings arise? Heaven knows we have had enough of those.”
The words struck with uncomfortable accuracy. Elizabeth pushed the rest of the way out from the table and rose.
“And where are you going now? Sit down, child. You are forever darting about, as if motion itself were a virtue.”
Elizabeth resumed her seat, frowning down at her still-full plate and cold tea. She felt watched—not with hostility, but with expectation. As though her role were already written, and deviation would require explanation.
Mr Collins chose that moment to enter the breakfast room. When he paused and no one looked up with rapt anticipation, he cleared his throat.
“I had hoped,” he said, folding his hands upon his ample middle, “to speak with you this morning, Cousin Elizabeth. A matter of some importance has weighed upon me.”
Elizabeth looked to her mother. Mrs Bennet inclined her head at once.
“By all means, Mr Collins. I am sure Lizzy will be most eager to hear what you have to say.”
She turned to her mother, eyes wide in horror. Oh, no, no! Mama could not be suggesting… No!
Mary set her cup aside with interest.
Elizabeth did not trust her voice. She stood again, this time with purpose. “I am sure Mr Collins and I have nothing in particular to speak of. If you will excuse me, I wished to speak with my father.”
Mr Collins moved to block the doorway, bowing with a strange, self-contented little chuckle.
“Indeed,” he said, with a smile that suggested correction rather than consent, “that may wait. It is precisely this habit of withdrawing—of placing oneself at inconvenient angles to one’s family—that I wish to address.”
Elizabeth stopped. So… this was not… what she had feared? “I do not withdraw,” she said carefully. “I remove myself when—”
“When you ought to listen,” Mr Collins supplied. “There is a difference, Cousin, which I fear you have not yet learned to distinguish. You are fortunate in your relations, and it is only proper that you attend to their guidance.”
Mary nodded. “Instruction, when offered in good faith, should be received with gratitude.”
Mama waved a hand, as if to dismiss any suggestion of severity. “Mr Collins means only your good, Lizzy. You have a way of putting yourself forward, and it leads to misunderstanding. You must see that.”
Elizabeth’s mouth opened, then closed again as a sharp agony went winging through her head.
She had learned not to wince outright, but she could hardly smother the grunt of pain as she stepped backward.
She had the sudden, unwelcome sense that whatever she said would confirm the very charge laid against her.
“I… only wished to find Papa,” she said. “Has anyone seen him this morning?”
Her mother shook her head. “Oh! I daresay he is nursing an aching head this morning. He certainly drank enough punch last night. Surely, he is keeping company with his books again.”
“He was not in his study when I came down,” Elizabeth said.
“Well, then,” Mr Collins replied, “this conversation is all the more timely. One cannot rely upon indulgence forever.”
“Excuse me, Mr Collins, but it is improper for you to impose upon me with this so-called instruction of yours when my father has not been advised of your complaint. I beg you will excuse me,” she said, and stepped toward the door.
Mr Collins moved with her. Not blocking her way, precisely, but close enough that she could not pass without a spike of discomfort shooting behind her eye. She pushed past him anyway.
She moved through the house with the same careful steps she had learned as a girl, when the day’s temper might be read by the sound of her mother’s voice alone.
The doors stood open. The sitting room lay abandoned, chairs set at odd angles from the night before.
Her father’s book lay face-down upon the small table near the window, its ribbon marker crushed between pages.
“Papa?” she called, lightly at first, as though he might answer from habit rather than presence.
Nothing.
His library was empty. The chair stood pushed back from the desk, the ink dried in its well. No fire. No scent of his favourite tobacco.
She crossed the passage to the back stairs. “Mrs Hill?” she asked, finding the housekeeper sorting linen with brisk indifference. “Has my father been down this morning?”
Mrs Hill glanced up. “Not that I saw, Miss Elizabeth. He did not ring.”
“Did he breakfast?”
“No, miss.”
Elizabeth nodded, thanked her, and moved on.
In the passage by the pantry, she encountered one of the kitchen maids, then the other.
Each shook her head. Alice suggested, cheerfully, that Mr Bennet might be enjoying a quiet morning walk.
Sarah supposed he was having a long lie-in after so much merrymaking the night before.
Elizabeth did not answer either conjecture. She passed through the back door instead. The yard was damp from last night’s rain. The stable boy was sweeping near the threshold, his boots leaving dark marks on the stone.
“Tom,” she said. “I do not suppose you have seen my father this morning?”
He looked up at once. “Yes, miss. Early.”
“Early? Where?”
He touched his cap. “I saddled the horse, miss. Just as he asked. But he didn’t say where he was bound.”
Elizabeth stared at him. “The horse? Did he… Well, did he take his fowling piece?”
“No, miss.”
“A book, perhaps?”
Tom shook his head. “No.”
She thanked him and turned away before he could ask why she looked as she did.
Her father did not go out early. He did not ride without remark. He did not leave without a word when the house was in such a state of expectation and strain. He avoided mornings altogether when he could.
Elizabeth crossed the yard again, then climbed the stairs to her room and closed the door behind her—not to sleep, not to think, but to gather herself into a space private enough to block out the clutter of people.
She began to pace—three steps from the bed to the window, three back again. She pressed her palms together, then dragged them through her hair and abandoned the effort. Nothing would settle. Nothing would line up.
Last night refused to stay where it belonged.
After the supper table—after that instant when he had stared at her like he had seen a ghost—there had been no…
no ease or gaiety for her. No return to civility disguised as comfort.
Darcy had placed himself elsewhere, then farther still.
When the room shifted, he shifted with it, until the distance between them felt arranged rather than accidental.
Once—only once—he had paused near her, then altered course so abruptly that she had wondered whether she had imagined the moment at all.
What the devil had she done to offend him? He did not speak to her. He did not even look at her again.
Instead, he had stationed himself where Mr Collins was thickest in his attentions, as though proximity itself might be used as cover.
Elizabeth had noticed because the relief she expected never came.
She had waited for it—waited with the patience of habit—and found only the same tightening, the same internal recoil, sharpened now by the absence of something she had not known she relied upon.
She stopped short, turning back toward the bed.
Mr Wickham.
That had been her certainty. It still wanted to be.
She had felt easier near him—lighter, almost—and she had accepted the feeling without question.
But memory, once disturbed, would not lie still.
Darcy had been nearby then, too. Always somewhere at the edge of the room, never quite out of reach.
She had not noticed because she had not been looking for him.