Chapter 10
Fitzwilliam Darcy
Darcy had exhausted the Netherfield library two days earlier.
This was not, in itself, remarkable. Whoever had stocked it had collected books with excellent intentions and very little discrimination, purchasing handsome bindings in quantities far exceeding his inclination to read them.
The shelves at Netherfield contained a great many volumes which had clearly never been opened at all, and which provided little inducement to any serious reader.
Under ordinary circumstances, Darcy might have found the situation mildly irritating. That morning, however, he welcomed any excuse to leave the house. A ride to Meryton to visit the bookseller and seek out a volume more worth his attention was a very welcome distraction.
Instructing his valet to have his horse saddled and to inform Bingley not to wait for him at breakfast was the work of moments. The brief ride to town was pleasant in the cool morning air, objectionable only in being over too quickly.
The Meryton bookshop, though small, was stocked by a man of taste and judgment, and better still, a man who did not chatter unnecessarily. Darcy nodded to him upon entering and strode back to the shelves, hoping to find something that would hold his attention.
Like almost every evening of late, he had spent too much of the previous evening thinking about Elizabeth Bennet.
More specifically, he had spent too much of it recalling her expression during her exchange with Mr Collins on the evening of the ball.
The memory had followed him with persistent clarity despite every effort to dismiss it.
Her refusal had been unmistakable. Collins, astonishingly, had failed to recognise it.
Darcy still found himself revisiting portions of their interaction with growing disbelief. What at first had appeared merely absurd now struck him as increasingly troubling the more carefully he considered it. How importuned she had looked. How — tired.
Darcy turned another page without absorbing a word. Giving up, he selected the volume and one more and brought them to the counter, where the owner gave him a smile and an approving nod at his selections.
A few minutes later he stepped back into the cold morning air of Meryton, his books tucked beneath his arm.
The town had begun fully to wake around him. Shopkeepers opened shutters against the pale morning light while carts rattled slowly over uneven stones. Voices drifted from nearby storefronts. Somewhere farther down the street, a dog barked furiously at passing horses.
Darcy descended the steps absently, his thoughts still fixed elsewhere. It was only by chance that he looked toward the coaching inn across the street.
Then he stopped dead.
Elizabeth Bennet stood beside the public stage, quite alone.
For one suspended moment, his mind refused to make sense of what he was seeing. She wore travelling clothes beneath a dark pelisse, one gloved hand gripping a small bag while the other held what appeared to be a stage ticket.
Darcy stared at her in stunned disbelief. There wasn’t a maid or servant with her. No companion of any kind.
Elizabeth turned slightly then, as though searching for the arrival of another passenger, and he saw the strain beneath her composure. Even from across the street, he saw it now. The tension in her posture. The unnatural stillness with which she held herself.
Something was very wrong.
Without stopping to think, Darcy strode across the street towards her.
She saw him only when he was halfway there. The change in her expression was instantaneous. First, she appeared shocked, then something very near alarmed. “Mr Darcy?”
He stopped before her, his gaze moving once rapidly over the nearly empty street around them before returning to her face. “Miss Elizabeth,” he said sharply, “what are you doing here?”
Elizabeth tightened her hold on the travelling bag. “I might ask the same of you.”
“I am not standing beside a public stage entirely alone.” The reply escaped him before he considered softening it.
Elizabeth’s eyes widened slightly.
Darcy drew a controlled breath. “I beg your pardon,” he said more evenly. “But this situation is highly irregular.”
A flicker of colour rose in her cheeks. “Yes,” she replied. “I am aware of it.”
The coachman called another passenger nearby. Horses shifted impatiently in the cold.
Darcy lowered his voice. “Where is your family?”
“At Longbourn.”
“And yet you are here.”
“Yes.”
The calmness of the answer disturbed him more than distress might have done.
Darcy studied her for one moment longer. Then he asked, “Miss Elizabeth…what has happened?”
She looked away almost immediately. A faint flush rose in her cheeks.
The movement alone was answer enough to sharpen Darcy’s concern.
For several seconds, she said nothing. The noise of the street continued around them with complete indifference. A cart rolled past farther down the road. Someone laughed near the inn entrance. The ordinary sounds of morning seemed strangely distant, insignificant compared to getting at the truth.
At last Elizabeth said, “I am going to London.”
“So I gathered.”
“I have family there. I shall stay with my aunt and uncle.”
Darcy’s gaze dropped briefly to the travelling bag still clutched tightly in her hand. “Alone?”
A faint edge entered her expression then, somewhere between irritation and embarrassment. “I had not intended to remain alone for the entire journey.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No,” Elizabeth replied, “it is merely the only one you are likely to receive.”
Under any other circumstances, the response might almost have amused him. Now it did not.
Darcy glanced once toward the stagecoach, then back at her. “You are distressed,” he said, as gently as he could. “You are travelling without a companion or servant. And unless I mistake the matter entirely, you are doing so without your family’s knowledge.”
Elizabeth’s silence confirmed it instantly.
A cold unease settled low in his chest. “Miss Elizabeth,” he said more carefully, “if some difficulty has arisen, perhaps I may be of assistance.”
Her laugh was soft and entirely without humour. “You have already discovered more than I intended anyone to know.”
“Then I was correct.”
Elizabeth looked toward the waiting coach. “They will leave soon.”
Darcy ignored this completely. “What has happened?”
For one moment he thought she would refuse him again. He saw the hesitation plainly in her face. Pride warred visibly against exhaustion, along with something else he profoundly disliked recognising. Fear.
When she finally spoke, her voice had lowered almost to a whisper. “Mr Collins intends to marry me.”
Darcy stared at her. The words themselves were unsurprising. Collins’s intentions had been obvious to every person at Longbourn except, perhaps, Collins himself. It was Elizabeth’s expression that made the difference.
“He proposed?”
“No,” she said grimly. “That would have required listening to my answer.”
Anger moved coldly through Darcy’s thoughts.
Elizabeth continued before he could speak. “He obtained my mother’s approval and appears to have concluded that my own is therefore unnecessary. Yesterday he announced our engagement to me as though it had already occurred.”
Darcy went still. “And your mother permitted this?”
“She encouraged it.”
The stagecoach driver called for boarding, but neither of them moved.
Darcy spoke very carefully. “You refused him.”
“Repeatedly.”
“And he persists?”
“Yes.”
Darcy’s jaw tightened.
Elizabeth gave another brief, exhausted laugh. “My mother considers me foolish. Mr Collins considers me modest. Between them, I discovered there was no possible method of saying no which they would recognise as genuine.”
For one suspended moment, Darcy could think of nothing to say at all. He remembered Collins at the Netherfield Ball, smiling patiently while Elizabeth spoke. He remembered every interruption. Every dismissal disguised as kindness.
The recollection landed differently now. Not absurd. Infuriating.
Darcy looked at Elizabeth again and suddenly understood the full reality of what she had attempted. She had fled her home alone before dawn rather than allow herself to be trapped into marriage.
It was a brand of courage that he could not help but respect, even as it terrified him. “When did you leave Longbourn?” he asked.
“Before breakfast.”
“Does anyone know where you are?”
“Mary knows.” She sighed. “I had not intended even that much. I left Jane a note, but because I could not risk being stopped, I did not say exactly where I intended to go.”
“And the rest of your family?”
“I imagine my mother is in hysterics already.”
Normally, Darcy would have considered the situation catastrophic. At present, however, catastrophe seemed less alarming than the image of Elizabeth Bennet travelling to London unprotected on a public stagecoach while half the county searched for her.
Absolutely not. Darcy made the decision. “You will not take the stage,” he said.
Elizabeth stared at him. “I beg your pardon?”
“You will not take the stage,” Darcy repeated.
For the first time since he had approached her, irritation seemed to displace some portion of her strain. “Mr Darcy, I am aware that the situation is improper. You need not look quite so horrified.”
“I assure you, my horror has very little to do with propriety.”
“Then with what?”
“With the fact that you are preparing to travel to London alone in circumstances which make you vulnerable to every sort of discomfort and danger imaginable.”
Elizabeth folded her arms tightly across herself. “I had managed the matter perfectly well before you arrived.”
“You had managed to alarm me within ten seconds of being seen.”
“That sounds like your own difficulty.”
Darcy might almost have admired the sharpness of the reply, had he not been in no humour to appreciate it. “You cannot seriously believe this arrangement safe.”
“I believe it necessary.”
“That is not the same thing.”