Chapter 11 #2
Darcy had not gone up to his rooms after all, but back to the saloon where Miss Elizabeth had sat on Thursday. He stood at the window, thinking about Mrs. Gardiner’s invitation.
It was quite late when Georgiana came to find him.
She had borne the day extraordinarily well, though he had not been able to tell her so for fear of making her self-conscious. She had greeted a group of guests, conversed with the Pelham girls, cared for Miss Atherton, and led the guests who were with her up to the house to wait out a storm.
She came with a lit candle. “Brother, I wished to bid you a good evening. I am for bed.”
He nodded. “You did very well today, sweetling.”
“Thank you. It was . . . I enjoyed myself, but I am rather weary now.”
He chuckled. “I can truthfully say the same.”
Georgiana moved towards the door, but after a few steps, turned back to face him.
“Brother . . . do you think the Gardiners might be persuaded to come into Derbyshire again? Or—Miss Bennet, at least. I should like it very much if Miss Bennet were to come again.”
She stopped, gathered herself, and went on.
“I have not often had a friend who talks to me as if she had already decided to like me. And I fear I had too little of her today, with so many guests.”
It was, Darcy thought, very nearly the longest speech he had ever heard his sister make about another young lady, and that she should have made it on this subject, on this evening, made him happy. For he had not had enough time with Miss Elizabeth either.
The thought came before he could stop it, plain and selfish and correct.
He had enjoyed a morning of glances, a storm’s worth of nearness, a few words in a crowded folly, a farewell in the hall with half the house around them, but it had not been enough.
He wanted more time with her. More conversation.
More proof, perhaps, that he had not imagined the warmth in her face when she glanced back from the carriage.
He did not know whether Miss Elizabeth wanted more time with him. Had her aunt’s gentle opening had been offered on Miss Elizabeth’s behalf, or only from her own kindness? He did not know whether that backward glance had meant encouragement, gratitude, or nothing more than farewell.
“I think it not impossible,” he said carefully, “that Miss Bennet may be persuaded into Derbyshire again. But I cannot answer for her.”
Georgiana looked up at him the way she did when she had heard more in a sentence than had been put into it. The girl was too quick sometimes.
“You would like her to come again too,” she said.
It was not a question.
Darcy moved towards the window. “I should be very glad if she did.”
Georgiana’s face changed. It did not brighten exactly, for she was too gentle to seize upon what she sensed might wound him, but some small seed of hope had been nurtured.
He had not meant to do that.
“Then perhaps she will,” Georgiana said.
“Perhaps.” It was a dangerous word. It held almost nothing and allowed almost everything.
Georgiana came back to him and kissed his cheek. “Good night, Brother.”
“Good night, Georgiana.”
At the door she paused once more. “If she does come again, I shall speak to her more.”
“I think she would like that.” This time he said it before caution could stop him. Georgiana smiled.
When his sister had gone, Darcy stood alone in the quiet room, with the house settling around him and the dark descending outside. Miss Elizabeth might be persuaded into Derbyshire again. It was a cautious bit of hope, no more, but after the day they had experienced, even that much felt unsafe.
He did not know whether Miss Elizabeth wished him to come to Lambton. He did not know whether her aunt had spoken for her or only from kindness. He knew only that doing nothing would be safest and that he could not decide tonight.
Tonight, he had only the memory of her backward glance and the knowledge that the morning would come soon enough.
Darcy did not sleep a great deal that night.
He lay in the dark of a house he had lived in all his life and listened to it settle around him. He knew these sounds. There was the faint complaint of old wood, the distant shifting of a door, the small noises of Pemberley at night that had been familiar to him since boyhood.
Until this past year, he had never once wished for someone beside him to hear them too.
He thought of the whole long day of her, which he had been recalling piece by piece.
The way she had drawn Georgiana away on some pretext when his sister was floundering.
The way she had been aware of young Henry Atherton, calling out an alarm but already moving while everyone else stood about.
The steadiness with which she had remained with and spoken to the frightened Pelham girl during the storm.
He knew, by now, exactly what manner of woman Elizabeth Bennet was.
What he did not know—what none of that long, happy list could tell him, what no amount of lying awake would yield—was the one thing that mattered.
He knew what she was. But he did not know what she felt.
Miss Elizabeth’s countenance as she stood near the carriage came back to him. It was the face of a woman who had forgiven him, and that was no small matter. Did it, could it, mean anything more?
She no longer despised him. He was nearly certain of it. There had been an evening in a Kent parsonage last April when he would have given a great deal for such grace.
But a man could not live upon the bare absence of a woman’s contempt.
He turned it over and over, but he could not decide whether Elizabeth Bennet liked him.
Whether she would be glad to see him in the morning, or only sorry he had come.
Whether he would be finishing a sentence she wished finished, or proving himself the very man she had called out in April, a man who supposed wanting a thing was the same as deserving it.
To go and be wrong was to shame them both.
To stay and let Monday carry her south was to lose her without ever learning whether she might have been won.
Darcy turned the whole of it over until the window went from black to grey. He resolved nothing. He decided nothing. And somewhere near dawn, Darcy fell asleep still not knowing what he was going to do.