Chapter 2
Mr. Darcy
Darcy's valet, McKeever, laid out two cravats. One was plain. The other had a narrow embroidered edge that Darcy had worn exactly once, under protest, in his aunt's drawing room. McKeever, damn the man, knew it.
"The plain one."
"Yes, sir."
The embroidered cravat remained on the table, untouched, as though it had feelings that might be hurt by relocation. Darcy put down his letter to his sister, Georgiana. "You are usually quicker than this."
"I am deciding whether the plain one has suffered damage."
"Has it?"
"No, sir."
McKeever removed it anyway. He inspected it near the lamp with theatrical care and returned it to the same place it had occupied a moment before. Ten years of service allowed a man many forms of insolence, provided he committed to none that could be named as such.
"You may speak," Darcy said.
"I have said nothing."
"That is the difficulty."
McKeever's face remained composed, a composure so total it was itself a kind of statement. "Miss Elizabeth arrived in weather that would have kept most gentlemen indoors."
Darcy looked back at the unfinished letter. He had written Georgiana's name twice in one sentence without noticing. "Her conduct was imprudent."
"It was."
"And devoted."
"Yes, sir."
There it was again. Agreement sharpened to a fine point and aimed, unmistakably, somewhere near Darcy's ribs.
Darcy rose and crossed to the window. Rain obscured the lawn in long grey sheets.
He had watched Elizabeth approach across that same lawn not two hours before, head bent, one hand holding her skirts clear of the mud with a determination that had nothing genteel about it.
When the wind seized her shawl, she caught it without breaking stride, without even looking, the way a person catches something they have caught a hundred times before.
He had admired the action before he remembered he was supposed to condemn it.
His hand found the curtain and rested there, forgotten.
"Miss Bennet's fever?" he asked.
"Mrs. Nicholls expects it to ease before morning. The apothecary will return at nine."
"Good." Darcy let the curtain fall.
"The volume of Cowper was delivered."
Darcy turned. "I told you to leave it in the sitting room."
"I did. Sarah selected a cheerful passage for the marker."
The book had not, strictly, been in his instructions. Not the choosing of a passage, at any rate. Darcy set the sander aside.
"Sarah?"
"The housemaid attending the ladies."
"I remember her."
McKeever adjusted a cuff that needed no adjustment whatsoever. "She has good judgement."
"About poetry?"
"Among other matters."
Darcy gave him a warning look, the kind that had, on occasion, silenced entire drawing rooms. McKeever received it with the serenity of a man who had survived considerably worse looks over considerably better provocation.
"The plain cravat," Darcy repeated, as though the matter were still in question.
"Certainly, sir."
At dinner, the chair opposite Darcy remained empty. Elizabeth had elected to dine with her sister, and the empty chair somehow took up more room than an occupied one ever had. Caroline lamented the decision so often, and with such elaborate sorrow, that her relief became audible beneath it.
"Miss Eliza is determined to exhaust herself. I admire devotion, but there are limits."
"Not all admirable qualities are improved by limits."
Caroline glanced at him. "Surely you do not approve of her arriving in such a state."
"I did not say that."
"Then we agree."
They did not agree. Not remotely. But Darcy saw no benefit in explaining the distinction to a woman who had already decided what he thought.
Bingley ate almost nothing and asked twice whether the apothecary had sent word.
Mrs. Hurst advised him to stop worrying, in the tone of someone advising a dog to stop barking.
Hurst advised him to finish the claret, which was, in fairness, the only advice Hurst ever gave anyone.
Darcy watched his friend push food about his plate without eating a bite of it. "The apothecary comes at nine."
"Yes. Nicholls told me." Bingley glanced towards the door for perhaps the tenth time. "Miss Bennet seemed much worse this afternoon."
"Her sister is with her."
"That is a comfort."
Caroline set down her fork with a small, precise click. "Charles, you speak as though Miss Bennet had no proper care until her sister came tramping across the fields."
"I speak as though she wanted her sister."
The answer was simple. Almost embarrassingly so. Caroline found no use for it and returned, with some determination, to her fish.
After dinner, Darcy declined cards. He went to the library with a real intention to work.
Two estate letters required answers, and Georgiana deserved a page not marred by a man's inability to keep his own thoughts in order.
The south fire had been lit, crackling low and orange.
Cowper's place on the shelf stood empty, a small gap in the row like a missing tooth.
He sat at the writing table. Rain struck the windows in irregular gusts, and somewhere above him a woman walked across a room, paused, and crossed again, the old house carrying the faint tread down through the ceiling.
He had no earthly means of knowing whether the steps belonged to Elizabeth.
He knew anyway. It is her. He did not examine why he was so certain.
At half past nine, Bingley entered without knocking, his face flushed with relief.
"The fever has turned. The apothecary is satisfied."
Darcy put down his pen. "I am glad."
"Miss Elizabeth has scarcely slept since she arrived."
"She has been here one day."
"That is still too long to go without sleep."
Bingley went to the fire and stood over it, warming hands that did not look cold. His easy, open face carried an apprehension Darcy had seen on it only once before, when a favourite tenant's child had gone missing near the river for the better part of an afternoon. "Jane is very good."
Darcy noticed the Christian name and chose not to notice it aloud. "Yes."
"You sound surprised."
"I am not."
"Caroline says the family is unsuitable."
"Caroline says a great many things."
Bingley laughed, though the concern did not quite leave his face. "Would you think me a fool if I paid Miss Bennet particular attention?"
Darcy had once found the match imprudent.
He could still, if pressed, name every objection in order.
And yet upstairs, at that very moment, Elizabeth had spent the whole day cooling her sister's fever while Caroline measured mud upon a hem as though it were a moral failing.
Objections, he was beginning to suspect, were not character.
Why did that simple distinction feel like something he ought to have understood years ago?
"I would think you a fool if you let another person decide whom you value."
Bingley's expression cleared, like sun breaking through. "That is excellent advice."
Darcy had not followed it himself. Not once. Not in his whole careful, dutiful life. The thought sat in his chest like something swallowed wrong.
The door opened. Elizabeth stood on the threshold with Cowper in her hand. She wore a pale gown that was too long for her, the hem catching at her ankles, and fatigue had taken the brightness from her face without touching the intelligence in her eyes at all.
"Forgive me," she said. "I came to return this."
Darcy rose. Bingley took the book from her and at once began asking after Jane, question tumbling over question. Elizabeth answered with patience. The fever was lower, Jane had taken broth, she might sleep through till morning.
"Then you must sleep as well."
"You sound very like my mother. I assure you that is not always a recommendation."
Bingley laughed. Darcy did too, once, the sound surprising him more than it surprised anyone else in the room.
Elizabeth's attention moved to Darcy, and he watched, helpless to stop it, the exact instant she remembered the assembly.
Her amusement cooled. Not into hostility exactly, but into something wary and careful.
Darcy deserved it. The knowledge sat low in his stomach, uncomfortable and entirely fair.
"Was Cowper tolerable?" he asked, and there was something in his own voice he did not quite recognise. Not hope, surely not that, but its careful, unacknowledged cousin.
Her brows lifted. "More than tolerable. The selection was well judged."
"Sarah chose the page," Bingley said, entirely too pleased with himself. "McKeever chose the book. Darcy merely owns an opinion of the poet."
Darcy looked at him.
"Nicholls told me," Bingley said, unrepentant.
Elizabeth examined the blue marker between two fingers. "Then the servants have achieved what their employers might not. They have agreed upon something useful."
"A dangerous precedent."
"For employers?"
"For servants who discover their own competence."
Her pleasure returned then and altered her whole face. Lit it, really, the way a candle changes a room. Darcy had remembered that look too accurately from Lucas Lodge, and not accurately enough, both at once.
Bingley looked between them, sensing something he could not name. "I should see whether Jane needs anything."
"Mr. Bingley, she is sleeping."
"Then I will ask Nicholls."
He left with what could only be called indecent speed, nearly catching his sleeve on the door frame. Elizabeth took one step into the room, still near the open door, as though keeping a line of retreat available. "You need not entertain me, Mr. Darcy. I came only to return the volume."
"It is the finest conversation I have had at Netherfield today."
"We have exchanged six sentences."
"My claim remains."
That pleased her. He saw it cross her face, quick and unguarded, gone a moment later when she remembered to govern it. Then she looked towards the windows.
"The rain is easing. Jane may wish for air tomorrow, if she is strong enough."
Darcy followed her gaze. Water still ran from the eaves in dark ropes, though a pale strip of sky had appeared above the trees. "The south terrace dries quickly. The path beyond it does not."
"I will remember the distinction."
His attention dropped, before he could stop it, to the pinned hem of her borrowed gown. "You did not remember it this morning."
"This morning I valued speed above dry shoes."
"And now?"
"Now I have reached Jane. My standards may recover with her."
She moved as if to leave. Darcy wanted, quite badly, to stop her. Every sentence that occurred to him sounded like a command dressed up as a question.
"Miss Elizabeth."
She turned.
He could apologise for Meryton. The words were ready, had been ready for some time, he suspected. He had been ready for nothing else since she had walked through that door.
Caroline appeared behind her.
"There you are, Miss Eliza. Your sister has asked for you."
Elizabeth straightened at once, all her attention leaving the room in a single motion. "Jane is awake?"
"A moment ago."
She departed without another word, skirts already moving. Caroline remained, one hand resting on the door as though she owned it.
"How fortunate that I found her."
"Did Miss Bennet ask for her?"
Caroline's pause was slight, barely a beat, but Darcy caught it. "Mrs. Nicholls said she might."
Darcy walked past her into the corridor without softening it. "Then Mrs. Nicholls may tell Miss Elizabeth when it happens."
He went upstairs. McKeever waited in the dressing room with the embroidered cravat folded away and the plain one laid ready for morning, as though the whole exchange downstairs had somehow already reached him.
"Miss Elizabeth liked the poetry."
McKeever kept his face composed. This visibly required effort, and Darcy, against his better judgement, respected him for it.
"Sarah believed she would, sir."
Two servants had arranged one book between them. It should not have mattered in the least. Darcy slept badly, because it did.