Chapter 13
Elizabeth
The blue shawl was back around Elizabeth's shoulders before midnight. A little worse for its adventures, but back.
Mrs. Nicholls stood near the retiring-room door, supervising the departure of guests with the particular genius of a good housekeeper: giving them privacy without ever quite leaving them alone.
"Miss Bingley took it from the press herself," Sarah said. "I saw the empty place after she asked me to carry Mrs. Long's cloak downstairs. Mr. McKeever saw Miss Bingley in the east corridor, and he knew my blue knots on sight."
Elizabeth examined the fringe. One knot had loosened in all the handling. She had to resist the urge to pull it tight right there, in front of everyone, as if that would undo the whole evening.
"You knew of her plan before I even arrived tonight," she said, "and you asked Mr. McKeever not to tell me."
"Yes, miss. I asked him to wait — unless Miss Bingley actually acted on it. Mr. Darcy agreed."
Mrs. Nicholls's eyes moved to Sarah. It was not a friendly look. A housemaid who inserted herself into a guest's private business could lose a great deal more than her employer's favour.
Elizabeth chose her words with care. "You protected my shawl.
You warned me the moment it went missing.
I am grateful for that." She paused. "You also decided, on my behalf, that I should walk into a ball without knowing a plan existed that used my name as its instrument. I am not grateful for that part."
Sarah swallowed. "I understand, miss. I thought — I thought staying quiet would keep the evening easy for you. Mr. Darcy made the same mistake, after the storm."
The comparison was bold. It was also exact, and Elizabeth felt it land.
"When he apologised for that," she said, "what did you think?"
"That he had learned better, miss."
"Then learn it with him." Elizabeth heard her own voice steady into something final. "There will be no more decisions made in my name. No messages invented, no garments moved, no meetings contrived. Books may still be recommended — within reason."
Sarah's chin came up. She did not weep. She did not plead, and Elizabeth found she respected her a good deal more for it than she would have for either.
"Yes, miss."
Mrs. Nicholls stepped forward. "I will speak with Sarah about her duties. She ought to have come to me at once."
"She ought," Elizabeth agreed. "She also prevented real harm to a guest of this house. I hope both facts will be remembered."
"They will be."
The housekeeper's answer carried an authority Elizabeth had no claim to at Netherfield. A tension she had not quite named eased at the sound of it. Sarah curtsied to them both and slipped away.
In the entrance hall, the Bennet family had assembled in its usual state of glorious disorder.
Lydia had lost one glove. Kitty had found it and, for reasons known only to Kitty, refused to admit where.
Mary wished to discuss the moral danger of masquerade.
She had caught a garbled account of somebody wearing another woman's shawl and mistaken the whole business for a scandal out of a novel.
Mrs. Bennet, meanwhile, had Jane cornered.
"Mr. Bingley hardly danced after supper," she said. "You must have offended him somehow."
"His sister was unwell," Jane said.
"Caroline looked perfectly well in the ballroom. She has a London constitution — very deceptive, London constitutions."
"Mamma," Elizabeth said, "the carriage is waiting."
Darcy stood beside Bingley at the foot of the stairs. Bingley's face showed the particular fatigue of a man who has spent an evening being cheerful on purpose. Jane went to him before Mrs. Bennet could get there first and turn a private sentence into a public performance.
"I hope Miss Bingley is not seriously ill," Jane said.
"She is not ill." Bingley's jaw was tight in a way Elizabeth had never seen on him. "There was a family disagreement. Caroline and the Hursts leave for Scarborough tomorrow."
Jane did not press for what he could not say in a crowded hall. "I am sorry the evening turned painful."
"None of it was your doing." He looked at her as though that fact were the only thing holding the rest of him together. "May I call tomorrow?"
"Yes."
His relief was so immediate and so complete that Mrs. Bennet heard the word yes and forgot that she had meant to be offended about something.
Darcy came to Elizabeth. "May I also call?"
She looked down at the blue shawl still settled around her shoulders. "My father expects it."
"And you?"
"I expect it too."
"That was not my question."
He learned directness from me, and now he is using it without a shred of mercy.
"I wish you to call," she said, and watched him try to keep the happiness off his face. He failed. His bow could not conceal it at all.
The carriage ride home was loud for the first mile, at least. Mrs. Bennet reviewed every dance in sequence, as though preparing testimony.
Lydia named each officer present, and two who had not been invited but ought to have been, in her opinion.
Kitty corrected her twice. Mary offered a principle.
Mr. Bennet closed his eyes and appeared, by some domestic miracle, to be asleep.
Jane sat beside Elizabeth. Under the carriage rug, in the dark, their hands found each other.
"He loves you," Jane said, pitched too low for the others to catch.
Elizabeth looked out at the black hedgerows sliding past. "He said so."
"You did not tell me."
"There has been little opportunity."
"There have been dances enough."
"I spent one pair making certain everyone saw me, another wondering whether Caroline had ruined her brother's entire ball, and the rest trying very hard not to look at Mr. Darcy."
"Did you succeed?"
"No."
The truth felt safer in the dark. Easier to say when she could not see Jane's face doing something knowing about it.
At Longbourn, Jane followed her up to her room.
Hill helped them both undress, extracted half the ball's events in the process, and went below with more than enough material to keep the servants' hall entertained until breakfast. Elizabeth folded the shawl herself, smoothing the repaired fringe flat under her thumb.
"Do you love him?" Jane asked.
The word had followed her home from the orangery like something warm tucked inside her sleeve.
Darcy had given it to her without demanding anything back.
He had not made his feeling into a debt she now owed him.
That kind of generosity, she was discovering, made the question harder to answer honestly, not easier.
"I know that I wait for him to enter a room," Elizabeth said. "I know his opinion matters to me even when I mean to reject it outright. I know that tonight, before I understood what he would do, I trusted him anyway."
"That is a great deal to know."
"It is not the word."
"No." Jane's smile was soft in the candlelight. "But it may well be the road to it."
Elizabeth looked down at the blue silk repair, the new thread bright against the old wool.
Sarah had said once that a mend should not pretend nothing had happened.
Darcy's pride had not vanished. Her own prejudice had not vanished either.
But both had been named and tested, and made a good deal less likely, she thought, to tear in the same place twice.
"I will not answer because he has waited," she said. "I will answer when it is true."
"He asked for no answer tonight."
"That is precisely why I may be able to give one later."
Bingley arrived before noon. Darcy arrived shortly after noon, as though he had timed the walk from the drive to the door and refused to be early.
Mrs. Bennet had placed Jane in the best light and moved Elizabeth twice. After a great deal of deliberation that fooled no one, she decided that Elizabeth had looked well enough where she had started. Mr. Bennet opened the library door the instant the gentlemen were announced.
"Mr. Bingley may remain with the ladies," he said. "Mr. Darcy, I would speak with you."
Darcy glanced at Elizabeth. She had told her father about the courtship after breakfast, in the calmest voice she could produce. Now she gave him a nod meant to be reassuring, though she possessed no actual reassurance to spare. The library door closed behind them with a small, final click.
Bingley stood before Jane with none of his usual ease. "I promised you an explanation."
Mrs. Bennet's ears, tuned as ever to any sentence not meant for her, caught it at once. "An explanation of what?"
"A family disagreement after the ball," Bingley said.
"Caroline was unwell. I knew it the moment I saw her colour. London constitutions are very deceptive."
"Mamma," Elizabeth said, "Lydia has brought mud into the breakfast room."
Mrs. Bennet turned like a ship coming about. Lydia denied the charge on principle. Kitty confirmed it with relish. Mary recommended immediate cleaning on both moral and practical grounds, and the resulting dispute drew the three of them toward the far window, arguing all the way.
Bingley lowered his voice. "Caroline was not ill. She tried to place Darcy in a compromising situation. Elizabeth's shawl was part of it."
Jane's colour drained clean away. "Why?"
"She believed he would be forced to marry her. She meant for others to think Elizabeth had asked him to meet privately — then meant to claim the whole thing had deceived her too."
"And your sister Louisa?"
"Knew enough to bring witnesses. She did not know Darcy had already told me."
Jane looked across the room at Elizabeth. "You were used, and you did not even know it."
"Not for long," Elizabeth said. "Sarah told me the moment the shawl disappeared."
Bingley's hands closed at his sides. "I sent Caroline away this morning. Louisa and Hurst went with her. I have not announced what happened, and I do not intend to."
"You protected her reputation," Jane said.
"She is my sister."
"You also protected Elizabeth's."