Chapter Five
Elizabeth learned of Caroline Bingley's suspicions not from Caroline herself, who was far too careful a strategist to make her accusations directly to the person most capable of denying them, but from her aunt Gardiner, who had it, in turn, from a Mrs. Vane, an acquaintance of the Gardiners' with a daughter recently returned from her first season and a keen ear for anything resembling news.
"She did not name you outright," her aunt said, choosing her words with evident care as they sat together the following morning.
"But she spoke of a Miss Bennet from Hertfordshire, lodging with relations in trade, and the description was precise enough that I do not think it can refer to anyone else of our acquaintance. "
Elizabeth felt the floor of her composure tilt, very slightly, beneath her.
"Then it is only a matter of time," she said, "before the whole of London knows what only Meryton has guessed at until now."
"It may be. Or it may pass, as these things sometimes do, if no one of consequence takes it up and repeats it with confidence.
" Her aunt's expression suggested she believed the former considerably more likely than the latter, though she was too kind to say so directly.
"You are not obliged to attend any further engagements while you are with us, Lizzy, if you would rather retreat until the matter settles. "
"No." Elizabeth said it with more force than she intended, and softened it after a moment's reflection.
"No, Aunt, I thank you, but I find I have very little taste for retreating from a story I did nothing to invite.
If I hide myself away now, I only confirm to everyone watching that there is something in it to be ashamed of, and I will not give Miss Bingley the satisfaction of believing she has driven me from society by the simple expedient of speaking my name in a drawing room. "
Her aunt studied her a long moment, and something in her expression suggested approval, though she said only, "Then we shall attend Mrs. Fenwick's evening party on Thursday, as planned, and you shall hold your head as high as you are presently holding it now, whatever is said within your hearing."
Thursday arrived with the particular dread of an appointment one has resolved to keep despite every private wish to avoid it, and Elizabeth dressed for Mrs. Fenwick's evening party with more care than she generally applied to such occasions, not from vanity but from the simple determination that she would not be found wanting in composure, whatever the evening required of her.
She had not, however, prepared herself for the particular shock of entering Mrs. Fenwick's drawing room and finding Mr. Darcy already present within it, standing near the window with a stillness that suggested he had noticed her entrance before she had noticed his, and had been, for some moments already, deciding how to conduct himself.
Their eyes met across the room, and Elizabeth felt the whole of the last three weeks compress itself into that single instant: the letter she had read three times, the anger that had once felt so certain and now felt worn thin with use, the question her aunt had asked her in Gracechurch Street that she had not yet managed to answer even to herself.
He crossed the room to her with a deliberateness that drew, she was uncomfortably aware, the attention of nearly every person present, and bowed with a correctness that gave away nothing of what his face, she thought, betrayed rather more of than he perhaps intended.
"Miss Bennet. I did not know you were in town."
"Nor I that you would be here, Mr. Darcy, though I collect London society is considerably smaller than its size would suggest, if we are both to be found at the same card parties within a fortnight of each other's arrival."
"It is smaller than either of us might wish, at present," he said, with a quiet significance that told her he understood precisely what danger their proximity, watched as it was by half the room, represented.
Mrs. Fenwick, who had been observing this exchange from a distance with an expression of undisguised delight, chose that moment to descend upon them both with the particular relish of a hostess who had, by pure accident of seating arrangement, produced the most interesting tableau of her entire evening.
"Mr. Darcy! Miss Bennet! How very charming to find you already acquainted, I had no notion, though I confess I begin to suspect the whole of London is more closely connected than any of us realize.
Miss Bennet, you must tell me, is it true you were visiting in Kent this spring, at Mr. Collins's parsonage?
Why, that is very near Rosings Park itself, is it not, Mr. Darcy, your aunt's estate?
What a very small world it is, to be sure. "
Elizabeth felt every eye in the vicinity turn, with sudden and unmistakable interest, toward herself and Darcy both, and understood, in that instant, that Mrs. Fenwick had not asked her question by accident.
The trap had been laid with considerable skill, dressed as idle conversation, designed to extract, in a single public exchange, the confirmation Caroline Bingley's whispers had not quite managed to secure.
She felt Darcy go very still beside her, and understood that he, too, had recognized the trap for what it was, and was, in the space of a heartbeat, calculating how to answer it without confirming to the room what neither of them could safely confirm.
"I was indeed visiting Kent this spring, Mrs. Fenwick," Elizabeth said, before Darcy could speak, keeping her voice light with an effort that cost her more than she allowed to show.
"My particular friend Mrs. Collins is settled there, and I confess Kent has a great many pleasant walks to recommend it, whatever else may be said of the county. "
"And did you have occasion to call at Rosings, my dear? I understand Lady Catherine keeps a very grand establishment, though I have heard she is not always the easiest of neighbours."
"We dined there upon several occasions, as is customary, I believe, for the parsonage family."
"How delightful. And Mr. Darcy, were you at Rosings during Miss Bennet's visit? I had understood you to have been there in the spring, though I confess I do not always keep such particulars in order."
The whole room, Elizabeth was now entirely certain, had gone quiet enough to hear the answer, whatever it should be.
"I was," Darcy said, and Elizabeth heard, beneath the careful evenness of his voice, the particular control of a man choosing every word with the precision of one walking across ice he did not entirely trust. "My cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam and I visit my aunt most springs.
It is, as you say, a small world, Mrs. Fenwick, and grows smaller yet the longer one moves within it. "
It was not a confirmation. It was not, either, a denial, and Elizabeth understood, watching Mrs. Fenwick's eyes move between them with undisguised and unsatisfied curiosity, that their hostess had drawn exactly the conclusion she had hoped to draw, whatever careful non-answers had been offered to forestall it.
"How very small indeed," Mrs. Fenwick murmured, and withdrew with the satisfied air of a woman who intended to make excellent use of the conversation she had just engineered, leaving Elizabeth and Darcy standing together in a silence that felt, to Elizabeth, considerably louder than anything that had been said.
"I am sorry," Darcy said, quietly, once they were as near to private as the crowded room allowed. "I should have found some way to draw her attention elsewhere before she could ask the question at all."
"I do not think there was any preventing it, Mr. Darcy.
Mrs. Fenwick strikes me as a woman who generally secures the answer she means to have, by one route or another.
" Elizabeth found, to her own surprise, that her anger, when she reached for it, arrived thin and unconvincing, worn down by three weeks of private reconsideration into something that could no longer sustain the sharpness it had once possessed at Hunsford.
"I confess I do not entirely know how to conduct myself, now that we are both aware the whole room suspects what neither of us has confirmed. "
"Nor do I," Darcy admitted, and there was something in the admission, the simple honesty of a man who did not pretend to a composure he did not feel, that struck Elizabeth more forcibly than any polished reassurance could have done.
"I had hoped, when I learned you were in town, to find some way of protecting you from exactly this sort of exposure.
I do not seem, tonight, to have managed it very well. "
"You could not have prevented Mrs. Fenwick's curiosity, Mr. Darcy, any more than I could. I think, perhaps, the only choice left to either of us is how we bear what comes of it."
He looked at her then with an expression she could not entirely read, something between regret and a hope he seemed to be actively suppressing, and said, "I should like, very much, Miss Bennet, to speak with you properly, when circumstances allow it.
Not here, not watched by half the room, but properly, as I ought to have spoken to you a great deal more carefully some weeks ago. "
Elizabeth felt something in her chest tighten, not with the old anger but with an entirely different and more uncertain feeling, one she was not yet prepared to name even to herself.
"Perhaps," she said, "circumstances will allow it, Mr. Darcy, before too much longer."
It was not agreement, precisely, but it was not refusal either, and she saw, in the small, careful ease that crossed his features at her answer, that he had understood it exactly as she intended: not the end of anything, but the very cautious beginning of something neither of them, watched as they were by a room full of interested strangers, could yet afford to call by its proper name.