Chapter Nine
Mr. Vane called at Gracechurch Street twice within the following week, each visit conducted with a perfect correctness that gave her aunt no cause for objection and Elizabeth no cause, either, for anything beyond the pleasant, undemanding enjoyment of a gentleman's company unencumbered by history.
"You are quiet today, Miss Bennet," he observed, on the second occasion, as they walked together in the small garden behind her uncle's house while Mrs. Gardiner sat within view but out of hearing, the proprieties observed with a precision that left Elizabeth free to speak without the weight of an audience.
"I had thought myself tolerably diverting, and yet you wear the expression of a lady turning over some more serious matter entirely. "
"Forgive me, Mr. Vane. I did not mean to be poor company."
"You are never poor company, Miss Bennet, whatever your mood. I only wondered whether the matter troubling you was one I might be permitted to lighten, or whether it belonged to that class of trouble a gentleman is better advised not to inquire into."
Elizabeth considered him a moment, his open, pleasant face, entirely without the guardedness she had grown accustomed to reading in Mr. Darcy's, and felt a small pang of something like guilt, the particular discomfort of a woman conscious that she had permitted a gentleman's attentions for reasons less generous than the attentions themselves deserved.
"You are kind to ask," she said, "and I will not insult you by pretending there is no matter at all. I find myself, of late, rather more preoccupied with an old acquaintance than I have any right to be, given how little settled the matter presently is."
"Ah." Vane's smile did not entirely fade, but something behind it shifted, a recalibration she recognized, watching him, as the particular grace of a man accepting news he had half suspected before it was spoken.
"I confess I had begun to guess as much.
You have a way, Miss Bennet, of growing very still whenever a certain gentleman's name is mentioned in company, which I noticed within the first quarter hour of our acquaintance and have been too well-mannered, until now, to remark upon. "
"I did not intend to encourage you falsely, Mr. Vane, if that is what my stillness has led you to fear. Your company has been a genuine pleasure to me these past weeks, and I have valued it more than perhaps I ought to admit, given the uncertainty of everything else presently occupying my mind."
"Then I shall take the pleasure as it is offered, Miss Bennet, and ask nothing further of it than what it plainly is: a friendship, honestly enjoyed, between two people neither of whom is presently free to offer the other anything more serious.
" He said this with a lightness that cost him, she suspected, rather more than he permitted her to see, and she felt, watching him recover his easy manner within the space of a single breath, a genuine respect for the grace with which he accepted a disappointment he had every right to resent.
"You are a better man than I have perhaps given you credit for, Mr. Vane."
"I am a man who has learned, Miss Bennet, that a lady's honesty is worth considerably more than her flattery, however much less comfortable it may be to receive.
I would rather know the truth of your feelings now, plainly stated, than continue in a pleasant delusion that could only end, eventually, in disappointment for us both.
" He offered her his arm as they turned back toward the house.
"I hope, at least, that we may continue as friends, whatever becomes of the gentleman in question, for I have genuinely enjoyed your company, and would be sorry to lose it entirely on the strength of a hope I ought never to have entertained so seriously. "
"I should like that very much, Mr. Vane."
She reflected, walking back into the house beside him, that she had been, in her allowance of his attentions these past weeks, rather more reckless than she generally permitted herself to be, using his easy charm as a shield against a complication she had not yet found the courage to face directly.
It was not fair to him, she thought, however gracefully he had borne the discovery, and she resolved, with the particular clarity that sometimes follows an uncomfortable truth spoken aloud, that she would allow herself no further such evasions.
Whatever she felt for Mr. Darcy, whatever confusion or hope or lingering anger remained tangled together in her own heart, it deserved to be reckoned with honestly, not buried beneath the pleasant distraction of a gentleman she did not, and never had, loved.