Seventeen
Netherfield
Elizabeth
Darcy returned to Netherfield before breakfast, though he had no intention of joining the others until he had mastered himself.
Bingley's voice carried faintly from below as he crossed the hall, cheerful enough to assure Darcy that his absence would pass unnoticed for a time.
He went directly to his chambers, dismissed his valet, and stood before the window, though he scarcely saw the grounds beyond.
His thoughts remained upon Oakham Mount.
Elizabeth had believed him.
The knowledge settled upon him with a quietness he had not expected.
She had accepted every painful confidence he had placed in her keeping without once doubting his sincerity.
She had sought the truth before condemning him, trusted her own judgement above appearances, and in doing so had restored something he had long believed lost.
His trust had not been misplaced.
A faint smile touched his lips before another recollection intruded.
Her cousin had proposed to her.
Even now the remembrance robbed him of ease.
When Elizabeth first spoke those words, before she assured him she had refused, he had known only a moment of cold disbelief.
The thought of her belonging to another, particularly such a man as she described, had been more painful than anything he had thought possible.
He loved her.
The truth presented itself without struggle. It explained too much to be denied. He had looked for her each morning before he acknowledged why. Her opinions had come to matter above those of almost every other person he knew. Her happiness had become more important to him than his own.
He loved her.
Had that been all, he might almost have welcomed the discovery.
Instead, it brought with it a fear unlike any he had known before.
He turned from the window and crossed the room slowly, troubled now by a different recollection.
Collins had not merely offered marriage.
He had used the entail of Longbourn as though Elizabeth's future dependence ought to persuade her to accept him, making a threat of what should have been an unhappy circumstance.
Foolishness might explain much of Collins's conduct, but it did not explain everything.
He was Lady Catherine's rector.
Richard had asked him in London whether there was anyone he truly suspected of standing behind the strange succession of disappointments which had attended his life. Darcy had answered that no one entirely fitted the pattern.
It had not been the whole truth.
He had deliberately withheld two names.
George Wickham and Lady Catherine.
Both possessed sufficient cause to wish him unhappy.
Yet neither accorded with the chronology of unfortunate events for which he could account.
His aunt had not begun pressing Anne upon him until years after the pattern first emerged, whilst Wickham's resentment, though long-standing, could not account for its earliest manifestations.
For that reason he had dismissed them both, though never without suspicion.
Now Wickham was in Hertfordshire.
So too was Lady Catherine's rector.
Wickham's conduct, however disagreeable, admitted of an obvious explanation. Elizabeth had been publicly slighted at the assembly. Any man seeking to injure Darcy's reputation might naturally conclude she would receive his tale with sympathy. Wickham had merely taken advantage of an opportunity.
Yet seeing him beside Elizabeth continued to trouble Darcy.
He had sought Elizabeth out and attempted to prejudice her against him. Collins, on the other hand, had arrived and proposed marriage with astonishing haste. One man had long possessed cause to hate him. The other worshiped a woman who had never forgiven his refusal to marry her daughter.
Darcy pressed his fingers against his brow as another possibility presented itself.
It was entirely possible that Collins's arrival had no connexion to Lady Catherine beyond the ordinary one between patroness and rector.
The man was, after all, the heir to Longbourn and had reasons enough of his own for visiting the family.
His offer for Elizabeth might have been nothing more than the absurd consequence of proximity and an inflated opinion of himself.
Darcy pressed one hand against the mantel and considered what he would have thought had Elizabeth not been involved.
He might have dismissed Collins as a vain clergyman and Wickham as an opportunist renewing an old injury.
Their presence in the same neighbourhood might have appeared unfortunate, but no more.
The attention both men had fixed upon Elizabeth made coincidence difficult to accept.
It fit the pattern established by Miss Harwood and Miss Harper. Collins in particular appeared another such circumstance, as though arisen from thin air for the sole purpose of ruining his growing understanding with Elizabeth.
The thought chilled him.
Darcy began to pace, though the room afforded little space for such restless movement. Until that morning he had believed Elizabeth protected by the secrecy of their friendship. No one knew of their meetings. They had met at an early hour, always believing themselves alone.
But had they been?
He had assumed so because he had seen no one.
It was an assumption he could no longer afford.
If Wickham had men in the neighbourhood willing to observe his movements, it would require little effort to learn that Darcy left Netherfield at the same hour each morning.
If Collins acted, knowingly or otherwise, in another's interest, who was to say Elizabeth's movements had not likewise been observed?
The fact that both men had turned their attentions towards Elizabeth, Mr. Collins above all, rendered coincidence increasingly difficult to credit.
Darcy deemed it safest to proceed upon the assumption that her connexion to him had been discovered.
Why else should Collins have appeared only to offer for her with such remarkable haste?
It occurred to Darcy at that moment that another meeting upon Oakham Mount, should Wickham or Collins be observing, would expose them both. Not only could it be contrived into a scandal, it would place Elizabeth at greater risk than himself.
He could not allow it.
He could not, gamble with Elizabeth's safety or reputation.
Darcy sank onto the mattress and spent several hours turning the matter over in his mind until only one course remained.
He needed to leave Hertfordshire as soon as possible.
The conclusion formed with painful ease.
Whether Wickham's and Collins's appearance in Hertfordshire had been no more than fortunate chance or something more deliberate no longer mattered.
So long as Darcy remained at Netherfield, he could not dismiss the possibility that his own movements were being observed.
If he removed himself from the neighbourhood, Wickham would lose whatever advantage his presence afforded him.
Should Collins's proposal have been nothing more than the vanity of a foolish man, nothing would be lost. But if another purpose lay beneath it, Darcy's departure might yet frustrate whatever design had not fully declared itself.
He considered risking one more trip to Oakham Mount on the morrow, if only briefly, to inform Elizabeth of his plan.
But knowing Elizabeth as he did, he knew she would not accept so sudden a departure quietly.
Worse, a second meeting risked the very thing he meant to prevent.
If anyone watched them, one more sighting would suffice to turn suspicion into certainty.
He decided he would write to his cousin instead.
If anyone possessed sufficient connexion to watch both Wickham and Collins, it was Fitzwilliam.
Even if either discovered he had left the following morning, Wickham, as an officer in the militia, could not simply desert his post. Collins, on the other hand, would be more easily traced should he return to Kent.
He stood and crossed to the writing table, took up a sheet of parchment and a pen.
The thought that Elizabeth would come to Oakham Mount the following morning expecting him, wait, and slowly cease to believe he meant to come at all, haunted him.
He had admitted to himself, that very morning, that he loved her.
Then, tomorrow, before the day was properly begun, he would be gone and would have left her nothing to believe in.
Darcy pushed the thoughts away, resolved to focus upon his letter and with it a promise to himself to return to Hertfordshire once this mystery was resolved.