Not Easily Bribed
Elizabeth had always loved mornings: the quiet of Longbourn before her younger sisters were awake, the lanes around the house still grey with mist, the fields seeming to belong entirely to herself.
She walked further than usual these days.
She told herself it was the season, the autumn air being particularly fine, the hedgerows turning, the mornings crisp, and all of these things were true.
They were not, she suspected, the whole of it.
It was difficult to examine one’s own thoughts clearly when those thoughts kept resolving themselves, without invitation, into the memory of a man who did not look away.
She walked a little further still, and thought about something else entirely, and did not succeed.
There was one lane she favoured, where the path ran along the edge of a field and the hedgerows were thick enough to give shelter from the wind. She had walked it every morning for as long as she could remember. She had begun, in the past week, to wonder whether she would meet anyone on it.
She had begun, in the past two days, to suspect that she was not the only one who walked it with some expectation. On the third morning, she turned a corner and found Mr Darcy on a large black horse, having apparently discovered the merits of this lane at precisely the same hour.
The horse regarded her with calm indifference. Mr Darcy looked, for just a moment, as though he had not entirely prepared for the reality of encountering her. She felt, for just a moment, exactly the same.
“Miss Elizabeth,” he said.
“Mr Darcy,” she replied.
She was, she realised, pleased to see him. This was not entirely surprising by now, though she had not yet decided whether it was wise.
He glanced along the lane ahead. “Does this path connect to the Meryton road? I went wrong yesterday and came out above the river entirely by accident.”
“It does, if you follow it far enough east.” She paused. “The river is worth the detour, though.”
“I thought so,” he said. “I stayed longer than I intended.”
Then, without ceremony, he swung down from the saddle and fell into step beside her, the horse following placidly at his shoulder.
Elizabeth had not expected that. She was not, she found, displeased by it.
“He looks fierce,” she said, glancing at the horse.
“He is,” Darcy agreed, with something that was almost fondness. “Not to those he trusts. To those he does not, he has thrown better riders than me.”
“Then I am glad to have passed the test.” She glanced at the horse again. “Does he have a name?”
“Wicked.”
She looked up. “I beg your pardon?”
“Wicked.” The corner of his mouth moved. “He was not a tractable foal.”
“And yet you kept him.”
“He was worth the effort.” Darcy reached into his coat pocket and produced an apple, which he held out to her with complete matter-of-factness. “Here. He will think better of you for it.”
She took it, and held it out with rather less confidence than she would have liked. Wicked regarded her for a moment with large dark eyes, and then took the apple from her palm with surprising delicacy.
“Oh,” she said, surprised into a smile.
Darcy was watching her face.
“He likes you,” he said quietly.
“High praise indeed,” she said. “I shall endeavour to deserve it.”
They walked on together, Wicked ambling placidly at Mr Darcy’s shoulder, and Elizabeth thought that this was perhaps the most natural half hour she had spent in some time.
They had gone perhaps a quarter of a mile before Elizabeth became aware that Mr Darcy’s ease was not quite so complete as she had first supposed.
He walked beside her with perfect civility, answered when she spoke, and attended to Wicked with the quiet confidence of long acquaintance; yet there was, beneath it all, a tension she could not reconcile with the softness that had come into his face when the horse took the apple from her hand.
“You ride early, Mr Darcy,” she said.
“When I can.”
“And when you cannot?”
He looked ahead, where the lane narrowed between two high hedges.
“Then I remember why I prefer it.”
Elizabeth glanced at him. “That sounds rather severe for a gentleman merely deprived of exercise.”
His mouth moved, though not quite into a smile. “Exercise is the least of it.”
“And the rest?”
He was silent long enough that she thought he would not answer. Wicked’s hooves sounded softly on the damp earth beside them.
“A horse cannot ask questions,” he said at last. “Nor carry tales, nor mistake silence for guilt.”
Elizabeth looked at him more closely. “That is a great many virtues to place upon one animal.”
“He has earned them.” Darcy’s hand tightened briefly upon the reins. “And he is not easily bribed.”
“He took the apple readily enough,” Elizabeth said.
Darcy looked at her.
“That,” said Darcy, “was different.”
“You are more at ease out here than in a drawing room,” she observed.
“Most people are.”
“I am not sure that is true. Lydia, for instance, is considerably more at ease in a drawing room than anywhere else. I suspect she would find a field actively threatening.”
The corner of his mouth moved. “I was speaking of myself.”
“I know you were. I was being charitable.” She glanced at him. “I have noticed that you bear drawing rooms with great fortitude. It is not quite the same as enjoying them.”
“You are very observant.”
“I am very entertained,” she said. “It is not always the same thing, but in your case it amounts to much the same.”
Wicked tossed his head, and Darcy settled him without looking.
“Some drawing rooms,” he said at last, “have more to recommend them than others.”
Elizabeth looked at the lane ahead, smiling.
They had reached the bend where the hedgerow opened and the land fell away towards the river.
The morning mist still clung to the lower fields, and for a few moments they walked without speaking, both of them looking ahead as though the view required their full attention.
“It is this way,” Elizabeth said at last. “If you still wish to find the river intentionally.”
“I do.”
He said it simply, and with enough weight that she glanced at him. His expression had altered again. Not much, perhaps not enough for anyone less entertained by him to notice, but enough for her. His hand had gone to his coat. Beneath his fingers, she saw the edge of a folded paper.
He seemed to become aware of the movement at the same moment she did, and his hand dropped at once.
Elizabeth looked back towards the river.
They reached the point where the lane met the road to Meryton, and stopped by unspoken agreement.
Wicked stood patiently, as though he understood that the walk was over and saw no reason to hurry.
“I go this way,” Elizabeth said, nodding towards the road.
“And I go back.” Darcy gathered the reins but did not yet mount. “You walk here every morning?”
“Most mornings.”
He nodded, once, as though confirming something he had already suspected. “Then perhaps our routes will overlap again.”
“Perhaps they will,” Elizabeth said.
It was not a question, and she did not treat it as one. He swung back into the saddle with the ease of long practice, and Wicked shifted beneath him, ready. Darcy looked down at her for a moment. There was that look again, the one she was becoming rather too practised at failing to name.
“Good morning, Miss Elizabeth.”
“Good morning, Mr Darcy.”
She watched him ride away, and then turned towards Meryton, and thought very firmly about nothing in particular.
She did not succeed any better than she had on the way out.
She was back at Longbourn before the household had properly stirred, her cheeks warm from the walk and her thoughts not yet fully restored to order.
Jane met her in the hall, a letter in her hand, looking resigned.
“A note from Netherfield,” she said. “Miss Bingley has invited me to dine today. The gentlemen are to be out.”
Elizabeth glanced at the window. The morning light had flattened while she was walking, the sky thickening from pale grey to something considerably less promising.
“You should take the carriage.”
“Mama will not hear of it.” Jane’s tone was gentle and entirely final. “She says the horses are wanted on the farm.”
Elizabeth looked at her sister. Then at the sky.
“They are wanted on the farm because it is going to rain.”
“So I believe.”
From the drawing room came the sound of Mrs Bennet in full voice, covering the injustice of the gentlemen being out, the slight of Elizabeth not being included, and the general ingratitude of daughters who failed to appreciate their mother’s arrangements, all in the same breath.
Elizabeth and Jane stood in the hall and listened.
“She means for you to stay the night,” Elizabeth said.
“I know,” said Jane.
Mrs Bennet appeared in the doorway. She had been saving up a grievance, and had finally found her audience.
“And I must say, Lizzy, I do not know what Miss Bingley means by not inviting you. It is a very particular slight, very particular indeed.”
“I do not think it a slight at all, Mama. Miss Bingley and Mrs Hurst have taken a great liking to Jane. It is natural they should wish to know her better without the whole family present.”
“Without you, you mean.”
“Without anyone. It is an intimate invitation. That is rather a compliment to Jane than an incivility to me.”
Mrs Bennet considered this, plainly finding a reasonable argument deeply inconvenient.
“Well,” she said at last, “I suppose that may be so. But the gentlemen being out is most provoking. What is the use of Jane going if Mr Bingley is not even there to see her?”
“I imagine the use is that Jane and Miss Bingley will have a very pleasant afternoon, and Mr Bingley will return this evening to find his sister speaking warmly of Jane, which will answer very well indeed.”
Mrs Bennet brightened considerably. “Yes,” she said, as though she had thought of it herself. “Yes, that is exactly right.”
Jane set out after luncheon, mounted on the quietest horse in the stable, with Mrs Bennet’s blessings, Kitty and Lydia’s envy, and Elizabeth’s repeated insistence that she take her warmest cloak.
By four o’clock the rain had begun. By five, it was steady. Elizabeth stood at the window, watching the road disappear beneath the weather, and told herself that Jane had reached Netherfield long before it turned.
It was a reasonable conclusion. She did not find it comforting. Her father’s library door was ajar. She ought to have walked past.
“Lizzy,” said her father, without looking up.
She stopped.
“Jane has gone out.”
“I know. I saw her off.”
“In weather like this.” He turned a page. “Your mother’s schemes have a certain relentless quality.”
“I had an interesting conversation with Mr Darcy last Tuesday,” Mr Bennet said, in precisely the same tone. “At the Longs’ dinner. We talked for the better part of an hour.”
“Did you.”
“He has read everything.” Her father lowered his book by an inch. “Did you know that? Everything. And he listens, which is considerably rarer.” He raised the book again. “A very pleasant sort of gentleman, Lizzy.”
Elizabeth felt the words land with more consequence than she cared to admit.
“Papa,” she said.
“That is all,” said Mr Bennet pleasantly. “You may go.”