No Intention of Staying
The note from Netherfield arrived at breakfast. It was from Jane, which meant it was carefully worded and entirely reassuring, and Elizabeth was pulling on her coat before she had finished reading it.
“You cannot walk,” Mrs Bennet said. “It is three miles, and the roads are a disgrace.”
“Then I shall be three miles worth of disgraceful,” Elizabeth said.
Her father looked up from his coffee. “Give Jane my regards,” he said. “And Lizzy.” He paused, choosing his moment. “Try not to be too reasonable about everything.”
Elizabeth looked at him. He returned her look with perfect innocence and went back to his coffee.
Kitty and Lydia elected to walk with her as far as Meryton, which meant they walked slightly ahead of her the entire way, debating the relative merits of Captain Carter’s new coat while Elizabeth followed behind and thought about something else entirely.
At Meryton they turned off towards the barracks with a cheerful wave and little interest in whether she made it the remaining two miles.
Elizabeth walked on alone. The roads were exactly as bad as Mrs Bennet had promised. By the time Netherfield’s gates came into view, her boots were muddy, her hem was six inches deep in it, and her cheeks were warm from the exercise. She was also, she realised, rather looking forward to arriving.
She did not examine that too closely. She came through the gates and up the drive at a good pace, and had not gone fifty yards before she saw him.
Mr Darcy was coming from the direction of the stables, still in his riding coat, and he stopped when he saw her, plainly unprepared to find her there. Elizabeth kept walking.
“Miss Elizabeth.” He fell into step beside her without quite deciding to. “You have come for your sister.”
“I have. How is she?”
“I cannot say with certainty. Mr Jones arrived just as I was leaving the house.” He glanced towards Netherfield. “Miss Bingley sent for him after breakfast.”
Elizabeth’s pace quickened. “Jane’s note said she was very well and not to worry.”
“It was a very reassuring note.”
“Then she is not well at all.”
He looked at her for a moment: the muddy hem, the colour in her cheeks, the complete absence of any concern about either.
“You walked from Longbourn,” he said.
“I did.”
“Of course you did,” he said, almost under his breath.
They walked up to the house together, and if anyone had been watching from the windows, and Elizabeth suspected that someone was, it would have looked very natural indeed.
It felt, she thought, very natural indeed.
“Of course?” she repeated.
Mr Darcy seemed to regret the words almost as soon as they were spoken. Elizabeth did not know whether to be amused by it or grateful.
His colour rose slightly. “I only meant that it is very much in your character.”
“To walk through mud?”
“To come when your sister needs you.”
It was said simply, and without the least appearance of compliment. That made it considerably worse.
Elizabeth looked towards the house. “Then I hope Miss Bingley will be prepared to forgive my appearance.”
“I would not depend upon it,” he said.
She laughed before she could help herself.
His expression changed, not greatly, but enough for her to notice. The guardedness eased for a moment, and something warmer took its place before he looked back towards the house.
They had reached the steps by then, and a footman opened the door before Mr Darcy could do more than lift his hand towards the bell.
“Miss Elizabeth Bennet,” he said, with only the smallest hesitation at the state of her hem.
“I have come to see my sister,” Elizabeth said.
“Yes, miss. Miss Bennet is above stairs. Mr Jones has seen her and left his instructions.”
Mr Darcy stepped aside at once. “I will not detain you.”
But before Elizabeth could answer, Miss Bingley’s voice carried from a room to the left, sharp enough to be heard through the half-open door.
“I cannot think why that door is forever sticking. It is intolerable. If Netherfield is to be let furnished, one would expect the doors at least to open and close as they ought.”
There was a murmur from within, some answer too low for Elizabeth to catch, and then Miss Bingley continued.
“And now Miss Eliza Bennet has walked here, I suppose, through every field between Longbourn and Netherfield. How very romantic. How very unnecessary.”
Elizabeth stopped. Mr Darcy stopped also. For one suspended moment, neither of them moved. Then Elizabeth looked at him, raised her brows very slightly, and proceeded into the hall with all the composure her muddy petticoat allowed.
A maid conducted her upstairs to a pretty chamber overlooking the lawn, where Jane lay propped against pillows, pale and flushed by turns, and looking, to Elizabeth’s experienced eye, far worse than she would ever confess.
“Lizzy,” Jane said, attempting a smile.
Elizabeth crossed the room at once and took her hand. “You are very well, I suppose.”
“A little tired only.”
“And feverish.”
“Perhaps a little.”
“Jane.”
Jane’s smile became apologetic. “I did not wish anyone to be alarmed.”
“A noble ambition,” Elizabeth said, laying the back of her fingers against Jane’s cheek, “and entirely hopeless.”
“The apothecary has been,” Jane said. “He says it is only a violent cold.”
“Only,” Elizabeth repeated.
“He has left draughts.”
“Then he must be very satisfied with himself.”
That made Jane smile, though it became a cough almost at once. Elizabeth helped her sit forward, held the glass while she drank, and settled the pillows more comfortably behind her.
Miss Bingley and Mrs Hurst came in a few minutes later, and Elizabeth, who had expected civility, found herself obliged to acknowledge something warmer.
They were attentive to Jane, anxious that Mr Jones’s instructions be followed exactly, and full of little offices: the fire stirred, the curtains adjusted, barley water ordered, the maid instructed to remain within call.
It was impossible not to like them better when they were so kind to Jane.
Jane submitted to being settled more comfortably in bed, for by then her head ached acutely and the fever had increased.
Elizabeth did not quit her room for a moment, and the other ladies were seldom absent.
The gentlemen being out, they had, in fact, nothing to do elsewhere.
When the clock struck three, Elizabeth knew she ought to go. The rain had lessened, but the road would be worse than before, and Jane’s hand tightened at once when Elizabeth mentioned leaving.
“You must not go,” Jane said, with more distress than strength.
Miss Bingley, who had already offered the carriage with all proper politeness, was obliged by this display of sisterly concern to convert the offer into an invitation.
“You must remain at Netherfield for the present, Miss Eliza,” she said. “We could not think of sending you away while Miss Bennet is so unwell.”
Elizabeth thanked her with real gratitude. A servant was sent to Longbourn for clothes, and Elizabeth, who had walked to Netherfield with no intention of staying, found herself installed there before dinner.
Her things arrived from Longbourn in the late afternoon. Elizabeth unpacked them herself, and discovered within the first two minutes that her mother had done the packing.
Her everyday dresses were nowhere to be found.
In their place were her newest morning gowns, her best evening gowns, her good shawl, and rather more ribbons than she had known she possessed.
She stood for a moment regarding them. Her mother had, at least, remembered her hairbrush.
She dressed for dinner. Miss Bingley noticed.
Her expression was briefly and precisely readable before she arranged it into welcome.
“My dear Miss Eliza,” she said, “you must allow us to be very pleased that your maid has contrived so rapid a transformation.”
“I have no maid,” Elizabeth said. “Only a mother with decided opinions.”
Mr Bingley, who had risen at once on her entrance, looked more concerned with her face than her gown. “How is Miss Bennet?”
“No better, I am afraid. She is resting now.”
His expression fell with such honest distress that Elizabeth liked him better than ever.
“We shall send again for Mr Jones in the morning if she is not improved,” he said. “Or tonight, if you think it necessary.”
“Thank you. I do not think it necessary yet, but I am grateful.”
“Anything you require, Miss Elizabeth. Anything at all.”
Miss Bingley’s smile tightened slightly. “Charles, Miss Eliza has only been in the room half a minute. You will frighten her with so much solicitude.”
“I hope not,” said Mr Bingley, turning back to Elizabeth. “I mean only that she is not to feel herself a guest where her sister is ill.”
It was impossible to answer such kindness lightly. “You are very good,” Elizabeth said.
When she looked towards Mr Darcy, she found his attention fixed upon her with a gravity that made the room feel, for one strange moment, less crowded than it was.
Then Mr Hurst asked whether dinner was to be delayed for illness or sentiment, and the moment passed.
The drawing room after dinner was arranged for music, which meant Miss Bingley at the pianoforte and an expectation that everyone else would listen with appropriate admiration.
Elizabeth listened with appropriate admiration and thought about Jane’s fever, and whether Mr Jones had been optimistic, and whether she ought to go up again before bed.
She was thinking about this with sufficient concentration that she did not notice Mr Darcy had crossed the room, until he was standing beside her chair.
“How is she, truly?” he said quietly.
Elizabeth looked up. Miss Bingley was playing something complicated and watching them from the corner of her eye.
“Feverish still. But she slept for an hour this afternoon, which is something.”
“You are worried.”
It was not a question. She considered deflecting and decided against it.
“A little,” she said. “She never complains, which makes it difficult to know how she actually is.”
“Then it is fortunate she has you here to know for her.”
Elizabeth looked at him. He said it simply, as though it were merely true.
“You are very free with your compliments this evening, Mr Darcy.”
“I am stating facts,” he said. “I do not consider that the same thing.”
Miss Bingley moved from one piece to another without pausing, which suggested she intended to occupy the pianoforte for some time.
Mrs Hurst had taken up her embroidery. Mr Hurst was asleep in the best chair.
Mr Bingley sat nearest the door, ostensibly reading, actually listening for sounds from upstairs.
It was, Elizabeth thought, a very domestic sort of evening for a house in which she had arrived uninvited that morning. She had not been inside Netherfield since the Robinsons left it, yet the shape of the rooms and the turn of the passages remained unexpectedly familiar.
“Do you always travel with apples in your coat?” she asked.
Mr Darcy looked at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“Yesterday morning. You produced an apple for Wicked as though it were entirely natural to carry fruit about one’s person.”
“He expects it,” Mr Darcy said, almost defensively. “If I ride without one he sulks.”
“The most formidable horse in Derbyshire sulks.”
“Quietly. And with great dignity.”
“Of course,” Elizabeth said. “I would expect nothing less.”
He gave her the look she was beginning to recognise, the one that preceded something he had not intended to say.
“You were not afraid of him,” he said. “Most people are.”
“I was a little afraid of him.”
“You did not show it.”
“Showing it seemed inadvisable.” She glanced at him. “He strikes me as the sort of creature who would find fear less interesting than composure.”
Mr Darcy was quiet for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “He does.”
“Then I shall be sure to maintain my composure if we meet again.”
“If we meet again,” he repeated.
Elizabeth looked down at the book lying unopened in her lap. “I thought we had already established that our routes may overlap.”
“So we did.”
Miss Bingley’s playing faltered, not enough to stop, but enough for Elizabeth to be certain she had heard.
Mr Darcy appeared to hear it too, for he looked towards the instrument and then back at Elizabeth with something like resignation.
“I fear,” Elizabeth said, “that I have interrupted your evening.”
“You have not.”
“You were listening to Miss Bingley.”
“I was endeavouring to.”
This was said so gravely that Elizabeth had to lower her eyes lest she laugh.
“Mr Darcy,” she said, “that is not quite the same thing.”
“No,” he said. “It is not.”
Miss Bingley brought the piece to a close with rather more force than delicacy.
“How very fortunate, Mr Darcy,” she said, rising from the instrument, “that Miss Eliza has provided you with so much entertainment. I had begun to fear my poor efforts at the pianoforte were unequal to the task.”
Elizabeth rose at once. “Not at all. I was only asking after his horse.”
“His horse?”
“Wicked,” said Mr Darcy.
Miss Bingley looked from one to the other. “I see.”
Elizabeth suspected very strongly that she did not, and was glad of it.
A sound came then from the passage, too slight perhaps for anyone else to notice, but Elizabeth heard it at once: a footstep outside the door, a low voice, and the movement of a servant uncertain whether to enter. She turned immediately.
Mr Bingley was on his feet before she had taken two steps. “Is it Miss Bennet?”
The maid appeared in the doorway and curtseyed. “Begging your pardon, miss. Miss Bennet is awake and asking for you.”
Elizabeth’s heart tightened. “Of course.”
“Is she worse?” Mr Bingley asked.
“I do not know.” She softened the words as well as she could. “I shall see.”
“I will send at once if anything is wanted,” he said.
“Thank you.”
She was aware, as she crossed the room, of Mr Darcy rising too. His attention followed her to the door with such steadiness that she felt it even after she had entered the passage. Jane was awake when Elizabeth reached her, her cheeks brighter than before and her eyes heavy with fever.
“Lizzy,” she whispered.
“I am here.” Elizabeth sat beside her and took her hand. It was too hot. “You should have rung sooner.”
“I did not wish to disturb anyone.”
“That is a very poor principle when one is ill.”
Jane tried to smile. “You are scolding me.”
“I am considering it.”
The attempt at a smile faded. “Do not go.”
Elizabeth leaned closer and smoothed the damp hair from her sister’s temple. “I am not going anywhere.”
Below stairs, the pianoforte began again, softer this time.
Voices rose and fell, polite and distant, belonging to another world entirely.
Elizabeth drew her chair nearer the bed and held Jane’s hand until her breathing settled.
Whatever warmth or confusion or uncomfortable pleasure the evening had held, it could wait.
Jane needed her. That, at least, required no examination.