After August
Netherfield had been made beautiful for the ball.
Every damaged curtain had been removed, every trace of smoke scrubbed or hidden, every servant instructed, placed, and watched.
The candles burned steadily in their branches, the musicians tuned in the gallery, and Mr Bingley stood at the entrance with determined cheerfulness, resolved that his guests should find nothing amiss.
Darcy stood beside him and saw everything that was. Morris near the passage. Henderson by the dining-room doors. Richard laughing with Sir William Lucas while missing nothing. And Wickham, smiling as though Netherfield had never nearly burned.
The first guests arrived at half past seven.
The neighbourhood came in its usual order: Sir William first, because Sir William was always first, with Lady Lucas and Miss Lucas, Miss Maria Lucas and Mr William Lucas behind him.
Then the Longs, the Gouldings, familiar faces Darcy had learned over the past weeks and now read almost automatically, trained as he was to notice everything.
He watched the door. Wickham circulated with practised ease.
He had already spoken with Sir William at length, had made himself agreeable to Mrs Long, had expressed admiration for the room and the music and Bingley’s taste in equal measure.
Every person he spoke to seemed to leave the conversation pleased.
Darcy watched him and waited. The Bennets arrived at twenty minutes to eight. Mrs Bennet came first, which was inevitable. Then Miss Bennet, then the younger girls, then a gentleman he did not know, and then, a step behind the rest, Elizabeth.
She wore a pale evening gown he had seen before, though never like this, never beneath so many candles, never with her chin lifted as though she had decided before entering the room that nothing in it would trouble her. She looked up and found him immediately.
Across the room Wickham turned his head. It was a small movement, unhurried. He had been speaking to Mrs Hurst, and he continued speaking to Mrs Hurst, but his attention had shifted. Darcy felt it as one feels a change in the wind before hearing it.
Wickham had found her. Darcy moved. Richard’s hand came down on his arm.
“No,” Richard said, very quietly, without looking at him. “If you go to her now he will see exactly what she is to you.”
Darcy went still.
“I will go,” Richard said. “I have no significance to her. I am merely a colonel being sociable.” He released Darcy’s arm. “Stay here. Talk to Bingley. Look as though you have not noticed where she is.”
“He has already noticed where she is.”
“Then give him nothing further to notice.” Richard picked up a glass from a passing footman, unhurried, at ease. “Stay here, Darcy.”
He went.
Darcy stayed, and talked to Bingley, and did not look across the room. He was not entirely successful. Bingley had lasted approximately four minutes before Jane Bennet’s arrival made further conversation impossible.
“Forgive me,” he said, already moving. “I must, that is, Miss Bennet looks…”
“Go,” Darcy said.
Bingley went. Darcy stood alone for a moment. Across the room Richard had reached Elizabeth and was making her laugh at something, which was useful. Wickham watched from beside Mrs Hurst. Darcy turned and found Miss Bingley at his elbow.
She was watching her brother cross the room towards Jane and appeared to have made her peace with the inevitable.
“Miss Bingley,” Darcy said. “Will you do me the honour of the first set?”
She turned to look at him, and Darcy saw the moment she began to revise him.
“Of course,” she said. “I should be very glad to.”
They took their places on the floor as the music began. Wickham, from across the room, watched them with a small, satisfied smile.
Darcy noted the smile. Bingley and Miss Bennet were dancing too, as were Richard and Elizabeth. Miss Lydia had secured one of the gentlemen who had come with the Bennets and was laughing up at him as though the evening had been arranged entirely for her benefit.
“The man who came with the Bennets,” Darcy said, as they took their places. “I do not know him. Do you?”
Miss Bingley looked distinctly pleased to be useful. “Mr Collins. He is their cousin, the one who inherits Longbourn when Mr Bennet dies. He arrived last week. A clergyman. Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s rector, apparently, which he mentions at every opportunity.”
“And he came with the family?”
“He is staying with them.” Miss Bingley glanced across the floor to where Mr Collins was dancing with Lydia with the solemn concentration of a man taking a religious examination. “He has been working his way through the younger Miss Bennets with some determination.”
“And has he settled on one?”
“Not yet. Though I suspect Miss Lydia is not quite what he had in mind.”
“What had he in mind?”
Miss Bingley looked at him. “Miss Elizabeth, I believe. Originally.”
The music carried them apart before he could answer.
When they came back together she was watching him rather more perceptively than he had counted on.
“He was discouraged,” she said. “Mrs Bennet, I understand, felt it incumbent on her to hint that Miss Elizabeth was likely to be very soon engaged elsewhere.”
“To you,” Miss Bingley added, with precision. “The neighbourhood considers it settled. Or near enough.”
The music carried them through the next figure before Darcy trusted himself to speak.
“Mrs Bennet,” he said at last, “is not known for her discretion.”
“No,” Miss Bingley agreed. “She is not. Though in this instance I am not entirely certain she is wrong.”
Darcy looked at her. She met his gaze. Evidently she had decided to stop pretending she had not noticed.
“I am not your enemy, Mr Darcy,” she said quietly. “Whatever you may think of my motives.”
The music carried them apart again. When they came back together Darcy said, “I do not think you my enemy.”
“No,” Miss Bingley said. “But you do not entirely trust me.”
She smiled, and it was a different smile from her usual ones. “That is sensible of you,” she said. “Under the circumstances.”
The set ended. They separated with the proper expressions of pleasure, and Darcy was left distinctly uneasy. He had underestimated her. The time between the first set and the second was brief enough to be merciless.
Darcy spent it correctly. He spoke with Sir William, who was in excellent spirits and said several things about the refinements of polished society.
He accepted a glass from a footman and did not drink it.
He watched Wickham move through the room as though entirely at home, and watched Richard watch Wickham, and watched Morris near the passage door, and did not watch Elizabeth.
Or rather, Elizabeth remained constantly at the edge of his attention. In the reflection of a window. In the movement of the people around her. She was talking with Charlotte Lucas and laughing at something. She was not looking at him.
Wickham had left her alone through the first set. Darcy doubted the delay was accidental. Then Wickham crossed the room towards her. Darcy set down his glass.
Richard appeared at his shoulder. “Let him speak to her.”
“He already knows who she is.”
“Yes. But she does not yet know what he is.” Richard’s voice was entirely calm. “And in five minutes you will be standing beside her on that floor.”
Wickham reached Elizabeth with a bow and an easy opening remark that made her tilt her head in the way she did when something had caught her attention. He leaned slightly forward with practised intimacy, making her seem the only person in the room.
Darcy could not read Elizabeth’s expression from this distance, which was the worst part. The musicians struck the opening notes of the second set. Darcy crossed the room.
Wickham saw him coming. His smile did not alter by a fraction. He finished whatever he was saying to Elizabeth with unhurried ease, as though he had not been interrupted, and stepped back with a small bow.
“Darcy,” he said pleasantly. “I believe this set is yours.”
“It is,” Darcy said.
He offered his hand to Elizabeth. She studied him for one moment, then took it. They took their places on the floor.
“Well,” Elizabeth said quietly, as the music began. “He is very charming.”
“Yes,” Darcy said. “He is.”
“You might have warned me that he would be agreeable.”
“I did warn you.”
“You warned me he was dangerous,” she said. “That is not quite the same thing.”
“He said he had known you since you were a child,” Elizabeth said. “That his father managed Pemberley. That he married your sister when you were eleven.”
“Yes,” Darcy said.
“He said he worries about you.”
The figure carried them apart.
When they came back together Elizabeth looked at him steadily.
“I asked him what he meant,” she said.
“He said you carry things alone that you should not carry alone. That you have never quite recovered from your father’s death. I asked him what things.”
“And?”
“He said he could not say. That it was not his place. That he only wished you would trust the people who love you. He said it with great affection.”
“Yes,” Darcy said. “He would.”
“He is very good at it,” Elizabeth said quietly.
“He has had a great deal of practice.”
The music carried them through another figure. Elizabeth was quiet through the next figure.
“Is any of it true?” she said at last.
“Which part?”
“That you carry things alone.”
“Yes,” he said. “That part is true.”
They danced for a moment without speaking. The candles were very bright and the room was very full and Darcy was acutely aware of Wickham somewhere behind him, watching.
“And the rest?” Elizabeth said.
“His father did manage Pemberley,” Darcy said carefully. “He married my sister when I was eleven. He has been my guardian for five years. All of that is true.”
“But?”
“But true facts arranged carefully can make a very misleading picture.”
“Rather like half a picture.”
“Yes,” he said. “Rather like that.”
“He wants you to trust him,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And you do not.”
“No.”
“And you cannot tell me why.”
He looked at her directly. “I could tell you some of it.”
“Then tell me some of it.”
The music was drawing towards its close.
Darcy thought about the burned library and the cut bell pull and the letter Jenkins had sent from Lambton, and about eight months and eighteen days, and about Elizabeth standing in a lane in the November rain saying I find it difficult to have half a picture.
“Not here,” he said. “Not tonight.”
“After tonight?”
“If I can.”
She accepted that. The music drew towards its close.
“Miss Elizabeth,” Darcy said quietly. “I must tell you something.”
She looked at him.
“I am leaving the neighbourhood.”
The last notes fell. Around them couples separated, bowed, moved away. Elizabeth did not move.
“When?” she said.
“The day after tomorrow. Bingley has business in London. I will accompany him.”
“And return?”
He held her gaze. “I do not know.”
Her face did not change in any way that anyone watching could have read. But he saw the small, precise moment of understanding, followed immediately by the composure she put over it like a lid over a flame.
“I see,” she said.
“It is not…” He stopped. “I would not go if I could stay safely.”
“I know that,” she said. She said it simply, without reproach, which was worse than reproach would have been. “I know.”
“After August,” he said quietly.
“What happens in August?”
He had known she would ask. He had hoped, foolishly, that she would not.
“I turn one-and-twenty.”
“And until then?”
The room moved around them. Music, laughter, conversation, the polite machinery of an evening determined to continue.
“Until then,” he said, “I am not entirely my own master.”
Elizabeth glanced across the room towards Wickham, then back to him.
“After August,” she said.
He bowed. She curtseyed. And the evening continued around them as though nothing had happened at all.