The Man Who Was Not Abroad #2
Elizabeth watched him with new attention. He did not know the whole of it.
Not the accounts, not the moved money, not the man who watched coffee-houses, and certainly not wherever Mr Darcy was actually concealing himself. But he knew the fire had been deliberate. He knew Mr Wickham was dangerous, and that Mr Darcy had gone because remaining would place others in danger.
He had been trusted with enough to make him careful, and no more. His cheerfulness was part of that care.
“You are very quiet, Miss Elizabeth,” Mr Bingley said.
“I am only thinking how very little any of us truly know.”
“Sometimes,” he said, “that may be the safest arrangement.”
Elizabeth realised she had mistaken openness for ignorance.
By luncheon Mrs Bennet had discovered three new necessities, rejected two perfectly serviceable plans, and declared that nothing could be settled until they had seen what Bond Street had to offer.
“Bond Street?” Mr Gardiner said mildly.
“For Jane’s wedding,” Mrs Bennet replied, as though this explained every extravagance ever committed in England.
Mr Bingley, his easy manner restored, offered his carriage at once. Mrs Gardiner accepted before Mrs Bennet could accept on behalf of the nation. The expedition arranged itself with alarming speed.
Mrs Bennet went upstairs to retrieve a list she had already lost once and found twice.
Jane followed, smiling apologetically. Mr Bingley was sent for the carriage and looked so pleased to be given a task that Elizabeth suspected he would have fetched the horses himself if permitted.
Mrs Gardiner remained behind long enough to fold her work.
“Bond Street,” she said.
“You sound resigned.”
“I am resigned. There is a difference between surrender and strategy.”
The carriage proved unequal to Mrs Bennet’s ambitions before it had gone half a mile.
“There is room enough,” she insisted, while one of the bandboxes slid gently against Elizabeth’s knee. “If Jane sits forward, and Lizzy does not mind that parcel, and Mr Bingley follows in a hackney, we shall do very well.”
Mr Bingley, from the pavement, declared himself perfectly happy with this arrangement. Jane looked mortified.
Mrs Gardiner merely adjusted the parcel and said, “Then Bond Street, if we are all still agreed.”
Bond Street, when they reached it, was everything Mrs Bennet had promised and considerably more crowded.
“There,” she said, the moment she stepped down, surveying the street with the satisfaction of a general arriving at a long-promised battlefield. “You see, Jane? This is what London is for.”
Jane, who had seen London used for a great many other purposes in the past month, said only that it was very fine.
They went from shop to shop with a thoroughness that left Elizabeth’s feet aching and her patience considerably more tested than her feet.
Mrs Bennet examined lace with the gravity of a connoisseur and supplied opinions freely enough for the entire party.
Jane was patient. Mrs Gardiner was efficient, steering Mrs Bennet gently from extravagance to extravagance in a manner calculated to look like agreement while accomplishing almost none of what Mrs Bennet actually proposed.
Bingley trailed them from shop to shop with placid good humour, entirely out of his depth and perfectly content to remain there, carrying whatever was handed to him without complaint.
Elizabeth trailed behind, listening with only part of her attention.
The rest remained on the street. It was the watching that had become habit now, whether she wished it or not.
She found herself noting faces without meaning to: who lingered too long outside a window, who crossed the street for no apparent reason, who seemed to have nowhere to be and yet kept moving.
She told herself it was nothing. London was full of strangers. Strangers did not all mean something. The problem was that some strangers did.
Jane touched Elizabeth’s arm. “Lizzy,” she whispered, “is that not Mr Darcy’s man?”
Elizabeth followed her gaze across the street. A neat dark coat. A sealed packet beneath one arm. A face she had last seen in Hertfordshire, moving through Netherfield with the assurance of a servant unmistakably attached to Darcy’s household.
Fletcher.
He reached the opposite pavement, glanced once towards the shop window, and saw them. His face remained perfectly still. Then he bowed. It was not the bow of a servant greeting a lady in the street. It was smaller than that, and stranger. An acknowledgement only.
Jane’s fingers tightened on Elizabeth’s sleeve. “But if Mr Darcy is abroad…”
Fletcher turned away at once. He crossed behind a passing carriage, paused beside a waiting hackney, and handed the packet to the driver with a few quiet words.
Then he stepped back, looked once along the street as if measuring who had noticed him, and walked on towards Piccadilly. He did not look at them again.
Jane was still watching the place where Fletcher had vanished into the movement of the street.
“That was him,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Then Mr Darcy cannot be very far from London.”
“I do not know what it means,” Elizabeth said.
“No,” Jane replied. “But it means something.”
Before Elizabeth could answer, Mrs Bennet called to them from the doorway of the shop.
“Jane! Lizzy! Do not stand in the street like statues. They have Valenciennes lace, and your aunt says it is dear, which means it is almost certainly exactly what we require.”
Jane turned at once, obedient even in bewilderment. Elizabeth followed more slowly.
Across the street, the hackney had begun to move, carrying Fletcher’s packet into the traffic.
Whatever it meant, it was already travelling away from her.
Inside, Mrs Bennet had found a length of lace she admired, which meant she was already arguing against its price with complete confidence that admiration and purchase were almost the same thing.
Mrs Gardiner looked from Jane to Elizabeth only once. Elizabeth gave the smallest shake of her head. Not here.
Her aunt accepted it at once and turned back to Mrs Bennet.
“It is very pretty,” she said, “but perhaps not so pretty as to require us to forget every other shop in London.”
Elizabeth looked once more through the shop window, but Fletcher was gone, the hackney was gone, and Bond Street had already closed over the moment as though it had never happened.
Mrs Bennet was still speaking of lace. Mr Darcy might be abroad. His valet was not.