Page 98 of When Elizabeth's Cat Chose Darcy
Bingley was behind him, equally saturated, his hair in the state of enthusiastic disarray that was Bingley’s natural condition but amplified by the weather, and his eyes found Jane before his feet had crossed the threshold.
“Georgiana.” Darcy’s voice broke on the second syllable.
She ran to him.
I had thought I was braced. I had revised and processed and intellectualized my way through every piece of information Georgiana had given me, and I believed, truly believed, that I had assembled a working understanding of the man standing in my drawing room, and the understanding would protect me from the seeing.
It did not.
He caught her—the way a brother catches a sister who has been missing, with both arms and his chin on top of her head and his eyes closing and his entire body curving around her slight frame as though he could retroactively shield her from the weather and the stream and all the two years since Ramsgate.
Bingley crossed the room to Jane. He did not hesitate; he simply went to her the way water goes downhill.
“Miss Bennet. I need to tell you before you hear it from anyone else, what happened at Netherfield today, and what I have done about it.”
“Mr. Bingley.” Jane’s composure held, but only just, in the fine tremor at the corners of her mouth. “Charlotte has told us.”
“All of it?”
“Enough.”
“Then you know it was not, that I did not—Miss Darcy is my friend, and I would sooner cut off my hand than?—”
“I know.” Jane’s voice was very certain. “I have always known.”
“Miss Bennet, Jane—” He caught himself on the Christian name, glanced at Papa, and the glancing was the most endearing thing I had ever seen Bingley do, because it was the glance of a man whounderstood that names had consequences and was prepared to accept them. “I have sent my sisters away. Caroline and the Hursts leave at first light. They will not return. And I should very much like to call on you properly tomorrow, if your father would permit it, because there are things I need to say to you that I cannot say properly while dripping on your mother’s carpet.”
And then, Jane tossed her head back, nodding and laughing. “Yes, Mr. Bingley, you are quite the sight, but you may say anything you wish, whether wet or dry.”
“You may call, Mr. Bingley,” Papa said from the doorway, and I noted Mama’s curt nod of approval. She had been watching, had set me watching, and whatever she saw, she liked.
“Thank you, sir. Thank you. I shall return tomorrow—at a civilized hour, in dry clothes, with?—”
“Mr. Bingley.” Papa’s voice held the faintest edge of amusement. “Sit down before you propose by accident.”
Bingley sat, and Jane sat beside him. Their shoulders touched, and neither moved away. Mama looked at the touching shoulders and said nothing, which was the most eloquent commentary she had offered in the entire evening.
Darcy released Georgiana. She stepped back, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of Lydia’s nightdress, and he held her at arm’s length and looked at her—really looked, the way a man looks at someone he has been too frightened to see clearly.
“You walked to Longbourn. In this weather. Alone.”
“I crossed the stream.” Georgiana lifted her chin. “The water was higher than the stones were flat, but I gathered my skirts, and I did not look down.”
“You could have?—”
“I could not stay at Netherfield. Not with Caroline. Not after what she did.”
“No.” His voice roughened. “You could not. The choice was yours, and you made it well.”
The words cost him. I could see the cost in the wayhe released her arms, as though letting go of her physically was letting go of something larger—the programme, the control, and the strict guardianship. And then he looked at me, and I remembered that I had also claimed the choice to stay or to go.
“May I stay at Longbourn tonight?” Georgiana looked at her brother with those Darcy eyes that I now understood carried the same stubbornness as his, but pointed in a different direction. “I do not wish to return.”
Darcy glanced at Mama, a request and not an assumption, and the distinction mattered.
“Miss Darcy is welcome for as long as she needs,” Mama said, with the authority of a woman who had already prepared the guest room and was merely awaiting formal acknowledgment of what she had decided an hour ago. “Hill has made up the bed. There is broth, bread, and a fire.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Bennet.” He held Georgiana’s shoulders. “Caroline and the Hursts will be gone from Netherfield by morning. You will not be under the same roof with her again.”
