Page 6 of Time Stands Still

Mr. Collins was quick to concur, his mouth full of boiled chicken. “An impertinence indeed, your ladyship! A shocking want of gratitude! A landlord’s generosity should not be met with such grasping demands. I myself have often found that a stern sermon on the virtue of contentment is the best remedy for such complaints.”

Elizabeth held her tongue, biting back a retort at the absurdity of prescribing a sermon for a failed crop. She thought of the hardworking farmers of her own neighbourhood, of their constant struggle against the whims of weather and fate. To dismiss a man’s hardship as mere idleness was a cruelty born of the most profound ignorance. She expected Mr. Darcy to remain silent, his expression one of bored indifference. After all, had he not spoken with similar disdain for her own family’s station?

It was then that he spoke, his voice quiet but carrying a firm, measured tone that cut through the air. “The man’s wife, I believe, suffers from a consumption, Aunt. And they lost a child this past winter.” He had spoken without looking up from his plate, a simple statement of fact, yet it carried an undeniable rebuke.

Lady Catherine’s lips tightened. “Be that as it may, nephew, a bargain is a bargain. One cannot allow sentiment to interfere with the proper running of an estate.”

“An estate is more than a ledger of bargains,” he replied, now lifting his eyes to meet his aunt’s. They were cool and unyielding. “It is a community. Its prosperity is tied to the well-being of those who live and work upon it. To press a man so afflicted is not only unkind, it is unwise. It breeds resentment and discourages industry in the long term. A landlord’s duty, I have always felt, extends beyond merely collecting rents. It requires a degree of foresight and, yes, a degree of compassion.”

Elizabeth looked up, her surprise so profound it almost registered on her features. She had painted him with the same brush as his aunt, expecting unfeeling dismissiveness. Instead, his words revealed a thoughtful, compassionate sense of duty, a philosophy of stewardship so at odds with his past arrogance that she was left speechless. This was not the sentiment of a cruel man. This was the sentiment of a just and generous one. How could such a man have acted with such wanton cruelty towards Mr. Wickham, or with such careless pride in separating her sister from Mr. Bingley? The contradiction was so stark, so utterly baffling, that it shook the very foundations of her judgement.

Before Lady Catherine could form a reply, Colonel Fitzwilliam added his support. “Darcy is right, Aunt. In the army, a captain who does not see to the welfare of his men cannot expect their loyalty in battle. An estate, I imagine, is not so different.”

A stony silence fell upon the table. Elizabeth watched, fascinated, as a dark flush crept up Lady Catherine’s neck. It was one thing to be contradicted by Mr. Darcy, whose status as master of Pemberley afforded him a certain license. It was quite another to be opposed by both of her nephews, in her own house, on a matter of her own estate. Her authority, which she held to be as absolute as a monarch’s, had been questioned, and the offence was, Elizabeth could see, utterly insupportable. Lady Catherine’s lips tightened into a thin, bloodless line of displeasure. Just as it seemed she might erupt, the Colonel, ever the diplomat, smoothly changed the subject, turning to Elizabeth with a charming smile. “But let us not burden our guests with such dry matters! Miss Bennet, I hope you might be persuaded to play for us after dinner? My aunt is famously fond of music.”

Elizabeth readily agreed, grateful for the change in subject. After they had returned to the drawing-room, Lady Catherine gestured toward the pianoforte. “Miss Bennet, you may now oblige us.”

Feeling the weight of every eye upon her, Elizabeth moved to the instrument. She chose a lively Scottish air, her fingers moving surely over the keys. As she played, she was aware of a shift in the room. Mr. Darcy, who had been in conversation with his aunt, had fallen silent. He moved from the fireplace to stand by the pianoforte, leaning against it, his gaze fixed not on her face, but on her hands as they moved across the keys.

His proximity unsettled her. She could feel the warmth radiating from him, smell the faint, clean scent of his linen. She felt his focus upon her, a silent, profound attention more potent than any compliment. It was a strange and powerful intimacy, to be observed so closely by a man whose heart she knew, while he remained entirely unaware of her knowledge. Her mind replayed the dinner conversation, his quiet defence of the tenant warring with the memory of his insulting proposal. He was a study in contradictions: a man who could insult her family to her face, yet speak with such wisdom of his duty to others; a man whose pride was a fortress, yet whose eyes, in this unguarded moment, betrayed a deep and vulnerable fascination. How could she reconcile the two? The question lingered in her mind long after the final note had faded into the opulent silence of the room.

Later that night, in the solitude of her chamber, the feeling of triumphant relief she had anticipated did not come. She had done it. By attending dinner at Rosings, she had averted the proposal, excising the day's central, terrible event. But instead of relief, she felt a profound and unsettling confusion. She had set out to prove a theory about the day, and in doing so, had inadvertently begun to dismantle a theory about a man.

Her thoughts were unquiet as she lay down to rest. Tomorrow, surely, would be the sixteenth of April. The spell would be broken.

Chapter Five

Elizabeth awoke to the familiar, dreadful litany of the early potato. The sound did not startle her; it pierced the quiet of the morning and shattered the fragile hope she had dared to cultivate. The voice from the garden, so absurdly predictable, was no longer a mere annoyance, but a chilling pronouncement of her doom. She had outsmarted fate, she had altered the day, she had endured the company at Rosings and denied Mr. Darcy the opportunity to propose, and for what? To be returned to this same grey morning, a prisoner in a cage she could not see, whose bars were forged of time itself.

She lay still, listening to the drone of Mr. Collins’s voice, and the ordered familiarity of her chamber seemed to mock her. The meticulously arranged furniture, the window overlooking the manicured garden, all of it felt like the scenery of a stage upon which she was condemned to play the same part, day after day. A crushing weight of powerlessness consumed her.

She descended for breakfast, moving as if in a dream. Her companions’ countenances formed a lively portrait of untroubled ignorance. Charlotte’s sensible smile, Maria’s uncomplicated delight, each was a fresh torment. The smell of coffee, the clink of a spoon against china, the very normality of it all felt like a madness. The thought of enduring their pleasantries, of hearing Maria remark upon the butter, was unbearable. She could not sit and listen, not today.

“Charlotte, Maria, you must forgive me,” she said, the words catching in her throat as she rose from her seat. “I feel suddenly most unwell, as though the room lacks air. I believe a moment outside is all that I require.”

“Of course, Eliza,” Charlotte answered at once with kind concern, Maria echoing her sentiment with wide, sympathetic eyes. “Do not trouble yourself on our account. Go, take your walk. We shall manage perfectly well.”

Before Mr. Collins could enter from the garden with the now-inevitable letter from Rosings, Elizabeth had quit the parlour. She did not merely walk, she fled, hurrying upstairs only to fetch her pelisse and bonnet. She did not know where she was going, only that she had to get away from the suffocating confines of the parsonage, from the relentless, maddening repetition of it all.

Her feet carried her towards Hunsford village, her thoughts a chaotic whirl. What was the nature of this curse? Was it tied to a place? To a person? If she could but remove herself from Kent, from Hunsford, surely the spell must break. The logic was thin, desperate, but it was all she had. She walked past the small village church, past tidy cottages with smoke curling from their chimneys, the sight of normal life a painful contrast to the unreality of her own. She reached the posting-house, a modest inn where the mail coach stopped on its way to London. A carriage for hire stood in the yard, its driver enjoying a pipe in the morning sun.

An impulse, wild and reckless, seized her. She approached the man, schooling her features into an expression of calm she was far from feeling. “I wish to hire this carriage,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady.

The driver looked her up and down, taking in her simple morning dress, her lack of any luggage or travelling companion. “To where, miss?”

“To London,” she said, the word tasting of freedom. “As quickly as may be.”

He hesitated, his brow furrowed. “You have no luggage, miss? No one to see you off?”

“I have not. My… my plans have changed suddenly. I must reach my uncle in London with all possible haste.” She named her uncle’s address, praying the specificity of it would lend her story some small measure of credence. A vague destination might suggest a flight of fancy, but a solid address in a respectable, if unfashionable, part of the city bespoke a journey grounded in family obligation and sense.

The man, though clearly perplexed, was not one to turn away a paying customer. He named his price, a sum that would make a considerable dent in her small allowance, but Elizabeth did not hesitate. She agreed to the terms, her heart pounding with a surge of terror and exhilarating hope.

The journey to London unfolded before her as a series of swiftly passing landscapes. She pressed her face to the window, watching the familiar Kentish lanes give way to broader roads, the small villages to larger towns. With each turn of the wheel, each receding hill, a fragile hope, at first barely a flicker, began to take root in her heart. The further she travelled from Hunsford, the more substantial that hope became, swelling with the belief that this physical removal, this decisive act, was the key to breaking the impossible enchantment. Surely, the cycle could not follow her to London.

As the carriage rattled on, her mind, freed from the immediate pressure of the repeating day, turned to the other great puzzle that vexed it: Mr. Darcy. Her experiment at Rosings had succeeded, in a way; she had avoided his proposal. But it had introduced a new and deeply unsettling variable. His quiet, firm defence of his tenant had been the act of a just and responsible man, an observation that did not accord with any of her prior calculations.

She had constructed a formidable case against him, built upon his arrogance at Meryton, his cruelty to Mr. Wickham, and his prideful separation of Jane and Mr. Bingley. But his words at dinner had cracked the very foundation of her certainty. How could a man so attuned to a landlord's duty be so blind to the duties of the heart? How could he speak with compassion for a tenant's suffering, yet act with such callous disregard for her own sister's?