Page 64 of Mr. Darcy Forgot I Said No

"Miss Bennet. I hear congratulations are in order."

He says it very softly, at my elbow, in the voice I used to think the pleasantest in Hertfordshire.

I have been alone for perhaps two minutes. No more.

Mr. Darcy was taken from me by Mrs. Long, who came down the draper's steps at a speed I would not have believed possible in a lady of her figure, and attached herself to his other arm, and began to tell him about her nieces. Lady Lucas crossed the street to join her, quizzing glass and all. Between them they backed him against the bow window of the draper's like a pair of terriers with a stag. Jane and Mr. Bingley have drifted on toward the church, still discussing cows. And I stepped aside, laughing, to wait by my Aunt Philips's door, where Lydia and Kitty were standing with three officers and a bag of sugar plums.

And I did not see him come out of the inn yard.

I turn.

He is exactly as I remember him. That is the strangest part. I had half expected him to look different, now that I know. To be shabbier, or shiftier, or to have some mark on him I had missed before. He has not. He is still the handsomest man in the regiment. His coat is still brushed, his smile still easy, his eyes still warm and frank and full of a sort of rueful amusement, as though we two share a private joke that the rest of the world is too dull to understand.

In November, that look made my heart beat faster.

Today it makes my skin crawl.

"Mr. Wickham," I say.

He bows. "I could hardly believe it when Miss Lydia told me. I said, she is quizzing me. Miss Elizabeth Bennet? And Darcy? It cannot be. Not after everything she said to me at your aunt's card table."

"A great deal has changed since then."

"So I see." He smiles. "I confess I am wounded. I thought you and I were of one mind on the subject of Mr. Darcy."

"We were," I say. "Once."

Something flickers at the back of his eyes. It is very quick. I would not have seen it in November. I would not have known to look.

"Lizzy!" Lydia bounces up between us in a flurry of ribbons and sugar plums. "Lizzy, have you told Mr. Wickham about Mr. Darcy's head? You must tell him. It is the most romantic thing in the world. Mr. Wickham, he fell off his horse in Kent, and hit his head on a tree, and he was insensible for hours, and when he woke up he could not remember a thing!"

"Lydia," I say.

"Well, it is true, Mama said so. She had it from Mr. Collins's letter. He forgot a whole day! Can you imagine? I should like to forget a whole day. I should choose the day Mary played the pianoforte at the Lucases' for two hours."

Mr. Wickham's eyebrows rise, gently. "Forgot a whole day? How very extraordinary. Which day?"

"Why, the day he proposed!" says Lydia, delighted. "Is it not the most romantic thing you ever heard? He asked Lizzy to marry him, and she said yes, and then he went out riding the next morning, all for love I suppose, and fell straight into a tree, and now he cannot remember her saying it. Not a word of it! Kitty cried for an hour when Mama read it out."

"I did not," says Kitty, from behind her.

"You did. You howled."

"I wept. It is different."

I am not looking at Kitty. I am looking at Mr. Wickham.

I see it happen.

It is not much. His smile does not change. His eyes do not leave Lydia's face; he goes on looking at her with that charming, attentive interest, as though she were the most fascinating girl in Meryton. But something behind the eyes has gone very still. Very quiet. The way a card player goes quiet when he has looked at his hand and seen, among the twos and threes, a single ace.

"He cannot remember her saying it," he repeats softly. "How very sad."

"Is it not?" says Lydia. "I told Mama, if I were Lizzy I should make him propose all over again. Twice. On his knees."

"Lydia, go and find Mrs. Long's nieces," I say. "I believe they are looking for you."

"They are not. They are dreadful. Maria Long has spots."