Page 8 of Mr Darcy’s Inconvenient Wife

They walked home along the Meryton road with the last of the light behind them.

At the turn by the gate, Elizabeth looked back. She had not meant to. Away to the north, the windows of Netherfield showed small and yellow between the trees. Several were already lit on the upper floor.

I have been some days trying to find the words for what I wish to say to you.

She had not let herself think of it in months. Now it came back to her whole, with the rain upon it. She saw him hand his hat to the maid without seeming to know he had done it. Whatever he had meant to say, he had walked half a mile in the wet to say it. She had not let him finish a single sentence.

A small, unwelcome pang of regret went through her. She pushed it away.

“Lizzy!” her mother called from the gate. “Are you coming in, or am I to stand holding the door till midnight?”

“I am coming, Mama,” she said, and turned away from the lights.

Chapter Four

Darcy

The first voice to reach him through the open door was Mrs Bennet's. That was no great distinction. Hers was usually the first voice to reach anybody.

Darcy stood at the back of the bookseller's with a history of the county in his hand. He had not got past the frontispiece. There was no way into the street that did not pass the bench outside the haberdasher's. So he turned his shoulder to the door and resolved to hear nothing.

He could not keep the resolution. Mrs Bennet's opinions on blue ribbon gave way to a quieter voice. In the space of a minute he learned that Mr Collins had made Miss Elizabeth an offer that afternoon, and that she had not accepted him.

He put the book back on the shelf. His relief was so sharp that it startled him.

Mrs Bennet's outrage at the offer followed, loud enough for any passer-by. Then she leaned closer to her daughter and lowered her voice. Lowered, it carried perfectly.

Once Jane was married, Mr Bennet was to speak to Mr Bingley. Mr Bingley was to buy Mr Collins out of the entail. He would be one of the family by then. He would never miss the sum. He was the best-natured young man in England, and would do it gladly.

Darcy's hand had closed on the edge of the shelf. He made himself let go.

He had known it would come to this. He had told Bingley in the autumn that the connection was imprudent, and had been forced to take the words back since. He had told Elizabeth Bennet the same at Hunsford, and been answered as she thought he deserved. Now the very thing he had foreseen was being laid out on a bench in the high street, by the lady herself.

Anger rose in him, hard and cold. Every smile Mrs Bennet had turned on Bingley since Michaelmas had been leading here. So had every invitation to dine, every compliment on his amiable nature. She had not even waited for the wedding before reckoning up what it would buy. She had waited only until the match could not decently be broken.

Nor was the entail to be the end of it. Mr Bingley had a great many friends, and rich ones. They were to be put to use in settling the four remaining daughters. Darcy heard himself mentioned among them as barely tolerable. He could not fairly resent the phrase. He had supplied it himself.

Miss Elizabeth said it was a very good scheme.

That stung more than all the rest. He had expected something sharper from her. He had wanted it, he realised. He had wanted her to be above it.

Then came a rustle of paper parcels and a complaint about an ankle. The two ladies went away up the street towards Longbourn. He waited until their footsteps had quite gone before he went out to his horse.

***

Darcy rode back to Netherfield at a speed usually reserved for a horse race. That morning, on the lawn at Netherfield, he had given Bingley his word. You have had my last word of advice. He had meant it, and Bingley had accepted it as generously as it was offered. To go to him now with something overheard through a shop door would be to break that promise before the day was out. Bingley had forgiven him once for standing between him and Jane Bennet. Darcy could not believe even so easy a temper would forgive it twice.

Yet silence was worse. It meant sitting at his friend's table for years to come and watching him drained by degrees. Each sum would be pressed on him so warmly that he would think it his own generosity. Darcy would say nothing, because he had promised. He would even be counted a good friend for it.

Neither choice would do. He came up the carriage sweep no closer to an answer than when he had left Meryton.

***

Miss Bingley was alone in the drawing room with her embroidery frame. She looked up at his step and noted the mud on his boots.

“You have not changed,” she said. “How unlike you. Dinner is in half an hour.”

“You spoke this afternoon of what might happen in three days.”