Bingley and Jane were both also present in the dining room, yawning.
Colonel Fitzwilliam sat looking trim, shaved, and quite as though he were ready to step onto a battlefield.
Bingley said when he saw Elizabeth, “Deuced early. But the coachmen are all up. Only waiting for Hartley, I dare sayhisservants will just ignore whatever orders he gave to be woken up,and we’ll need to bang his door down if you want him to come with us.”
“Not a difficulty,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said. “I’ll do the pounding. Always a cheerful task, battering a door down. Gives a man an appetite.”
Elizabeth could not stop herself from glancing again and again at Mr. Darcy as she drank her coffee. She fingered a roll and a lemon tart, but she found that it was still hard to eat. There was so much warm gratitude towards him. He had protected her. He stood with her. He had carried her away from danger to safety in his carriage.
He was so very handsome.
Darcy must have some feeling for her beyond simple friendship. Even if he only thought of her with friendship, she would always think of him with unlimited gratitude and affection. She would always know that he was the dearest person in all the world.
Despite these bits of romantic nonsense, as Mr. Bennet—Papa—would call them going through her head, Mr. Darcy did not look towards her often, and there seemed to be a sort of awkwardness in him, as though hewishedto look at her but did not.
Lord Hartley arrived ten minutes after they’d sat down to breakfast: Trimly dressed, shaved, clearly fully prepared for the day. Robert, she should think of him as Robert. He stepped up to Elizabeth and kissed her on the head saying, “Good morning, sister.”
Elizabeth blushed, and replied, “Good morning,brother. It is fortunate, is it not, that I do not have another brother, and you lack another sister. Else ambiguity might intrude.”
“Nothing I hate more than ambiguity,” Robert agreed. “No, no. Thank you kindly, Mrs. Bingley, but I never drink coffee in the morning, I do not like how it feels. And thank you verykindly for the pastry, but I have already eaten enough. Are we ready to leave?”
“Quite,” Bingley rubbed his own eyes. “We were only waiting for the battering ram.”
“With which to break my door down?” Robert inquired.
“No....” Bingley replied.
“It’s a stout oak piece. Bars on the inside too. Iron wrapped. I hope you laid out for a proper tree trunk.”
In another minute or two the servants announced that the carriages were prepared and waiting for them in front of the house, and they left.
Now Elizabeth suffered a proper disappointment. There were so many persons that it had been decided that both Bingley’s and Darcy’s carriage would be used to convey them. And by some awful quirk of fate, it was Elizabeth in Bingley’s carriage with Jane and Bingley, while the two other gentlemen travelled together.
This would have been a lesser evil if she had known how long Darcy intended to remain at Netherfield with his friend—he might even decide to go back to Rosings Park to complete the course of his planned visit with his aunt.
And it would make sense for them to learn directly what plans Lord Rochester might have made, and if he intended to use lawsuit or private force to seize her. Despite the confidence of everyone else, Elizabeth was by no means wholly sanguine.
Jane and Bingley were full of questions for the first half of the journey—how did they learn? How did she feel? Did she know what would happen—had she really tried to shoot the earl?
All the questions natural on such an occasion.
Elizabeth strove to answer these questions, but so often she did not know.
Howdidshe feel?
She had not had liberty enough to settle upon an answer to that question.
From a certain point of view, she was a fool to run from Lord Rochester. He was an earl, and he was acknowledging her. Likely if she actually lived as his daughter he would provide her with a dowry, a position, and possibilities. If she obeyed him and made an effort to become a proper daughter for a nobleman, it was unlikely that he would ever hurt her again. Probably.
The memory of a child’s fear should not overwhelm every prudential consideration.
Except...she could not.
The landscape rushed past her. Fields with growing wheat. Trees heavy with leaves. Churches and villages. Cows and grasses. Birds in the air. She could recognize barely anything, returning the opposite direction from what she had taken on the one previous trip along this road. When she was of age and thus would not need to fear any legal authority of the earl, she hoped she could travel more.
Maybe if Lord Rochester had shown kindness and repentance instead of towering arrogance anddemand for his rights.
She only wanted to see her Papa and have him embrace her and tell her that all would be all right.
