“A servant brought it to the house last night, sir. From Lambton.”
“With a message?”
Vaughan’s face said it all. There was no need for him to reply, “No, sir.”
That was it, then. Elizabeth had returned his coat with neither thanks nor farewell, but her message was loud and clear, nevertheless. She wanted nothing more to do with him. He knew not how or why, but he had lost her all over again. Feeling alarmingly close to high emotion, he opened his mouth to dismiss Vaughan, but his man had already gone. Darcy was utterly alone. Again.
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
NOTHING TO BE DONE
Longbourn was strangely muted, given the extraordinary circumstances. Mr Bennet remained in London, and thither, too, had gone Mr Gardiner. Mrs Bennet kept to her chambers. Without her favourite sister to conspire with, Kitty made a good deal less noise than she was generally wont to do. Elizabeth, Jane, and Mary, all conscious of the implications for them of a sister’s fall from grace, were vastly subdued. The whole family was avoiding social engagements, and by such means, all difficult questions.
The only liveliness in the house came from the Gardiner children, and their mother spent most of her time attempting to dampen that, for fear of upsetting the rest of the household.
“Shall we take them out to play in the garden?” Elizabeth suggested, seeing the littlest of her cousins begin to work himself up to tears upon being hushed for the fourth or fifth time. Mrs Gardiner readily agreed, and between them, they bundled all four children, several toys, and a blanket outside. The three eldest children dispersed across the lawn, whilst little Matthew began lining up his toy soldiers on the hills and valleys of the blanket-landscape.
It was a mild day, not cold but not sunny either, and the stiff breeze picking at the corners of the blanket reminded Elizabeth of the picnic at Pemberley. That had been less than a week ago, yet it felt a lifetime removed. Separating that moment from the present were three miserable days of rain-plagued travel, followed by two even longer days spent absorbing all the distressing details of Lydia’s elopement. Elizabeth would not have been surprised had she woken that morning to discover her entire stay in Derbyshire had been a dream.
She wished she had kept Darcy’s coat. It had smelled wonderful. She would have taken solace in wrapping it around herself, perchance to pretend she was in his arms as she had come so close to being.
“I hate to see you so downcast, Lizzy,” Mrs Gardiner said gently. “I am more used to you finding the humour in things.”
“I do not know that things have ever seemed less humorous.”
“These are not ideal circumstances by any stretch of the imagination. But I am sure your father and uncle will find Lydia.”
“Then you are more confident than I am.” Elizabeth righted several of her cousin’s soldiers that had fallen over. They all toppled over again directly, for she was too angry to place them with any care. “Stupid, stupid girl! To go, and go willingly, into such a situation—and with such a man! What possessed her?”
“Youth. Fancy. Inclination. Do not fool yourself into believing that passion is the sole province of men. Women are just as susceptible.”
Elizabeth did not need to be persuaded of that. When Darcy had pulled her towards him in his coat and looked at her as though she were a siren from whose song he was struggling to break free, her body had responded compellingly. Sensations she had never felt before but were instinctively understood left her flushed, light-headed, and unsatisfied. She had wanted him to kiss her with a fervency that startled her still, so yes, she knew very well what it was to be carried away by passion. She knew it so well, had dwelt on it so long, in fact, that she had begun to doubt her understanding of everything else.
She fretted that she, like Lydia, had allowed her fancy to overtake reason—allowed herself to see admiration where, in truth, there was only civility. For she knew now that Darcy could be so very attentive, so very gentle, so very generous. It was perfectly possible that he had not wanted to kiss her at all; that he had meant only to shield her from the rain; that, not wishing to appear resentful, he had merely been tolerating her company all along.
“Perhaps he is relieved I am gone. He certainly will be when he finds out what has happened.”
“Who?”
“Mr Darcy.”
“Oh. We are talking about him now, are we?” Mrs Gardiner had taken over straightening the fallen soldiers, passing every other one to her son for him to position. It nevertheless seemed that her small smile was not for him. “If you are lucky, he will not find out.”
“Lucky?” Elizabeth said with a bitter laugh. “I suppose it would prevent him discovering yet another reason to object to my family, but it would not explain to him why I left, just when—” She bit off her words and exhaled in exasperation. There had been no question of explaining the matter in her note to his sister—the risk to Lydia’s reputation hardly as great a consideration as the pain to Miss Darcy that any mention of Mr Wickham’s name must give. It had never been her intention to leave without any explanation at all, though. Not when she and Darcy had seemed so close to an understanding. She could not bear to think what his feelings towards her must presently be. “Would that I could have talked to him.”
“I know you wanted to, and that your uncle and I agreed to it, but in retrospect, I am not sure it is a bad thing that you did not get the chance. What would you have said?”
“That I—That Lydia—Oh! I do not know!”
“Exactly. It is better this way. Let us find your sister and bring her home first. Then, once everything has settled down, your uncle can write to Mr Darcy and invite him to dinner when he is next in London, and the acquaintance can be renewed that way.”
“Only if Lydia is not married to Mr Wickham. If she is, it is all lost.” It was not to be supposed that Darcy would have anything to do with her if she were connected so closely to the man he so justly scorned.
“If she isnotmarried to Mr Wickham, it may still all be lost.”
Her aunt’s sombre tone was humbling.
“Forgive me, I do not mean to be selfish. You must know I am concerned about what will happen to Lydia. But I cannot pretend it does not pain me that Mr Darcy does not know why I left. He will think I do not care.”
