“Quite right, sir,” Elizabeth replied. “Why waste a good ticket?”
“Indeed! You are very generous. Dare I hope this means?—”
“It means—I comprehend that your affections have found a new home, and you no longer wish to call on me. I assure you, there are no hard feelings. My uncle willperfectlyunderstand. Good evening.” She inclined her head by the smallest degree and hastened away, smiling to herself to hear him bark at Miss Delaney to let go of him.
It came to something when the discovery that one had been thrown over for a woman of the night was a relief, but this truly was the best thing to have happened to Elizabeth in a long while. Kitty’s admonishment, that she was ‘determined to refuse every bit of interest any man showed in her,’ had not been entirely accurate. Rather, her struggle to repress her true feelings had led to hernotrefusing Mr Knowles’s interest.
The truth was that despite all her efforts and everybody else’s firm encouragement to be practical, she had not yet learnt to stop loving Mr Darcy. Her endeavours to avoid meeting Lord Rutherford had been powerful proof of that. She fancied she would be happier if she simply allowed herself to feel it and ceased torturing herself with the notion of giving her heart to anyone else. Her family would be disappointed, maybe even angry, but there was nothing for it. When she resolved to come this evening, it had been with the intention of telling Mr Knowles definitively that they had no future together. He could not have made it easier for her.
It was nevertheless a bittersweet victory. She was no less full of regret than she had been before—no less alone. She wended her way through the gallery, keeping an eye on Kitty as she went, until she reached the couch at the far end of the room. She sat down, wondering forlornly what might have happened had she stood up from this spot one minute earlier on Monday andencountered Mr Darcy face-to-face instead of passing behind him as he climbed into his carriage.
There was little point in speculating she supposed, for she would never know. Just as she would never know what might have happened had she not been separated from him at the dinner table when they dined together at Longbourn last autumn, giving them no opportunity to converse. Or what might have happened had her sister not eloped, or had she not rejected Mr Darcy’s offer of marriage, or had he not separated Jane and Mr Bingley. Their association was so dotted with ifs, almosts, and maybes that the addition of a few more misses this week ought not to have made any difference—yet they did.
She wished she had called his name when she saw him on the street. She wished she had not hidden behind a pillar when she saw his sister. She wished she, and not Kitty, had been here at the gallery when he came yesterday.
She wished she had not spurned his offer to love her.
Someone sat down next to her, and with a mumbled apology for having inconsiderately sat in the middle of the couch, she slid sideways to make room.
“Do not move away on my account, Miss Bennet.”
Elizabeth’s head snapped up faster than Kitty’s had earlier, her heart in her throat, for she knewthatvoice, too. Intimately. “Mr Darcy!”
She was half inclined to think she was hallucinating, that he was a vivid manifestation of her yearning—only then he smiled, and she knew he was real, for no flight of fancy had ever affected her so deeply.
“Good evening,” he said.
She smiled regardless of her discomposure, for it was exactly like him to make her feel so much with so few words. “Good evening,” she replied.
She scarcely knew where to look. To hold his gaze seemed too revealing, yet every time she looked away, she found herself immediately glancing back again to marvel that he was there, to admire his countenance, to confirm that she had not imagined his smile. She had not; he seemed almost unable to repress it as he said, “I cannot express how pleased I am to see you.”
Alas, his countenance clouded as soon as he said it, and he added stiffly, “Are you here alone?”
“No, I am here with Kitty—and your cousin’s batman, as it happens.” Elizabeth pointed to them, but Mr Darcy did not look.
“Yes, but I meant…” He stopped talking and winced slightly.
“Is something the matter?”
This appeared to surprise him. “It is heartening that you should have to ask. Are you not exceptionally angry with me?”
“What for?”
“For giving you the cut direct, here, on Monday.”
Elizabeth recoiled in dismay. “That was you?”
“It seems it may have been—but…you did not recognise me?”
“I did notseeyou. What do you mean, itmayhave been you?”
“It was not intentional, I—” He frowned. “You truly did not see me?”
“No. I was standing over there, lost in my own thoughts, and the next thing I knew, a lady I had never met before informed me I had been given the cut direct and began attempting to remedy all my worldly problems.”
“Lady Tuppence Swanbrook?”
“Yes! Do you know her?”
