“How long will he be gone? He truly told me nothing, I must say.”
“I don’t know the exact amount of time, I admit. At any rate, I have interrupted what you were saying. You decided to come here because of the proximity to Neith Abbey, I presume?”
“Yes, I must find a way to speak to the current duke,” she said. “He would not be my father, of course, because he is too young. The duke who might have been my father passed on years ago.”
“So, you think it’s possible the current Duke of Neithern is your half-brother?”
“I wish to find out whether or not that is so,” said Elizabeth.
“Did you bring these letters with you?”
“I did, of course,” said Elizabeth, “but I do not have them with me now. They are in my bedchamber.”
“I should like to take a look at them,” said Mr. Darcy. “I shall come to see you later on this evening. After dinner? We can speak more of this then?”
“You’ll come to my bedchamber,” she said.
“We should not continue talking about this here, where anyone could overhear,” he said pointedly.
She supposed she saw the sense in that.
He licked his lips. “Congratulations, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. I wish you joy.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
CHAPTER TWO
“WHAT WAS THATabout?” said Jane to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was seated next to Jane outside on a set of chairs that had been set up with a pavilion. The rolling green fields stretched out ahead of them, all the way to the horizon, where the sky was blue and dotted with fluffy clouds. They were watching a game of pall-mall that was being played by a number of other guests, all of whom had glasses of wine.
If it came to that, Jane had a glass of wine, too.
Behind them, Barralds stretched up towards the sky, its pillars and windows stately and imposing as they overlooked the stretch of the lawn.
Elizabeth had refused the offer of wine. “What was what about?”
“You know full well and don’t pretend otherwise,” said Jane. “You and Mr. Darcy. He came straight for you and you went and talked in whispers, and you both looked about, wary, as if you were concerned that people were watching you or listening in or something. It was all very irregular, and if you hadn’t looked so much as if you wished to conceal yourselves, it would have been less remarkable.”
Elizabeth sighed. She had not told her sister a number of things that had befallen her, and she wasn’t certain why this was, exactly.
She usually gave her sister a faithful recitation of everything that happened to her, but there was a sort of line in her experience after which she did not speak, to anyone.
When she went to Rosings to visit her friend Charlotte Collins, she told Jane everything about that experience, up to the point when Mr. Darcy proposed to her and she refused him.
But she did not tell Jane that she knew that Mr. Darcy was the person who had convinced Mr. Bingley to leave Netherfield, thus preventing further connection between them. She had never told her sister this, even though Mr. Bingley had come back into Jane’s life now and was pursuing her again.
However, it seemed a rather long courtship in Elizabeth’s mind. She was not certain what Mr. Bingley was about, inviting Jane along on this trip to the country but not asking for her hand? She wasn’t sure if she thought well of Mr. Bingley or not. Was something preventing him asking Jane to marry him?
What was it?
Was it Elizabeth herself?
She was no longer respectable, though she didn’t know if Mr. Bingley knew this or not.
It was partly because of her birth, though she now suspected that perhaps her parents had been married. If her mother had eloped with the duke, then Elizabeth might, in fact, be legitimate.
It was also because, however, she had done a number of improper things with men.
