He did walk away.
Mr. Darcy, sighing, did not follow him.
CHAPTER NINE
ELIZABETH STAYED CLOSEto Jane all day. She looked around, hoping that the duke would come, and that she could speak to him, since she had thought they would be having breakfast that morning, but he did not arrive.
She noticed Mr. Darcy from time to time, but she forced herself not to pay him too much mind, as she allowed her own mind to churn.
Larilane had negotiated everything with the dowager duchess, but what had he negotiated?
Elizabeth supposed that whatever the negotiation was, it had been for one child, and when it had turned out to be twins, he’d stolen away one of the children and left the other. She couldn’t understand why her mother had allowed her child to be taken, however. She also couldn’t understand why her mother had given Elizabeth up if she’d lost one babe.
But these questions, like the questions about why her mother had given her up at all or why she had not lived at Weythorn were all not likely to be answered, Elizabeth was coming to realize.
She did not know what to think about the dowager duchess herself, who seemed mostly awful, and yet, there was that one wistful moment about wishing for a girl child, about wanting to attend Elizabeth’s wedding. As small as it was, Elizabeth’ssoul grasped at it, and she realized she longed for some sort of maternal love, that it was a thing she had never really experienced in her life.
Looking back on the way Fanny Bennet had treated Elizabeth, it all seemed obvious now. Mrs. Bennet had gloried in Jane’s beauty, in Lydia’s silliness, and she had even been affectionate in her dealings with Mary and Kitty. But when it came to Elizabeth, she had been standoffish and harsh. Elizabeth had been left thinking that she never measured up to her mother’s standards, but now she knew it was only that she was not her mother’s daughter.
The way the duchess’s eyes had softened, it had torn something inside Elizabeth, broken open a wound that had already been made and it had given some small promise of healing, and Elizabeth could not quite bear it, for she could see that it was not a promise at all, and that the duchess would never truly acknowledge her.
But why not?
That didn’t make sense.
She and Neithern were twins, and so they were both legitimate.
What did it matter if Elizabeth was acknowledged as well? Would it expose the fact that her father had been violent or crazed or locked away? But he was dead now. Did that really matter?
No.
This did not make sense.
There was more to know.
This settled into Elizabeth with a feeling of unease, because she was not sure how it was she could find out what else there was.
As the day wore on, she began to realize there was only one person who she knew could assist her in this matter, and it wasMr. Darcy. As much as she knew she should stay away from him, as much as she felt that her association with him was becoming more ruinous by degrees, she could not but go to him.
He would do anything for her.
Of this, somehow, perversely, she was sure.
MR. DARCY SPENTthe afternoon reassuring Georgiana that the absence of Neithern was not because of her.
“He said he would return today, but he has not returned,” said Georgiana, more than once. “Why would he not send word if he could not be here?”
“Well,” Mr. Darcy said, “it was not a formal appointment, was it?”
“Oh, I suppose not,” she said. “He even made a joke about how he had not even been invited. Even so, I thought he was looking forward to seeing me. I wonder now if I imagined it all. Did he truly have any regard for me?”
“I’m certain he did,” said Mr. Darcy, who was beginning to realize his sister had fallen in love with Neithern. How did he feel about that? He was not entirely sure.
If Neithern loved her back, then he was a good choice for a husband. He was a duke, after all. Darcy couldn’t ask for much better.
“You can’t be certain of that, though,” said Georgiana.
“Well, I am certain that men like the duke have a number of pressing responsibilities, any of which would take precedence over sipping lemonade in the gardens with diverting young women, and that you oughtn’t think anything disastrous has happened. Perhaps he’ll be back tomorrow.”
