“You are searching for a single cause, sir, when I suspect there are several.”
Darcy said, after a terse silence, “If you have identified specific impediments hindering our efforts, then pray, do not withhold them.”
“Perhaps it is this room, Mr Darcy. Perhaps it is this candle.” Her voice was deceptively light, but her gaze met his without flinching, a clear challenge in its depths.
“I do not believe that the fault lies with the decor.”
Elizabeth drew in a steadying breath, the effort to maintain her composure becoming almost physically painful. “Then my suggestion is simply that we attempt the exercise again.”
They did. Six times more they attempted it, to no success.
Sarah entered, bearing a letter on a silver salver. “Letters for you, ma’am.”
“Thank you, Sarah,” she said, her heart lightening when she recognised the seal.
A surge of longing for home, for her sister’s loving presence, came over Elizabeth as she took the letter. Jane’s graceful script filled the pages, a welcome, if poignant, reminder of a life that seemed increasingly distant.
She read, at first, with a smile, Jane’s descriptions of the everyday happenings at Longbourn – their mother’s continued pronouncements on the brilliance of Lizzy’s match; Kitty and Lydia’s latest, invariably foolish, flirtations with the remaining officers of the ----shire Militia, Mary’s request for a piece of sheet music.
But then, as Elizabeth turned the page, the tone of Jane’s letter shifted, a deviation in the rhythm of her words, a tremor in the usually serene flow of her prose, that immediately alerted Elizabeth’s senses.
“I have some news from Netherfield which will, I am sure, prove to be for the best in the long run,”Jane wrote, her words attempting a casualness that felt transparently false,“It seems Mr Bingley and his entire party have departed quite suddenly for London. They left Netherfield this morning, their departureapparently necessitated by urgent matters that could no longer be delayed.”
The air left her lungs in a rush, the words on the page blurring before her eyes. Mr Bingley gone? Departed Netherfield? Without…?
Jane’s letter continued, her attempts at nonchalance becoming increasingly strained.“Miss Bingley shares that her brother sends his kindest regards to our family, and expressed his sincere hope that we might meet again in London, at some future, unspecified date.”
A future, unspecified date. The words were a death knell to any hopes of a continued courtship or of an impending engagement.
Mr Bingley was gone.
Elizabeth knew her sister too well. Beneath the bravely optimistic facade of Jane’s letter, beneath the carefully constructed attempts to make light of the situation, to attribute Mr Bingley’s departure to necessity, lay a deep sense of loss.
The letter concluded with an attempt at cheerfulness, a reassurance that all was well at Longbourn, that Jane herself was perfectly content with this unexpected turn of events. But Elizabeth was not fooled.
Her dearest sister was heartbroken.
Helpless anger choked her throat, anger at Mr Bingley, for his weakness, his lack of resolve, his willingness to raise expectations for weeks (weeks!) and then flee like a coward in the night.
The letter crumpled in her hand.
Pleading the indisputable excuse of a throbbing headache – a condition her current vexation did little to alleviate – she took her dinner, and indeed, the following morning’s repast, as trays delivered to her chambers.
The thought of enduring another meal under Darcy’s assessing gaze, or worse, engaging in further stilted, emotionally charged discourse, was simply more than her frayed nerves could presently withstand.
Dear God, she was turning into her mother.
By mid-morning, the walls of her room felt like they were closing in around her. Determined to escape the suffocating atmosphere of the house, and the even more suffocating presence of its master, Elizabeth resolved upon a walk. A long, solitary ramble, as far from Pemberley as her feet could carry her.
It would be a brief reprieve, she knew. Darcy would undoubtedly seek her out, driven by his conviction that the Concordance’s failure was a solvable puzzle, a knot that a sheer application of his will could certainly untangle.
The prospect of that inevitable, and undoubtedly exasperating, trial hung over her like a gathering storm cloud, hastening her steps as she sought the temporary solace of the outdoors.
It was snowing.
As she rounded a bend in the overgrown path that led towards the shimmering lake, she was surprised to see a familiar figure approaching, his military greatcoat a splash of colour against the muted landscape.
“Elizabeth!” he called out, his voice cheerful, his smile as warm and engaging as ever, though Elizabeth thought she detected an almost anxious note in his demeanour. “Fancy meeting you here! Taking a constitutional, are we?”
