“Elizabeth? Darling, what do you do here?” he asked jauntily, his air so easy as to be almost indifferent. It jarred horribly with the multiple disasters presently besetting Elizabeth’s own life. She swallowed hard, tasting the salt air on her lips. It dawned on her with unpleasant clarity that she did not trust Mr Hartham. She enjoyed his company; she enjoyed laughing with him. But in a crisis? She had the feeling that to lean on him would be the same as leaning on her crumbled wall.
She glanced up at Mr Darcy who had a strange, stoic expression on his countenance, the lamplightplaying across the sharp planes of his face. When he saw her look, he quickly glanced away.
“A problem with a wall,” she said. “Mr Tucker has been sent for.”
“At this hour?” Mr Hartham looked comically puzzled, droplets of mist clinging to his beaver. “Surely it might have waited until morning.”
She did not answer, for Mr Darcy’s cousins approached, their voices, strangely jovial, preceding them. Lord Saye, mercifully, was now fully attired, including a snow-white cravat with an amazing number of knots and billows that seemed about to envelop his chin.
“No, it could not wait until morning,” he snapped at Mr Hartham. “Miss Bennet has understated the matter. The wall is no more. Why, I was standing there right as the Lord made me with all and sundry to gaze upon me! We needed to summon Mr Tucker immediately to make sure the entire house was not about to turn into rubble on top of us.”
“How dreadful!” Mr Hartham was at once all sympathy. “Elizabeth, how may I be of assistance? Shall I wait with you until Mr Tucker arrives? It seems Lord Saye and his party mean to go out.”
“Mr Tucker will do perfectly well by himself. We are escorting Miss Bennet home,” Mr Darcy said flatly at the same time as Colonel Fitzwilliam said cheerfully, “My pay packet will not gamble itself away. We mean to join up at Sullivan’s party.”
“Pray do not let us detain you,” said Mr Hartham. “Enjoy your evening. I can see Elizabeth home.”
A muscle in Mr Darcy’s jaw twitched, but he said nothing. Watching him, all Elizabeth could think was,He called!She had no idea what he would have said hadshe been at home, nor whether he had since been put off by the report of her engagement. Surely so, for he had not returned a second time. She wished there were fewer people present so she could finish what she had been trying to tell him inside—that no such understanding existed—but she reluctantly acknowledged that she probably ought to tell Mr Hartham that first, so instead, she told Mr Darcy, “It is for the best. I would not like to delay you in getting to the party.”
After a prolonged look, he nodded, once. The elegant carriage had already been brought round, its fittings gleaming dully in the lamplight. The coachman sat hunched against the damp. Lord Saye, after a narrow-eyed look at Mr Hartham, went to it, followed by his brother and cousin. Mr Darcy did not look back at her as he climbed inside and was borne away into the mist-shrouded night, the clatter of wheels fading into the distance.
Mr Hartham turned to Elizabeth, rain beginning to speckle his shoulders. “Shall we go in? Wait out of the rain while my carriage is readied?”
She nodded and followed him to Lady Preston’s front door, where, at his gesture, she preceded him inside while he spoke to a footman about his carriage. When he turned back to her, looking as though he would speak, she anticipated him, unable to wait another moment. “Before we go on, there is something I must say.”
“Oh?”
Drawing a deep breath of the close air between them, she said, “As much as I esteem you, sir, I cannot marry you. Forgive me if I misled you in any manner.”
He studied her for a moment, his head tilted. “That it is Mr Darcy who has changed your mind, I cannotdoubt; but is it what hesaidto you, or what heisto you, that prevailed?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“What did he tell you?” he asked in a voice that was not challenging, only curious.
“Mr Darcy? He did not tell me anything,” she said, then faltered as the memory of what else he had been saying, just before the wall came down, resurfaced in her mind.He can never love you.It had made her want to scream after having spent three days convincing herself that neither could he, and his meaning had been lost amongst her indignation. It gave her greater pause now. “What has he to do with any of this?”
“Everything and anything,” Mr Hartham remarked cryptically. “Come, it is a beautiful night. Let us speak up on the roof terrace. My aunt will only interrupt us if she hears us talking down here.”
Elizabeth nodded, somewhat numbly, and allowed him to guide her up the stairs to the roof. Being out on the terrace reminded her of being trapped on her own balcony with Mr Darcy, of the wonderful moment in the rain when she had been enveloped in the warmth of his coat, the warmth of him. How she longed for that same comfort now!
They stood for some minutes in silence, inhaling the salty tang of the sea air and listening to the rhythmic crash of waves on the stones along the shore.
“I suppose I ought to go back to calling you Miss Bennet,” Mr Hartham mused. “It was fun while it lasted, I daresay.”
It was the least of Elizabeth’s concerns at that moment, so she only nodded, running her hand absently over the railing.
“Mr Darcy was rather severe with me earlier. Quitetook me to task for having the audacity to propose to you.”
“Why did he think it so audacious?”
“Eliz— Miss Bennet. You are a clever girl, and even if you are not worldly, I hope you will understand what it is I must tell you. I…I am the sort of man who could be forever happy unmarried. A man for whom the marital state…is undesirable. A man who has no wish to take a wife. Alas, men like myself are not…not always tolerated in society.”
“I see.” And she had always seen, had she not? At the very least, she had suspected, before his proposal made her think she must be mistaken. It was why she had never felt in any danger of misleading him.
“At times, that intolerance can lead to…unpleasant, or even dangerous consequences, so it is something that must be kept hidden.”
“A correspondence not fit to be named,” she said softly, her gaze still in the direction of the crashing sea. There had been a book in her father’s library—Roderick Random, she believed it was called. She had read it clandestinely when she was but sixteen. In it, a certain Captain Whiffle had ‘a correspondence with his surgeon not fit to be named’. She remembered distinctly going to her father about that phrase, wondering at it. She recalled, too, the unexpected sight of her father turning red and snatching the book from her hands, telling her to find something else to read.
