She hadlikedMr. Darcy, she thought wistfully. Not when she first met him, when he was stiff and formal, but afterwards. She had liked the gentleman she had glimpsed behind his façade, someone warm, with the ability to laugh. Above all, he was kind. She suspected he did not often show that side of himself to others. He was handsome, to boot.
Yet the fact remained, he had not even asked for her name. It was embarrassing to be dismissed so completely.
Well, she did not have to befriend him. She just had to appreciate what he had done for her.
Somehow, that did not make her feel any better.
The letter went out, and Elizabeth awaited the response anxiously. She imagined him opening the letter and tossing it in the fire, and she felt ashamed.
“If Mr. Darcy invites you to his house,” said Elizabeth the next day, “I will not join you. I will not go where I am not welcome.”
“I do not care if we are welcome or not. Mr. Darcy saved our daughter.” Mr. Gardiner sent her a sideways look. “I do not care how insulted you may feel, Lizzy. It is only right that we say thank you. Though I must say, I have never taken you for a coward. How would it look if we turned up and you did not trouble yourself to express your gratitude. After all, you were the one with our Margaret, not us.”
“I am not a coward,” said Elizabeth, sharply. “I just do not want to encroach on gentlemen who think I am beneath them.”
“Unfortunately,” said her uncle, “there are many gentlemen like that. I am obliged to deal with them all the time. How do you think my trade would fare if I were to take offence every time they slight me? I would be in the poorhouse by now. Come Lizzy. You know how the world works. Sometimes we must go hat in hand. It will be a brief call, we will do what we intend to do, and then you need never set eyes on him again.”
Her uncle’s words stung. It was not cowardice that held her back. She did not, in fact, want to see him at all again. It all felt terribly awkward. But her uncle was right. Elizabeth owed him that much at least. He had been good to Maggie. And he had carried Elizabeth back to the shore, even though it was not strictly necessary.
They were right. She needed to go.
On the seventh day after her uncle had sent Mr. Darcy the letter, Elizabeth looked across the table at her uncle.
“Well,” she said, “I told you he did not wish to further the acquaintance. I was right. He did not even send a thank you note for the gift of prodigiously expensive Brussels lace you sent for Miss Darcy.” She curled her hands around her teacup, warming her palms. “Do you not think it rude that he has not responded?”
“Patience, my dear niece. You are jumping to conclusions. There could be many reasons for his silence. He may have business to take care of, or he may be out of town.”
“He is not out of town,” remarked Mrs. Gardiner, as she buttered her toast. “We drove by his house this morning, and the knocker was still on the door. The Darcys are in town.”
“Madeline!” said her husband. “Have you been spying on Mr. Darcy? I am shocked!”
“We happened to go in that direction,” she said nonchalantly, her knife scraping against the toast. Elizabeth stifled a laugh.
“We?” said her uncle, sending the question in Elizabeth’s direction.
“I was not with my aunt,” said Elizabeth, though she would have liked to be.
After all, she had been inclined to do the same, except in a far less subtle manner. She had been sorely tempted to go and knock on Mr. Darcy’s door to ask him what the deuce he meant by ignoring them. Fortunately, common sense prevailed. Still, she was plagued by an almost irresistible itch to return to Hyde Park and walk along the Serpentine in the hopes of running into him. What made matters worse was that she was now deprived of her daily walk in the park. She was forced to go to Green Park instead, which was less convenient to reach and much smaller. Moreover, her uncle now insisted on her taking a maid and a footman with her everywhere, which meant she had to match her steps to theirs and could not suddenly take off in a run.
Waiting for Mr. Darcy to write back was insufferable. It became almost a test of her own judgment. How could she have been so mistaken in his character? Surely he was too much of a gentleman to indulge in such blatant snobbery. A simple note of thanks for the lace would have sufficed. It would have satisfied everyone, without committing him to any further acquaintance. His silence lowered him in her eyes. It was almost as if he was making a point of being uncivil.
Until today, she had hoped against hope that he would live up to her expectations, convinced he would not let her down. But one did not wait six days to send a note. It was evident by now that Mr. Darcy would not welcome a visit from her uncle. He did not want anything to do with them, and he wanted to make that clear.
It hurt, although it should not.
It was very possible, she thought, that she was assuming too much. Perhaps the whole rescue and its aftermath had meant nothing to him at all. Engaged in a social whirl among the elite in society, amongst balls and dinners and theatre performances, he had not given them a moment’s thought at all, not even enough to wish to make anything clear. He had bid her farewell, and that was the end of it.
It was Elizabeth who was giving the whole thing too much importance. She was trying to guess what he was thinking when he was not thinking of her at all.
Why, oh, why did she persist in holding onto hope? She knew nothing about Mr. Darcy. Yet she was presuming to understand him. It was indeed laughable.
It was all very simple. Mr. Darcy had done a heroic deed on the spur of the moment, and she had put him on a pedestal. But it turned out her hero had feet of clay.
Chapter 6
Darcy sat gingerly on the side of his bed, waiting for the dizziness to subside. The putrid throat that had sent him back under the covers for the last three days was gone. His limbs felt unsteady, but at least the room did not swim around him anymore. He considered that a victory. It meant he was on the road to recovery.
Thank heavens! If nothing else, he would be free of the nightmares. Febrile visions of drowning in a murky river. Or of failing to rescue a young mother and her child. Of water that had frozen and trapped him.
