Miss Bingley had resumed tasting her soup, though her expression left little doubt of her opinions of it. “Miss Elizabeth, I fear you are looking rather diminished of late. Are you quite well, my dear?”
Elizabeth drew herself up. “Nothing of any consequence, I assure you.”
Miss Bingley hummed with a faint smile. “Nonetheless, I imagine you might prefer to exchange the country for town before the winter deepens. London has its inconveniences, of course—but one is never truly uncomfortable there.”
Elizabeth inclined her head. “I have no such plans at present.”
“No? I had thought you might be tempted. You have relations there, do you not? Cheapside, if I remember correctly.”
“I do,” Elizabeth said. The effort of keeping her tone even was greater than it ought to have been. “And they are very well, I thank you.”
“How fortunate,” Miss Bingley purred. “It must be a comfort to know one has a refuge, should the country grow… trying.”
Elizabeth returned the smile she was given, though it felt oddly delayed, as though she were answering from a short distance away. “If you are asking whether I intend to pursue… diversions in Town, I shall answer in the negative. The country has always suited me.”
Mr Collins, encouraged by what he took for Elizabeth’s attentiveness to the conversation, leaned nearer to continue his point—on economy, on gratitude, on the dangers of excess. His voice grated against her like wool too thick for the season. She followed it as one follows a sermon whose cadence is familiar enough to predict the end without quite hearing the middle.
By the time the plates were changed, the conversation had taken on a new shape. Someone was speaking about prices now. Grain. Coal. Elizabeth caught only pieces of it, as though the talk had broken into manageable shards.
“—no one prepared—”
“—extraordinary demand—”
“—only temporary, surely—”
Her head ached—sharply. Insistently. She winced and pinched the bridge of her nose, hoping it would drive the pressure back somewhat.
The voices continued, overlapping politely, rising and falling with the passing of dishes. Someone laughed—Kitty, perhaps. Someone else murmured assent. Elizabeth followed none of it with any certainty. Each sentence reached her as an isolated thing, stripped of its beginning and end, demanding effort simply to place. She kept her gaze lowered, fixing upon the pale curve of her plate, the edge of the tablecloth, anything that did not move.
She became aware, dimly, that she had not eaten. Or had she? The question felt unimportant. The soup had been taken away; that she remembered. What followed after was uncertain.
Elizabeth caught her name once—only once—and then lost the rest to the dull roar gathering behind her temples. She answered when spoken to, or believed she did. Her replies sounded clumsy to her own ear, as though spoken through water.
Papa had gone quiet. That, at least, she noticed.
She did not look at him directly, but she felt his eyes on her all the same—the pause in his eating, the way his attention had settled, uncharacteristically fixed. He said nothing. He would not—not with company watching their every word and move.
Elizabeth straightened, then immediately regretted it. The room tilted—not enough to alarm, but enough to make her still. She folded her hands in her lap and waited for the sensation to pass, counting her breaths as though that might impose order.
The conversation moved on without her.
That was the strangest part of it. Ordinarily, she would have steered it, brightened it, found amusement even in solemnity. Tonight, it flowed around her as though she were no longer quite within its bounds.
By the time the last dish was removed, she could no longer follow a word that was said, and what little she had tasted of her food threatened to unmake her precious dignity.
She lifted her eyes at last, and across the table Papa met her gaze. Then his eyes dropped back to his wine, and he said nothing.
Elizabeth did not rememberchoosing the corner.
One moment she was standing, the next she had found her way to the far end of the drawing room, half-hidden by a tall screen and the shadow of the bookcase. The lamps had been moved for tea, but little of the light reached her. The quiet there was fresher, easier to bear.
Miss Bingley noticed at once.
“Well,” she said, glancing across the room as she accepted her cup, “if this is not a familiar posture. Miss Elizabeth, you are quite in the Darcy manner this evening—removed from the bustle, observing rather than engaging.”
Elizabeth’s fingers tightened around the arm of the chair.
Darcy.
