Darcy shifted, then said, too quickly, “You must permit me to offer my congratulations to your sister on her engagement to Mr Collins.”
The smile she gave him this time was thin. Dutiful. “I hope she will be happy.”
“You have your doubts?”
Elizabeth frowned, and for the first time, her eyes fell. “I… I am not sorry my family decided not to require my attendance.”
He looked at her keenly. “You disapprove of her choice?”
She grimaced, just a little. “I disapprove of very few things absolutely. But I confess I should find it difficult to rejoice at a union founded entirely on obligation.”
Darcy leaned forward with a question he could not hold back. “And if obligation were joined by something more?”
Elizabeth hesitated. It was no more than a breath’s delay, but it was enough. Enough that he thought, for one reckless instant, that she might answer him honestly.
“Oh, there you are! I thought I should find you here, Mr Darcy.”
Darcy blinked back to awareness to discover that Miss Bingley now stood in the doorway, her back arched to display the silhouette of her figure to best advantage. Her gaze flicked—once—to Elizabeth, then back again.
“How very comfortable the rooms are,” she continued. “So tastefully arranged. I daresay you have done the most admirable job of redecorating them since I last saw them.”
“They are precisely as my mother left them,” Darcy replied, with a civility that held no warmth. “I may consider altering them one day, but I have not done so yet.”
“Oh.” Miss Bingley did not smile at all. She adjusted the fall of her skirt, smoothing one fold and then another, though they required no attention.
Elizabeth regarded the display with open amusement, her smile deepening rather than retreating.
The moment had begun to tilt in directions best left unexplored before coffee. Darcy rose and gestured toward the door. “Well, the morning appears to be advancing. Shall we go in to breakfast?”
“Oh, I am quite eager to see the breakfast room,” Elizabeth said. “If it has been so comfortably established for years, I expect it will be perfection by now.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Evening came in duecourse in Mr Darcy’s house, as though it knew better than to present itself too early or too late.
Elizabeth felt it in the way the lamps were lit before she thought to notice the dark, in the even cadence of the servants’ steps as dinner was laid, in the curious strengthening of her own body as the day passed without the familiar ebb and surge of weakness. Nearly a full day under this roof, and she felt, quite unmistakably, perhaps the best she had ever felt in her life.
Which only made the awkwardness sharper.
She was keenly aware, as they took their places at table, of how well she must appear. Too well, certainly, for the trouble she had occasioned. She had apologised twice already; Darcy had dismissed it both times with a courtesy so firm it brooked no argument. Bingley, for his part, appeared delighted beyond reason to have them all gathered thus, as though illness, abrupt travel, and uncertainty were merely pretexts for conviviality.
Darcy sat nearest her. Not at the head—he had insisted on a less formal setting for this evening, a square table, of all things, with neither head nor foot. Close enough that she could see him clearly whenever she lifted her eyes.
It was then that she heard it.
Not loud. Not persistent. Just a brief interruption of breath, carefully smothered behind a hand.
She looked up at once.
Darcy’s hand had already dropped back to the table. His expression was composed, almost deliberately so, but there was a faint tension about his mouth that had not been there earlier.
“Mr Darcy, are you quite well?” Miss Bingley asked. “You sound—”
“It is nothing,” Darcy said, too quickly to convince anyone at the table. “A chill, perhaps. I went riding in the cold the other day.”
Elizabeth watched him over the rim of her glass. She had never heard him cough before. Indeed, he seemed like a man whom illness would never dare to trouble.
Dinner proceeded, if not smoothly then at least politely. Jane spoke little, though she smiled often—mostly at Mr Bingley. Miss Bingley watched Darcy with narrowed attention, her appetite visibly diminished. Bingley filled the spaces with cheerful speculation—about physicians in town, about the weather, about how fortunate it was that Elizabeth seemed so very much herself again.
