"In the same direction."
"The exercise is beneficial."
Jenkins had said nothing else. Jenkins had been in Darcy's service for eight years and had perfected the art of communicating volumes through the application of boot polish and silence.
At Longbourn, while Darcy circled the lanes, Truffles had eaten Mr. Bennet's bookmark. Not the ribbon he used in his Tacitus, which he would have mourned, but the slip of paper he had been using in Fordyce's Sermons — a volume he had been reading aloud to the household at Mrs. Bennet's insistence and which had been sitting untouched on his desk since Tuesday, when he declared that Fordyce's views on female education made him want to lie down in a ditch. Truffles had nosed the book off the desk, chewed the bookmark into a damp ball, and was discovered asleep on the open pages with her snout resting on a passage about the dangers of feminine levity.
Mr. Bennet, informed of the destruction, looked at the pig over his spectacles. "She has better literary taste than most of my family," he said. "Leave her."
At Netherfield, Caroline was waiting. She had been watching him with increasing sharpness over the past week, tracking his rides, noting his routes, cataloguing the evidence of an attachment she was determined to prevent. She had the instinctsof a woman whose entire future depended on a single outcome, and she could see the outcome slipping.
"You ride to Longbourn rather often," she observed at dinner. She was cutting her meat with precise, controlled motions that suggested she would rather be cutting something else.
"The lanes in that direction are pleasant."
"All lanes in Hertfordshire are pleasant. You seem to prefer the one that passes the Bennets' gate."
He said nothing. Caroline examined her wine glass.
"The neighbourhood dinner at the Phillipses' is next Thursday," Bingley said, oblivious to the tension. He had the cheerful unawareness of a man who had never been the subject of strategy. "The Bennets will attend. I have it from Jane herself."
"Jane," Caroline repeated, with a shade of emphasis.
"Miss Bennet. Yes. We are on friendly terms."
"You are on more than friendly terms, Charles. The entire county is aware of it."
"Good," Bingley said, with a firmness that surprised everyone, including himself. "Let them be aware."
Caroline turned to Darcy. Her expression said:Do you see what is happening? Do you see what we are losing?Darcy saw. He saw a man in love with a woman who loved him back, and the simplicity of it made his own situation feel like a punishment.
The dinner arrived. The Phillipses' dining room was small but well-appointed, the table laid with Mrs. Phillips's best china and the candelabra that came out for company. The Bennets came as a party of six: Mrs. Bennet leading the charge, Jane beside her, Elizabeth behind. Kitty and Lydia brought up the rear, already scanning the room for officers.
Elizabeth was in a dark blue gown, the same one she had worn at Netherfield. Darcy recognised it by the way the fabriccaught the candlelight, and by the small repair at the hem that she had done herself, and by the fact that he had memorised it, which was not something he was prepared to examine at this moment.
She did not look at him when she entered. She moved past him to greet Mrs. Phillips with a warmth that specifically excluded the corner of the room where he was standing. Her avoidance was steady and complete and more eloquent than any confrontation. She had not spoken to him directly since the card party. She had not met his eye. She had not acknowledged him beyond the minimum courtesy required between acquaintances, and the minimum was very minimum indeed.
Truffles was not present. Elizabeth had managed to contain her. The dinner table felt emptier for it, though no one else would have noticed.
Without the pig, Darcy was alone in his stiffness. He sat through the first course with the rigid posture of a man sitting for a portrait he had not commissioned. He spoke when spoken to. He praised Mrs. Phillips's soup, which was oversalted. He answered Mr. Phillips's question about whether the shooting was good at Pemberley (it was) and Mrs. Long's question about whether the library was extensive (it was). He said correct things. He was polite and measured and completely, devastatingly hollow.
Elizabeth was seated four places down from him, between Jane and a young officer. She was animated in conversation. She laughed twice. She did not direct either laugh toward his end of the table.
Then Caroline made her move.
The second course had been cleared. The table was at ease, the conversation fragmenting into smaller groups. Someone mentioned the Netherfield ball. Someone else mentioned the pig's dramatic entrance. Laughter rippled around the table, thecomfortable laughter of neighbours who had been dining out on this story for weeks.
Elizabeth's mouth tightened. She was waiting for the joke to pass.
Caroline did not let it pass.
"We were all so diverted by the little pig at the ball," she said. Her voice carried the sweetness of a woman who had been waiting for this moment and had rehearsed her approach. "Though I confess I worry for the health of any assembly. Livestock in public rooms cannot be sanitary." She paused. She smoothed her napkin. She turned to Darcy. "Surely you agree, Mr. Darcy, that such displays are beneath the dignity of good society?"
The room went quiet. Forks stopped moving. Mrs. Phillips, who had been midway through a sentence about her sister's new curtains, went silent. Fifteen faces turned to Darcy with the expectant attention of a gallery watching a duel, waiting for the second shot.
Elizabeth's face turned to Darcy.
He knew what he should say. He should say that the pig was harmless and charming and that Elizabeth had nothing to be ashamed of. He should say what he had said at Netherfield, when Caroline first complained: "She is quiet. She is doing no harm." He could feel the right words forming. They were there, in his chest, pressing upward.
