Elizabeth got up from the bed and paced a few times around the room. “Do you not want to see him? Do you not have a few questions that you would like to ask him, such as why did he run away from Hertfordshire without even taking leave of his friends?”
“We did not have an understanding Lizzy, he owed me nothing. He did not break his word to me.”
“Why then did you agree to go to London and seek out his pernicious sisters? Moreover why have you been disconsolate all these months?”
Jane’s eyes filled with tears.
“Oh Jane please forgive me, I did not mean to make you more unhappy than you are already.”
Jane shook her head and the tears fell. “Oh Lizzy I am terrified of meeting him again.”
“Why Jane, this is silly. Why should you be afraid?”
“What if he wished to escape from us, Lizzy, escape from me? What if he had no desire to meet me again and Mr Darcy has simply forced his hand?”
“I am sure you are mistaken Jane.”
“Miss Bingley did say that he knew that I was in London but he was too occupied with others to make time to see me.”
“And do you believe that woman?”
“I do not have any reasons why I should not.”
“I do. Simply because she is false Jane, she detests us all including you. Her pretence at friendship is just that, an act!” Elizabeth said impatiently.
“Why would she do that?”
“I do not know. She is a mystery... a nasty mystery.”
Jane winced. She fixed a look on a point on the wall... seeing nothing...far away.
“Please, Jane. Please tell me you will come down to dinner and give Mr Bingley a chance to make his own excuses. You owe yourself at least that after all the suffering you have been through.”
“And if he does not care for excuses and simply asks why I am here… what am I meant to say then?”
“Then we shall shake the dust of this place off our feet, turn back home and think of Mr Bingley no more.”
Jane released a slow breath, “Very well, let us meet him then. Heaven knows I must have some manner of closure, be it for comfort or for sorrow.”
Chapter 13
Bingley was pacing the drawing room as the company waited for the Miss Bennets. They were not late but the fact that everybody else was there and they were not made Lady Catherine irritable.
Darcy looked nervous also for he did not know how to treat Miss Elizabeth after her outburst about Wickham.
When at last they entered the drawing room Bingley caught his breath at the vision before him.
“Miss Bennet!” he exclaimed softly, as though the very utterance of her name were the first draught of air he had taken since quitting her presence.
Immediately he walked towards her and without pause took her hand in his and placed a soft kiss on her knuckles, “How wonderful it is to see you again, Miss Bennet.”
Darcy observed, with a concern he scarcely permitted himself to show, that the lady appeared somewhat thinner and paler than when he had last seen her. Might it be merely the consequence of a London winter; or had her spirits indeed suffered more deeply in Bingley’s absence as her sister suggested?
However, as soon as Bingley smiled at her, her own smile split her face and she immediately looked livelier... and healthier.
Darcy silently reproached himself most severely for the arrogance of supposing he understood the hearts of others better than they did themselves. He who had not even discerned a lady’s decided dislike of him; by what presumption had he imagined he could judge the affections of another, whose happiness was wholly unconnected with his own?
“Miss Bennet I presume,” Lady Catherine called to the lady.
