“She refused me,” I said. “But she will accept me. Eventually.”
“She refused you.” My aunt put a hand to her chest. “Oh, my heart. The way it pounds. I am ever so relieved.”
“It’s fate, I think, madam,” I said softly. “Some things are meant to be.”
After this conversation, I took my leave of my aunt, even as she raged at me that I must leave Elizabeth Bennet be, that I must never be in her company again.
It was only the fact that I had been awake for ever so long, having not slept at all the night before that allowed me to sleep that night, I believe.
Had I not, I think I might have stayed awake to midnight, perhaps taken a carriage, just to be sure it did not disappear beneath me, just to prove to myself the day would not, in fact, reset.
But I was exhausted, and I fell asleep before it was yet dark, on the top of the coverlet on my bed.
When I awoke, it was to rain.
I sprang up from my bed and went to pull aside the curtains, to stare in awe at the rain pelting the window pane.
“It rains on Friday,” I whispered. “It rains.”
I was shocked at it, the sheer joy of not knowing what might happen, of the future marching on in its way, of uncertainty.
It gripped me in such a deeply profound way that my throat was tight and tears came to my eyes.
Of course, I seized everyone that I could—servants, the colonel, my cousin Anne—and bade them tell me what day it was.
“Friday,” they all said, giving me the strangest of looks. “It is Friday, sir. Are you feeling well?”
The rain had passed by mid-morning.
I passed that time composing the letter I had determined I would write to Elizabeth. I hoped to put it directly into her hands, for I knew she was fond of morning walks on the nearby grounds.
But she was not walking that day, and when I went to inquire after her at the parsonage, I was told that she was abed with a frightful headache.
I paid a servant to deliver my letter, and I felt awash in an awful feeling of dread.
Damage, my aunt had said.
Damage.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
elizabeth
I had a headache for days, a headache like I’ve never had in my life. It pounded and pulsed. Sometimes I saw bright lights and images. I spent the day abed, and I did not get up to read the letter from Mr. Darcy that a servant delivered to me—a scandalous thing to do at all, to send me a letter!
By the time I recovered enough to read it, he was gone.
The knowledge that he had left Kent gave me a pang, which I found odd. I had expected him to leave. It had been planned. But it was strange, because some part of me felt unsettled at the knowledge he was not close by, as if he ought to be close.
But perhaps it was only the letter.
At first, I did not wish to believe it, but I found that I could not make myself think he would lie about such a thing, to tell me this secret about his sister, something that could be damaging to his own family’s reputation. No one would make something like that up. It could only be true.
And then word reached us that Mr. Wickham had been found dead one morning, a most curious thing. It seemed his neck was broken, his injuries grievous, but no one had any notion how he could have come to be harmed in such a way. Itwas as if he had fallen from a great height and then been placed in his tent by someone, left there to be discovered.
I only remained in Kent myself for another week, and then I left for London, to be reunited, at long last, with Jane. It felt, when I embraced her, that we had been parted for much longer than a handful of months, but I could not say why I felt that either.
The pang, it was ever present. I found myself looking up in crowded rooms, searching for something or someone, someone who was always missing, never there, someone who I felt should be there.
