Chapter Seventeen
ThedispatcharrivedatNetherfield while the household was still at breakfast.
A rider in army livery; a sealed packet bearing his name in a hand he recognised. Fitzwilliam accepted it from the footman with an expression that gave nothing away, excused himself from the table, and went upstairs.
He had known it was coming, of course. He had given General Hazlett his direction before leaving Brighton precisely because he had known it was coming. But knowing a thing and holdingit in your hands were, he had found, two rather different experiences.
He sat by the window of his room for something under an hour, reading the orders twice and then setting them aside and looking out at the Hertfordshire countryside in its bright summer colours, which was pleasant enough and which he did not see at all. He went through the arithmetic he had already gone through a dozen times; the dates, the distance to Plymouth, the margin available to him. The margin was thin. A few days’ grace had been granted because of his upcoming wedding, which was something. Not very much, but something. He would get no more even if he asked; Hazlett was clear about that.
He thought about Lydia.
Then he put the orders in the inside pocket of his coat, straightened his cuffs, and went downstairs.
Darcy was in the entrance hall, hat already in hand, displaying all the outward attitude of a man with no particular intention and the inward restlessness of one with a very particular intention indeed. He looked up when Fitzwilliam appeared on the stair.
“Too early to call at Longbourn?” Fitzwilliam enquired, having observed the way his cousin spent the previous evening watching Miss Elizabeth Bennet. Darcy had ceased to be covert about his attention, which spoke volumes about his imminent intentions.
“It is half past nine,” Darcy said, with some dignity.
“Then yes. Far too early.” Fitzwilliam reached the bottom of the stair and considered his cousin. “Come and play billiards.”
They had the billiards room to themselves for the better part of an hour. Fitzwilliam played badly, which was unlike him, and Darcy played quietly and waited, which was entirely like him. The balls clicked against each other in the morning silence.
“I have orders,” Fitzwilliam said, lining up a shot.
Darcy looked at him steadily.
“I knew they were coming,” Fitzwilliam continued, making his shot without seeing it. “I was advised before leaving Brighton, but granted as much leave as possible due to the circumstances. But the orders that arrived this morning dictate that I must be in Plymouth at the end of the month. There is a ship.”
Darcy set down his cue. He walked to the window and stood there for a moment looking out at Netherfield’s grounds.
“America?” he said. It was not an unreasonable assumption, given the port.
“The Canadian theatre, specifically. Hazlett’s regiment.”
Darcy was silent for long enough that Fitzwilliam lined up another shot, missed it completely, and straightened.
“Does Lydia know?” Darcy asked.
“Not yet. I will tell her later. Right now I am telling you.”
Darcy turned from the window. He was doing the thing he always did when he had something to say that he was not yet saying; his jaw set, his expression settling into the careful neutrality that the world generally mistook for arrogance and Fitzwilliam recognised as thought.
“You could have told me earlier,” Darcy said at last, very evenly.
“Yes.”
“You chose not to.”
“I chose to wait until I had complete and specific information.” Fitzwilliam met his cousin’s gaze. “What was to be gained by telling you earlier? You would have worried, and been unable to do anything useful about it, and we had rather more pressing matters to manage.”
Darcy made a sound that was not precisely agreement. He came away from the window and retrieved his cue, though he did not play, only held it. Fitzwilliam had learned Darcy’s silences fairly well, and this one had the texture of a man working himself up to saying something he found difficult.
“Fitzwilliam,” Darcy said.
“If you are about to tell me to take care of myself,” Fitzwilliam said, “I would be grateful if you could find a way to do so without making it sound like a military briefing.”
A very faint, very dry smile crossed Darcy’s face. “I was not going to say anything of the sort.”
