Elizabeth's breath caught. "How did you—I never said—"
"You did not need to say anything, and I am not asking you to tell me." She paused to draw breath. "I know you, Lizzy. You came back from Hunsford changed. Troubled. And you have not been yourself since, though you pretend otherwise. With my own troubles, I chose not to ask."
Elizabeth suddenly grew interested in her shoes.
Jane continued, her voice gentle. "I was not entirely certain until today, when Aunt mentioned Mr. Darcy's name, and you looked as though you had been struck, even though you had already seen him this morning and spoken to him."
Elizabeth found she could not meet her sister's eyes. "It is—"
Jane raised a hand. "You do not have to tell me, Lizzy. Let it be your secret. The important thing is that he saved your life today without hesitation."
Elizabeth had no answer to that.
"What will you do?" Jane asked softly after a while.
"I do not know." Elizabeth pressed her hands to her face. "I thought I would never see him again. I was content with that. And now he is here, and we are to dine with him tomorrow, and I do not know what I feel or what I should feel."
"Perhaps," Jane suggested, "you need not know yet. Perhaps it is enough simply to endure tomorrow evening with civility and see what comes after."
Elizabeth lowered her hands and looked at her sister. "When did you become so wise?"
"When I had my own heart broken and survived it." Jane's smile was sad but genuine. "We are both survivors, Lizzy. We shall survive this as well."
They sat together in silence, two sisters bound by disappointment and uncertainty, neither knowing what the next evening would bring but determined to face it together.
After some minutes, Jane begged leave to retire, pleading the need for rest. Elizabeth remained alone in the parlour. She stared out the window at the Bath streets below, watching carriages pass and strangers hurry about their business.
Her mind wandered to Mr. Darcy's face when he had pushed her aside without hesitation, risking his own safety for hers.
Why? If he thought so little of her connections, if she was so beneath him, why would he do such a thing? Why would he risk his life to save hers? And more troubling still—why had her heart leapt when she recognised him? Why had relief flooded through her when she saw he was unharmed?
She had told herself she despised him. She had convinced herself that his proposal was an insult she could never forgive. But standing there in the street, covered in dust and ash, looking up into his soot-streaked face, she had felt something she could not name.
She did not like him still; she assured herself of that. However, she appreciated what he had done for the little child and the maid. If he had not rushed through that window, Bath would be a town in mourning that evening.
Yet there were still things about Mr. Darcy that she could not reconcile—his treatment of Mr. Wickham, and most importantly, his interference in preventing the courtship between Mr. Bingley and Jane.
Her mind drifted to the letter she had refused. She had checked the stone bench later that same evening and found it gone. Perhaps taken by a maid, or retrieved by Mr. Darcy himself. She could not tell which. Whatever the content of the letter, she now wished she had read it. But her better judgment at the time had compelled her to refuse it. Propriety had compelled her. Or perhaps it was simply her prejudice.
Elizabeth pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the window.
Tomorrow evening would come whether she was ready for it or not. She would sit across the table from Mr. Darcy. She would make polite conversation. She would behave with perfect civility. With luck, the evening might pass in tolerable composure. Yet it was equally possible she would leave it disliking him more than before.
Either way, there was no escaping it now.
FOUR
Bath, August 1812
Darcy
Early the following morning, Darcy found Mr. Thomas Hewitt in his usual spot—a stone bench overlooking the Royal Crescent, his walking stick propped beside him and a leather-bound volume open in his lap.
The older gentleman looked up as Darcy approached, and his weathered countenance creased into a smile. He gestured to the empty space beside him.
Darcy sat heavily, grateful for the invitation.
He had made Mr. Hewitt's acquaintance three days after arriving in Bath, when the older man's hat had blown off in a sudden gust of wind. Darcy had retrieved it, and Hewitt had thanked him with careful, deliberate speech that marked him as deaf and mute from birth. They had fallen into an easy companionship after that.
