"What if I am wrong about him again? What if this kindness, this humility—what if it is all pretense?"
"Then you will discover the truth eventually," Jane said simply. "But I do not think it is pretense, Lizzy. I think he is exactly what he appears to be—a good man who made mistakes and is trying to atone for them."
"And the things he did? The way he treated Mr. Wickham? His interference with you and Mr. Bingley?"
"He has apologized for the latter. As for Mr. Wickham—" Jane paused. "Perhaps you should ask him about it directly. Give him the chance to explain."
"I cannot. It would be too forward."
"More forward than continuing to judge him for something you have only heard one side of?"
The question hung in the air between them.
Elizabeth had no answer.
She lay awake long after Jane had fallen asleep, staring at the ceiling and trying to sort through the tangle of her thoughts.
She had been so certain of everything once. So sure of who Mr. Darcy was and what he represented.
But certainty, she was learning, was a fragile thing. And once shaken, it was nearly impossible to restore.
Tomorrow, the gentlemen would call again. Mr. Darcy would be polite, attentive, kind. He would make her laugh without seeming to try. He would look at her in that way he had—as though she were something precious and rare.
And she would feel her resolve crumbling a little more.
She did not know how much longer she could sustain this pretense of indifference.
But she would have to try.
Because the alternative—admitting that she was beginning to care for him—was too frightening to contemplate.
TEN
Bath, September 1812
Elizabeth
The following day, Elizabeth found herself anticipating Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley's next visit with an eagerness she would not have acknowledged aloud. But the following day came and went, and no knock sounded at the door.
By noon, she was forced to admit to herself what she had been denying all morning: the gentlemen would not be calling. They had come without fail before the midday hour during their previous visits. Their absence today was deliberate.
Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner settled into a game of cards after luncheon, and the weather proved too fine to remain indoors. Elizabeth, announcing that she now knew Bath well enough to venture out unaccompanied, declared her intention to walk.
Jane, who had been unwell since morning and suspected her courses were imminent, declined to join her.
"Do not stay out too long, Lizzy," Mrs. Gardiner cautioned. "And keep to the main streets."
"I shall be perfectly safe, Aunt. Bath is hardly a wilderness."
Elizabeth set out alone, her steps lighter than they had been all morning simply for being in motion. Aside from her initial outing with Mrs. Gardiner and their visit to the Pump Room with Jane, she realized this was her first solitary walk in Bath—the first time she had ventured forth without being in the company of Mr. Darcy, Mr. Bingley and Jane.
The thought brought her up short.
When had she begun to think of him as her companion on these walks? When had his presence become so familiar that his absence felt like a void?
Her mind drifted to his last visit, to the things he had said. She traced backward through the chronology of their encounters in Bath—the fire, the dinner, the walks, the easy conversations that had somehow supplanted the animosity of Hertfordshire and the pain of Kent.
As her thoughts wandered freely, they returned to the conversation she had shared with her sister the previous night. Jane had accused her—gently, of course—of liking him, and Elizabeth had denied it.
