Darcy waited until Elizabeth’s attention was his alone.
“Miss Elizabeth,” he said quietly, “may I request the honor of calling upon you at Longbourn? I should like to do so with your permission—and your father’s.”
She looked up at him, surprise flashing first, then something warmer, steadier. Her smile was not coy nor calculating, but sincere.
“I should like that very much,” she replied.
The moment might have deepened further had Mrs. Bennet not descended upon them in a flutter of shawls and anxious exclamations, fretting over Jane’s exposure to the morning air and declaring it quite improper for anyone to be standing about when illness had so recently threatened the family. Darcystepped back instinctively, but Elizabeth’s glance met his again—amused, fond, and entirely unembarrassed.
That look remained with him throughout the service.
Miss Bingley’s whispered remarks and pointed sighs scarcely reached his awareness. He found himself deaf to them, his attention fixed instead on the knowledge that the following morning he would ride to Longbourn—not as a guest of Netherfield, nor as a passing acquaintance, but as a man with intent.
For the first time in many years, the future did not feel like a duty to be endured.
It felt like something to be anticipated.
Chapter 19
Elizabeth endured the carriage ride home from church with outward composure and inward restlessness. The familiar hedgerows of Hertfordshire rolled past, the lanes narrowing as they approached Longbourn, and she felt an odd tightening in her chest. Only a week ago she would have rejoiced at the sight of home. Now, though she loved it still, there was something she had left behind in Derbyshire company—something tall, dark, and unexpectedly attentive.
Mrs. Bennet’s exclamations had begun before the carriage had even left the church. “I cannot imagine what you girls were thinking, leaving Netherfield today,” she cried. “To leave so soon—when Mr. Bingley was so attentive, and the house so much finer than Longbourn—really, Lizzy, I cannot comprehend it!”
Jane attempted a gentle explanation about propriety and convalescence, but Mrs. Bennet was not inclined to reason.
“Propriety!” she scoffed. “What propriety is there in quitting a grand house where you are cherished, only to return to your mother’s anxieties? I declare, I never heard of such a thing. You might at least have remained until Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Or until Mr. Bingley begged you not to go!”
Elizabeth, who had endured church beneath her mother’s watchful eye and now found herself the subject of renewed scrutiny, felt her patience thinning.
“Mama, Jane is recovered. It would not have been proper to impose further.”
“To impose?” Mrs. Bennet threw up her hands. “My dear, when a gentleman has shown such devotion, it is not an imposition—it is encouragement!”
Elizabeth’s gaze flickered involuntarily toward the lane beyond the hedgerow, though Darcy was long gone from sight. The warmth of his presence at church still lingered with her, and the memory of his quiet promise to call sustained her composure.
Mrs. Bennet continued in mounting agitation. “And after all that poor Mr. Bingley did for you—sending for physicians, offering the carriage, calling this very morning to escort you to church—you choose to return home at once. I am certain Caroline Bingley would have preferred that you remain.”
Elizabeth doubted that very much.
Jane, ever gentle, laid a hand upon their mother’s arm. “We shall see them again soon, Mama.”
“I should hope so!” Mrs. Bennet declared. “How else will Mr. Bingley be able to fall in love with you and ask you to marry him?”
Elizabeth bore the harangue with as much patience as she could summon, answering dutifully when required and exchanging quiet glances with Jane when their mother’s concerns drifted into melodrama. But once tea had been taken and her mother’s attention diverted toward recounting every look and bow bestowed upon Jane at church, Elizabeth slipped away.
Her father’s study door stood slightly ajar. She tapped lightly and entered.
Mr. Bennet sat at his desk, spectacles low upon his nose, a newspaper spread before him like a shield against the world.
He glanced up at the sound of her step. “Ah. Returned from grandeur, are you? You endured a week of superior company and fine dinners, and now you flee to my dusty shelves for comfort. I suppose Longbourn pales in comparison.”
Elizabeth managed a faint smile. “Netherfield had its advantages.”
The change in her tone did not escape him. He lowered the paper entirely and studied her more closely.
“You are not sparkling with triumph as I might have expected,” he observed. “Has something gone amiss? Or are you simply mourning the loss of grand dinners and elegant company?”
She crossed the room and took the chair opposite him.
