Obscure? The man was as obscure as a church bell.
He meant to marry Elizabeth. Or he thought he did. This ponderous, self-important, abasing, arrogant oaf had looked at Elizabeth—Elizabeth, with her courage, wit, intelligence, and fire—and judged her a useful solution to an entail.
Something hot and violent rose in Darcy’s chest.
He could not remain.
If he stayed, he would say something unforgivable. Perhaps to Mr. Collins. Perhaps to Lady Catherine through Mr. Collins. Perhaps, worst of all, to Elizabeth, whose face was already marked by too many injuries he had caused and too many hopes he had failed to protect.
“Bingley,” he said abruptly, “I have forgotten something of importance.”
Bingley turned, startled. “Forgotten?”
“Yes.” Darcy gathered the reins and mounted with more haste than grace. “Pray excuse me. Ladies. Mr. Collins. Gentlemen.”
He did not wait for a reply.
He turned his horse sharply and rode out of Meryton at a pace too swift for the street, slowing only when the last houses fell behind him and the open road stretched ahead. Even then, hedid not stop. The cold air struck his face, the horse’s strides beat against the road, and still the image pursued him: Elizabeth pale and silent while Mr. Collins spoke of Hunsford, Rosings, and domestic arrangements.
Darcy pressed his heels lightly to the horse’s sides and let him run.
It was cowardice again. He knew it even as he fled.
But if he had remained another moment and heard that man call her dear cousin Elizabeth once more, Darcy did not know what he might have done.
∞∞∞
Elizabeth watched Darcy ride away with her cheeks burning and her heart sinking lower with every strike of his horse’s hooves against the street.
For one brief, mortifying moment, when Mr. Collins had spoken of domestic arrangements and Darcy had gone so very still, she had allowed herself to feel something like comfort. It was not a generous comfort, nor a wise one, but it had come all the same. Darcy was not indifferent. Whatever else might be true—whatever fears, disapproval, pride, or prudence held him apart—he had not heard Mr. Collins’s broad hint with cool unconcern.
He had reacted.
The knowledge ought not to have mattered.
It did.
And then he had left.
Abruptly. Almost rudely. With some hasty excuse to Mr. Bingley and a bow that barely satisfied civility before he turned his horse and fled the scene as if the sight of them all had become intolerable.
The small comfort vanished.
So he was affected by her, then. Enough to stiffen. Enough to grow cold when Mr. Collins spoke of Lady Catherine and Anne de Bourgh. Enough to be disturbed by the possibility of her becoming Mrs. Collins.
But not enough to remain.
Not enough to speak.
Not enough to look at her and let her know she was not ridiculous for feeling wounded.
Elizabeth’s throat tightened. In some ways, it would have been easier if he had not liked her at all. Then his distance might have been merely pride, or indifference, or an opinion formed at the assembly and never altered. But if he did like her—if he had felt something in the library, at dinner, in the looks and conversations she had treasured despite every effort at sense—then his withdrawal meant something far worse. It meant there was some defect in her, or in her family, or in her circumstances, strong enough to overpower whatever regard he had begun to feel.
That was a thought too painful to examine in the middle of Meryton.
“Lizzy?”
Jane’s voice reached her as though from across a great distance.
