“Yes, and she looked quite pretty, too, even though Mamma spent nineteen years calling her the plain one.” Elizabeth untwisted a stubborn pin. “But Jane, we must talk about Bingley.”
“Must we?”
“His ears turned crimson, and he couldn’t finish a sentence. He called you Miss Bennet three times, as if you were the only thing keeping him afloat.”
Jane’s hands held still, but her lips tightened. “He seemed well.”
“Well? He’s clearly still besotted. He has been since Meryton, survived months of his sister’s interference—and whatever Darcy said about your—what was it?—indifference.” Elizabeth shook her hair loose with a frustrated huff.
“You are still angry, Lizzy.”
“I am cautious. In October, you were Miss Bennet of Longbourn with a father’s estate entailed away and a mother whose nerves were the talk of three counties. Bingley left without so much as a farewell. And then, when you were in town over the Yuletide, never once did he call, even though you called on hissisters and were told they weren’t home. And I watched it nearly break you.”
Although Jane’s face remained placid, her eyes shone overly bright as she insisted, “Lizzy, I am well.”
But Elizabeth was not finished. “Now it is April, and your sister has fifteen thousand a year and a house on Grosvenor Street. Charles Bingley appears at an ice shop and asks permission to call, all nervous smiles and awkward pauses, as if uncertain whether he is even welcome. I could see clear regret when he looked at you, but still he offered no true apology, no acknowledgment of how deeply his absence had wounded you. And you are merely the lady who has finally become worth the effort.”
Jane stared at her hands. Nettle’s breathing filled the room—steady, untroubled, blissfully ignorant of the calculation of courtship.
“You think his reappearance has to do with your fortune,” Jane said.
“The timing invites the question.”
“And Mr. Darcy? Do you speculate the same about him?”
Elizabeth’s brush paused mid-stroke, her composure beginning to falter. Jane asked the question with a rare directness—always when Elizabeth was least prepared, and always about the subject she most wished to avoid.
“I was not discussing Mr. Darcy.”
“And yet,” Jane said, her voice just a whisper over the crackle of the hearth, “you are weighing him with the same scales as Mr. Bingley. You are looking for the price tag on a man’s regard.”
“Can you blame me? A month ago, we were ‘tolerable’ but not ‘handsome enough’ to tempt a man of fortune. Now, we are the same women, with the same faces and the same minds, but because a bank ledger changes, we are suddenly worth a stroll across the garden or a visit to an ice shop.”
Jane reached out, her hand covering Elizabeth’s. Her skin was cool, her touch steady. “Do you truly believe Mr. Darcy cares for a ledger? A man who already owns half of Derbyshire?”
“I believe Mr. Darcy cares for propriety. He cares about standing. Fifteen thousand a year buys a mountain of standing. It turns an impertinent girl into a suitable companion. I do not want to be suitable, Jane. I want to be seen.”
Jane’s gaze wandered to the candle flame. “Mr. Darcy saw you long before the money arrived. He did propose to you while you had nothing—asked you to be his wife, albeit in a most displeasing manner, did he not?”
Elizabeth turned away, the memory of that Hunsford parlor still rankling. “He proposed while enumerating every reason why he should not. He offered me his hand while making it clear he stepped over a gutter to reach it. That is not being seen, Jane. That is being conquered by a man’s own lack of judgment.”
“And yet you have not stopped thinking about Mr. Darcy since he arrived this morning unexpectedly,” Jane noted, her voice mild. “You’ve dwelled on his thoroughness, his efficiency, his authorization of the wardrobe budget, even the precise trajectory of balls thrown to Nettle in the garden. To Allegra, you complain he scowls too much; to me, you insist he does not scowl at all. You are carrying on a very energetic argument with yourself about a man who only tolerates you for your purse.”
Elizabeth put down the brush. “Jane Bennet. When did you become impertinent?”
“I have always been livelier than you realize, merely quieter about it.” Jane pulled Nettle onto her lap, and the terrier submitted with the boneless compliance she reserved for people she loved unreservedly. “Lizzy, what happened this morning? When he came about the budget.”
“Nothing. We discussed the wardrobe expenditure. He mentioned the Bingley sisters’ call, and he inquired after your welfare, which I found surprising.”
“Surprising how?”
“He admitted the error was his.” Elizabeth rose from the bed and crossed to the writing desk, where Darcy’s letter remained beneath her stationery. “He wrote to me the morning after the proposal.”
She removed the letter, which was creased from folding and slightly foxed at the edges.
Jane’s eyes widened. “You never told me there was a letter.”
“I told you part of it, where he was acquitted of cruelty toward Mr. Wickham, but I could not show you the letter itself because parts of it contain a confidence that is not mine to share.” Elizabeth sat beside Jane and unfolded the first page, covering the lower half with her hand. “Read the opening.”
