Page 24 of Elizabeth Bennet Says Yes to Mr. Darcy

I understood too late what I had just revealed.

“Ah,” he said. “There, perhaps, is the beginning of an answer.”

Chapter 8

Elizabeth

Mr. Darcy arrived in Hertfordshire six days after I did.

I learned of his presence from my mother, who burst into the breakfast room in such a state that Kitty spilled her chocolate when she turned around.

“Netherfield is open again!” she exclaimed. “Mr. Bingley returned last night, and Mr. Darcy is with him. Mrs. Long heard it from her valet, who got it from the stable boy. Why am I always the last to know anything important?”

Jane stopped buttering her bread.

I looked at her. She immediately lowered her eyes, but the flush in her cheeks betrayed the very emotion she would have blamed herself for revealing.

“Perhaps Mr. Bingley is only here for a few days,” she said.

“A few days is plenty of time to call on one’s neighbors,” my mother replied. “Especially when a young woman he nearly married lives three miles from his house.”

“Mama,” Jane murmured.

“I am only speaking the truth.”

For once, she was not entirely wrong.

They came the next day.

Mr. Bingley’s arrival transformed the drawing room into a theater. My mother spoke too loudly, Kitty giggled, Lydia asked three questions about the officers before greetings were even finished. Jane remained calm, but I knew her hands well enough to see they were trembling.

Mr. Darcy entered behind his friend.

Our eyes met.

He bowed with perfect formality.

“Miss Elizabeth.”

“Mr. Darcy.”

Nothing in his voice revealed that he had asked me to become his wife, that I had accepted, then nearly broken our engagement. Nothing—except the intensity of his gaze and the tension in his jaw.

Mr. Bingley, on the other hand, concealed nothing. He looked at Jane with anxious joy, like a man returning to a beloved place from which he feared being cast out. When she spoke to him, his face lit up.

Darcy observed him, then looked at Jane. I saw the exact moment he understood. My sister’s gentleness was not indifference. Her reserve could not entirely hide her love from someone who was finally willing to see it.

The conversation scattered into smaller groups. Lydia began recounting a recent ball. Mr. Bingley moved closer to Jane. My mother asked me to bring a book to Mr. Darcy, though he had shown no desire to read.

I crossed the room and handed him the volume.

“My mother thinks you are in need of distraction.”

He took the book without looking at the title.

“She is mistaken.”

The response, spoken so softly that only I could hear, sent a shiver down my arms.