Page 17 of A Selfish Disdain

They set off within the hour, the carriage turning out of Netherfield's gates and onto the London road with a rider sent ahead and Jane’s own maid engaged, at the last moment and at Darcy's particular insistence, to travel with them for propriety's sake; a small enough concession to the proper forms, though neither Elizabeth nor Darcy, settling into their respective corners of the carriage with a silence neither yet knew how to break, could have said with any confidence, as the last of Netherfield's chimneys disappeared behind them, precisely what lay ahead upon the road, nor how very far it would carry them from anything either had planned.

***

For the first several hours, the carriage was silent. Even the maid, seated beside Elizabeth with her hands folded neatly in her lap, seemed to feel its awkwardness; she sent occasional glances out the window, and wore a look that suggested she wished to be anywhere else but there.

Elizabeth watched the Hertfordshire hedgerows give way to unfamiliar country, and found herself unable to keep her thoughts from straying to the gentleman seated opposite her, who had not spoken above a dozen words since the carriage door was shut.

He sat with his arms folded and his gaze fixed upon some point beyond the window that did not appear, from the stillness of his countenance, to hold any particular interest for him; and Elizabeth, watching him from beneath the brim of her bonnet, thought that she had rarely seen a man work so hard at appearing entirely at ease while so plainly failing to achieve it.

"You need not sit in such state upon my account, Mr. Darcy," she said at last, unable to bear the silence any longer. "I promise you I do not bite, whatever impression the last fortnight may have given you."

He raised an eyebrow slightly at the last part of her remark. "I was not aware I had given any impression at all."

"No," said Elizabeth, with dryness, "I do not suppose you were."

He looked at her then, properly, for the first time since the carriage had set off, and something in his expression suggested he understood, better than his answer had allowed, precisely what she meant by it. But whatever he might have said in reply was lost to the sudden lurch of the carriage as it struck a rut deep enough to send Elizabeth's basket sliding from the seat beside her, and the moment, such as it had been, passed before either of them could properly address it.

***

They broke their journey, as planned, at an inn in Dunstable, intending no more than an hour's rest for the horses before continuing on; but the hour became two, and the two became the better part of an afternoon, when it was discovered that the maid, who had complained of a headache since Hertfordshire, had grown genuinely unwell somewhere upon the road, and was found, upon their arrival, to be feverish enough that the innkeeper's wife would not hear of her continuing the journey that day, nor perhaps the next.

"She cannot travel in this condition," the woman said, with the flat authority of someone long accustomed to nursing other people's servants through other people's inconvenient illnesses, "and I'll not have it said I sent a sick girl back out on the road for anybody's schedule, gentleman's business or no."

This news was received by the party with different levels of alarm. The maid herself, mortified at the delay her illness had occasioned, begged to be left behind and sent for later, insisting she wanted nothing but a night's rest to see her through it; and it was this proposal, after some consultation, that was at last agreed upon, Darcy arranging for the girl's board and a message to be sent ahead to Gracechurch Street explaining the delay, while privately considering what her absence must now mean for the remainder of the journey.

Once the arrangements were made, he stood next to Elizabeth in the inn-yard while fresh horses were put to, "I do not think that we can continue without her."

Elizabeth shook her head, knowing it was the impropriety of their situation that he spoke of. "I understand, but we cannot remain here another night either, sir, not with my uncle as ill as my aunt's letter described him. I have thought about it, and I do not see that we have any choice but to go on. We are neither of us children, and I think a few hours further travel, undertaken in genuine necessity will not signify so very much against the alternative of my aunt managing entirely alone for another night, or two, or however long it takes to send properly for someone else."

He exhaled, and brushed his ungloved hand through his hair, before responding, "Are you so willing to risk your own reputation, Miss Bennet?"

She gave him a fickle smile, before turning to look at the horses across the way. "I am very willing to risk a great deal less than my uncle's life, Mr. Darcy, which is the actual choice in front of us, whatever the strict letter of propriety would prefer to pretend otherwise." She said this with more heat than she had intended; And, she saw, indeed, something in his countenance that was not quite disapproval, though she could not name what it was. "I do not ask you to risk anything on my account that you are not willing to risk. If you would rather turn back, I will hire what conveyance I can find here and go on alone."

He responded tactfully, though his voice was quieter. "I did not say I would rather turn back."

Elizabeth turned to look at him again, her eyes narrowing, and her voice tightening. "You said we could not continue."

"I said I did not think we should," he corrected, "I have already told you once today that you would not undertake this journey alone, Miss Bennet, and I do not make a habit of unsaying what I have already resolved."

There was something in the firmness of this that left Elizabeth, for once, without a ready reply, and it was in a silence rather different in character from the one that had begun the day. With that, they climbed back into the carriage and continued on toward London.

Without the maid's quiet presence to constrain them, it was Darcy who broke the silence first, an hour past Dunstable, inquiring after her uncle.

"He is the kindest man I know," she told him, "and the most sensible, which I have always thought a rare combination. He has never once made me feel that my mother's want of delicacy, or my younger sisters' want of sense, reflected upon me in the smallest degree, when I know very well that a great many gentlemen of his acquaintance would have thought it perfectly natural to hold the whole family to account for the failings of a part of it."

She saw him understand, plainly, that she had spoken not only of her uncle's generosity but of its absence in others.

"I have not always judged as generously as I ought," he said, after a silence long enough that Elizabeth had begun to think he did not mean to answer at all. "I am aware of it, Miss Bennet."

She looked out the window, slightly embarrassed at her loose tongue. "I did not say it to accuse you, sir."

"No," said Darcy, "but I think, upon reflection, that it would not have been unjust of you to have meant it so."

It was the nearest thing to an apology she had yet heard him offer. And yet, it acted as a type of olive branch, and as the miles that followed passed, so their conversation grew less guarded, and steadily more like the one they had shared before either had thought to withdraw from it; that is until the light began to fail in earnest, and the coachman, leaning down from his box with a note of concern in his voice, called down that the road ahead looked to want some caution, the woods along this stretch having, by all report, a poor reputation after dark.

CHAPTER 10

The road had been narrowing for some while, the open fields that had accompanied them out of Dunstable giving way to a country of close-grown trees that crowded the verges and met, in places, overhead, so that the last grey light of the evening reached the carriage only in broken pieces, filtered and increasingly dark.