Page 25 of Miss Bennet is Gone

“I am aware of it.”

“I thought perhaps you would leave me in peace today, of all days.”

“I considered it. I considered that today you might be at last prepared to sign, and I did not wish to leave you alone with the letter at such an hour, lest the signing of it be attended by any unnecessary distress.”

Elizabeth looked at her a long moment. She had watched this woman every day for seven days, had studied her, as she had promised herself she would.

Lady Catherine genuinely believed herself to be acting from proper motives, that her cruelty was that of a woman who did not think herself cruel.

“I shall not sign the letter today,” Elizabeth said, quietly.

“Miss Bennet⁠—”

“I shall not sign it today, ma’am, of all days. I have taken my resolution. I shall not sign this letter if you keep me here until midsummer. I have considered every possible future, and I have chosen the one in which I do not sign.”

Lady Catherine’s face did not change, but her hand, resting lightly on the letter, closed slowly around the edge of it. “If you are so confident of this, Miss Bennet, why trouble to tell me?”

“Because you came today thinking I might be at last prepared, and you should know I am not, and you should not waste any more of your mornings on the expectation. I ask you to leave me alone today. I grant you the rest of the week, if you must have it. I only ask for today.”

“You ask.”

“I do.”

“Very well. I shall not come tomorrow. I shall come again on Friday.” She rose, and did not take the letter. “You will sign it before the end, Miss Bennet. You do not believe it yet. I am older than you, and I know how a thing proceeds. I am content to wait. I leave the letter with you. I wish you to have it before you every hour between now and Friday.”

“Take it away.”

“It stays.” She went to the door, and there she paused, and turned back. “I am sorry for you, Miss Bennet. I am sorry your day is to be spent in this manner. It was not a thing any of us had to do. It is a thing you could still, even now, end.”

“Leave me.”

Lady Catherine went out and locked the door.

Elizabeth stood at the table, looking at the folded letter. Then she took it up in both hands and carried it to the small grate where the fire was burning, and did not burn it.

She could not. If she did, Lady Catherine would only write another, and the act would have given the woman the satisfaction of knowing the letter had power enough over her to be worth destroying.

Elizabeth would give Lady Catherine no satisfaction, today of all days. She put it back on the table.

She sat down in the chair and put her face in her hands. She wept as she had not wept since she was a child, with great gasping breaths that came up out of her chest against her will.

The morning she had been meant to have, and the walk Darcy had been meant to make, and the two of them together at the altar in the fullness of it. Elizabeth had chosen the hour of weeping, and now she spent it, all of it, to the bottom.

When she had finished, she washed her face again in the cold water, and took her place at the window with her hand on the sill, and began to talk to the man who had not come round the corner that morning all the things she would have said to him as she came up the aisle on her father’s arm.

I loved you when I pretended I did not, and I loved you when I could no longer pretend. I would have come to you today. I shall come to you still.

The grey sky brightened slowly. The sparrows came back to the cobbles. When the maid brought the midday tray she did not turn, and let the woman set it down and take the old one and go without a word.

She would eat, presently. Elizabeth would not let this room, or this woman, or this day, break her. She had sworn it to him, and she meant to keep her word.

Elizabeth did not go back to the window again. She sat down at the table instead and drew the paper toward her and she moved the folded letter of surrender to the far end of the table, where it might look at the wall instead of at her, and uncapped the ink.

Fitzwilliam,

By the arrangement of the world as it stood a fortnight ago, I should be in a carriage by now with my father sitting opposite, informing me that it is not too late to change my mind.

That is his jest. It would have made me laugh this morning of all mornings, and I find I am obliged to laugh at it here instead, alone, which is not the same and will have to do.