Page 9 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

She knew who it was before she turned. She did not know how she knew. Perhaps it was only that of all the people in Hertfordshire, he was the one she least wished to meet looking like this, and fate had a sense of humour.

Mr Darcy reined in a tall grey horse a few yards away and looked down at her. She watched his eyes travel from her flushed face, to her bonnet, which had slipped sideways, to her gown, which was brown to the knee, and back up again.

She waited for the look she had seen on Miss Bingley's face at the carriage window.

It did not come. Instead, the corner of his mouth began to twitch, and then he gave up the struggle entirely and laughed, a real laugh, deep and helpless.

"Forgive me," he managed. "I thought for a moment one of Bingley's hedges had come to life."

"You are very gallant, sir."

"I am very sorry." He did not look sorry. He looked delighted. Then the laughter faded, and he said, quite differently, "You have hurt your hand."

"A hawthorn disagreed with me. It is nothing."

He swung down from the saddle before she could stop him, and came and took her hand, glove and all, and turned it over to look at the scratch. He did it as naturally as if he had every right. His fingers were warm through the torn kid, and Elizabeth, who had been cold all the way from Longbourn, was suddenly not cold at all.

"It has not bled much," he said. "But you must have it washed when we reach the house."

"We?"

"I was riding to Longbourn," said Mr Darcy, "to tell you that your sister was unwell and to offer you the carriage. It seems you did not need me."

She looked up at him, and he looked steadily back, and she understood that nobody had asked him to ride to Longbourn. That he had heard Jane was ill and thought, before anyone else in that house had thought it, that her sister would want to come.

"That was kind," she said, and her voice was not quite steady.

"It was selfish," he said. "I wished to see you." He let go of her hand, rather abruptly, and turned to his horse. "Will you ride? Swiftsure is gentle."

"I do not ride. At least, not well enough to trust myself on a horse that size."

"Then I shall walk."

And he did. He led the grey by the bridle, and walked beside her through the mud for the last mile and a half, in boots his valet would weep over, adjusting his long stride to hers without a word. He asked about Jane, and listened to the answer. He told her the apothecary was a sensible man. He made her laugh twice. When they reached Netherfield's gravel sweep, he stood back to let her go first, and opened the door himself.

Miss Bingley was coming down the staircase. She stopped on the fourth step and stared at Elizabeth's petticoat as though it had personally insulted her.

"Good heavens," she said. "Miss Eliza. Did you walk?"

"She did," said Mr Darcy, before Elizabeth could answer. "Three miles, to nurse her sister. I think it does her great credit." He turned to the hovering housekeeper. "Mrs Nicholls, Miss Elizabeth has hurt her hand. Warm water and a clean cloth, if you please. And then she will want to go straight up to Miss Bennet."

Miss Bingley's mouth opened, and closed, and did not open again.

#

Miss Bennet's fever lasted three days. They were the longest, strangest, and happiest three days Darcy had spent in years.

He hardly saw Elizabeth. That was the strange part. She was upstairs almost all the time, in the blue bedroom at the end of the east passage, and when she came down to dinner she was pale and distracted and left again before the tea tray. He learnt the rhythm of the house by her comings and goings. A door opening above. Quick light steps on the stair. Her voice in the hall, asking Mrs Nicholls for more barley water, or another candle, or whether the apothecary had said anything about the cough.

He found he was listening for those steps the way a man in a dark room listens for a clock.

On the first evening, Miss Bingley spent the whole of dinner explaining to Mrs Hurst, in a carrying voice, how very wild Miss Eliza had looked, with her hair all blown about and her petticoat six inches deep in mud.

"I thought her eyes were brightened by the exercise," said Darcy, to his plate.

There was a short silence.

"Her eyes, Mr Darcy?"