Chapter Text
The sprain was, by any reasonable measure, Elizabeth Bennet's own fault.
She had walked that path a hundred times, knew its roots and its ruts and the deception of the ground near the old stile, and had nevertheless managed, on the afternoon before the Netherfield ball, to come down wrong on her left ankle with enough commitment to produce a swelling that Mrs. Bennet, on inspection, declared to be the ruin of everything.
"Three inches of mud and you could have managed," said Mrs. Bennet, in the tone of a woman rehearsing grievances for a larger audience. "Three inches of mud you have managed before, and gone perfectly well, and now – now the night before the ball, when Mr. Bingley-"
"Mama," said Jane, from the doorway.
"--when Mr. Bingley has particularly expressed–"
"Mama."
Mrs. Bennet redirected. "Well, it cannot be helped, I suppose. Jane must go, naturally. Jane will go. There is no reason Jane should suffer for Lizzy's –there is no reason whatsoever–"
Elizabeth, from the sofa, caught Jane's eye and made a very small gesture of apology. Jane's expression communicated several things in succession: resignation, affection, and the forbearance of the eldest.
"I am truly sorry," Elizabeth said, when their mother had been conveyed into the corridor. "I know you wanted me there."
Jane sat beside her, "I know you wanted to be there.” Elizabeth had been anticipating a meeting with Mr. Wickham, even a dance, Jane knew.
"You will tell me everything."
"I will."
"Mr. Bingley's every word, every look."
"Everything." Jane agreed, smoothening the compress on Elizabeth's ankle carefully. "And if Mr. Darcy says anything you might find of note, I will remember it exactly."
Elizabeth laughed, which achieved the effect Jane intended; Elizabeth had quickly gotten over the gentleman’s comments on her looks, even if she was still determined to dislike him on Mr. Wickham’s behalf. "He will, he always does. Tell me that too."
***
Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy had been prepared to think about Miss Elizabeth Bennet. He had formed, from their previous meetings, an impression of her that was more engaged than he usually allowed himself – she was interesting, which was uncommon enough to be notable – and he had been aware of something that might have been anticipation at the prospect of encountering her again.
But she was not here. This fact had been communicated to him by Bingley, who'd heard it from Miss Bennet, who had managed to convey her sister's absence without any of the elaborate lamentations that her mother would shortly visit upon anyone within range.
So now, as was his wont, he observed the room. He observed Bingley's happiness with cautious approval; he had been made anxious by that happiness before. He observed Miss Bingley's management of her smiles, and how shrewdly they were bestowed.
And he observed, with attention he had not entirely accounted for, Miss Bennet.
This too, started with Miss Elizabeth Bennet: her absence operated in the evening; several people asked after her, because Elizabeth Bennet was the kind of person whose absence was felt, and each time, he heard her sister, Miss Bennet, answer with the same warmth – genuine concern, genuine regret, nothing performed, and he was struck by a thought: she misses her. Her tone brought to mind suddenly, memories of his own mother, the gentle creature, who Georgina had taken after with an additional measure of shyness, and he found himself wondering if his sister, might in time, develop the stature of Miss Bennet.
He had not thought much about Miss Bennet before tonight. She was beautiful – this was the first thing anyone thought about Jane Bennet, and it had the unfortunate effect of being the last thing many people thought about her as well. Bingley's admiration had seemed to him, if he were honest, slightly credulous; beauty was an insufficient foundation, and Miss Bennet's manners were so uniformly pleasant as to make the woman beneath them opaque.
But he was revising this assessment.
He was near enough, nearer than was comfortable, when Mrs. Bennet's voice rose above the general noise to proclaim, with magnificent indiscretion, that she expected all her girls to be well settled soon, for her Jane was not the sort to be trifled with, certain gentlemen of large fortune might–
He turned to catch Miss Bennet's face through this recitation. She coloured so slightly, but then so quickly controlled it that he thought he was perhaps the only person positioned to see the shifts. She then said something to her mother, low and without heat, that, instead of stopping the flow redirected it. And then she turned back to her conversation with Miss Lucas and resumed it with a composure so complete that it could only have been deliberate.
Deliberate composure, he knew, was a different thing from natural equanimity. Natural equanimity cost nothing. Deliberate composure in the face of that scrne, - and continuing when her cousin was delivering what appeared to be a comprehensive account of Lady Catherine de Bourgh's chimney-pieces, when a sister said something to another gentleman that made him laugh too loudly, when another sister performed without talent at the pianoforte, and another looked uncertain then petulant -, that was a form of work, a form of discipline.
He found he was curious, in spite of himself, whether it cost her at all.
Of course, he did not ask her to dance; that would have been a step requiring more action than curiosity warranted, but when the collision of a particularly energetic set deposited Mr. Collins at Miss Bennet's side, and Darcy watched the man's fulsome address and saw her receive it with the same patient courtesy she had extended to the entirety of Meryton all evening – something moved in him, a settling of new judgment ... that... she was kind.
He had attributed it, before, to softness; to the mild, undiscriminating goodwill of a woman without strong feeling. He saw now that he had been wrong, or at least incomplete in his assessment. There was something in her that was not softness at all but something more like – he searched for the word – generosity. Chosen generosity. The kind extended to people who have not especially earned it, as a matter of principle rather than preference.
He was not certain he was capable of it himself.
The thought was unexpectedly uncomfortable.
He sought her out, eventually, near the end of the evening, when their movement through the room deposited them in proximity that required either conversation or deliberate avoidance. He was not, he found, interested in deliberate avoidance.
She saw him coming. She was observant too, and she had, he suspected, been likely at least half as aware of his observation of her this evening as he had been careful to conceal it.
"Miss Bennet." He bowed, and then because he was not sure what else to say, "I am sorry to hear about your sister. She is much missed, I imagine."
Her expression softened, "By me, yes. Though she would tell you she is very comfortable at home with a book, and mean it sincerely."
"I believe she would."
The music swirled around them.
Her next words surprised him, "Mr. Wickham is not here either, I notice," she said.
He was very still for a moment. Then, "No, he is not."
"You knew him," Miss Bennet said, and somehow it was not a question.
"Once," he said. "Adequately well."
She did not press, which he respected, but she also did not look away, which also, he found, he respected. "You and your sister have much in common," he said, "in some aspects."
The remark elicited her surprise, "That is not the comparison most people make."
"Most people," he said, "look at you first, and conclude they have looked long enough."
He had not meant to say quite that. He was aware of it as the words left him, and he did not know where they came from. But she at least, received it without confusion or coy performance and instead said consideringly, "I find, I do not know whether that is a compliment, a criticism, or an observation."
"Nor do I," he said, honestly. "Not entirely."
She almost smiled, it was smaller but real, he thought, unlike the smiles she had been distributing all evening. "Then we are equally uncertain, Mr. Darcy, which I think is a reasonable place to end a conversation."
She moved away, back toward Charlotte Lucas, and he watched her go with the distinct sensation that he had in some small but not insignificant way, been outmanoeuvred. He had not minded it.
***
Elizabeth was awake when Jane came in; her ankle hurt and she had read everything available and was surviving on anticipation.
"Tell me," she said, before Jane had her cloak off. "Tell me everything, omit nothing. I have been lying here imagining it and my imagination is not, I find, flattering to anyone."
"It was a pleasant evening," she said.
"Jane!"
Jane sat. "Mr. Bingley was very attentive. He danced with me twice, and-"
"Oh, that is expected, but even so, so wonderful-” she stopped, catching her sister’s expression. “Was Mama unbearable?”
"Mama was–"
"No, do not trouble yourself. I know what Mama is like-"
"Wickham was not there."
Elizabeth absorbed this, "I see."
"I am sorry, Lizzy."
"Don't be, it is not your fault he didn't come." She shifted, wincing slightly. "Did he send his excuses?"
"Something about regimental business. I don't know more,” Jane paused.
"Well," Elizabeth said firmly. "I shall survive it."
"I know you will." Jane said, looking at her gloves. "Mr. Darcy spoke to me."
Elizabeth had been composing herself into philosophical acceptance so this landed with some disruption. "Did he? What did he say?"
"Several things," her sister was quiet for a moment, "He was… not what I expected."
"Proud and disagreeable, you mean?"
"I suppose. He is, … he watches very carefully, I think. He sees things." She paused.
Elizabeth waited. When Jane said something in that particular tone, careful and slightly wondering, it was best to wait.
"He said,.. he said something rather odd, actually. He said that most people look at me first and conclude they have looked long enough." She paused. "And when I asked if that was a compliment or a criticism, he said he wasn't entirely sure."
Elizabeth was silent for a moment, "That is odd," she said at last. "That is very nearly perceptive, and somewhat impertinent."
Jane smiled, "I thought so."
"What did you make of him?"
"I think,... that he is more complicated than either of us have given him credit for,” She glanced at Elizabeth. "He said we were alike."
"You and Mr. Darcy?"
"You and me. He said I was like you in some respects."
Elizabeth laughed, "Now that is the most interesting thing you've said. He does not give that observation as a compliment to most people, I suspect."
"I am not sure," said Jane, quietly. "But you were on his mind then, it seemed like."
“The man definitely said several things, I see.”
“Yes, and I maintain, he cannot be a bad man, Lizzy. He is only someone who watches rather than talks."
"You have known him few evenings."
"You have known him for less," Jane said mildly. "And you have formed very decided views."
Elizabeth, whose ankle was preventing the dramatic exit this observation deserved, settled for raising her eyebrows. "On the testimony of a reliable witness."
"On the testimony of a very charming man who did not come when he said he would."
They looked at each other. "You are irritating," said Elizabeth finally, "when you are right." Jane leaned over and squeezed her hand.
They talked until midnight, about the ball, and Mr. Bingley, and Lydia's behaviour on the dance floor, and Mr. Collins who had apparently managed to step on the feet of three different women during the same set. They did not return to Mr. Darcy. But Elizabeth lay awake long after Jane had fallen asleep, looking at the ceiling, turning over the details of what Jane had said about a man that Elizabeth could not yet abhor, of his perception of her sister, and how the former meant that Jane had watched him too.
***
The morning after the Netherfield ball, Darcy rose early and walked.
This was not unusual. He was a man who thought better in motion, and he had, at present, a great deal to think about. The park at Netherfield was not Pemberley – it lacked Pemberley's old authority, its sense of accumulated meaning – but it was sufficient for the purpose. He walked for an hour and arrived at nothing conclusive.
Now, this was unusual. He was not, ordinarily, a man who failed to conclude. He had been drawing conclusions about people and situations since he was old enough to observe them; it was perhaps his most practised skill, and he had learned to trust it. He had concluded, for instance, that Bingley's attachment to Miss Bennet was warm but possibly not wise. He had concluded that the neighbourhood of Meryton, though pleasant enough in its way, offered nothing that need detain a man of sense beyond the length of a lease. He had concluded that Miss Elizabeth Bennet was, of all the women he had met in recent years, the most nearly worth knowing – a conclusion he held at careful distance, for reasons he did not examine closely.
He had not concluded anything useful about last night.
He sat down, eventually, on a fallen log at the edge of the park, which was undignified, but he needed to think some more. What he had observed – he returned to the word observed, finding it safer – was Miss Elizabeth Bennet's sister managing an impossible evening alone with a quality of self-possession he had not expected and could not easily dismiss.
He had also not, before, seen a woman extend genuine courtesy to a man like Collins – fulsome, absurd, excessive in his own estimation by a factor of several – and do so without condescension, or impatience, or even the slight weariness that most people cannot entirely suppress. She had simply been kind. As though he were worth it.
The uncomfortable thought from the night before returned: he was not certain he was capable of it himself.
He was generous to his tenants. He was loyal to those he loved. He was, he believed, a good master and a good brother. But this – this indiscriminate extension of dignity to people who had done nothing to earn it – this was not something he practiced, or had ever particularly valued.
He rose, brushed bark from his coat, and walked back to the house, where Bingley was already at breakfast and inclined to talk.
"A fine evening," said Bingley, for the third time, as though saying it again might produce new information from the assertion.
"So you have said."
"Miss Bennet looked remarkably well."
Darcy poured coffee. "She was, I think, the most composed person in the room."
Bingley looked up. This was not to his expectation, it was clear; perhaps, composed, was not the compliment he thought exalted enough for Miss Bennet. "Composed? Is that what you noticed?"
"It is what struck me as notable, yes."
"She is always composed," said Bingley, slightly defensively.
"There is a difference," Darcy said, "between natural composure and the kind that is maintained at some effort." He stopped, aware he had said more than he intended. "It is no matter. Are we to ride this morning?"
They rode. The subject was not returned to.
But Darcy thought, on and off throughout the morning, about the difference he had articulated without meaning to: between what is easy, and what is chosen.
***
Miss Bingley noticed.
This was, perhaps, inevitable. Miss Bingley had many faults and one very considerable ability: she could read Darcy's attention with an accuracy that would have impressed him had it not been so consistently inconvenient. She had evidently been watching him watch Miss Bennet at the ball, and she made her first move at luncheon.
"I thought Miss Bennet looked rather tired last night," she said. "It is perhaps the effect of her situation – so many sisters to manage, and a mother who requires a great deal of managing herself. One imagines it is rather wearing."
Darcy said nothing. This was not, in itself, alarming and he intended to not rise to the bait; after all he frequently said nothing to conversational openings of this kind. But he could not nod, what he sometimes did to indicate absent agreement.
Miss Bingley continued, still pleasantly, "Charles tells me she is thought very sweet by the neighbourhood. I am sure it is true. She has that even temper that is so restful in a woman – though I sometimes think it is difficult to know, with very sweet people, what they are actually thinking."
"I imagine," said Darcy, without looking up from his coffee, "that that difficulty lies more often with the observer than the observed."
"You are very generous, Mr. Darcy."
"I am, I think, accurate."
***
The fortnight that followed the ball was one of those quiet periods that appear uneventful and are, in fact, formative.
Mr. Bingley called at Longbourn three times. He was always welcome – by Jane, warmly; by Mrs. Bennet, rapturously; by Mr. Bennet, with the wry tolerance of a man making his peace with his drawing room being invaded by young gentlemen. He brought Mr. Darcy on the first of these visits, and not on the second, and on the third.
Elizabeth received them from the sofa, her ankle elevated on a cushion that her mother had arranged and rearranged four times, and watched.
This was, she was finding, an unexpectedly enlightening position to be in. She was a person who generally moved through rooms, talked, directed her attention where she chose. Confinement had made her an observer, and when unaccompanied by participation was providing her with clarity that she was unaccustomed to.
***
The first visit was, by any external measure, utterly ordinary.
Bingley had talked with cheerful energy; Mrs. Bennet had performed her full range; the younger girls had orbited the edges with varying degrees of restraint. Darcy had stood slightly apart, observed, and said the minimum that courtesy required.
What he had not anticipated was the end of the call.
Bingley had been borne off by Mrs. Bennet to admire some view from the east window that she considered remarkable, and the younger girls had followed, and Darcy found himself in the room with the two eldest Miss Bennets.
Miss Bennet had not seemed troubled by the sudden quiet – not that he was, but – and had picked up from the side table a piece of work she had set aside when they arrived, dark wool, a man's coat by the look of it.
He watched her take two stitches before she met his eyes.
"My father's coat," she said, before he could speak. "The lining has been coming away. It wants attention before the cold properly arrives."
"And is there no one else to give it attention?" He asked, and then wondered if it was condescending for her younger sister had made a sound in response. He had not meant it to be.
Miss Bennet considered this with apparent seriousness. "There is me," she said.
Then the room refilled, and the moment dissolved. Darcy did not speak much on the return to Netherfield, which Bingley accepted with his easy tolerance, accustomed that he was to his friend's silences.
***
He declined the second visit.
He told Bingley he had correspondence, which was true, and letters to his steward, which was also true, and Bingley accepted this with easy good faith. But when Darcy sat down to his correspondence, he wrote three letters and stared at a fourth for twenty minutes without beginning it.
He was being sensible. He had been to Longbourn once. He had sat in accidental quiet with Miss Bennet for perhaps seven minutes while she mended a coat, and she had said one unremarkable thing, and he had found it – he had found her – no, he was staying back at Netherfield, because he had correspondence, and he was simply being sensible.
He finished the fourth letter. He sent them all. He thought about her twice. This was, he told himself, normal. She had surprised him at the ball, and she had surprised him again at Longbourn, and he was a man who noticed surprises because they were rare. That was all.
***
He joined Bingley on the third visit because they had happened to be riding in the same direction, and it would have been unnecessarily pointed to separate at the Longbourn gate. He was not an impolite man.
They arrived to find the house in the middle of a negotiation, it sounded like, conducted at the shrill pitch of younger sisters who have not yet accepted an outcome. The words that carried through the hallway as they were shown in were, but you never wear that one and then, more clearly, another voice, that is not the point.
When they entered the drawing room Miss Bennet was turning from the window, composed and welcoming, and one of the younger girls was on the sofa looking aggrieved as if she had just lost an argument she felt entitled to win.
Mrs. Bennet received them warmly. "You find us in fine spirits, gentlemen, though Kitty will insist on being disagreeable about trifles -- Jane dear, come and sit, Mr. Bingley will think we are all at sixes and sevens-"
Miss Bennet came and sat, and the visit proceeded. Bingley settled into conversation with her with his customary ease, and Darcy stood somewhat apart, as was his habit.
Near the end of the call, when Bingley had been drawn into some discussion with Mrs. Bennet about Netherfield's winter arrangements, Darcy found himself standing beside Jane near the window, at sufficient remove from the rest of the room. Had he made that happen, he was not sure.
"You were right," he said, "about the ribbon."
She turned to look at him. "I beg your pardon?"
"I could not help but hear, when we arrived." He paused. "Your sister will find a way to borrow it regardless. They always do."
Jane looked at him for a moment, her eyes crinkling, "You are very certain."
"I have a younger sister," he said. "I speak from considerable experience."
"And did you," she said, now the edges of her mouth twitching, "make a habit of observing your sister's ribbon transactions?"
"I made a habit," he said, "of observing what was likely to cause difficulty, and occasionally of being ignored when I said so."
She almost laughed. "That I understand entirely."
They stood for a moment in the easy quiet that he was, he realised, already beginning to expect from her. Outside, a thin December rain had started against the window.
"She is younger than you by much?" Jane asked.
"By quite some years. She is–" he paused, aware that he rarely spoke of Georgiana in general company, and aware also that this did not feel like general company. "She is shy. She finds the world somewhat large."
Jane was quiet for a moment. "That is hard," she said, simply. "To find the world large when everyone expects you to be equal to it."
"Yes," he said. "It is."
From across the room, Mrs. Bennet's voice rose and fell. Bingley laughed at something, which he often did.
"I hope," Jane said, looking at the window, "that she has someone who makes the world feel smaller, like home."
"She has me," he said. And then, after a moment, with the honesty that her presence drew from him, "I am not always certain I am sufficient."
She turned to look at him then, fully, "the fact that you wonder about it," she said quietly, "is rather more than most people manage."
He did not know how to respond, but then Bingley extricated himself from Mrs. Bennet with his cheerful diplomacy, and the visit ended, and they rode back in the thin rain.
Darcy rode and thought about Georgiana, and home, and comfort and familiarity, and thought, she would be good for Georgiana.
He set this thought aside immediately, it would not lead anywhere sensible.
It returned, uninvited, thrice before he reached Netherfield.
***
He came because they happened to be riding in the same direction, Mr. Bingley had said, which Elizabeth had received with amusement; she had been lying on a sofa thinking for a fortnight and had arrived at certain conclusions.
She had watched his eyes find Jane quickly, and the way Jane controlled her colour, quickly, completely, in a way that would have been invisible if you were not Elizabeth.
She had noticed that Mr. Darcy stood apart, as was almost expected, but when Mr. Bingley was claimed by her mother, he had moved to stand beside Jane at the window. Elizabeth had turned a page she had not read and listened; she could hear enough, the ribbon, his younger sister…
They rode away in the rain, and Mrs. Bennet began an assessment of the visit that would last until dinner. Elizabeth looked back at her book - which she had not read a word of in forty minutes - and thought that I am not always certain I am sufficient was not the remark of a proud man.
Jane, it seemed, had as always, the better measure of people.
Well, she thought. Well.
***
He was not, Darcy decided, to be trusted.
He arrived at this conclusion with the same methodical honesty he applied to his accounts, his estate, his judgments of other men, and he found it no more comfortable for being arrived at fairly.
The evidence was as follows: he had come to Hertfordshire with a settled mind and a clear sense of what the neighbourhood contained and did not. He had formed, within a few weeks, a decided impression of Miss Elizabeth Bennet – her intelligence, her quick wit, her fine eyes – and had found himself, for the first time in recent memory, genuinely interested. He had held this at careful distance, but it had been there, and he had thought, here, perhaps, is something worth knowing.
And now.
Now he was dressing for a dinner at Netherfield that he was anticipating with an alacrity that he recognised as caused by Jane Bennet’s confirmed presence that evening. And whatever he had felt with the younger Miss Bennet, that quickening of interest, had been apparently superseded, without his full consent or awareness, by something - someone - else altogether.
He was not proud of this.
He had not behaved badly. He had said nothing to Miss Elizabeth Bennet, had acted on nothing, had made no declaration even to himself that could be called a commitment. But he had thought certain things, and he was left with the uncomfortable question of what this said about the reliability of his own feelings.
Not much, was the honest answer.
He was a man who prided himself on his judgment and here was his judgment, moving from one sister to another in the space of a few weeks, like a compass needle near something magnetic, swinging without his permission toward a new north.
Perhaps it was the neighbourhood. Perhaps there was something in the air of Hertfordshire that disordered a man's sense. Perhaps he was simply susceptible to the Bennet sisters as a category, which was a thought so unflattering that he set it aside immediately.
Or perhaps – and this was the thought he least wanted to examine – what he had felt for the younger sister had been real but incomplete, the interest of a mind without the heart, and now that the latter was asserting its interests, he could see the difference enough... that the second did not discredit the first but simply exceeded it. He could be friends with Miss Elizabeth Bennet; with her sister? He did not know.
That was the difficulty. He did not know, and he was not accustomed to not knowing, and he thought: until I know, I am not to be trusted. Not my conclusions, not my certainties, not the confident assessments I have been making about this family and these women since I arrived.
It was an uncomfortable position for a man of his particular disposition.
He went in to dinner.
***
Miss Bingley's second move was more elaborate, and had required more thought than she generally expended on the Bennets.
She arranged a small dinner at Netherfield to which the principal Bennet sisters were invited, along with several other neighbourhood families. She had two disparate goals: Charles needed to be managed – his attachment to Jane Bennet was warm and genuine and characteristic of him, but she had redirected him before, and she could redirect him again. But Mr. Darcy's approbation was making things respectable and she needed to prevent it.
So she sat Jane beside the most boring man in Hertfordshire, which she had identified as Mr. Goulding's eldest son – earnest, agricultural, and possessed of opinions about drainage that he shared without encouragement. The intent was not to humiliate Jane; no, to humiliate meant to produce sympathy, which was the last thing Caroline wanted. No, Jane was there to be revealed. A woman who spent a dinner absorbed in a dull man's conversation was, in Caroline's measure of worth, a woman displaying the ceiling of her world. Darcy would see smallness where he imagined depth and remember what the family was and what a connection to it would mean for Charles,... and lest he was thinking of anyone else … for them too.
She placed Elizabeth Bennet beside Darcy; she remembered his earlier quick combative interest in her; but while it had alarmed her for a season his attention had then levelled off into what looked more like appreciation than attachment. Elizabeth Bennet beside him now was simply useful. Lively, diverting, a reminder of the family in its most tolerable form. A woman who would hold his attention for the length of a dinner without engaging anything more dangerous. She could not say this of Jane Bennet.
***
What she had not anticipated was that Mr. Darcy would spend the first course apparently engaged with Miss Elizabeth, which was expected, and the second course increasingly aware of the conversation happening across the table.
Jane Bennet, at the far end, had with the gentle inevitability of water finding its level steered the younger Mr. Goulding from drainage to the subject of his younger brother, who was apparently not well, and was listening to the account of this brother's illness with an attention so complete and so genuine that the man had noticeably brightened under her regard even when narrating matters so dismal.
Darcy found himself watching this and missing what his conversation partner said, until, "You are distracted this evening, Mr. Darcy," Miss Elizabeth Bennet said, agreeably.
"Forgive me."
"I am not offended." She followed his gaze to her sister for a moment, and then looked back at him. "She will remember his brother's name," she said. "In six months, if she sees him at an assembly, she will ask after him. He will be astonished, they always are."
"How does she bear it?" Darcy asked in spite of himself. It was only curiosity.
"Bear what?"
"All of it, all of them." He meant: Mrs. Bennet. Collins. The sustained weight of being the good one, the patient one, the one on whom everyone unconsciously relies.
Miss Elizabeth was quiet for a moment, and then began lightly, "Jane once spent an entire afternoon listening to our aunt describe, in considerable detail, mind, the new curtains she had put up in every room of her house. Colour, fabric, cost, the opinions of the upholsterer." She paused. "Afterward I asked her how she had borne it. She said she had found it genuinely interesting."
"Had she?"
"That," said Miss Elizabeth, "I could not determine. With Jane, you never quite can." She glanced across the table. "But she is not bearing it, that I am assured of. She has just decided, I think, that people are worth attending to. Even curtains, if that is what someone needs to talk about. I find it rather extraordinary, myself. I would have been halfway out the window by the second room."
He smiled, “I presume most people never get far enough to discover that." There, he was directing the conversation back to the older sister, surely that was not sensible?
"No," she said, considering him. "They don't."
He looked across the table at Jane, who was saying something to Mr. Goulding that made the man's shoulders drop half an inch with relief, and thought, I have been looking and concluding I have looked long enough. I said as much to her. And I was describing myself.
***
Netherfield was vacated a week later.
Mr. Bingley came to Longbourn one last time – hurried, warm, apologetic – and said there was business in London, and that he would return, and that he hoped very much they would all be well, and looked at Jane for a moment too long and then did not say the thing he might have said.
Jane received it so completely with composure that Elizabeth, who had been watching with her hands clasped in her lap, felt a sudden fierce protectiveness that she recognised as partly helplessness.
That evening, Elizabeth found her in their shared room, sitting at the window.
"Tell me," said Elizabeth.
"There is nothing to tell."
"Jane."
Jane was still quiet. The window showed the last of a grey afternoon light. "I do not know what I expected," she said, at last. "That is the difficulty. I am not sure I was right to expect anything at all."
"You were right," Elizabeth said, firmly. "He–"
"He is a good man who perhaps felt more than he knew how to act on, or less than I had hoped." Jane's voice was very even. "I am not sure which, and I don't think it is useful to decide."
Elizabeth was silent. She was not, by temperament, a person who accepted the passive tense when the active was available, and she felt strongly that someone ought to be blamed; but she was not certain enough of the facts to direct this feeling usefully.
"Are you unhappy?" she asked.
Jane considered this. "Yes," she said. "A little." She paused. "Not devastatingly."
"That is something."
"It is something." Jane looked out at the last of the light. "I think I had not let myself hope very much, which is either wisdom or a failure of courage, and I cannot decide which."
Elizabeth moved to sit beside her, and they stayed like that for a while, not talking, until the light was gone.
***
In London, Darcy was discovering that he had made a mistake.
He had known that persuading Bingley away from Netherfield required a certain compression of his own doubts about the wisdom of the action. He had employed his usual arguments: the family was unsuitable; the mother was intolerable; the attachment on Miss Bennet's side was uncertain, her composure too complete to read with confidence. Bingley's happiness was volatile and valuable and required stewardship.
But he believed in those arguments less, now.
The mother was intolerable – this remained true. The family's prospects were not such as he would have chosen for Bingley. These were facts. But he found himself turning, with an irritating frequency, to what Elizabeth Bennet had said to him at dinner, “But she is not bearing it, that I am assured of. She has just decided, I think, that people are worth attending to.”
He had represented Miss Bennet's equanimity - whether to Mr. Goulding or Bingley - as evidence of indifference. He had done so with confidence. He could not trust the workings of his own self, and yet he had presumed to judge hers.
He went to his club, and to meetings about his estates, and to dinner with Colonel Fitzwilliam, who was good company and did not ask intrusive questions. He took Georgiana to a concert and watched her listen to music, and thought about how often he had, in his life, made confident assessments of people that had later required revision.
Not often.
Yet…
He decided, eventually, to go to Rosings for Easter. Lady Catherine expected him and he needed, more than he would admit, to be somewhere where the rules were fixed and clear and not subject to the kind of revision he had lately been practising.