Page 16 of Epiphany (A Little Bit More Darcy and Elizabeth #2)
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I t continued to snow intermittently overnight and all the next morning, resulting in an increasingly gloomy air at Longbourn as the prospect of Mr Bingley calling that day grew ever less likely. Elizabeth commiserated with Jane but could not decide whether she was unhappy or relieved for herself. She suspected it would be as painful as it was pleasurable to see Mr Darcy again if he accompanied his friend. His choosing not to come would present an entirely different source of misery.
All of them were surprised when a carriage was seen rolling into the drive, and none were so perturbed as Elizabeth when its door opened, and two bonneted figures stepped down from it. The ladies of Netherfield had called, and nobody but she could guess why.
“Mr Bingley and my brother are otherwise engaged at present,” Miss Darcy explained once they were all settled in the parlour. “A part of the old stable roof has given way under the weight of snow, and they are organising the repairs. I am sure they will call as soon as they are able.”
Jane observably took heart from the promise, but looking at the sky outside, Elizabeth rather doubted it would be fulfilled in the near future.
“I am surprised you both took the trouble to come in this weather,” she said. “We are honoured, of course, but the snow is getting rather heavy.”
“Our message could not be delayed, Miss Elizabeth,” replied Miss de Bourgh.
Mrs Bennet launched into transports of gratitude for saving Jane from an afternoon of suspense while the gentlemen saw to the stable repairs. Elizabeth, suspecting the message to be something entirely other than the one already relayed, entered her own state of wretched suspense as she waited to hear it.
“I hope this snow will not prevent Mr Bingley’s sisters from coming on Monday,” Jane said. “It would be a great shame if they were not able to attend the feast he has planned. It sounds wonderful.”
“Miss Bingley?” Miss de Bourgh enquired disdainfully, looking at her cousin. “The woman who has had her cap set for your brother since the turn of the century?”
Miss Darcy baulked and muttered a few inarticulate words, her hedging as good as a confirmation of the charge.
Miss de Bourgh sniffed contemptuously. “I should as soon pray for more snow, Miss Bennet. Any woman who has not yet worked out the difference between desire and delusion after eleven years cannot have much sensible to add to a party. I daresay she would not be missed.”
Elizabeth might have been diverted were it not for an unbidden swell of empathy for Miss Bingley, one of the most unpleasant women of her acquaintance and the last person on earth with whom she would ever have expected to feel an affinity.
“Nevertheless, I hope she is not detained. Miss Bingley was exceedingly good to me last autumn when I was taken ill at her house,” Jane insisted gently but firmly. “I shall be pleased to see her again.”
“My cousin jests,” Miss Darcy said with absolutely no conviction and looking increasingly bewildered. “The Bingleys are all good friends of our family.”
Miss de Bourgh rolled her eyes but otherwise ignored her. “I understand you saw my cousin in Meryton yesterday.”
“We did,” Lydia answered. “He came with us for tea at my aunt Philips’s house.”
“Yes, he mentioned that.” Miss de Bourgh fixed Elizabeth with a stare that was startlingly similar to her cousin’s, if rather colder. “I trust you did not misunderstand his purpose.”
“In accompanying us?” she answered. “No, I do not believe there was any misunderstanding.”
“Indeed, none at all,” cried Mrs Bennet. “Why Mr Darcy chose to show such vast condescension to the family who might soon boast a connexion of the closest kind to his oldest friend is his own business. We should never presume to draw any conclusions about it.”
“That is well. Assumptions are clearly not your forte,” Miss de Bourgh replied with a slightly bemused expression. With a sidelong glance at Elizabeth, she added, “So long as his attention was taken for what it was.”
Elizabeth was careful to keep her expression neutral, despite how her stomach dropped. Here was her message then—a reminder of their conversation on Christmas Day. “Civility,” she said, nodding. “I know.”
“No,” Miss de Bourgh replied with surprising energy. “No, he was not being civil.”
“Cousin Anne, I cannot imagine my brother would have been impolite!” said Miss Darcy with alarm.
“That was not my meaning, dear. Of course he was polite. Darcy is unfailingly well-mannered, which is fortunate, given what he told me of the visit. But you cannot believe it was his design to call on Mr and Mrs Philips to exhibit his good breeding.” She pierced Elizabeth with another glance. “He does not give such notice indiscriminately. I have said before that one should never mistake civility for attentions. I say it again now but with the opposite meaning.”
Elizabeth made no reply, unsure she had understood properly. Was it more than politeness that induced Mr Darcy to suffer that ridiculous visit?
Her mother certainly took that as Miss de Bourgh’s meaning. She preened and leant to clasp Jane’s arm. “You see, Jane. In recognising our relations thus, Mr Darcy proves he knows what is coming between you and Mr Bingley.”
“Mrs Bennet, you are a true wonder. How you managed to construe that hint as meant for you, I do not know,” said Miss de Bourgh.
“Thank you,” Mrs Bennet replied, puffing up with pride.
Elizabeth closed her eyes briefly, mortified by her mother’s misplaced hubris, and dismayed by the confirmation that Miss de Bourgh’s hint was meant for her. She replied with equanimity she did not feel.
“You have no cause to be uneasy, madam. I comprehend the importance of not taking things that are not meant for me. And I never would.”
Miss de Bourgh replied in a flash. “I know. It is a disposition I find most tiresome.”
“Lizzy, what are you running on about? Remember who you are speaking to, and do not vex our visitors so!” Mrs Bennet snapped, looking between them in frowning perplexity.
“We are talking about my cousin, Mr Darcy,” replied Miss de Bourgh. “And the fact that he and your daughter share the same insufferable inclination to rectitude.”
Elizabeth huffed in frustration. “In which case, you cannot believe him capable of ever showing… civility to more than one person at once.”
“That is precisely my point. I am glad we have come to it at last.”
The room fell silent as everybody else attempted to come to the same point and, judging by their bemused expressions, failed.
“Is that why he did not speak to Mrs Long at the assembly?” Mrs Bennet enquired dubiously.
“I am sure he did not mean to be rude to Mrs Long,” Miss Darcy said breathlessly. “Or anybody.”
Jane gave a mollifying tut. “Come now, Mama. Mr Darcy did speak to Mrs Long at the assembly. I have told you that.”
“I find it difficult to know who to talk to when there are too many conversations happening at once,” Kitty said, pouting. “Perhaps Mr Darcy is the same as me.”
Miss de Bourgh pulled a disgusted face and turned her back on them all to address Elizabeth. “I heard it reported that you were clever. Please do me the honour of attempting to grasp what I am telling you.”
“Perhaps I also struggle with more than one conversation,” Elizabeth replied. “There are at least four going on here, and I am not sure I am following any of them properly.”
“Then constrain yourself to just one, as my cousin is doing. And his conversation, I trust you comprehend, is not with me.”
Elizabeth let out a sharp exhalation. Dismay and bitter disappointment herded her thoughts in the only direction they could now go.
Darcy had broken with his cousin. How could he?
“Oh, I detest it when men ignore me,” said Mrs Bennet, determined to have her share of the conversation. “Mr Bennet does it all the time. You ought not to stand for it. But I am glad you came here today, for we shall not ignore you.”
“Be fair, Mama. The gentlemen were obliged to see to the stable repairs. I am sure they did not mean to ignore anyone,” Jane said.
“Mr Darcy might have meant to,” Lydia argued. “Lizzy said he ignored her for a whole day when she was staying at Netherfield.”
“I assure you my brother has not ignored either my cousin or me today. He is only helping his friend. He truly is exceptionally good,” Miss Darcy said.
“Indeed,” Miss de Bourgh added, still looking pointedly at Elizabeth. “Exceptionally good and unencumbered by honour.”
Elizabeth could scarcely unclench her teeth enough to speak, so turbulent were her sentiments. Had Mr Darcy not seen the pain caused when he separated Jane and Mr Bingley? And they had known each other for but a few months. Miss de Bourgh and he had been engaged their entire lives.
For weeks now, Elizabeth had witnessed the desperate jealousy with which Miss de Bourgh sought to protect that connexion. Could he be ignorant of the strength of her feelings—or worse, indifferent to them? It mattered not how dearly she had come to think of him, Elizabeth would not, could not be party to Mr Darcy’s callous abandonment. And neither could she forgive him for it, for despite all her good fortune to have evaded Mr Wickham’s duplicity, she still found herself in the unenviable position of being in love with a scoundrel.
She looked Miss de Bourgh in the eye and nodded. “Entirely without it, it would seem.”
“I hate to interrupt what looks like a scintillating exchange, my dear,” said Mr Bennet, appearing in the doorway, “but unless Miss de Bourgh and Miss Darcy wish to stay for dinner, supper, and breakfast too, they might like to consider leaving us now. At this rate, the lane will be impassable within a quarter of an hour.”
The ladies all turned in unison to look out of the window. The snow had indeed begun to settle at an alarming rate, but the horses had not been unhitched from the carriage for that very reason, and thus the business of departing took very little arranging. Less than five minutes after it was suggested that they leave, Miss Darcy and Miss de Bourgh had gone.
“Would that all your visitors were as efficient, Mrs Bennet,” said her husband. “I confess I am surprised they came at all.”
“I am not,” she replied. “You can ignore all that nonsense about delivering the message of Mr Bingley being delayed. He could have sent a note with a servant to let us know that. They talked around the houses a bit, as these high and mighty folk often do, but it was as clear as day to me that they were here to discuss Mr Darcy.”
Elizabeth kept her lips firmly closed, though she was grateful when Mary expressed the same doubts as to her mother’s reasoning that she felt unequal to articulating herself.
“Oh Mary, you can be thick-headed!” Mrs Bennet replied. “Only consider it. First, Miss de Bourgh discredited Miss Bingley. That gives us leave to overlook her disapprobation. Then she talked about Mr Darcy’s visit to my sister yesterday, and she was adamant that we should not mistake his intention in doing that . Then Miss Darcy and her cousin both gave a glowing account of Mr Darcy’s character, assuring us that he is exceptionally good—particularly in his friendship towards his friend .”
She paused to look at everybody and seemed disappointed when they did not instantly pounce upon the conclusion to which she had evidently meant to lead them. “It is obvious! As his cousin and sister, and therefore the best people to speak on his behalf, they came to let it be known that Mr Darcy commends the union between Jane and Mr Bingley!” She clapped her hands together and veritably wriggled with glee.
“Well then, Jane,” said Mr Bennet after a pause of palpable astonishment, “if your mother is right, your Mr Bingley ought to appear at any moment through the snow to ask one or both of us a question. You may tell him I await his presence with bated breath in my library.”
He departed to begin his vigil, leaving behind a clamour centred mostly around Mrs Bennet’s anticipation for the imminent sound of wedding bells and Jane’s attempts to moderate her expectations.
It allowed Elizabeth to escape unseen to her room, where she curled up on her bed and told herself repeatedly that it did not matter why Mr Darcy had broken his engagement. He was promised to Miss de Bourgh and ought never to have forsaken her. It was immaterial, therefore, that Elizabeth’s heart yearned for him to have acted thus because he wished to marry her.
* * *
Darcy stamped the snow off his boots and shrugged off his greatcoat into the hands of the waiting footman. Behind him, Bingley issued instructions for hot drinks to be sent out to the men still at work on the stable roof.
“Fancy a drop of something warming yourself, Darcy?” he enquired. “You have earnt it.”
“Tea will suffice, thank you.”
“Right ho,” his friend replied, nodding at the footman to see to it. “You go ahead and find the ladies, then. I shall join you as soon as I have dashed off that report to the agent. Good advice, that. Thank you.”
Darcy gave his best estimation of a smile. He did not begrudge helping his friend, but he was tired, cold, and bitterly disappointed to have lost the chance of seeing Elizabeth. He left to seek out his sister and cousin but found only Mrs Jenkinson in the parlour.
“Have you been abandoned, madam? That seems ungenerous.”
“Mrs Annesley is resting, sir. And Miss Darcy and her cousin have gone out.”
“Out? Where?”
“Longbourn.”
Darcy kept his countenance carefully neutral so as not to alarm her with the extent of his consternation. “I did not realise they intended to go there. They said nothing of it.”
The woman shrank into her seat. Perhaps he had not kept his countenance as blank as he had intended.
“I am afraid I cannot answer for that, sir.”
“I can.”
Darcy turned around slowly, undesirous of appearing unduly irate. Anne was walking calmly into the room with Georgiana behind her as though they had been nowhere more contentious than the drawing room. She lowered herself with exaggerated state into a chair and arranged her skirts before troubling herself to explain.
“The notion occurred to me when the carriages were all brought out of the stables. I thought it the perfect opportunity to visit my new friend, Miss Elizabeth.”
Darcy bit back his words, clamping his mouth closed on a most ungentlemanlike outburst. He knew not why Anne had expressed surprise over his always being angry about things when she gave him such constant reason to be vexed. With forced composure, he asked Mrs Jenkinson to leave them.
“What have you done?” he enquired of Anne as soon as her companion was gone. She looked wholly unrepentant. His sister, on the other hand, looked petrified, and he regretted not asking her to leave also.
“We have not done anything, Brother,” she said in the same, timorous tone she always used when she had done something she thought would displease him—which was all the time of late. “We only went to pay a call on Miss Elizabeth and her sisters.”
“Through three feet of snow? What was it you wished to say to her that was so urgent it could not wait for more clement weather?”
She flinched and looked anxiously at Anne, who sighed affectedly. “It is not three feet. It is not even one! But I own, I did not think it would get so heavy. What does it matter? We are back safely.”
“Which is why that is not what concerns me,” he retorted. “Though I should have been a good deal less forbearing had any harm come to my sister. Or my coachman. Or my horses!” He took a deep breath to dispel the anger that stretched his composure tauter by the moment. “Do not prevaricate, Anne. Tell me what you said to Miss Elizabeth.”
She seemed—finally—to comprehend the extent of his displeasure, for she lost some of her defiance and sank backwards a little into her chair, two spots of colour reddening her cheeks.
“I was only attempting to help you, Darcy.”
“By telling her what? ”
“That you and I are not engaged.”
Darcy ignored Georgiana’s gasp. That she, too, had been ignorant of the misapprehension was of little comfort at this stage.
“You did not consider me capable of imparting the details of my own marital status? Or deciding the best moment to do so?”
“I thought it would have more effect coming from me,” Anne replied. “I have, after all, spent the last several weeks convincing her of the opposite. And it is only my affection for you that allows me to admit I may have been quite insistent on the matter. Rather too insistent, I fear.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, to be frank, I am not at all sure that my disclosure had the desired effect.”
He glowered at her, too conflicted to speak, until she took the hint and continued. “One might have expected a little rejoicing. I suppose I ought to applaud Miss Elizabeth for not doing so, for it shows a more modest understanding of her situation than I had previously credited her with. She is right not to expect that she will receive an offer from such a man as you simply because she has learnt you are not engaged to me. Nevertheless, I did not expect her to be cross about it.”
Darcy was still framing a sufficiently emphatic rejoinder when the door swung open, and a footman appeared, who took one look in his direction and seemed to change his mind about entering.
“What is it?” Darcy barked.
He mumbled that he had brought tea.
“Bring it in then,” Anne said impatiently, “unless you would like us all to come and drink it in the lobby?”
Darcy turned away, disliking his cousin’s manner of addressing servants—so like her mother’s—and liking even less the fumbling incompetence of the man as he emptied the tray onto the table. The sound of teacups being set shakily in their saucers eventually ceased, and Darcy barely waited for the door to click closed behind the departing footman before turning to glare at Anne.
“Why was she cross?”
“How am I to know? Mayhap I was right the first time, and she does not like you.”
“I am sure that is not the case,” Georgiana interposed in a voice that was half reproach, half whisper, as though she were frightened by her own boldness. “Admittedly, a few of her relations seem to have a somewhat poor impression of you, Brother, but it can be nothing that will not improve on acquaintance.”
Darcy fully comprehended that his previous complacency where Elizabeth was concerned had been egregiously misplaced. Yet, he simply could not believe she disliked him. No man who had been looked at the way Elizabeth gazed up at him in the snow yesterday could ever willingly give up hope of there being a warmer sentiment at play. It had felt as though, had he kissed her there in the street before all her relations, she would not have objected. How was it that Anne’s admission had angered her so?
“What precisely did you say to her?”
“I cannot remember the exact words. I think…that your attentions were deliberate, not mere civilities, and that you were not being duplicitous in giving her such notice because you were not bound to me by honour.”
“Did you say it exactly like that?”
“No, of course not. I am not completely devoid of self-respect, Darcy. I had no objection to enlightening Miss Elizabeth as to my mistake, but neither had I any intention of allowing Mrs Bennet to gloat about being right when she told me I was ill-suited to be your wife.”
Georgiana let out a shaky breath that might have been an ill-concealed giggle. “She said that to you?”
“Oh, do be quiet,” Anne retorted rudely.
Georgiana straightened her back, her expression as close to resentment as Darcy had ever seen it. “ I remember what you said at Longbourn, Anne. You told them that Brother had no intention of being civil when he visited Mr and Mrs Philips, that he spent this morning ignoring you and me and that is what drove us to call at Longbourn, that Mrs Bennet was wondrous silly, and that you found Miss Elizabeth’s disposition tiresome. I could not understand why you said any of it and hoped you had a kinder intention than was immediately apparent, but I am beginning to wonder whether that was the case, for you seem to take great pleasure in being un kind!”
“All done!” came a jubilant pronouncement from Bingley as he bounded into the room. “Ah, you have had tea already, I see. What else have I missed?”
Nobody answered. Darcy knew not what prevented the others, but for his part, he found panting with anger precluded much in the way of good-humoured conversation.
“Upon my word,” Bingley said as he surveyed everyone’s faces. “Who died?”
No one had, though Darcy knew who he would nominate if there were a ballot on who should. He ought never to have agreed to bring Anne back to Hertfordshire.
“My patience,” he said darkly and then, though conscious that he had done it several times of late and risked beginning to look like a histrionic adolescent, he excused himself and stalked from the room, unable to trust himself to remain civil if he stayed.