Page 20 of The Riches of a Life Well-Lived

T he trip home was rather uncomfortable—without Mr. Darcy nearby to converse with Mr. Collins, the man kept pestering Elizabeth, no matter how short her answers were. Fortunately, Jane did her best to keep him occupied.

When they arrived at Longbourn, Elizabeth immediately went up to her bedroom, which was blessedly still and quiet. It was not at all like her to rest in the middle of the day, but she felt as if she would scream if she did not lie down and savour the darkness behind her eyelids.

The outdoors would have been just as soothing were she to ramble on her own, but Mr. Collins would likely insist upon accompanying her and she had no patience for the man—especially after hours of listening to him prattle on. She felt as though she could quote his discourse on how wonderful Lady Catherine was and how very much Mrs. Phillips’s drawing room resembled the small summer breakfast-parlour at Rosings.

Hopefully his obsession with overly inflated formalities would keep him occupied at dinner tonight.

“Lizzy,” Jane called through the door several hours later.

“Come in,” Elizabeth said.

Jane softly walked in and sat on the bed, as real and solid as she had been yesterday. “Are you certain you wish to attend Aunt Phillips’s party tonight? You did not look at all well this afternoon.”

“I am perfectly hale,” Elizabeth said, sitting up.

Jane gave her an unimpressed look. “You are in bed in the middle of the day.”

“My headache was quite bad, but it seems to have abated,” Elizabeth said.

It was true; throughout the afternoon, her headache had lessened, though the various visions she had experienced remained, had in fact become even clearer. It was as though someone had shuffled a month’s worth of todays in her mind, and she still could not make sense of the information.

“I believe it will do me good to get out of this room; you know that I detest being cooped up,” Elizabeth said.

Jane pressed a hand to Elizabeth’s forehead. “You do not seem feverish.”

“I do not feel feverish.”

“And you seem more yourself.”

Elizabeth got out of bed and threw open the curtains, allowing the sunlight to flood in. The light left her blinking for several moments, but it did not stab at her eyes the way it had this afternoon. “See, fit as a fiddle,” she told Jane. “Perfectly fit to attend a party. I imagine I need only some company to ensure I am fully back to my usual self.”

“If you are certain,” Jane said, studying Elizabeth intently.

“I am.”

Upon arriving at Mrs. Phillips’s, Elizabeth instantly regretted her decision: not only had Mr. Collins babbled on for their ride, attempting to share headache remedies and comment on the nature of maidenly modesty, but the moment her aunt greeted them, the haze returned.

Though Elizabeth was still confused about why the haze had vanished in the first place, she would have much preferred it to remain absent.

For the most part, she managed to ignore her aunt and Mr. Collins’s conversation about how very like the smallest breakfast-parlour at Rosings Mrs. Phillips’s drawing room was. She could not entirely avoid Jane’s concerned looks though, nor her younger sisters’ enthusiasm about the officers and whether Mr. Wickham had agreed to attend.

He had not, and Elizabeth was not sure how she felt about that. Clearly, Mr. Darcy’s presence had driven the man off.

But what was between them that had led to such an outcome?

As though from a distance, she heard Mr. Wickham explaining how Mr. Darcy had cheated him out of his inheritance.

But Mr. Darcy was scrupulously attentive to what was right—one might even call him a stick-in-the-mud.

Elizabeth frowned, trying to decide where that thought had come from. She did not even know Mr. Darcy—had barely interacted with him at all.

Or had she?

The man himself walked into the room, and after greeting her aunt, immediately caught her eye, walking towards her purposefully.

“Are you well, Miss Elizabeth?” he asked the moment he reached her.

“Good evening to you, too, Mr. Darcy,” Elizabeth responded lightly, attempting to keep another wave of nausea at bay as the room blurred and spun, Mr. Darcy’s voice overlapping itself with a concert of greetings and inquiries.

The man coughed slightly. “I apologise. Good evening, Miss Elizabeth. I trust you are well?”

“As you can see for yourself,” she said.

Mr. Darcy’s keen eyes studied her. “I do not believe you are quite yourself. If you require something, please allow me to assist.”

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. “The knight assisting a damsel in distress?”

Mr. Darcy smiled. “Only if the damsel requests it.” His smile grew. “I must warn you, however, that I am but a mediocre knight—I had a habit of losing my lances as a child.”

“When you played in the woods at Pemberley?” she asked, before realising that the question had come out of the substance of one of her visions.

His brow furrowed. “Yes.” He clasped his hands and unclasped them, hands fluttering at his sides for a moment, and then seated himself. “Do you believe that time is linear, Miss Elizabeth?”

Elizabeth frowned. “Linear?”

“That it proceeds in a line, with a fixed beginning and a fixed end,” he said carefully.

She shifted uneasily. “I have never considered the matter. Is that something that you are interested in?”

“Let us say that I have a vested interest, yes.”

“A vested interest?” she asked, one eyebrow raised.

Mr. Darcy studied her. “If time were to behave in a manner other than that of a line, what do you believe it would do?”

“I do not believe that it can do anything but move in a manner from one point to the next,” she said slowly. “One cannot go backwards in time, nor jump to a point that is not the next moment, if that is what you are referring to.”

“Nor to experience the same moment in time over and over?”

Elizabeth nearly leaned forward and demanded what he meant. That was what her visions felt like—as though she were experiencing the same day over and over. But that was impossible. Not to mention that she would have known if she was repeating time while she was repeating it, would she not?

But she had not yet told anyone what she was experiencing—primarily because she did not even know how to explain it herself. If the phenomenon continued, perhaps she would discuss it with Jane or her father.

“Do you believe that time can function in a manner other than linear?” Elizabeth asked.

Mr. Darcy fidgeted with his coat sleeves. “I do. Although I do not believe that it commonly behaves so—it takes some form of intervention to change the natural flow of time.”

Elizabeth’s eyebrows shot up. “Divine intervention? You believe that Providence changes time?”

Mr. Darcy gave a small shrug. “Does it not say in the Bible that time went backwards for Hezekiah or that the day lasted twice as long for Joshua?”

“Do you believe that such a thing actually occurs now though?”

“To say that something does occur is entirely different from saying that it can occur, but yes, I do believe that time does not always function in a linear manner, even today,” Mr. Darcy said, his eyes fixed upon hers.

Darcy’s heart sped up as he declared so openly that time was malleable. It felt like skirting too close to the truths that would tarnish the Darcy name and get him sent to Bedlam.

But Miss Elizabeth’s headache had gnawed at him all day. He dared not contemplate that he might not be so alone lest the disappointment suffocate him as swiftly as an elephant sitting on his chest, but if—if she were.... Well, he did not wish her to believe herself as alone as he was.

Miss Elizabeth’s brow furrowed. “How interesting. I did not take you for one who enjoyed debating such esoteric matters, Mr. Darcy. One might inquire if you regularly theorize about other concepts considered mere fairy tales.”

She was not experiencing the repetitions then. Darcy shifted, trying to readjust to the dreary heaviness that returned in full force. Mrs. Engel had merely said that she would provide a helper and that it would be risky. He had not even considered Miss Elizabeth until her headache today. It would have been refreshing to have her remember their conversations. He had almost thought, when she had mentioned his childhood habit of playing in Pemberley’s woods, that she had remembered... but that was ridiculous. Not to mention that Miss Elizabeth could do little to assist with Wickham.

He would simply have to resign himself to waiting until whatever help Mrs. Engel sent arrived. “I have never theorised as to the viability of fairy tales, although one wonders how much truth is contained therein,” he said.

“Truth?”

“Legends are often the stuff of history, are they not? Real people whose exploits have been exaggerated, growing with each retelling. And what are fairy tales but legends that have grown even further?”

The card tables were brought out, and Darcy offered to escort her to the lottery table.

She stared up at him as though he had just proposed that he run through the town naked. “You play lottery?”

“Yes,” he said, frowning at her.

Miss Elizabeth blinked at him. “Truly, Mr. Darcy, you are not at all the man you first seemed to be.”