Page 8 of A Quiet Affection

The cup shattered on the floor with a loud crack.

Elizabeth stepped back with a chagrined expression on her small face, and Mrs. Phillips severely scolded her for her clumsiness, a tirade that ended with, “Lord, you will be such a burden for everyone if you do not learn to simply sit in one place and never move without being guided!”

Elizabeth sat back down with an angry expression.

Darcy had a strong sense of the unfairness of what had been said to Lizzy, and he thought yet more ill of Lizzy’s relations. He had met them infrequently during his father’s visits to Longbourn, and he had never been impressed. He now was wholly satisfied with their worthlessness.

In this mood Darcy simply wished to leave the house as quickly as possible, and he said as much.

There was a bustle while Elizabeth sat still, feeling rather miserable. She could tell from his tone that Fitzwilliam was angry about something. Or at least she assumed that it was Fitzwilliam. His voice had changed and deepened, and she was notcompletelysure that it matched what she remembered from back when she generally recognized people by sight.

Elizabeth noted that Fitzwilliam stayed very still, far more still than most people could manage, after he had ordered that they would leave.

She wondered if he was still looking at her, and what he was thinking if he did so. There was, for the first time really, just a hint in her mind of a wish tonotbe so ugly as she knew she was.

But shewasin fact ugly now and forever, and as her spirit rose at every attempt to intimidate it, Elizabeth smiled—not a forced smile, a real smile—and she stared blindly and steadily towards where Fitzwilliam stood.

There was that in the manner in which she looked at him that struck Darcy strongly. He was filled with a sense of deepest melancholy at the thought of what had happened to her, and he again imagined, as he’d been unable to stop himself from doing again and again, what he would feel and think if his Papa and Georgiana, and also his cousin Richard and George Wickham, to make the destruction complete, if they all died suddenly and violently.

And for him to then lose his house and his ability to see.

Darcy felt a great sense of compassion for Lizzy, and a sense of admiration for how she smiled, despite having been scolded—what sort of woman could bear to do that—he wished to see her cared for as well as could be managed.

Darcy stepped close to Elizabeth and said softly, “Please take my arm. I will lead you down the stairs and to the carriage.”

Without any further fuss or any meaningful parting words with her aunt, her uncle, or any of the servants, Elizabeth was walked downstairs and out to the carriage. There was some difficulty with her being able to find the high step up to the carriage without being able to see it, and rather than giving her an opportunity to figure out how on her own, almost immediately Darcy picked her up and simply placed her on the seat of the carriage.

The young man then climbed in behind her and loudly shut the door.

Without delay the carriage set off, and so Elizabeth Bennet left the environs in which she had grown up.

Chapter Three

At first, nothing Darcy could think of to say seemed appropriate.

’I was sorry to hear about your father’s death.’ True. He was deeply sorry, and for his own sake as well as hers. But to say so seemed trite and obvious.

‘Are you happy that you will live at Pemberley? It is after all much bigger than Longbourn was.’ Why did that thought even occur to him to ask?

‘Have you read Plato’sSymposium?’ This time Darcy was aware of why the thought occurred to him, but it was not a subject that he wished to embark upon.

In any case, after some ten minutes of wracking his brain, Darcy gave up the fight and condemned them both to the awkwardness of a quiet carriage ride.

He did surreptitiously keep an eye on Lizzy.

She leaned back against the cushions. The bright raised and mottled scars all around her eyes and over her nose, one of her cheeks, and down her neck were so significant that it had been difficult for half a second for Darcy to recognize her.

She had grown far larger. This last year, instead of going to Town for the season, and thus stopping at Longbourn for a week on the return, as was the habit of Darcy’s father, Darcy had remained the whole time at Cambridge, immersed in arguments with his fellow students, the younger and more liberal minded dons, the books he read, and most significantly, his own conflicting intuitions about philosophical matters.

Darcy had always liked Lizzy. She enjoyed reading and arguing, and talking, and she was always clearly clever and adventurous. Despite how much younger she was than him, she had tended to make an interesting companion with much useful knowledge about the area around Longbourn. There was a bubbliness to her nature that made her chattering always pleasant, and he had many times heard Mr. Bennet brag to his father about how quickly Lizzy grasped concepts that boys older than her found difficult, and how excellently she climbed trees, and how she fully understood the rudiments of algebra, and the simplest explanations of Newton’s calculus.

Poor, poor girl.

It was impossible for Darcy to really imagine, to understand, to conceive of what it must be like to be in her position. He desperately wished to somehow help this little slip of a girl, her eyes covered by a scarf that had been tied around them, her hand whitely gripping the cushion, and her lips pressed together.

And it was in fact his place to help her: She would live with them. She was his father’s ward now.

For her part, while Elizabeth had been enthused for Fitzwilliam’s arrival, the breaking of the cup, the scolding she had received, and the memory of him exclaiming, ‘Jove, how did you survive?’ made it impossible for her to speak.