Page 39 of Dear Friend

But Richard’s letter was not the one he had been waiting for, and Darcy could no longer pretend to himself that he did not know the difference.

He rose from the desk and crossed to the back window, where the timberland stood dense and unmoving beneath the afternoon sun. A week was hardly an extraordinary interval between letters, particularly when Elizabeth had never promised to write upon any fixed day, yet he found himself considering possibilities all the same.

Perhaps some engagement at Longbourn had prevented her. Perhaps she had written and the letter was delayed upon the road. Perhaps, after five months of addressing a woman who never answered, she had at last decided there was little sense in continuing. That possibility ought to have pleased him, for it would spare him both the impropriety of receiving further correspondence and the necessity of explaining Julia Harding’s absence. Instead, Darcy discovered that he disliked it exceedingly. He wanted another letter to come. More troubling still, he wanted it not because it might reveal something further of Julia Harding, but simply because he wished to hear from Elizabeth Bennet again.

~

14th September 1811

Within the next two weeks, Darcy received another letter from his sister and a further report from Mr. Humphrey. His attorney had discovered nothing of Mr. Harding's present whereabouts, though he assured Darcy that his enquiries continued. He reminded him that Harding had not been a longstanding tenant of Willowbrook, having taken the house only five years before quitting it.

Harding had earned his living as a fisherman, working from one of the smaller ports along the coast. His occupation frequently kept him at sea for several days together, and those who had worked alongside him could tell Mr. Humphrey very little beyond the particulars of his trade. Harding, by every account, had been a reserved man, little inclined to speak of his private affairs and apparently content that others should show him the same consideration.

The information went some way towards explaining what had puzzled Darcy from the beginning. A man who formed few attachments and spoke little of his affairs might remove from the neighbourhood without leaving many people able to say where he had gone. It explained less satisfactorily how Elizabeth, after an intimacy of such evident closeness with Julia, had known so little of her family or of the place she called home. Mr. Humphrey could offer no assistance upon that point aside from the promise that he would continue his enquiries.

Georgiana's letter was filled with smaller and more welcome intelligence. She had been practising a new air upon the pianoforte until Mrs. Annesley pronounced it fit to be heard; an afternoon at an exhibition of watercolours had made her regret leaving her sketchbook at home; and she asked, with a diffidence Darcy could easily imagine, whether he meant to return before Christmas. Through these ordinary particulars, however, ran something which troubled him. Georgiana apologised for the anxiety she had caused him that summer and feared that even his retreat to Somerset had been made necessary by her conduct.

Darcy read that portion severally. He was grateful that she had tried to write so freely, but the apology pained him. Georgiana had been deceived, and he had no wish for her to spend the remainder of the year persuading herself that his absence was a punishment she had deserved. His reply to her was begun almost immediately.

There was, however, another absence which had become increasingly difficult to ignore.

Three weeks had passed without a letter from Elizabeth.

At first, Darcy had tried to think little of it. After a fortnight, however, he found himself returning to her last letter with increasing frequency. By the third week, he could no longer pretend that he was merely curious.

Had she finally abandoned the hope of hearing from Julia? Six months of silence would have exhausted the constancy of most people, and Elizabeth herself had admitted that she no longer knew whether her letters were read at all. Perhaps she had at last concluded that there was nothing to be gained by continuing them.

Darcy ought to have found the explanation reasonable.

Instead, his mind supplied others.

Perhaps some circumstance at Longbourn had occupied her. Perhaps illness had entered the household. Perhaps Elizabeth herself was unwell.

His thoughts stopped there.

The sudden force of his uneasiness startled him. He knew of no reason to suppose anything had happened to her. Three weeks without a letter was evidence of nothing except three weeks without a letter, and he had neither right nor cause to imagine the worst.

Yet the thought had already occurred, and once admitted, proved difficult to dismiss.

Nothing must have happened to her.

Darcy became still at the realisation.

He had no claim upon Elizabeth Bennet. She did not know his name, his face, or even that the letters she had written to Julia had been read by another. Yet somewhere in the course of those eighteen letters, concern for a woman he had never met had ceased to feel altogether like concern for a stranger.

Chapter Fourteen

30th September 1811

Willowbrook Somerset

Darcy

The letter Darcy hoped for did not arrive until the last day of September. Georgiana had written once more in the interval, and Mr. Humphrey had sent another brief account of enquiries which had produced nothing useful.

That morning Darcy returned from a long walk along the edge of the timberland to find a servant waiting in the hall.

“Two letters for you, sir.”