Page 36 of A Compromise By Design

Elizabeth pressed her lips together, and Mr Darcy returned to his plate.

It was the kind of shared moment that requires no words and leaves a warmth behind it that persists longer than it has any reason to. Elizabeth was keenly aware of it, and aware too that it had raised her spirits and made her heart flutter as nothing else had for some time.

As the supper progressed, Mr Robinson turned to the table with the jovial air of a man sharing an observation he considers universally amusing.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose some engagements want a great deal of time and others want very little. Yours, Mr Darcy, must be the fastest I have heard of in the county. Say what you like, there is something to be said for a decisive man.”

He laughed loudly and unrestrainedly. Mr Hurst laughed with him, not troubling to enquire what the jest had been, while the more perceptive of the guests offered polite smiles with more or less tension in them.

Elizabeth could not bring herself to do either. For a single, horrible moment, she felt almost as though she might cry, a humiliation too terrible to imagine. She must say something, surely, but she did not believe she could. Not without betraying an irritation that everyone would understand as vulnerability.

Then Mr Darcy said, with what seemed only easy composure, “I believe when the situation is clear, there is little advantage in delay,” and picked up his wineglass with a finality that said more clearly than words that the subject was closed.

Seated across from him, Elizabeth said nothing. She could not have done so if she wished, for she was forcing back an almost irresistible impulse to laugh. The laugh had arrived, unwanted and entirely genuine, at the collision of Mr Robinson’s blithe delivery and Mr Darcy’s perfectly pitched reply, which was both the correct thing to say and also, from the inside, absolutely absurd.

She caught his eye for the second time that evening.

He was holding the same thing she was holding, with the same composure, and she could see in the very precision of it exactly what it was covering. Their eyes met and held for a beat that was one beat too long.

Then she looked at her wineglass and he looked at his, and neither of them laughed, and it was the closest thing to genuine happiness she had felt since their long nightmare began.

It was this thought that undid her.

She excused herself at the end of the course, citing the beginning of a headache, which was not true, and went upstairs.

Elizabeth sat on the edge of her bed, not troubling herself to light a candle. Closing her eyes, she grappled with the unmanageability of her feelings. She could not go back and rejoin the supper; she could not bear it. She did not think she could face the warm, persistent comfort of the shared look and the almost-laugh and the completely ordinary, extraordinary ease of meeting eyes with a man who understood, without exchanging so much as a word, exactly what was funny and why.

She had found a gentleman with whom she might truly share understanding, but that connection had been created by a vicious scheme gone awry and was being maintained by a lie. Sitting alone in the dark, Elizabeth felt the weight of it. All her obligations seemed to go in a circle, until it was impossible to do right by one without failing another. Anything she might do, or even refrain from doing, seemed to violate some essential principle. She could have her reputation and her freedom, but only at the cost of ruining Miss Bingley and destroying Jane’s fledgling happiness. She could have Mr Darcy, but only at the cost of allowing the damage to their reputations to stand and, worse still, of withholding the truth from him. How could she justify such a thing?

Withholding the truth meant closing the investigation, which was the path they had agreed led to freedom, which was what she had wanted. What, in all likelihood, Mr Darcy wanted still. She was protecting Jane, which was right. She was protecting Miss Bingley, which was not justice, but was certainly mercy. Elizabeth rested her head in her hands, wishing she could simply stop thinking. What was the point of thinking when every choice was equally impossible?

After a few minutes, she heard footsteps on the stairs. The door opened, and Jane came in. She sat beside her on the bed without ceremony.

“Headache?” Jane asked.

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. It was the truth, if not the whole truth.

“Whatever this is, you should not have to carry it alone,” Jane said softly.

“Perhaps not,” Elizabeth agreed ruefully. “But I do not know what else I can do. Someone must make a judgement in the case, and I believe the responsibility is mine. It would not help matters to burden you with knowledge that you cannot act upon.”

“Perhaps Mr Darcy should be told?” Jane’s voice was careful. “He might be able to help.”

“Perhaps. I may have to, in time. Only I am not yet certain what is the right way forward. Whether it would be an act of courage or cowardice to tell him.”

Jane put her arm around her, her silence a welcome kindness, and they sat in the dark for a while without speaking.

∞∞∞

Darcy was careful not to look too long at the empty place where Elizabeth had sat. The last thing they needed was more rumours, and to look either plaintive or angry at her absence would be a sure way to start them.

For once, Mrs Bennet had shown relatively good breeding in managing her daughters’ premature departure from supper. She had explained to the table at large that Elizabeth was overwrought with excitement at her coming wedding and had a headache, and that Jane would see to her sister. Though obviously at best an optimistic interpretation of events, it required no response beyond a murmur of sympathy and therefore served its purpose.

Darcy did not murmur sympathy. He was sitting with the stillness he brought to things that required him not to act when his instinct was to do so. Though carefully not looking at the place where Elizabeth had been, he was thinking of nothing else.

She had been there, and then she had not been. The headache was possible. It was also consistent with a woman who had reached the limit of something and removed herself. He had watched her nearly laugh, pressing her lips together, and something had passed between them.

In the same moment, he had seen something else cross her face that he had not been quick enough to read. Whatever the headache was a cover for, it had arrived in the immediate aftermath of a moment of unguarded warmth. What might that sequence mean? Darcy could think of several possibilities, some more disastrous than others.