Page 53 of A Compromise By Design

“Lizzy,” Jane said, and then stopped and began again. “I have been afraid of this. Since before you told me what you knew. Since the engagement itself. That you were carrying something you had not chosen and carrying it in a direction that was not your own.”

“The direction is quite my own,” Elizabeth told her. “I chose it.”

“You chose it from within a set of options that someone else constructed for you.”

“But I still chose it.”

Jane shook her head. “That is not the same thing.”

“Perhaps not. But it is what I have, and I will not spend the remainder of the engagement lamenting what could have been.”

Jane’s expression softened into a mix of admiration and grief, the expression of someone watching a person they love do something brave at great cost.

“I think,” Jane said after a moment, “that you have decided endurance is the noblest course. You are probably right, but I think it is costing you more than you are saying — and I think you will not tell me how much because you do not want me to feel responsible for it.”

“As indeed you are not,” Elizabeth said firmly.

Jane looked at her for a long moment. Then she took her hand, and they sat like that for a while in the way they had sat together since childhood, when the world had been smaller and their problems had been more easily solved, and the window had looked out onto the same garden and the same grey winter light.

“Do you care for him?” Jane asked softly.

Elizabeth looked at the garden for a long time.

“Yes,” she said. “Rather more than is comfortable.”

Jane’s hand tightened on hers, briefly.

“And does he —” Jane began.

“Please don’t,” Elizabeth said. “I know what you are going to say, and I cannot — not today. I am managing, Jane, and I need to keep managing, and the direction you are headed will make that rather harder.”

Jane’s beautiful face, usually so full of light and happiness, pinched into a frown. “I worry you are so practiced at managing that no one can see you are not. Not really.”

“That is rather the point of it.”

“I know.” Jane looked at her with the expression of someone arriving, reluctantly, at the limits of what she could offer. “I only want you to know that I see it. Whatever you will not say to me. I see it, and I am sorry. It seems to me that you are doing something very brave, and I am not certain you should have to.”

Elizabeth looked at her sister, thinking of the particular quality of Jane’s goodness, which had never been the uncritical goodness people assumed it was, but something more effortful and more clear-eyed than it appeared. And in the light of that goodness and fellowship, and the places to which it could not reach, she felt all the loneliness of her position.

“I know you see it,” Elizabeth said. “That is enough.”

It was not enough, and she knew it, but the alternative was to sit at the window and grieve for something she had not yet lost. Grief required certainty, and Elizabeth was not yet willing to be certain.

Jane stayed until the church bells rang. They went down to breakfast together, and Elizabeth did her best to appear warm and present and entirely composed. If Jane had asked only a very little more, she would have had to either lie, or let part of the dreadful secret slip. It was half a relief and half a loss that she had not.

Elizabeth did not think she could bear to think of what would have happened next, and so she did not examine it further. She had become very good at not examining things of late, and that skill, at least, seemed to be improving.

Chapter Twenty-One

The fire in the billiard room had burned down to its second hour, and Bingley had not touched his cue in twenty minutes.

Darcy had noticed his inaction some time ago, after he finished recounting the meeting he had with his aunt that morning. It was not a meeting that he recalled with any pleasure. Lady Catherine had received him with determination, having arranged herself for an argument concerning Rosings, family, duty, and expectations. He had done his best to listen to her calmly until she had concluded. Then he had told her, in no uncertain terms, that he was engaged to Miss Elizabeth Bennet and would be marrying her. His aunt had hoped to find the arrangement less settled than it was, and laid out her objections. The lack of fortune, connections, and the reputation of the Bennet family were all abhorrent to her.

Darcy had quietly asked her to speak more respectfully of Mrs Bennet, who was the mother of his soon-to-be-wife. He heard Lady Catherine’s arguments, found them to be insufficient, and reaffirmed his intention to marry Elizabeth Bennet.

Bingley had applauded him for standing up to his aunt, receiving the summary of Darcy’s visit with amusement. Then he had gone quiet.

Darcy had continued to play; standing in silence waiting for a man to say what he was working up to saying was not a courtesy either of them would have appreciated. He made his shot, straightened, and waited.