Page 9 of A Mismatched Compromise

Cutting through all the noise in his mind was the memory of Elizabeth’s voice, quiet and controlled, saying yes to a proposal that she had not wanted, but could not refuse. There was something about the tone in her voice that he could not identify, but could not forget. Finally, just as dawn was lightening the sky outside the windows, he realised what he heard: it was the sound of someone who had accepted the inevitable, not with dread or anger, but with the composure and the determination not to be destroyed by it. Elizabeth had found that composure in the face of public shame and potential humiliation, in the space of just a few seconds.

Darcy did not admire many people. He could admit that this was perhaps more an indication of a failing in himself than a profound lack of merit in the general population of the people he met, and he had, on occasion, attempted to improve upon this quality in himself, though his attempts had never been particularly heartfelt or successful. But as he lay there, trying to determine how to fix a dilemma that was not really his to fix, he thought about Elizabeth Bennet and realised that he admired her very much. Given the fact that she had, mere hours before, become betrothed to his best friend, this was a deeply inconvenient time to discover his admiration. Darcy groaned, rolling over and pulling the pillow over his head. He had to fix this.

Chapter 5

On the morning after the ball, Elizabeth was awake before she opened her eyes, though it was not at all her usual habit. Normally, she went from sleep to wakefulness in one decided movement, in the way a book goes from being closed to open when one lifts the cover. That morning, though, she lay for some time with her eyes closed, listening to her mother’s triumphant voice carrying up from below stairs, unable to face going down to observe that triumph in person. When she heard the door close softly behind her sister, she was forced to admit that she was also hiding from Jane.

Elizabeth opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling of her room, which was the same as it had ever been. Longbourn, and her mother’s voice, and the noises of the household were all the same. It was only Elizabeth’s life — and Jane’s and Mr Bingley’s — that had changed completely overnight. She forced herself to get out of bed, reminding herself that she was a grown woman, and one in possession of a good mind and a reasonable amount of common sense. Sensible people did not spend all day hiding in their bedchambers. They got up and went about the business of finding solutions to whatever dilemmas ensnared them, and that was exactly what she would do.

As she dressed, Elizabeth tried to think carefully over the facts, to bring order to the chaos of the previous night. She was engaged to a man she did not love, and who did not love her. Charles Bingley was honourable and kind, and certainly did not deserve to be paid back for those qualities by being forced to spend his life married to the wrong woman, doubtless continuing to treat her kindly and honourably, while remaining privately in love with the right woman, who happened to be the wrong woman’s sister. If she did not act, Elizabeth was going to spend the rest of her life married to a man who wished she were Jane, and Jane was going to spend the rest of her life watching the man she loved be husband to her sister.

That, Elizabeth decided, was utterly unacceptable on all levels. She was going to have to find a way to remedy the situation, and in order to do that, she would have to go downstairs.

Upon going down, she found the house was in an uproar.

This was a state of affairs not without precedence at Longbourn, but uproars came in degrees, and this one could be measured on a scale all its own. Elizabeth suspected her mother had lain awake, turning the events of the night before over and over in her head until she had framed them from near-disaster to total victory. She was ensconced in the breakfast room when Elizabeth came down, recounting the events of the previous evening to Hill, who was breathlessly commenting and interjecting frequent exclamations at the details as she brought in breakfast. Lydia was sprawled across two chairs, looking as though she found the conversation endlessly entertaining, throwing in comments which Kitty dutifully giggled over. Mary was reading, which would have seemed the most sensible action of anyone in the room had she not kept stopping to make dolorous pronouncements.

“Marriage,” she was saying as Elizabeth sat down, “is a state that ought never to be entered into without the most serious reflections on the nature of commitment. So sudden a betrothal is rarely one that has been properly considered by all parties. I have been reading Mrs Radcliffe, and her thoughts on this subject are quite clear.”

“Mrs Radcliffe writes Gothic novels,” Elizabeth observed as she accepted a cup of tea. “I do not believe she would be considered an expert on the nature of matrimonial commitment.”

“She is concerned,” Mary said with exaggerated dignity, “with the consequences of imprudent decisions. That is certainly what we are faced with today.” She shot Elizabeth a satisfied look and returned her attention to her pages.

Elizabeth stared at her sister’s bent head. It could only be a sign of how very far she had fallen that she had been bested in matters of wit by Mary.

Mr Bennet was not present. That was not unusual; he often took his breakfast in his study, and on any normal morning, Elizabeth would not have thought twice about his absence. This morning, however, she noticed it with something sharper than her usual fond exasperation — something less tolerant, less willing to overlook his eternal absence. He should have been there last night, with them, rather than spending the evening playing at the card tables. He should have said something, but he had not. She had seen Mr Bingley’s surprise and discomfiture when her father had responded to his offer of a conversation with a brief, “Not now, I thank you. There will be time for all that later.”

She drank her tea and said nothing. When Hill started clearing the dishes, Jane stood and took Elizabeth’s arm, walking her out into the hallway.

“How are you?” she asked once they were clear of the breakfast room.

“Quite well,” Elizabeth said.

Jane looked at her steadily.

“Adequately well,” Elizabeth admitted. “And you?”

Jane’s expression shifted, something moving across her face that she contained almost at once. “I am perfectly well,” she said.

Elizabeth looked at her steadily, and Jane smiled faintly.

“I am adequately well,” she conceded. “I only want to make sure that you know…you know that I…”

“I know,” Elizabeth said.

They stood in silence there in the hallway for a moment, neither of them speaking aloud the one truth that consumed them both: Jane and Mr Bingley had come to care for each other, and all of the quiet hopes and dreams that Jane had slowly allowed herself to cultivate had come to a crashing halt last night when Elizabeth fell to the floor in a dark library. Elizabeth could feel the weight of that shared knowledge between them, as surely as though it had physical substance.

“Mrs Long has been here already this morning,” Jane said. “She came while you were…asleep.”

Elizabeth closed her eyes briefly. “Of course she did.”

“Mama was very pleased to see her,” Jane continued. “She provided an account of the evening that was quite…comprehensive.”

“I have no doubt that she did,” Elizabeth sighed.

Jane smiled faintly, and for a moment, things felt normal between them. Then the particular press of quiet unhappiness returned, and Jane went back into the breakfast room, and Elizabeth went into the sitting room to find her embroidery.

The rest of the family had drifted into the sitting room, and Charlotte had come to call, settling herself quietly beside Elizabeth, by the time Mr Collins descended the stairs at half past ten. He was dressed with his customary care, his starched collars so high they nearly touched the hair flattened about his ears, and upon settling into the largest armchair and accepting a cup of tea, he surveyed the room for a long, silent moment before clearing his throat.