The next morning Darcy woke with a terrible headache and an aching stomach. Why had he ever drunk so much? He wished he could claim he had lost all memory of the night, and make some sort of pretence that the argument with Bingley had not occurred.

And he was glad it had. Bingley was not a worthy friend of a worthy gentleman.

The orders to pack and prepare his carriage had been given before he collapsed on the bed, while the room spun dizzily about him.

It hurt to lose a friend he had valued greatly. They had been close these five years past.

Darcy stood from the big bed and pressed his hand hard against his forehead. His valet entered the room, with a concoction that smelled of vinegar and tomatoes that he pushed into Darcy's hand. "Reckon you feel terrible, sir. Terrible. Drink this. Drink it right up. You'll feel better quite soon."

Darcy took a swallow of the foul concoction, and nearly gagged on it.

"Pinch your nose, sir. It will go down easier." Darcy stared at the drink, and he cautiously sniffed it again.

"What the deuce is in here?" He put it softly down on the incidental table in the room. "I did give the orders last night for us to be ready to leave? Are the rest of my clothes packed?"

"Are you sure, sir?" The valet looked down and to the side. "Begging your pardon sir, not my place to criticize, but I've not seen you drink so much in a night since the day after you heard your father died. You and Mr. Bingley are good friends, and often in the morning the —"

Darcy's first instinctive reply was a sharply spoken No, it is not your place. But he imagined Elizabeth hearing him castigate a servant making an attempt to keep peace between two old friends, and he sighed. He put his hands on a windowsill and looked out as his stomach heaved and roiled and his head pounded.

At last Darcy said, "In vino veritas. True things were said betwixt us last night. I must break the connection."

"Yes, sir. We are all ready to leave then."

"I thank you, and —" Darcy paused. What he was about to say felt odd coming from his mouth. "It was not your place to suggest reconciliation, but I thank you nonetheless for the sentiment."

"Yes, sir."

With the help of the valet he dressed into a splendid green coat, and then he walked downstairs.

Bingley sat in the breakfast room, only half dressed and with his head in his hand. When he looked up at Darcy, his face lightened, "Say, you aren't meaning to leave, dear fellow? Not truly?"

"I am."

"Call the whole matter quits? Can't we? I'll not hold anything you said while drinking against you. And you need not —"

"Do you yet intend to throw over Miss Bennet to pursue her sister?"

Bingley face hardened and he got a mulish expression. "I must follow my heart. I will not force myself to marry a woman I do not love, no matter how much you wish for me to do so."

"Then we cannot remain friends. I will hold nothing you said while drunk against you either. But the fundamental of the matter is that you have chosen to behave in a dishonorable manner, and I shall not remain on the closest terms of association with someone who chooses to jilt a woman the instant he sees her supposedly prettier sister."

"I do not need to pursue Jane. Not quickly. She has no other suitor at the moment, and I can remain but a friend of hers for a time, but I cannot marry Miss Bennet, not when I no longer have the slightest inclination towards her."

"Damnation, man, two days ago you were canting to the heavens about your precious, pink hued flower, and now you care nothing for her?"

"My head." Bingley growled. "Quieter. I wish this deuced headache would go away. How did we ever drink so much while at the university?"

"You ought try," Mr. Darcy suggested, "The concoction my valet prepared for me. It is so suitably disgusting that the smell alone ought to drive away all thought of your poor head."

"Didn't work for you, I saw you flinch away from the light the instant you entered the door."

Darcy's heart was full of a strange and sad sensation. He was to leave Mr. Bingley, and they would never be on such close terms of friendship again. He had not expected this to be the outcome of a visit to his friend's new estate.

"Why do you care so much? It does not make sense, but you almost act like you care for Miss Bennet like a lover. If you were a lover towards her, you would rejoice that I am quitting the field, and not plan to decamp to London, or Pemberley or wherever you are headed."

Darcy sighed, and rubbed the face his valet had just shaved smooth. "Bingley, you… it simply is not done. You do not make love to a woman and then heave her aside at the drop of a hat."

"I hope, Mr. Darcy, I hope that one day we will again be friends. You have been a dear friend to me. You know that. I owe you a very great deal. So do not…"

"We shall see." Darcy tightened his lips. "Good bye, Bingley. Good bye."

The two shook hands, briefly, and that was that.

Mr. Darcy took his carriage first to Longbourn to call one last time upon Elizabeth… Mr. Bennet and Miss Bennet… before he quit the neighborhood entirely. The entire twenty minute ride he felt a strange and deep reluctance to take a final leave. He would miss… he would miss Elizabeth greatly. She and Mr. Bennet had become dear friends in this month during which he suffered the loss of a different friend.

Did he really need to leave entirely? Darcy insisted to himself that he did.

Darcy stepped out of the carriage, wrapping his coat tightly around himself against the chill breeze that cut at his cheeks. He settled his hat firmly on his head mournfully looked at the door.

It would not open itself, he needed to go and knock, if he were to take leave of Elizabeth.

The door opened, in defiance of Darcy's thoughts, and with a smile Elizabeth stepped out into the wind and greeted him. "Mr. Darcy, come very early. What brings you calling so soon —" The smile collapsed from her face as she frowned at his carriage with the heavy iron bound trunks tied up against the back, and the several extra horses tied up to the back to run with the carriage.

He stepped up to her and took her hand to make that brief polite kiss. "I fear we must take leave of each other, for the time at least. Might I call on you and your father for some fifteen minutes?"

"Dear, oh dear," she replied with some distress. "Tell me no one is ill. Not your sister? Not your uncle or one of your cousins?"

"Nothing of that sort." He tried to smile at her, but it came out as a sad, thin line.

"Oh," she cried, "So suddenly. I depended upon you to dance with me again at the next ball. And Papa shall miss you very much. Very much indeed."

The named gentleman walked to the still open door. "Come in, Darcy, come in — Lizzy, what is the matter."

"He is leaving. Why are you leaving if there is not an illness! Some sudden business?"

Darcy's stomach felt ill at seeing Elizabeth's distress.

He rather felt as though he were abandoning Elizabeth after their emotional conversation of the day before. When her mother had arrived in the neighborhood, and when her suitor was jilting her, Elizabeth's true friends should stay close to her, to be her support.

"Come in, both of you." Mr. Bennet said gruffly and a little thickly. "I shall be sorry to see you go. I would be very happy if you keep up a correspondence of some sort with me. Or half with Lizzy, since she is the one who takes the effort to write my letters for me. You have become a friend. Inside. It is too cold to stand about in the December air for no reason."

Mr. Darcy carefully wiped his shoes off on the entryway mat, and put his coat away, even though he only planned to take ten minutes to speak with them. He followed to the study room.

Elizabeth walked in front of him, there was a slight sway to her hips which set her yellow flowered dress rustling about her thickly stockinged ankles, visible in her pretty silvery slippers. The color made her a little pale, but it also gave a beautiful creamy contrast to her glowing skin. The curve of her neck, on this day when he knew he would leave, and see her no more, for a fair passage of time at least, made his chest to catch.

What a fool Bingley was to see a woman like this, and not throw aside every concern and every other idea in his head to pursue her hand and her heart. Only a man of the densest substance would be able to walk away from her whilst he had any hope of gaining her affections.

They entered the book lined study, with its red coated portrait of Mr. Bennet's grandfather over the marble fireplace, the thick lines of books from subscribed scientific and archeological studies along the wall to the right, and the fine walnut bookshelves holding the collections of Elizabeth's favorite novels on the right. The poetry and the Greek and Roman texts in their own shelf. And the rolling ladder to reach the highest shelves. Elizabeth's familiar desk next to her father's. And there was the small clock on Mr. Bennet's desk that rang to remind him to take his walks.

Mr. Bennet had once said of his room that books were the proper wallpaper of a civilized man.

When they entered the room, Mr. Bennet pulled out from his desk a dusty bottle of a stoppered whisky and three glasses. "You are leaving us then," he said as he poured the glasses. "You must have a parting drink to your health. Auld lang syne, and all — it will take some little time before you cease to come to mind, I'll say that. Can I hope you will be back to stay with Bingley again one day when whatever business is settled?"

"I am afraid… there is no business matter I must settle. And I shall not be visiting with Mr. Bingley again."

"Mr. Bingley, now?" Mr. Bennet's sardonic voice suggested that he had gained from that one sentence a good notion of what had happened. And he probably had. Darcy could not bear to look at Elizabeth, fearing both that she would show a distress on her face, and that she would not.

Mr. Bennet handed the glasses around and clinked his against Darcy's, making the Latin toast of "Salveo."

Darcy repeated "salveo" in quiet voice, and then he and Elizabeth clinked glasses as well. He swallowed the whiskey in a single gulp. It lay heavily on his already tender stomach. "I quarrelled last night with Mr. Bingley. I… I would rather not discuss the cause of our dispute, but each word I said… I yet stand behind and in front of those words, though I now must stand there in the cold and sober light of morning. Miss Bennet, I fear… I must be the bearer of additional poor news." Elizabeth looked at him with quiet eyes, on the edge of which tears hid, and her lip trembled. "I do not believe Mr. Bingley has the slightest intention of continuing the… course upon which your friendship was headed."

Elizabeth said nothing.

And then she blinked. "What! You two argued over me? How flattering. But what… how…" Elizabeth nibbled her lip. "Surely you need not leave? There can be no need for you to leave."

"I must. I have lost my welcome at Netherfield and I…"

"I don't want you to leave."

Elizabeth bit her lip and looked down.

Darcy felt something clutch in his stomach, and he was not sure what it meant.

"Not over me!" She exclaimed, looking up again. "How ridiculous. You were offended on my behalf that Mr. Bingley — he plans to abandon his course with me? Was he so serious? I had never realized he was so serious. Yesterday… yes, yesterday he acted in a way… I wondered if he meant to make me an offer."

Elizabeth nibbled her lip again. Her brows were wrinkled, and she looked distressed, but in a confused way. She did not look hurt. Not like when Georgiana had realized that Wickham wanted nothing but her money. The clear point Darcy could see was that she did not yet look like an abandoned and jilted lover.

He wished he knew what Elizabeth was thinking.

And alas, he must leave and head his way to London. He felt a pain in his chest. "You and Mr. Bennet ought to someday visit Pemberley. I would be happy if I were to see you. You both, that is." He looked at the gentleman. "Do promise you will visit one day."

"I promise. But not for a few months yet, in likelihood. I do not like to travel in winter. But promise you will send us a letter, after at most a month or two."

"I promise."

"We'll arrange some day to call on your giant library then, after you send a letter — I'll not assume your hospitality if you are not forward in showing that you have not forgotten our friendship."

"Never."

Why was it so difficult to part with Elizabeth? He took Elizabeth's small, soft hand in his own. Bingley's accusation echoed in his ear, You sound like you are in love with her yourself. Well go now, I give you my blessing to pursue that harridan.

At last he pulled his hand away. Except, he kept Elizabeth's hand, and pulled her with him.

She looked up into his eyes, with something breathless. And in that moment Darcy thought, though it was ridiculous, that he could kiss her, and she would be happy to kiss him back. Even in front of her father.

And he was too proper and too shocked by the thought to actually kiss her, and the moment was lost, and he no longer could kiss her. And he did kiss her hand, briefly, and in the formal way where the dry skin of the lips barely moistened the lady's hand.

"Good bye, Elizabeth. I beg you, live in good health."

Darcy felt a deep guilt in his soul.

How could he imagine kissing her? She must still be in love with Bingley. No matter what she looked like at this moment, women fell easily in love with Bingley, but never truly with him. And he would not intrude upon Elizabeth while she yet hurt from the abandonment by her previous lover.

And then he was gone. Away from Elizabeth.

Out into the yard, without having any memory of passing back through the tiled hallway out of Longbourn. Back to where his carriage waited. And then his fine conveyance took him off and away from her, perhaps, despite their promises to write and visit, forever.