Mr. Darcy stood on the terrace and stared at the eastern horizon and the first blush of dawn. He wondered if Elizabeth (as he thought of her to himself) still kept up her practice of early morning walks. He really wanted to see her, to speak to her, to understand her. She had so puzzled him the day before. She had seemed surprised, almost embarrassed, when she first saw him; then at dinner, she was so attentive, too attentive really, almost attentive as Miss Bingley. He shuddered at the memory of that lady, although he blamed the chill still lingering from the night for his reaction. But when he and Bingley rejoined the ladies after dinner there she was, the Elizabeth he had fallen in love with. He had no time to think further on the dilemma posed by Miss Elizabeth Bennet as he heard footsteps behind him.
"Good morning, Mr. Darcy," said Elizabeth. She handed him a mug, a servant's mug. He took a sip, it was coffee, and it was prepared just the way he liked it.
"Pray excuse me," said Mr. Darcy. "I am forgetting my manners." He looked around, no one was near, and so he said. "How are you, Miss Bennet? Forgive me, but you will never be Miss Carruthers, not to me. And I must thank you for this pleasant surprise and?" he looked a question at the cloth bag hanging on her arm.
"Very well, now; and you're welcome." Elizabeth took a sip from her own mug and jiggled the bag. "I have a currant scone and a cheese one. Follow me, there's a bench in a prettyish kind of a little wilderness down and to the left. We can sit there and watch the sun rise. I'll let you have first choice."
Mr. Darcy smiled and shook his head. "Ladies always have first choice; and what if I'd like some of each?"
Elizabeth tilted her head and said "I had not thought to bring a knife. We could each take a bite and then switch – if you promised not to take too big a bite – and if you didn't mind my lips on your scone." The sudden realization of what she had just said had Elizabeth ablush.
If he did not have a mug of coffee in his hand, and if she did not have a mug of coffee in her hand, and if they were not in full view of the house, and if he were not a stolid lump of Derbyshire oak, Mr. Darcy would have damned propriety and kissed Elizabeth. None of those preconditions being true, he did not, but he did stare at her lips, with such a longing, and for so long, that her chin started to come up and she might have stretched up on her tip toes and kissed him had not a turtle dove cooed and broken the spell.
Mr. Darcy offered to carry the bag of scones but Elizabeth countered that they were light, and pointed out that Cook would be horrified to hear any suggestion to the contrary. Mr. Darcy laughed and insisted, as a gentleman always carried the burden, no matter the weight. Elizabeth laughed, gave him the bag, and took his arm.
The two of them went down the steps and walked toward the bench in the prettyish kind of a little wilderness; a bench which, not incidentally, was not in view of the house.
-}{-
Jane watched all this, although she could not hear what was said, from the window of her bedroom, ignoring her husband who was tugging at the blanket she had wrapped around her nakedness. She watched until her sister and Mr. Darcy were out of sight and then she threw up in the basin her maid had left beside her bed just for that purpose.