Chapter Thirteen

I spent the rest of the day turning that conversation around in my mind.

Of course I did, being after all in most respects a quite ordinary girl.

So to the interpretation I developed then: Mr. Darcy possessed some affection for me, but he was torn about whether to follow his inclination or not. The argument against me was simple. He saw an attachment to me as being beneath his duty and his position. After all, gentlemen in general do not offer honorable marriage to their governesses.

This was a painful thought, but I knew the world too well to blame Mr. Darcy for it.

Yet… yet I was not entirely blinded by what I expected to see. When I lean back in my seat — in fact in that very seat beneath the arbor, the chair much older and more weathered now, the vines grown more thick — and try to remember what I thought then, it is clear to me that I was not actually convinced by that theory.

But in the back of my mind, I knew that this did not make sense.

After his first, dreadful trial of the married state, Mr. Darcy was not likely to be scared off from pursuing a relationship he wished by the difference in our stations. He would not have spoken in such passionate terms of the wrongness of pursuing this happiness if he merely meant that he was expected to marry a woman with excellent connections and dowry.

I did not contemplate this mystery, though I ought to have.

The following afternoon, when John retrieved the post from Lambton, it included a letter to me from Jane, with lines from my other sisters. My sister Mary was to marry a clergyman of small fortune, small connections, and now a modest parish in a county distant from both Pemberley and our home in Meryton. He had been the curate of our rector for the last five months, and during this time I'd read several times in the letters I received about how an attachment was forming between the two, though as he had no living it would of course be impossible for them to marry.

And now I received the news that he had received sufficient preferment for them to marry.

Jane ordered me in the letter to quickly give the greetings and thanks of the family to Mr. Bingley who had suggested the curate Mr. Matthews to his new patron, just as he had helped me find a post as a governess.

I will say it again: Though it was unfortunate for Jane that they had fallen in love when any marriage was forever impossible, Mr. Bingley was the best sort of gentleman.

After reading this letter, one that did raise my heart and tender feelings, with a smile I sought out our friend. I had the hope in my heart at that time that Darcy must feel a great deal for me, and he must learn, I hoped, to ignore his compunctions.

Bingley stood in the drawing room, smiling easily, with several women smelling of rose water surrounding him, while he told a story about dancing at a ball in London until the sun had actually risen when they all left.

"Miss Bennet!" he exclaimed happily upon seeing me standing near. "Miss Bennet — you cannot be drawn by my story. I told it once already when your whole family was present. Forgive me for boring you in such a way."

"No apology necessary. None at all — I have not heard it so often that all charm is lost in the retelling." I smiled at Bingley, my cheeks dimpling, and tapped the smooth paper of my letter against the back of my hand. "I have presently received happy news from my sister Jane she enjoined me to tell you immediately, about Mary."

"Aha!" Bingley exclaimed, "Mr. Matthews, the curate! Do tell me they have decided to make a match of it."

"Yes," I smiled, "the banns are reading now. It seems Mr. Matthews has found preferment at a parish in Worcestershire, and they shall be able to marry immediately — you apparently must be thanked for recommending Mr. Matthews to Sir Barton."

"Excellent position for Matthews! Very good. An excellent fellow. I merely mentioned to my old Eton acquaintance that I knew an excellent fellow in need of a position. You left before Matthews arrived, had you not? — five months now."

"I only know him through mention in letters."

"Let me say freely, your sister has done well for herself. A better natured man I could not imagine."

"I hope as well—"

I stumbled in my speech, when I saw that Mr. Darcy was standing near us, as though drawn by seeing me smiling with Mr. Bingley and speaking excitedly.

"Yes, Miss Elizabeth?" Bingley asked with a smile, and I wondered if he had noted my susceptibility to Mr. Darcy.

"Only it is strange." I shook my head. "Quite strange for my sister to be sent off with a man who I have never met, to a place I have never been, and likely next time I see the rest of my family in Meryton, she will be gone and not there to be seen."

"You ought to visit her now," Mr. Darcy said firmly, his intense frowning eyes on me. "I can spare you for a month, or however long it takes for the banns to be read, and the couple to leave for their new home. I freely give you liberty to travel south. A wedding is a time for a family to be united together — your sister, and all your relations would be delighted to see you. No better gift than your own presence could be imagined for a wedding. I would rather cut off one of my fingers than miss that future date when Georgiana marries."

I smiled uneasily. "My place is here… caring for Cathy. If I go off—"

"Nonsense. Nonsense. Your place is where I say it is — for this next month, your place is with your family. Come, come, I'll count you out your wages owed for the time till now, so you can have funds to travel and you will no doubt be very happy away from the crowd. Cathy is too agitated by the party to make any progress in her studies. Come, Miss Bennet. Come."

"Yes, I see… yes… I am not sure if I should go — to travel so quickly without knowing if any of my friends shall be willing to be imposed upon."

"Nonsense, Miss Bennet. Nonsense. Your Mrs. Collins will be very happy to give you room, even if your mother is not."

I followed Mr. Darcy out of the room to his study, a masculine room in heavy dark woods. There were no flowers, but several marble busts of philosophers and a larger than life old painting of his grandfather sat above the mantelpiece.

Tears pricked at the edge of my eyes.

Rather than being rewarded with an unexpected vacation, I felt as though I was being expelled, pushed away from his presence. Losing my chance to be near him, as I'd prefer to be. I was sure Mr. Darcy had noticed my infatuation with him. He was too perceptive. This must be his way of telling me that he wished to have me sent elsewhere so that I might forget him — but watching the happy marriage of my sister could do no such thing.

Nothing, nothing could.

He rooted around in his massive desk looking for a money pouch. "Ah yes, you have been paid quarterly have you not?"

I nodded.

"So then it is now almost six months since you came to us." Darcy shook his head. "Six meaningful months. I feel as though my life now is entirely different from how it was before you came to us — strange. Most strange it will feel for you to be absent from Pemberley."

"I shall return. I promise."

Darcy settled into his chair, while I stood before the huge desk, like a supplicant. "Ah yes. Yes. You shall — Georgiana would never forgive you if you did not return. Nor Cathy I suspect."

He chuckled in a way that did not sound as though he was amused.

"And you?"

"And me?" Darcy asked with surprise. "You have proved a decent governess. And a dear friend — yes, yes. I would much prefer if you return… unless you should find an eligible gentleman, one who you like while gone — I would give you every blessing if you were to part from us on such terms."

He did not look at me as he said that. He spoke with a rather too quick cadence.

I pressed my fingers together, so hard they hurt, to keep tears from coming. I could not reply, my throat was thick, and every attempt to breathe brought the tears closer to the surface. I would not cry in front of him.

"Well, here you are," he said, handing me a ten pound note.

"No, Mr. Darcy, no — that is too much. The wages for the whole quarter are only seven and twelve shillings."

Darcy looked at me in a way that suggested he exactly knew the math, and had ignored it on his own volition. "Seven and twelve you say? And you have not even served out the whole of the quarter — you will not take a loan from me?"

"I would prefer not to, Mr. Darcy."

"No — though I'd happily give you ten times ten pounds — but no, I suppose not." He pulled back the ten pound note and instead handed me a five pound note. "There you are, happy, I suppose."

"Only this is less than what you owe me."

"Less? Contrary woman." He smiled at me, and I smiled back, hurt by the beauty of his face and gaze. "Well then," he added, "it shall be a security that you shall return, that I owe you yet part of your wages."

"Yes."

"You do wish to return, do you not?"

"Of course!"

"And yet you are going to see family, and you will have no work to do."

"I do not mind! — do you mourn to see me go?" My voice caught as I spoke the question.

Mr. Darcy's face froze. He stared at me. The intense eyes ate into my soul. My heart beat hard.

He at last replied, looking away, past me, at the corner of the room, where Plato's bearded marbled head sat on a shelf, with a name plate in bronze. "I have said before — it shall be different, emptier for Pemberley to lack you."

"Yet you send me away. Away from Pemberley. Away from—" I forcefully cut myself off.

He stood quickly, and came next to me, pressing warm fingers against my wet cheeks.

"Elizabeth, you are crying."

I dashed the tears away from my face.

"I am not!"

"Elizabeth… what — tell me what feeling… tell me what the matter has been."

I could not reply.

He stood close to me. I could smell that masculine spicy scent from his body, his clean wool coat, the soap he washed with. His breath played on my face. He pressed his large wide warm hand on my shoulder. "Elizabeth, please. Please, what is the matter — do tell me. Let me fix it."

I looked up at him with wide eyes, and he looked down at me, with his soft lips, and his eyes intent on me, looking at me through his soft eyelashes, his dark hair falling over his face. I could not stop crying, nor tell him the truth. The truth was that I sobbed because he was sending me away from him.

I do not know how long we stood like that, in such intimate closeness. I could feel his warmth, his size wrapping around me.

Then there was a knock on the door, and Mrs. Reynolds entered as we stepped apart, me quickly wiping the tears off my face. Mr. Darcy gruffly asked what was the matter, and she informed him that several of his guests — specifically Mrs. and Miss Bingley, had been asking after him, and wondering about the tennis party planned on the grounds for the evening.

Mr. Darcy stepped out from the room, but he looked at me quickly before he went off, and he said, "This conversation has not yet ended, Miss Bennet — I will find out what bothers you so."

And with that he left the room.

For my part I quickly found Georgiana and Cathy and made my partings, and then I convinced John to immediately take me and my packed trunk to Lambton. I took the stagecoach from there.