"He's in love with you," Charlotte said bluntly, pointing a finger across the table at Elizabeth as if to clarify who she meant. They were the only two people at the table, but Elizabeth still felt her cheeks heat and she swatted at Charlotte's accusing digit.
"Don't say that!" she hissed. "He is not!"
Charlotte chuckled but desisted in pointing at her friend long enough to pick up her sandwich and take a bite. She chewed, looking thoughtful, and then set it down as she swallowed. Hands free once more, she extended a finger again, but this time to point upwards in the gesture for the number one.
"First, he shows up in the middle of the night on a street near your workplace." She darted a look around the room in elaborate amazement, as though Darcy were likely to be found peering out from behind a potted plant. "Does he, perhaps, have a business interest nearby that would bring him to this part of town at such an hour?"
"How would I know what that man does or why he does it?" Elizabeth grumbled, but Charlotte was clearly not about to pay her any attention.
"Second," the other woman put up another finger, "you said he showed up in a place and at a time where he has no business being and was so ill that he actually fainted. But according to you, his first words were to ask if you were well."
"Even I am willing to admit that he may not have actually been raised by a pack of wolves and might be capable of politeness."
Charlotte continued to ignore Elizabeth's grumbling and put up a third finger, shaking the digits slightly as though in emphasis. "Third, he absolutely wouldn't hear of you making your way home without his assistance."
"He was delirious, Char," Elizabeth objected. "He probably thought he was rescuing the Marquis of Carabas."
Charlotte rolled her eyes and continued, nothing deterred by her friend's surly rejoinders. "Fourth. He offered to let you yell at him as much as you wanted."
Sitting back with a triumphant grin, Charlotte gave her friend a level look. "I wasn't even there, and I can see he is completely in love with you."
"Well, he has an idiotic way of showing it even if it is true," Elizabeth shot back. She held up her own fingers as she made her points of rebuttal. "One, he fires me after knowing me for one whole minute. Two, he has some sort of bizarre relationship with Bingley's frightful sister. Three, his ability to converse with anyone who is not his monetary equal is abysmal, unless he happens to be putting them down and then he's just brilliantat it. And four, he broke up Jane and Bingley!
"Whatever he might have been doing last night and however concerned he might have appeared for me in the midst of his illness, it isn't enough to counter all the other, very negative interactions I've had with him."
"Tell me again about the end of the night," Charlotte demanded, leaning forward and propping her chin in her hands. "Because that was probably the most romantic thing I'll ever hear in my whole life."
Elizabeth rolled her eyes and shook her head, refusing to try again to put the end of the previous night's strange encounter into words.
When Darcy had put her into the back of his automobile and shut the door, she had at first been concerned that he was actually going to wait there on the sidewalk until his driver could take her home and return for him. Much as she disliked him, it wasn't in her to be that heartless towards a man who was so obviously ill.
But then he had settled himself in the driver's compartment and they had departed. She had scarcely known what to think or how to feel, she was so off-balance from the swift succession of emotions she had experienced. There had first been anger at seeing him, then actual fright when he had passed out, followed by irritation at his intrusion on her life causing her to be late for her coach home and a wild impatience at his insistence on taking her there himself. Underneath it all had been a strange tenderness towards him that had suffused the whole encounter.
She couldn't begin to fathom what might have brought him to her at such an hour, disheveled and haggard from his sick bed. Nor could she decide upon any explanation for his insistence on seeing her home safely. Why should he care at all? Why should he even think of it? And how had he known where she would be? She couldn't recall having ever told him where she worked.
Jane might have told him and probably had, but Elizabeth would not for the whole world mention any part of last night to her still-heartbroken older sister.
No matter how much she craved Jane's opinion on that last, poignant exchange in front of her building.
He had helped her out of the back of his automobile, and the light from the streetlamp had been enough for her to see him quite clearly. He looked almost vulnerable, she thought, his face covered with dark stubble and his hair an untidy riot of dark curls atop his head. She would never have thought it possible for someone as fastidious as he was to look so unkempt in public, even if it were the middle of the night and in less savory parts of town than what he was used to.
Still struggling to make sense of something that would probably forever be a mystery to her, she had looked at him for a long moment before opening her mouth to thank him for the ride. It was the polite thing to do, even if he had caused her to need the assistance in the first place.
To her chagrin, it was not a simple thank you that came from her lips. "You didn't let me yell at you," she had stated, as though that was what had been on her mind for the whole ride home.
"Forgive me," he had said immediately. "I had thought you would value the reprieve from my more immediate presence." The words, given along with a minute bow, had made her frown at his stiff formality. It was not the sort of thing she would have expected from a man who had only minutes before been so almost wild in the uncharacteristically unreserved manner he had accosted her and all but demanded she accept his charity.
Elizabeth stared at him in open puzzlement for some time before she even realized that she was staring and rather rudely. Whether it was illness or tiredness or simple good grace, Darcy bore her inspection without seeming at all put off by her. If anything, there was a certain look in his eye that seemed almost too warm given their tumultuous relationship.
If she were being honest with herself, Elizabeth would admit that the idea that Charlotte was correct was a frightening one. She had turned from the warmth of his gaze last night in an attempt to deny it, and having slept on it, was all but convinced that everything that had made the encounter so strange was entirely due to Darcy's illness.
Well, and she had told him she didn't understand him and had thanked him for the ride as she had originally intended to do. He had called her Miss Bennet again, as she had demanded he do earlier in the evening, and she had been shocked to find that she actually would have preferred to hear him speak her name again in that low and raspy voice that was a result of his illness.
But his final words to her for the night had been nearly as good as or perhaps even better than the syllables of her name.
"You may still yell at me as much and as loudly as you wish," he had offered. "At any time convenient to you."
The words, the tone and the manner had all been so entirely the sort of snobby behavior she felt she could expect from Darcy. But there had been an underlying mixture of humor and genuine feeling. A dangerous, heady combination she thought, and something that she hadn't even attempted to tell Charlotte about or to reproduce in her own tone when sharing the strange story with her friend.
She hadn't been able to help the smile that had come as a response to those words and that hint of self-deprecation. Not trusting herself to not say something else she didn't intend to, she had fumbled for the handle and let herself into the building, not taking her eyes off Darcy until she was safely inside.
The image of him staring after her with his ashen face, lightly sheened with sweat, a study of hopefulness and regard and naked longing was something she couldn't be sure she hadn't imagined.
"What's that frown about?" Charlotte asked, pulling her back out of her musings.
"I really do think he was far too ill to be out of bed," Elizabeth replied. "And I think that the whole bizarre sequence of events had more to do with him being out of his mind with fever than it did any emotion he may or may not have towards me."
"You sound like you're worried about him."
"I'm not sure I'm worried about him," she flapped the notion away with a few waves of her hand. "Although, wouldn't I be a terrible person not to be? I can dislike him and still not want him to do something reckless with his health. I don't want him to die as a result of some misguided notion of chivalry towards me."
Charlotte smirked. "Now that is not the Elizabeth that I first met who was all too willing to crush his skull with her bare hands. You've softened towards him. You likehim."
"No," Elizabeth shook her head. "He might have any number of redeeming qualities and I can and will acknowledge that, but I will never like him. Not when he is at fault for Jane's current state of unhappiness. Anyone who could hurt someone as sweet as my sister is not a person I could hold in high regard."
"Remind me how that is Darcy's fault," Charlotte demanded. "Because all I remember you telling me is that Bingley told your sister that he didn't want to be used as a way of getting at his friends."
"That's right."
"So, Bingley didn't mention Darcy at all? And you've come to the conclusion that Darcy is still somehow the villain in this piece?"
"It's not a piece of drama," Elizabeth shot back. "It's my sister. And yes, of course it has to be Darcy. Jane hasn't met any of Bingley's other friends, let alone spent time trying to make conversation with them."
Charlotte hummed in a considering fashion. "It still doesn't really tell a complete story," she mused. "I mean, what does that even mean? 'Get at my friends.' It seems pretty open for interpretation to me. It might have very little to do with Darcy and everything to do with Bingley having second thoughts and looking for an easy way out."
"You never saw Jane and Bingley together," Elizabeth replied, shaking her head definitively. "They were so perfect together and each one so devoted to the other that it almost made me sad to see it. I don't think I could ever find someone to look at the way those two looked at each other."
"But Bingley ended it."
"Yes, and Bingley defers to Darcy in all of his big business decisions. He's used to listening to him. Darcy probably said something snooty about Jane being a social climber - even though she could never be even a little bit mercenary - and then Bingley probably second-guessed the whole thing."
Charlotte wrinkled her nose and then leaned forward again, putting her hand on the table between them. "Even if that's exactly what happened, I still think it sounds like Bingley is to blame for this separation. Unless Darcy has some way of compelling him to do whatever he wants, it was Bingley who decided to cut Jane out. And if Bingley is so weak-minded as to go along with whatever his friend says, well... Do you really want Jane to be with a man like that?"
"Of course not. But she loved him and she's hurting and I hate to see her suffer."
"Who's suffering?" A new voice broke into the conversation, and the women both glanced up sharply to see that they had been joined by one of the newest hires on the shift.
"Hello, George," Charlotte greeted the young man, giving him a lazy smile as he took a seat at the table without invitation. "Since we're all here and not out having fun, I'd say we're all suffering."
Elizabeth cast a quick smile at her friend, glad that the other woman had so quickly and deftly turned the conversation away from the personal. It wasn't that she disliked George Wickham, but rather that she had only spoken with him a handful of times in the past few weeks since he had been hired on and it had always been only about work-related topics. Still, he seemed nice enough and was cute in an unpolished sort of fashion, so she smiled and added, "I think I'msuffering most of all since I got stuck training with Lukas for the rest of the week."
George grimaced, but there was a wry smile lurking in the corners of his mouth. "Tough break. But at least you don't have to spend your nights dashing madly to and fro anymore."
Elizabeth laughed again, though the conversation hardly called for it. "I doubt I am entirely off the hook in that regard. Besides, throwing mail is a lot more complicated than it looks."
"Just don't think about it," Charlotte advised. "I've tried it a time or two on slower nights with good operators and the trick seems to be to really flick your wrists and to not concentrate too hard."
"Not thinking," Elizabeth echoed. "Right. I can do that."
The lunch hour came to an end soon after and Elizabeth returned to work and the turmoil of her private thoughts as she attempted to learn everything that being an Operator would entail. If she had been correct about nothing else, Charlotte had certainly given good advice on the topic of throwing the mail - as she distractedly mulled over the whole course of her relationship with Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth was able to master the skill.
But on the topic of Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth felt more and more certain as the night wore on that her friend was incorrect in her assessment. It was only natural, seeing as how she had never met the man, and nor was she likely to do so. A tale told of a sick man coming to offer a safe ride home to a female acquaintance might sound romantic on the face of it. It would not, however, be something that was likely to happen again. Whatever fluke of fevered thinking had brought him her way the night before, he was certain to leave her to her own commute for the remainder of her nights.
Still, as she stepped into the cold darkness of the winter night, Elizabeth couldn't help but hope that he would come again. She told herself it was because she wanted a chance to redo the previous night and to say all that she meant to say to him and to demand what was he thinking about to make the gesture in the first place. And when her solitary trudge through the deserted streets proved to be free of any sightings of so much as his automobile, she told herself that she wasn't disappointed in anything except that she had missed an opportunity to defend her sister.
A/N: I know. I am the worst person ever. If you're still here, if you're still reading, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I'll try to do better.