CHAPTER 4

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Mr. Bingley called on Jane again the day after their dinner, and Mr. Darcy, naturally, was obliged to join him at Longbourn. It was a bit late in the day, timed for an afternoon tea before riding back to Netherfield for dinner. The Bennet house was very quiet. Jane answered the door with a blush and a courtesy, though she seemed troubled about something. Inside the house Mr. Darcy did not detect the same level of excitement as on his last visit. Indeed, the faces of those he passed seemed rather sorrowful. The entire place felt decidedly tired.

“I wondered,” Bingley said to Jane, “if you would like to join me for another stroll in the lane? It was so lovely the other day, walking out under the sun with you, and it is another fine day, as you see. If you would like to, that is.”

It wasn’t nearly so fine a day. The truth of the matter was it looked like it could rain at any moment, but Bingley seemed more urgent even than before in spending time with Miss Bennet today. Perhaps some of the concern Darcy had given him by mistake had taken root, and he wanted to be as sure of Jane’s intentions as he was of his own.

“Of course,” Jane replied.

“Ah, and will your lovely sister be joining us?” Bingley asked.

Jane’s face fell ever so slightly. “I believe she would have me send her most heartfelt apologies, but she is not feeling well today. She is resting.”

Mr. Darcy frowned. “Has she taken ill?” He surprised himself with the tone of his voice, betraying a certain amount of agitation.

Jane shook her head. “Nothing a day of rest won’t improve, I am sure. But thank you for your concern, Mr. Darcy.”

Bingley inclined his head. “It is too bad, but I am sure Mr. Darcy alone with suffice as chaperone. With your permission, m’am?” He directed the last toward Mrs. Bennet, whose reclining figure could just be made out in the next room. She seemed to agree by waving a hand in their direction, and the trio was off.

Mr. Darcy, for however his mood had soured, had no wish of imposing any unhappiness of his own on the happy couple. He hung back and let them walk ahead of him, far enough that he could not distinguish their words, and followed alone, lost in his thoughts.

Could he have married her, even if she had not been engaged?

Of course. Well, the devil take whether or not he could have; the point was, he would have. Certainly there would have been certain objections. He could not deny that her family had less standing and was of less consequence than his own, nor that her mother and some of her sisters had shown themselves to be of rather silly character. This much was not desirable in a match, but when it came to Elizabeth Bennet, he cared not; he would have married her no matter who her family or what their connections.

No. The problem was simply the engagement.

He had been confused when she had told him. How could she be spoken for already and have allowed him to connect himself to her so deeply so quickly? But so foreign to his mind was the thought of doing her any harm, of bearing her any ill will, that this confusion had not even for an instant prevented him from doing the right thing and defending her honor. So it was he had passed off their brief romp in the dirt as a lady tripping and falling, and he, her chaperone, helping her to right herself. That was all that had happened, and the Bennets and Elizabeth’s fiancee had believed it.

But Mr. Darcy knew far better. He knew that in that moment when they had stood together, beating heart against beating heart, his entire world had ceased to cascade and had coalesced into one immobile, eternal truth. His every dream and desire, his every experience and longing, all distilled into this one moment of existence. And when their lips had met… truly, he thought to himself, he could live the rest of his life a lonely miser and still die happy now, for that one blissful kiss. It would last.

It would have to, anyway.

He could have no one else but her.

The rumble of thunder, far closer sounding than he would have expected, roused Darcy back to the present. He looked up and found he had lost track of his charges. Biting his lips and silently cursing himself, he looked up at the sky. It had grown far, far darker. A stiff summer breeze kicked up seeds, telling him a storm was imminent.

Bingley and Jane were probably just on the other side of that slight rise there, he told himself. To the left. So he corrected course and made double time, hoping to spot them once he had crested it. But he did not. Instead he found the fields growing more wild beneath him, until at last a path cut across and met a little stream. There is crossed in a covered bridge. All this he took in just as the first big, heavy drops began to spatter the dirt. He bit his lips together again and began to jog lightly toward the bridge, the only shelter in sight. Just as he did, he thought he saw a figure moving in the shadows within.

“Bingley?” he called as he approached. But as he reached the stream and ducked his head under the bridge—now truly his only recourse, as the drops had accelerated to a true deluge—he found himself staring at the face of neither Jane nor Bingley.

“Elizabeth,” he said.

Elizabeth’s lips parted.