Page 11

“I thought you might tell me, if I waited,” she said. “Then I feared that waiting had only left you alone.”

“You couldn't have made me speak before I knew how.” Elizabeth leaned towards her. “Please don't take his conduct as an occasion to accuse yourself. We shall never reach the end of the matter if every person except my husband is to blame.”

Jane smiled faintly, then laid her hand over Elizabeth's. Her touch was so familiar that the tears Elizabeth had resisted at her arrival came without warning. She bent her head, angry with herself for making her sister's first afternoon sad, and Jane moved to sit beside her without another word.

“I may leave him,” Elizabeth said when she could speak again. “For a time. Perhaps longer. My uncle has explained the provision, and there is a room here.”

“Do you wish to?”

It would have been a kindness to make the question less simple. Elizabeth took the handkerchief Jane offered and straightened its corner upon her knee. She could describe why she might have to leave. She had rehearsed that account so thoroughly that every part followed the last with the precision of a proof. Desire was less obliging.

“I wish that I could stay without being managed. I wish I did not enjoy being with him when he chooses to be agreeable.”

“Is he only agreeable when he wishes something from you?”

“No. That is one of his most troublesome qualities.” Elizabeth gave a small, uneven laugh. “He can be very good company. He remembers things I hardly remember telling him. Then he does something which makes me wonder whether all that attention is only another means of arranging my life.”

When Jane spoke, it was with less certainty than Elizabeth was accustomed to hearing from someone offering help.

“I should like you to be able to say you wanted to come home with him. Or that you wanted to remain here. Whichever it was, I should like to hear you say it without explaining first what might happen to someone else.”

Elizabeth looked at their joined hands. She had come prepared to defend herself against Jane's goodness, afraid it might require more endurance than she could offer. Instead her sister had wished her an ordinary freedom so gently that she could hardly bear it.

Before she left, she told her aunt that Charlotte's copied letter from Lady Catherine had reached her directly on Monday evening. She had sent an acknowledgement back with the messenger. Charlotte had not accepted the invitation to Rosings. Elizabeth asked whether there was any answer yet from Sir William, and Mrs. Gardiner said that it was too early to expect one. Jane heard the names, but no account of the death was added for her benefit.

* * *

Darcy was in the library when Elizabeth returned to Grosvenor Square. He had brought the second volume of the novel from upstairs and placed it on the small table beside the chair she generally chose. It was an invitation so carefully devoid of insistence that she nearly smiled before he spoke.

“How is your sister?”

“Very well. My father has sent her with his spectacles, which I believe must be a new method of ensuring a letter.”

Darcy looked up from his book. “He will receive one promptly, if he wishes to read anything before the week is out.”

“He may have discovered that the company improves when he cannot distinguish it.”

That earned the quiet laugh she liked best, the one which seemed to surprise him on its way out. Elizabeth sat down. The room smelled faintly of leather and the fresh coals which someone had put upon the fire. There was no visitor, no unopened communication awaiting discussion between them, and for the first time that day she wanted the hour to pass slowly.

Darcy offered her the novel. “Your young lady has discovered a relation.”

“Did she fall upon him?”

“Not yet. Her constitution appears to have improved.”

Elizabeth opened the book at the place he indicated. The heroine had indeed acquired an uncle, whose estate and benevolence were described at lengths which suggested the author had mistaken them for the same quality. She read a paragraph aloud, then stopped.

“I should like to know whether he would be considered quite so excellent if he possessed only a cottage.”

“He would have difficulty receiving the whole party.”

“Then they might visit in smaller numbers. It would improve the conversation enormously.”

Darcy moved his chair a little nearer. He defended the practical merits of an ample house while she disputed the moral distinction attached to its ownership. Elizabeth felt the possible quarrel approach and waited to see whether he would insist upon winning it.

Instead he looked at the page and said, “The aunt has only a modest income, and she appears to have more sense than anyone else.”

“Do not be deceived. I am certain the author will punish her for it.”