Rather than going downstairs to see Mama and Mrs. Phillips again, Elizabeth escaped out the door, and she went on a long ramble through the carefully cultivated woods nearby, all branches bare due to the season.
When she returned, Mr. Darcy was there, calling on them before he left the neighborhood.
Chapter Thirteen
Elizabeth Bennet looked luminous in Darcy’s eyes, and he felt a sharp pain in his belly, because it was quite likely that he would never see her again.
She sat on the Bennet’s worn blue-green Chesterfield with her slippered feet inelegantly placed on the velvet upholstery, her arms around her legs.
Elizabeth's normal smile was gone, and there was a stillness to her. She looked at him with dark sad eyes, and when she spoke it was slowly and without much animation.
Darcy wished he could do something to make her happy, to bring the happiness back to her eyes.
“Departing our rustic neighborhood?”
“Yes, off to London as soon as this call is done — my servants have already been informed that I shall dine at my townhouse tonight.”
Elizabeth nodded. She did not say anything else, or look at him.
“I… how fares Miss Bennet?”
“I really would have rathered it if it was I who'd lost my sight — I could be brave then. I could facethat. But Jane… and to see her so crushed by Mr. Bingley. I’d done wrong. I let him sit next to her when she was near death, and then while she recovered… he may be your friend, but I shall always despise him.”
“I do not know if he deserves hatred.”
“He whispered to Jane while she was sick that he loved her, and then… then he said, ‘I cannot love a blind woman, it would have been better if she had died.’ — I did not slap him hard enough.”
“I fully agree.”
Elizabeth’s lips quirked up, and she looked at him directly. “Are you not supposed to say that I was unladylike? That one ought never behave in such a way, in company even, no matter the provocation?”
“Ah yes, of course. Consider me as having said all that.” Darcy smiled weakly at her. “But I much prefer you as you are than I would some lady who in actual truth could never be provoked.”
“Truly?”
An actual smile from Elizabeth.
Darcy’s heart clenched at how beautiful the look in her eyes was.
How could he leave and then never come back?
“Truly.”
Elizabeth then sighed, her glum mood quickly returning. “I also yelled at my mother, quarreled with her. It made Jane unhappy. I shouldn't have. I hardly know myself.”
“Then trust me —Iknow you. You are affectionate, dedicated, capable, tender, and sweet. You have endured much, you were indefatigable in the care for your sister, and you have provided precisely the concern and care that Miss Bennet has needed. That you are… a man can be like a rope, scraped at too much. Once frayed it might snap. You need rest, and you have earned rest now that your sister is mending.”
She smiled again, a half-smile this time. “That was not a complimentary metaphor — I am like a worn out piece of rope?”
Darcy half coughed and half laughed. “It is for good reason that I have never developed any pretensions of a literary nature.”
An actual laugh from Elizabeth. “No, no, you must not.”
And then the time for a polite call was done, and Darcy was required to leave.
He looked at his watch, and Elizabeth sighed at seeing him do so. “So quick?”
“I am afraid I must head off — otherwise it shall be dark already when we reach London.”
