The dressing bell had not yet rung, but he could no longer stand the stale air of his room. He moved through the quiet corridors of Netherfield with the same unease of a man searching for something he could put his finger on. Down the staircase, past the library, the drawing room, the dining room door ajar, a single candelabra guttering into wax. He ignored it. He opened the morning room window and breathed in air that bit.
He had not meant to stay this long in Hertfordshire.
A week. Ten days. Long enough to satisfy the dowager’s orders—Go out, she had said. Make yourself seen. Choose someone before the choice is made for you. Long enough to prove to himself that he was still in command of his future. Long enough to forget that the woman most capable of helping him was also the one most likely to ruin him.
Elizabeth Bennet had always been a liability.
She was also, inconveniently, the only person in Hertfordshire who knew just how little time he had left. And the only one he feared might guess the real reason he had not yet chosen.
She had seen too much. Heard too much. It would not take much more for her to stitch it together—Wickham, the letters, the restlessness he tried to hide behind propriety.
She had said the words so lightly—"You need a wife." The simplicity of it had struck deeper than any accusation. Not pity. Not irony. Just truth, laid bare in that way she had of turning a dagger into a compliment.
And then, with that perfect flippant shrug: "Or so everyone says."
Everyone.
Not “You told me five years ago, under a tree at Chiswell Park, your coat half undone and your pride even more so…”
Apparently, everyone in Hertfordshire could see that he had grown desperate. And that was a wretched state of affairs, indeed.
Breakfast was a quiet farce. Bingley entered looking like he had been caught in a windstorm—hair askew, coat wrong-buttoned, eyes dreamy with a smile not even Miss Bingley’s disdain could cut through.
Darcy sipped his coffee and wondered what had become of Bingley’s valet.
Caroline Bingley fluttered in next, pale and tight-lipped, and began rearranging the fruit in the bowl with the deliberate intensity of a woman who had gathered somewhere that Fitzwilliam Darcy did not fancy the late lying-in habits of many fashionable ladies. Thus, determined to make her impression, she looked to have already consumed six cups of tea before her arrival.
Mrs. Hurst stumbled in some minutes later, yawning behind her hand, and asked what day it was. Nobody answered.
Darcy waited for the moment to strike.
It came, as most opportunities did, when Miss Bingley began to complain.
“I do think, Charles, that we have lingered long enough in the provinces. It has been charming, I am sure. But the social opportunities are dwindling, and the weather is turning dreadful. Louisa and I would be far more useful in Town.”
Bingley glanced at Darcy. Darcy met his eyes and gave a slight nod.
“I am returning to London,” he said. “This afternoon.”
That lit the match.
“You are?” Miss Bingley’s tone lifted an octave. “Well! Then we must as well. I cannot imagine letting you go off to be bored to death by yourself.”
Bingley set down his knife. “I had hoped to call on Miss Bennet again.”
“Charles,” his sister said tightly, “you cannot be serious.”
“I gave my word.”
Mrs. Hurst blinked awake. “TowhichMiss Bennet?”
“I hardly think I need clarify that,” Bingley said.
Miss Bingley rolled her eyes. “Heavens. Charles, you are behaving like a lovesick—”
Darcy cleared his throat. Miss Bingley’s methods were only likely to make her brother dig his heels in, and if Bingley went through with it, married Jane Bennet… why, Darcy’s life would never be free of Bennets. Another stratagem was necessary.
“London will be full of guests by now for the Parliament season. It is worth consideration.”
