“Oh.” Jane’s brow creased. “I am sorry. I know you were looking forward to it.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth to agree.
Then changed her mind.
“I was not entirely.”
Jane looked surprised. “No?”
“It is a long journey,” Elizabeth said, picking up a slightly crumpled ledger and smoothing it more than necessary. “And Derbyshire is full of hills. And opinions.”
“I thought you liked hills.”
“I like opinions even less.”
Jane smiled. “Then you shall enjoy your reprieve.”
Elizabeth did not answer.
She went to the window instead. The garden was a mess of high summer—too much green, not enough order. She could hear Lydia’s laughter from the back lawn, loud and bright and thoughtless. Mary’s pianoforte trickled in from the sitting room like someone walking slowly down a staircase and forgetting their place.
Elizabeth folded her arms.
She had not thought abouthim.
Very studiously, she had not.
Not since London.
She had put it all away—the rare smile, the notebook, the insult, the heat of standing too close in a ballroom and pretending not to notice. She had put it all away because there had been nothing to do with it. Because he had made no effort. Because she did not want him to.
The trip’s cancellation felt like a reprieve.
But she hated that it felt like anything at all.
May, 1811
Pemberley
The letter from Bingleyhad been far too cheerful for Darcy’s current mood.
It had arrived in the morning post, written in an enthusiastic scrawl and sealed with a haphazard wax stamp that had cracked in transit. Bingley was “entertaining the idea of an estate” somewhere in the country. Nothing settled, nothing signed, buthe was interested. Hopeful. The whole thing read like a man proposing marriage to a hypothetical cow.
Darcy set it aside without replying.
He could not think about Bingley’s leisure pursuits. Not while he was still answering evasive questions from Georgiana’s new companion and paying off another tutor who had noticed too much and said too little.
Colonel Fitzwilliam was still in Spain—somewhere near Salamanca, if his last letter could be believed—and therefore utterly useless. Darcy had drafted a reply to him twice and burned both.
That left only one person he might speak to.
Someone who knew enough to be dangerous. Someone who might already be speaking to others.
The dowager Countess of Matlock had never been known for her discretion, only her taste in scandal.
Darcy stood at his study window, staring down at the gravel path where the morning’s rain had turned the stones the color of ash. He had not left the house in three days. Georgiana barely left her room.
And Wickham was gone. Hopefully forever.
