The words settled into her mind like a key turning in a lock.
Her stomach dropped at the sudden recollection of those months. Ramsgate was fresh, the wound too raw, and sherecalled Miss Bingley hinting at a painful dispute between brother and sister. The shame and terror must have been suffocating when Darcy arrived in Hertfordshire to stay with Bingley. He had been carrying the weight of his sister’s near-ruin, and she—blinded by her own pride—had judged him merely disagreeable. She had not been entirely wrong, but she had been spectacularly unfair.
“Perhaps I was hasty in my assessment,” she said, which was the most extraordinary understatement she had ever produced.
Allegra squeezed her arm, her touch grounding. “He is proud. I will grant you that. His father encouraged it. Old Mr. Darcy believed the family name carried obligations as well as privileges, and he raised Fitzwilliam to consider both carefully before acting. As the grandson of an earl and master of Pemberley, he was taught that his choices reflected on an entire legacy.” She paused, and her voice carried the reflective warmth of someone recounting a history she had witnessed up close. “But his pride is not contempt, Elizabeth. It is a caution. He weighs everything and considers every connection. His father wished him to marry well, and ‘well’ in old Mr. Darcy’s vocabulary meant a woman of character and standing who would do credit to the name.”
Character and standing.Elizabeth heard the wordstandingand felt it land with a sting she did not wish to accept. A month ago, she had possessed character in abundance and standing not at all. A country gentleman’s daughter with no fortune, no connections, and no claim on the attention of a man who weighed every alliance against the lofty standard his father had set.
And yet, Darcy had proposed despite this, and it had been the cruelest barb in his proposal—against my better judgment, against my will, against reason—because it told her she was theexception to his rules. Not a compliment but a concession he would rather not make.
And now? Now that she had fifteen thousand a year, a house on Grosvenor Street, and a godmother who was a duke’s daughter—the very definition ofstanding—Darcy had crossed a garden on a Wednesday that was not a Thursday. He had come to discuss her wardrobe and inquire after Jane’s welfare with a softness she had never seen in Hertfordshire.
She had been beneath his notice until fortune elevated her into his field of vision. The changed manner, the careful solicitude, themore careful observerwho now admitted his errors, all of it might be nothing more than the natural recalibration of a man who no longer needed to overcome his pride because the obstacle had been removed.
Surely, a Darcy was above the scent of fortune hunting, yet she could not quite dismiss the gnawing suspicion that her change in circumstances had, perhaps, made her less regrettable.
“You have gone remarkably quiet,” Allegra remarked, pausing to inspect a silk-lined window display. “I trust you aren’t mourning the loss of those forty-seven pounds already?”
Elizabeth blinked, pulling herself back from the brink of that dark contemplation. She forced a bright, practiced smile. “I am merely calculating the cost of bonnets. It requires a great deal of concentration, Allegra. One does not arrive at such figures without a certain degree of mental strain.”
Allegra laughed, entirely unconvinced, and tucked her arm back into Elizabeth’s as they turned toward the next shop. “You are a terrible liar, Elizabeth. But do keep practicing—I suspect it will be a useful skill in the weeks to come.”
Gerrard’s confectionery occupied a cheerful shopfront on a street just off Piccadilly, with small marble-topped tables and the sweet, cold smell of ices and sugar with the bustle of aplace devoted entirely to pleasure. Allegra secured a table by the window, ordered pistachio ices for herself and Elizabeth, vanilla for Jane, lemon for Mary, and something involving chocolate for Georgiana, who received it with the reverential silence of a sixteen-year-old encountering a religious experience.
“This,” Elizabeth said, tasting the pistachio, “is the single greatest argument for having a fortune that I have encountered since arriving in London.”
“Better than the library?”
“The library is a close second. But the library does not melt, and the urgency of consumption adds considerably to the pleasure.”
Allegra grinned. “I knew I liked you.”
They were laughing, all five of them, crowded around the marble table with their ices and their parcels and the easy, uncomplicated joy of young women who had spent a day doing something frivolous and were not sorry for it.
And then the bell above the door rang, and a voice said, “Miss Courtenay! What a delightful surprise.”
Charles Bingley stood in the doorway of Gerrard’s in a blue coat, hatless, his ginger hair disarranged by the wind, with the open, eager expression of a man who had walked in looking for ices and discovered something considerably better. His gaze swept the table and arrived at Jane, and what happened to his face in the next three seconds was the most thorough betrayal of a man’s interior life that Elizabeth had ever witnessed: surprise, recognition, joy so naked it bordered on indecent, and then the belated, slightly frantic attempt to reassemble himself into a mien that resembled social composure, which failed, because Charles Bingley had never in his life successfully concealed a single emotion.
“Miss Bennet,” he said, and his voice cracked. “Miss Jane Bennet. You are in London.”
“Mr. Bingley.” Jane’s hand tightened on her spoon, but her voice remained a steady, calm anchor. “How pleasant to see you.”
Pleasant.The word was a polite wall. Bingley winced, looking like a man who had expected a blow and received a cold shoulder instead.
“May I… that is, if I am not intruding? I was passing by, and I recognized Miss Courtenay through the glass.”
“Naturally.” Elizabeth looked at Jane, who was suddenly very interested in her melting ice, while Georgiana and Mary were fixed on a page of sheet music between them.
“Please join us, Mr. Bingley,” Allegra said, with the smooth social grace of a woman rescuing a drowning man. “You know everyone, I think? Miss Bennet, Miss Elizabeth, Miss Mary, and Miss Darcy.”
“Miss Darcy! Georgiana. I didn’t know you were in town. Is your brother well? He never mentioned—” Bingley cut himself off, pulled a chair from a neighboring table, and sat directly beside Jane. “You are all looking remarkably well. All of you. Very well indeed. I heard of your good fortune, Miss Elizabeth. It is wonderful news. You deserve every happiness. Your entire family does.”
His gaze drifted back to Jane, and the look was so wretchedly tender that Elizabeth cringed on his behalf, although her heart cooled faster than the ice in her dish.
She was different now, a fortunate “Miss Bennet” who now felt the weight of her new bank balance.
“You are very kind, Mr. Bingley,” Elizabeth said. “We understood you were occupied at your club.”
