Page 10 of Shipwrecked with Mr Darcy

They were at dinner — the eighth dinner. Elizabeth was counting the way one counted the days of an illness or a prison sentence. The clergyman was discussing the book of Ruth, dispensing scripture by habit, without checking whether anyone was listening. His wife was nodding. The Bristol merchant was engaged in a private war with a piece of salt beef that appeared to be winning.

“Ruth's loyalty to Naomi,” the clergyman said, with gentle conviction. He had delivered this homily at least thirty times and had not yet tired of it. “Is the truest model of faithfulness in the Old Testament. She gave up her country, her people, her very identity, for the sake of a bond she was not obligated to honour.”

“And lost nothing by it,” Mrs Gardiner said. “She gained Boaz, a prosperous husband, and a place in the genealogy of kings. Loyalty was well rewarded in her case.”

“Is loyalty only valuable when it is rewarded?” Elizabeth asked. The question was aimed at no one in particular, but it hit everyone at the table. It was the danger of a mouth that moved before the thinking was done.

“It is valuable regardless,” the clergyman said, “but its value is demonstrated most clearly when⁠—”

“When it costs something,” Elizabeth said. “When loyalty demands that a person sacrifice their own comfort for someone else's happiness, and they do it, quietly, without recognition, and the person who benefits never knows the price.”

She was not talking about Ruth. She was talking about Jane — Jane folding linens in Hertfordshire. Jane maintained the appearance of cheerfulness with quiet dedication, deciding her suffering was a private matter. She was going to keep it private if it killed her. It was doing exactly that, slowly, by degrees, evident in the sharp lines of her collarbones.

She should not have said it. She especially should not have said it in front of Mr Darcy. His face had gone still, his hands unmoving on the table. She knew what his still hands meant. She had been watching them for eight days.

The table moved on. The clergyman's wife remarked on the weather. Mr Gardiner asked for more bread. Mrs Gardiner watched Elizabeth with a steady, patient gaze. She had identified the subtext and was choosing not to excavate it in public.

Darcy said nothing. His silence was louder than the clergyman's homily.

She found him on deck after dinner. She was not yet willing to determine whether it was an accident or a decision. The night was warm. The stars were excessive. The sea churned, dark and restless, entirely indifferent to the emotional state of the people floating on top of it.

He was at the port railing. His coat was off. He had loosened his cravat. She had not seen him do this before. The informality of it—the collar open, the line of his throat visible in the moonlight—was distracting. She was not prepared to analyse it.

She walked to the railing. Not beside him. Close enough to speak without raising her voice. Far enough that the gap between them was a statement.

“Miss Bennet.”

“Mr Darcy.”

The ship moved. Somewhere below, the Bristol merchant was snoring, approaching sleep the way he approached beef: aggressively.

“You were not discussing Ruth,” Darcy said.

“No.”

“You were discussing your sister.”

Elizabeth's hands tightened on the railing. “I was discussing loyalty. You may assign the reference as you see fit.”

“I am assigning it accurately, and you know it.” His voice was quiet, careful. Carelessness with this woman produced a catastrophe. “You were speaking of Jane.”

The name landed between them. Elizabeth felt the sharpness of it. She was suddenly, comprehensively tired of the careful distance she had maintained for eight days.

“Yes,” she said. “I was speaking of Jane. I was speaking of a woman who has not smiled — really smiled, with her whole face — since November. I was speaking of a woman who writes letters to Miss Bingley and does not send them. I was speaking of my sister, Mr Darcy, who is the best person I know, and who is thin and quiet and performing contentment with such conviction that everyone in Hertfordshire believes her. I am the only person who does not, because I am the only person who knows what she looked like before.”

She had not planned the speech. It arrived fully formed, the way her worst speeches always did. She felt it leave her and knew it was too much, but she could not stop it.

Darcy did not flinch. He stood at the railing and took it. A man who believed himself blameless would have argued. He was not arguing.

“Before what?” he asked. His voice was barely audible above the water.

“Before Mr Bingley left Netherfield without explanation. Before your friend departed in the night like a man fleeing a creditor. Before Jane went to London and called on his sisters and was told, by Miss Bingley, with a smile I am quite certain was intended to wound, that Mr Bingley was unlikely to return to Hertfordshire and that his affections were engaged elsewhere.” Elizabeth's voice was steady. She was proud of the steadiness. It was costing her everything. “Before she came home from London and unpacked her trunk with the same careful hands she uses for everything, and went to her room, and I found her sitting on the bed with a letter she had not finished writing, and she looked at me, and I saw⁠—”

She stopped. She had reached the edge of what she could say without crying, and she was not going to cry in front of him. She was Elizabeth Bennet. She expressed her pain through sarcasm and her grief through fury. Neither left room for tears.

“What did you see?” Darcy asked.

“I saw my sister's heart broken. Neatly. Quietly. With all the composure you could wish for, because Jane does not make scenes, and she does not assign blame, and she does not say cruel things about the people who have hurt her, because she is better than I am, and I have always known it, and it makes me furious.”