Page 105 of Faceless

A report could not teach that. Someone who had stood in the house could. And so, for four months now, she had been going quietly through every man she had ever known, and the list… was very short. And not particularly satisfying, but there it was.

She had gone to the portrait in the solar again today, and again, it had set her off.

She had thought first of Colonel Fitzwilliam, and dismissed it as a trick of the painter; but the colonel would not stay dismissed. He had never been to Longbourn, but he had talked to her enough to have pictured it. He had found her on the steps in Cheapside and looked stricken at what she told him, as though he would have liked to pull her from the wreckage of her life himself. And yet, early at Rosings, he had been at some pains to teach her that a younger son had no means to marry where he liked — said plainly enough to put out any expectation before it could catch.

That had argued against him for weeks. But a man with something to hide might say exactly that, and if the colonel had gone to ground from his own regiment and sheltered here behind a borrowed barony, she could very nearly picture it. It was preposterous. She could see it anyway.

What she could not make fit was the plain measure of him. The man whose shoulders her hands had learned ran past six feet by several inches; the colonel did not.

Collins came next, and only because height insisted on him. There had been length enough in Mr Collins to satisfy the rough reckoning of shoulders and brow. But there had never been a particle of kindness in the man, and kindness was the one thing the man in the dark had never failed in — and Collins, in any case, was four hundred miles south, installed in her father’s house, eating her father's dinners off her father’s plate. Whatever the height, he could not be sitting across a table from her in Aberdeenshire.

After that, she was reduced to ticking off the rest. Bingley, who was not so tall, and who was all open warmth besides; the man who came to her each evening carried himself like a door held shut by hand, and to put Charles Bingley’s candid face behind that whisper felt indecent. One or two of her uncle’s connexions from the City, men who had dined in Gracechurch Street and had some means and the odd generous impulse — but none had ever spoken to her at any length, and none knew Longbourn.

The list thinned. The list ran out.

And at the end of it, where she had been refusing to let him stand, remained Darcy.

He matched. That was the trouble with him; he matched where none of the others would. The height was right, and so was the rest — the dry turn in an argument, the silence with force held down inside it, the press of intelligence under his manners, the sense that he cared far more than he would ever consent to show.

And he had a sister. Good heavens, how was she only just now thinking of that? A younger sister who played beautifully and whom he claimed to adore. Georgiana. A name that seemed too close to be a coincidence.

By every measure of resemblance, it was him.

And by every measure of possibility, it could not be. He was dead. And even had he lived, the Darcy she had known had looked at her across every room in Hertfordshire as though cataloguing her deficiencies; he had never paid her a compliment that was not also a correction; he had made it plain that he thought her beneath his notice.

Such a man did not vanish into a borrowed name and a chosen whisper on the edge of the world. He did not hide his face from his own wife. He did not spend his pride so cheaply on a woman he had never troubled to admire. It was the surest argument she had, and she made it to herself, but it did not take.

Too many bells were ringing at once. She could dismiss the colonel and Collins and the rest in a breath each, and she could not dismiss Darcy at all, however dead he was, however little he had ever thought of her. She stood a moment with the unopened packet in her hand and did not let herself finish the thought — only felt the edge of it, the thing she was not going to name yet.

Elizabeth went to the library, took the chair by the fire, and broke the seal on the packet.

Jane’s hand! And the script was large and flowing, not the cramped lettering she had seen from her sister last. Jane was in excellent spirits. She settled in beside the fire and prepared to spend a very pleasant quarter hour.

My dearest Lizzy,

I write with more good news than I have had occasion to send in some considerable time, and I find I hardly know where to begin except at the beginning, trusting you to read through to the end before you form opinions, which I know has never precisely been your habit.

Mary is to be married. I shall pause here and allow you to recover, as I required a full quarter of an hour myself. You will perhaps remember Mr Thomas Peele, the young clerk Uncle Gardiner once thought might do for her, before your own situation was settled and the question was set aside. It appears the question was set aside only by the rest of us. Mary, characteristically, said nothing about it to anyone and simply continued making up her own mind. Mr Peele is a quiet young man, not handsome, not wealthy, not remarkable in any particular way that I have been able to identify, and I have watched Mary watch him and concluded that she finds all three of these qualities precisely to her liking. Uncle Gardiner proposes to take him in as a junior partner once the business is on steadier footing, and Mary’s settlement will go towards that in part, which means she will have both a husband and a purpose, which I believe suits her far better than either would alone. She seems genuinely content, Lizzy. You know how rare a thing that is with Mary.

Kitty, I am sorry to report, is being very tiresome about it. She says she is not jealous, and I believe she is not, precisely, but she is very much alone now that Lydia is gone, and it seems to her that everyone is gaining a situation but herself (and me, which she overlooks). I suppose it is not an unreasonable observation, even if it is being expressed with rather more feeling than the occasion strictly warrants. She has taken up drawing, which gives her some occupation, though she informs me daily that she has no talent for it and that it is entirely unfair that Elizabeth got all the cleverness and she got nothing useful whatsoever. I have told her that self-pity is not becoming, and she has told me that I am very tiresome when I say true things in that particular way, and we have settled into our usual understanding.

I must tell you about Lydia, because I know you have been anxious. She is in lodgings in Norwich, decent and respectable, and she is not in want of anything material. Uncle Gardiner has secured a widow to live with her for now, which, I gather, is an arrangement more suitable than it is agreeable to either of them. He has suggested that, for now at least, it would be better if Lydia stays where she is, by which he means away from Kitty and away from Mary until after Mary’s wedding, at least. Mama says it is very hard, but the only thing that is hard about it is Mama’s frequent tears.

Uncle says a solicitor there has seen to the rest of the arrangements for Lydia, and I cannot account for the source of the funds except to say that they arrived as so many things have arrived lately, which is to say quietly and from a direction I find it more peaceful not to examine too closely. Mr Wickham was arrested some weeks ago on charges relating to gaming debts and various unsettled accounts, the particulars of which are not entirely clear to me, and is at present detained. Lydia writes that she is bearing this with fortitude. She does not elaborate on what fortitude means in the present circumstances, and I have not asked.

Uncle Gardiner has also had some reason for encouragement. An investor approached him through an intermediary last month with terms my uncle describes as both generous and very discreetly arranged. He would not say more than that, but he has seemed, these past weeks, like a man who has had some small portion of the last year returned to him, and I am content with that and ask no questions. I find I have developed a talent for not asking questions lately. I cannot imagine where I learned it.

We are all of us settled in Pentonville now, in a small house but a respectable one, near enough to the warehouse that Uncle Gardiner does not lose more time than he can spare in the walk. The rooms grow no larger, however much we might wish them to. Mama is tolerably well and has taken a great interest in Kitty’s drawing, which is to say she tells Kitty daily that she has no talent for it and suggests she try embroidery instead. The arrangement suits neither of them and entertains both enormously. Uncle and Aunt Gardiner are very good to us all.

I must tell you, too, that I saw a notice in the paper last week that Mr Bingley has married. A Miss Harrington. I examined my feelings on reading it with considerable care, and find I am not much moved, which surprises me less than I thought it would. There is a rumour through Uncle Gardiner that Mr Bingley’s affairs were also affected by the same difficulties that touched Uncle’s business, not to the same degree but sufficiently that a wife with a very considerable fortune in timber was perhaps not a matter of the heart alone. I find this intelligence more settling than I expected. I had told myself a story about it all, and the story, I discover, was not quite right, and having a truer picture is a relief of sorts even when the truer picture is not a flattering one.

I have been entertaining a few callers of my own, but none of particular interest. Aunt says that Mr Pendegraff has a weak chin, and Kitty declares that Mr Ashton slurps his tea, but those complaints do not move me. It is rather that I find nothing in them worth admiring, and it is particularly liberating when I consider the power I have now of rejection. Indeed, Lizzy, I am quite content, and I mean to be patient. A woman in possession of ten thousand pounds need not settle, and so I shall not.

Now, dearest, I must ask you what I have been turning over since your last letter. You write that you are well and that you are not unhappy and that he is kind, and I read between those lines as I always have read between yours. I think you are telling me a great deal more than the words themselves say. I am very glad of it.

I confess that I had imagined, from what you wrote in the beginning, that the arrangement was chiefly a matter of bereavement, and that the darkness was the necessity of a man too much disfigured to be seen. But your letters have changed in character these last months, and I no longer think the explanation so simple. I will not press you on what the truth is, because I think you will tell me when you are ready and not before. I only ask whether you think you might ever come south, or whether we might come to you. I should very much like to meet him someday, Lizzy. A man who arranges as many kindnesses for his wife as you have told me about has introduced himself to me already, and I find I am very favourably disposed.

Mama is writing her own letter, and I expect it will arrive in the same packet. I have not read it and cannot therefore be held responsible for its contents.