Page 7 of Faceless

His eye went to her. She felt the heat of it on her cheek, but kept her gaze on the path.

“An interesting principle,” he said.

“I have been thinking about it a good deal lately. I was thinking, as it happens, of Mr Wickham.”

“Were you?”

“I found him open, and frank, and—” she selected the word with care— “not at all what I might have expected, given what one hears of his history.”

“And what does one hear of his history?”

“That he was your father’s favourite. That he was disappointed of a living your father intended for him.” Her eye was on his face. “And I was present in Meryton when you met him on the street. I saw what passed between you.”

His jaw tightened. “Whatever you observed on that occasion—”

“I observed that the encounter was not pleasant. For either of you.” She waited. “He explained it afterward. You have not.”

“Wickham is not what he appears.” The name came out stripped of everything but the fact of it, and underneath the fact was something considerably hotter than she had expected. “I cannot say more than that.”

“Cannot, or will not?”

He turned a sharp look on her. “There are people who would suffer for my speaking plainly on this subject. Innocent people.” The words came as though pulled rather than offered. “There is a matter of decency — of protection — that I cannot set aside simply because you require me to.”

“I see.” She tilted her head. “So, I am to accept that you are protecting someone. I am to ask no questions about whom, or from what, or whether your account of the matter bears any resemblance to Mr Wickham’s. I am simply to revise my opinion of a man I have spoken with at length, on the basis of your authority alone. You will forgive me if I find that arrangement somewhat unequal.”

“Miss Bennet—”

“No, no. You have decided what I can know and what I cannot. What I can bear and what I cannot.” There was considerably more she wanted to say — three or four observations forming themselves at the back of her teeth with considerable force. She drew breath to say the first of them—

And saw Colonel Fitzwilliam coming along the upper path, fifty yards away, raising a hand in greeting.

She looked back at Darcy. His jaw was set, his colour up, his eyes on her with an intensity she had no immediate use for.

“Mr Darcy.” She dropped her voice. “Colonel Fitzwilliam is a man of considerable perception. If he reaches us and finds us wearing such heroic expressions of injury, he will suppose a duel has already taken place. He will ask what it was, and then we will both have to pretend we were discussing the Hunsford road, and I have heard quite enough about that road to last me the remainder of the visit.”

He blinked.

“If you could manage to look as though you have been enjoying the morning rather than losing an argument, I think we should both find the next ten minutes considerably easier.”

The set of his jaw eased, his shoulders dropped. His eye held hers an instant with an expression she could not entirely read; then he turned towards Fitzwilliam and raised a hand in greeting.

She turned with him.

She was, she found, almost smiling herself, which was irritating, and she declined to examine why.

By the time Fitzwilliam reached them, the morning had righted itself entirely. The three of them walked back towards Rosings in perfectly good order; the conversation turned to the Hunsford road; and nothing that had just been said was said again.

III

The Best Laid Plans

Fitzwilliam had been watching him since dinner.

Not obviously — he never did anything obviously — but Darcy knew that look, had known it since they were boys. It was the look his cousin wore when he had arrived at a conclusion and was deciding in his own time whether to say it aloud or let it work on its own. It was not a comfortable look to be on the receiving end of at the best of times. Tonight, it was worse than that, because Darcy could feel the warmth in his own face and could not entirely account for it, and Fitzwilliam had sharp eyes and thirty years of practice.

He reached for his wine and gave him nothing.

Across the table, Lady Catherine was addressing herself to the Hunsford road, which had been in a disgraceful state since November and which the parish had done nothing to remedy despite repeated and emphatic representation from Rosings. At her right, Anne wore the quiet, faintly distant air of most evenings, as though she had made her peace with the proceedings long ago and found it restful.