Page 44 of The Vanished Bennet Sister

He had done the right thing by visiting the Bennets. He was incredibly sure of this, as much as any important decision he had undertaken thus far in life. Mrs Bingley had given him information with a purpose he found contemptible, and he had used it for a contrary purpose, which was the only use it merited. The family had been warned. Whatever they chose to do with the warning was not within his jurisdiction.

He had also been dismissed.

This was the other certainty, and it was less comfortable to stand with.

He turned it over as he walked, not seeking a resolution, only seeking to understand why it persisted. If his cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam, had said something equally unfair under equivalent strain, he would have assessed it as a product of distress, made no grievance of it, and moved on within the hour.

If any other person of his acquaintance had delivered the same words in the same tone, the same would have applied. He was not, in general, a man who carried injuries.

A more honest accounting arrived, with the reluctant precision of something that had been evaded for too long and was now stating itself.

Elizabeth Bennet's opinion of him was not a matter he was capable of treating with the detachment he applied to most things. It had not been, he suspected, since that first meeting at Almack's, when she had made it clear that she wasn't exactly enamoured by him. It had persisted through several assessing conclusions he had drawn about the Bennets before setting them aside.

It had survived the rational explanations he had assembled about her circumstances, her motives and the nature of her ideological position in the world.

Why her voice, echoing from the hallway in a townhouse in Portman Square, should follow him through the streets with this much tenacity — that was the question he had not yet answered with the honesty it deserved.

He turned into Grosvenor Street, where he lived, and did not pretend, this time, that the answer was not where it could be found.

She had made a lasting impression on him, from the beginning and at every subsequent encounter, in the way that very few people had ever managed to do. Not through beauty, although that existed in folds, and not through position.

It was not by any of the conventional instruments of such impressions but through the unique nature of her mind as it engaged with the world. The calibrated intelligence and refusal to be anything other than herself in all circumstances. She was not easy to dismiss. He had tried, which had produced nothing more than a temporary and unconvincing conclusion.

He was not yet ready to name what this amounted to. He was, however, aware that he was walking home with the sound of her voice still in his head, and that this was not the behaviour of a man who had satisfactorily resolved a question.

Chapter Twenty

Elizabeth

Mary's maid was the first to come forward with news of Mary’s whereabouts.

Miss Mary had dressed mid-morning in her outdoor clothes. She had not rung for assistance; the maid had noticed only after the fact, when she went up to attend her and found the room empty and the bonnet hook bare. She had assumed, she said, with the increasing misery of knowing her assumption had not aged well, that it was merely a brief walk. Miss Mary sometimes went out without announcing it. She had thought nothing of it.

"How long ago was this?" Elizabeth asked.

"Nearly three hours, Miss. Perhaps a little more."

Elizabeth noted this, thanked the maid and sent her away.

Elizabeth had also sent a footman to Mr Thwaite's townhouse to confirm if Mary was there. After all, it was the second likeliest place her sister could be spotted.

In the meantime, the Bennet household had arranged itself around a central absence. Kitty was adjusting the cushions on the sofa restlessly. Jane had made tea that no one drank and brewed yet another set. Lydia sat at the window with an unblinking attention to the square below that was more unsettling than her usual animation. She was, according to the evidence of her silence, truly worried, which was an experience she was not accustomed to and did not yet have words for. Mrs Bennet had progressed from active weeping to the stage of hushed tears and then a fragile, exhausted state arrived after the crying had run its full course and there was nothing left to do but wait.

Elizabeth had spent the hour after Kitty's announcement moving through the house with a thoroughness, she found more useful than anything else available to her. She had spoken to each member of the household staff.

She had established what time Mary had left, in what dress, and whether she had taken anything beyond her bonnet and shawl.

Thomas, a young footman, told Elizabeth Mary had asked him to deliver a note earlier in the day to an address on Jermyn Street. Elizabeth did not think it unusual—Mary was fond of delivering notes to friends and acquaintances alike. Written forms of communication were her preferred medium, compared to attending events and calling on people physically. But Jermyn Street? If Mary had made a new friend in London, she certainly hadn't mentioned it.

Elizabeth filed the piece of information from Thomas to examine at a later time.

More footmen were dispatched to retrace Mary’s likely routes on foot. From experience, Elizabeth knew going on walks could occasionally lead to unexpected circumstances. But if Mary had encountered some kind of obstacle while on a walk, the footmen were bound to encounter her and help.

None of these enquiries had produced Mary.

Mr Thwaite arrived shortly after Elizabeth had dispatched a footman to his home. He came through the front door still shrugging his coat onto his shoulders. He had not, apparently, waited for his valet to help him into it before he ventured towards the Bennets.

He took in the assembled family in the drawing room with rapid assessment.