Page 100 of Dear Friend

He stared at her.

“I want you to leave me alone.” Her fingers tightened around the fan until the sticks gave a faint protest beneath her glove. “Do not come to Longbourn tomorrow, or the day after. Indeed, I must ask that you do not call upon me again.”

“Elizabeth...”

She raised one hand, and Darcy stopped. He had never imagined that such a small gesture from her could render him so entirely powerless.

“I cannot continue receiving your addresses. I cannot stand here tonight and pretend that nothing has altered merely because yesterday I...” Her voice failed, and she looked away before mastering it. “I would rather leave than remain here and risk embarrassing Mr. Bingley or my family.”

Darcy wanted to stop her. Every instinct urged him to ask for another minute, another conversation, some assurance that again did not truly mean never. Yet he had already taken too much upon the assumption that what he wanted justified another intrusion upon what belonged to her.

His hands fell uselessly to his sides. “As you wish.”

Elizabeth looked at him once more, and whatever she might have said remained unspoken. She turned and crossed the entrance hall towards her father.

Darcy remained where she had left him.

He watched her speak quietly to Mr. Bennet, who first looked surprised and then concerned. His gaze travelled across the hall and settled briefly upon Darcy, but he asked his daughter no question that Darcy could hear. A moment later he offered Elizabeth his arm, and together they moved towards the entrance.

Darcy did not follow.

Only when the doors closed behind them did he remember Julia.

His breath caught. He had meant to tell Elizabeth that her friend was alive, had carried that one piece of happiness through the entire miserable day, and when the moment came he had forgotten it. He took one step towards the entrance before stopping himself. To run after her now would be to disregard the very last thing she had asked of him.

The music continued from the ballroom, but Darcy had no desire to enter it. He turned instead towards the staircase and climbed slowly, conscious of an exhaustion which seemed to have settled into his very bones.

There was nothing more to be done tonight.

Tomorrow he would leave Netherfield and go to Julia Harding. The letters upstairs did not belong in his possession and never had, and he would place every one of them into the hands for which they had been intended. He would do whatever could properly be done for Miss Harding and her father, and ask for nothing in return.

Even if Elizabeth came to hate him, perhaps he could at least give her back some part of the friend she had lost. If it was the last thing he was ever permitted to do for her, then it would be his parting gift.

Beyond that, Darcy could form no plan. For months he had told himself that one more day of silence might preserve what was growing between him and Elizabeth. Standing alone upon the landing, with the sound of Bingley's ball continuing merrily below and Elizabeth already on the road back to Longbourn, he could no longer hide from the simpler truth.

He had preserved nothing. He had merely postponed the moment when she discovered what his silence had cost them.

Chapter Thirty-Four

25th November 1811

Longbourn

Elizabeth

Monday morning found Elizabeth in the small sitting room at Longbourn with a book open upon her lap and very little knowledge of what she had been reading. She had made the attempt for nearly half an hour, but whenever footsteps sounded in the passage, her eyes lifted from the page before she could prevent them, and each time she was irritated with herself for doing so. Mr. Darcy would not come. She had expressly forbidden it, and if there was one thing she could still depend upon, it was that he would respect a request once she had plainly made it.

The knowledge ought to have brought relief. Instead, Longbourn seemed unusually quiet, and Elizabeth turned another page without having finished the one before it.

Sunday had been easier in some respects. The habits of the day had demanded church, dinner and the usual occupations of the family, while Mrs. Bennet had spent much of it lamenting that Elizabeth's sudden indisposition had deprived her of half the Netherfield ball. Lydia and Kitty had supplied everything she had missed in exhausting detail, from the officers who had danced most often to the supper, the gowns of every young woman present, and how Mr. Wickham’s arrest was discussed among officers, a fact which Lydia still insisted could be nothing more than a malicious falsehood.

Little had been said of Darcy beyond his failure to join the ball, a circumstance Mr. Collins in particular had lamented, having apparently formed several subjects upon which he had hoped to converse with him. Elizabeth had been grateful for the omission. She was more grateful still that her father had not pressed her for the true reason she had wished to leave Netherfield, though his restraint did not mean he was deceived. During the journey home he had asked more than once whether Darcy had done something to distress her, and when she refused to answer, he had allowed the matter to rest.

Mr. Bennet had been obliged to send the carriage back for the rest of the family after Elizabeth insisted upon returning home with him. She had gone directly to her room and cried until there seemed very little left in her capable of tears.

She had cried several times since, though only in private. The fierce indignation she had felt while listening to Darcy’s confession had diminished somewhat, but her anger had not. If anything, two days of reflection had given it firmer ground upon which to stand.

How dare he? He had read words she had written in perfect confidence, continued reading after there could no longer be any pretence of accident, and then entered her life carrying a knowledge of her she had never chosen to give him. Worse still, he had allowed her to trust him. Every time she had confided something personal, every time she had been touched by how readily he understood her, he had permitted her to believe that intimacy was being formed between them honestly.