Page 16 of Shadows Of Rosings Park: Part 2

His eyes met hers. Dark, dilated, stripped of every pretence she had ever seen him wear. For a moment he looked at her with an expression so naked that she felt the last of her anger guttering like a candle in a draught, not gone, not extinguished, but forced to share its space with something equally consuming.

"I know," he said. "That is why I must."

He stepped back. His hand slid from beneath her skirt, the muslin falling, the cool air rushing in to fill the space his palm had warmed, and he was at the far wall in three strides, his back to her, one hand pressed flat against the doorframe. She watched his shoulders rise and fall. She watched him collect himself as one collects shattered glass, carefully, aware that the edges could cut.

She smoothed her skirt. She touched her hair. A pin had come loose; she pressed it back into place with fingers that trembled only slightly.

The book that had fallen was a volume of Cowper. She picked it up and shelved it without reading the spine.

"We should go," she said. Her voice was almost steady. Almost.

He turned. His social armour had returned, imperfect but sufficient for the caretaker's wife who would see them leave and for the long drive home.

"Yes," he said.

Neither spoke of it. They walked through the house. The caretaker locked the door behind them, and Darcy handed her into the curricle. His fingers on hers were careful, correct, brief. She wanted to scream.

They drove home in the slanting light. Neither spoke. The silence between them was not comfortable, it was weighted, full of the things that had been said and the larger things that had not, but it was not hostile. It was the silence of two people occupying the same narrow space, their shoulders touching, their thoughts running parallel but not converging, and Elizabeth found in it a strange, precarious rest.

At Longbourn he handed her down from the curricle. His fingers held hers for a moment longer than necessary.

"Today marks a beginning," he said, his voice lowered. "Not the beginning you would have chosen. But a beginning nonetheless."

She looked up at him. The evening light had turned his face to gold and shadow, and she thought with frightening clarity: He means this. This is no performance. Sincerity did not undo coercion. It only made the bars harder to see.

She withdrew her hand and went inside.

Upstairs, she sat at her desk and wrote her daily letter to him. She described the house, the library, the walled garden. She confirmed her compliance. She discussed the weather.

She signed it.

Elizabeth

One name. No surname. Not Bennet, not Darcy. Just Elizabeth, the self she was before either man had touched her, the irreducible self that no arrangement could erase.

She sealed the letter and went to bed and slept without dreams.

CHAPTER 6

ELIZABETH

Colonel Fitzwilliam arrived at Lucas Lodge at half past ten, and Elizabeth watched from across the parlour as Charlotte's hands ceased moving.

Jane saw it too. The sisters had called that morning, ostensibly to comfort a grieving widow, actually because Elizabeth could no longer bear not knowing what was happening to her friend. They sat on the good sofa with tea they were not drinking. Charlotte occupied the chair by the window in mourning black that made her look like a cut-out against the spring light. Everything was fine. Everything was perfectly civil. Now Charlotte's hands lay motionless in her lap, as though a mainspring had snapped.

"Mrs. Collins." Fitzwilliam bowed with military precision. "Ladies. What a pleasant surprise."

It was not a surprise. He had known they would be here. Darcy had arranged it, Elizabeth was certain of this, though she couldn't prove it, deploying the Colonel's visit to coincide with her own, ensuring that the Darcy cousins' parallel claims on the two women were demonstrated simultaneously. The choreography was immaculate. A week ago it would have made her sick. Now, with the memory of his mouth on hers in the library warm enough to contradict every accusation she constructed in daylight, it merely made her tired. She could not reconcile the man who kissed her as though she were the answer to a question he had spent years asking with the man who arranged social visits like a general positioning infantry. The failure of reconciliation was beginning to feel less like his fault and more like hers.

"Colonel Fitzwilliam," Charlotte said. Her voice was steady. Her face was calm. Her hands in her lap were white-knuckled. "How kind of you to call."

He settled into the chair beside her with the ease of a man taking a seat he considered his. Not beside Elizabeth and Jane on the sofa, not near Sir William who hovered by the mantelpiece, beside Charlotte. The positioning was deliberate, territorial, and disguised, as all his visits were disguised, as the charitable attention of a gentleman toward a bereaved acquaintance. Elizabeth knew enough to fear what lay beneath it.

Sir William, delighted to have a Colonel in his parlour, launched into enthusiastic hospitality. Lady Lucas produced more tea. Maria fluttered. Through it all, Charlotte sat motionless, her posture perfect, her expression betraying nothing, while Fitzwilliam leaned toward her and spoke in low, solicitous tones that carried just enough to suggest concern but not enough to reveal content.

Jane touched Elizabeth's arm. A small pressure. A question.

"Later," Elizabeth murmured. But Jane's eyes were sharp, sharper than Elizabeth had expected. Jane was watching Charlotte and the Colonel with an expression that had moved past concern into something more active. Suspicion. Jane Bennet, who thought well of everyone, who found excuses for the inexcusable, who had once defended Wickham's lies as honest misunderstanding. Jane was looking at Colonel Fitzwilliam as their father looked at Darcy. The sight of it sent a chill through Elizabeth that had nothing to do with the temperature of the parlour.