Page 10 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

"Yes," said Darcy, and went on eating.

Miss Bingley did not mention the petticoat again.

On the second day, Elizabeth did not come down to dinner at all. Jane was worse. The apothecary came twice, and Bingley paced the hall like a man awaiting news of a battle, and Darcy, who could do nothing useful, went to the library and chose three books with great care, and then stood outside the blue bedroom for a full minute before he dared to knock.

She opened the door a crack. Her hair was coming down. There was a smudge of shadow under each eye.

"Mr Darcy?"

"I thought," he said, feeling foolish, "that your sister might be well enough to be read to, soon. Or that you might like something, while she sleeps." He held the books out. "Cowper, for her. He is soothing. And Much Ado, for you. So that you may prepare your arguments."

She looked at the books, and then up at him, and her tired face broke into a smile that did something painful to his heart.

"You are ridiculous," she said softly.

"I have been told so."

"Thank you." She took the books and held them against her chest. "She is sleeping now. The fever broke an hour ago. Mr Jones says the worst is over."

He had not known how much he had been dreading until the dread went out of him. "Thank God."

"Yes." Her eyes were bright. "I think I shall sit down on the floor and cry a little, now that I may."

"Shall I fetch Bingley? He will want to cry too."

She laughed, a small, cracked, relieved laugh, and closed the door. He heard her say something to Jane on the other side of it. He went downstairs, and found Bingley, and told him, and Bingley did in fact cry, briefly and without shame, which Darcy pretended not to see.

On the third day, Miss Bennet sat up and ate some broth, and Elizabeth came down for the whole of the evening.

She had changed into a gown sent from Longbourn, a plain dove grey that made her eyes look darker still. She sat by the fire with some needlework she did not seem to be doing, and answered Mrs Hurst's questions about her family with patience and Miss Bingley's questions about her connections with a cheerfulness that left nothing to attack. Hurst fell asleep on the sofa. Bingley went up to sit outside Jane's door like a faithful spaniel.

Darcy was supposed to be writing to his steward. He wrote the same line three times.

"You write uncommonly fast, Mr Darcy," said Miss Bingley, drifting over to look at the page.

"On the contrary. I write rather slowly."

"How many letters you must have occasion to write in the course of a year. Letters of business, too. How odious I should think them."

"It is fortunate, then, that they fall to my lot instead of yours."

He heard a small sound from the fireplace. When he looked up, Elizabeth was bent very low over her embroidery, and her shoulders were shaking.

Presently she rose and said she would fetch a book from the library, since the ones she had brought up had been read. Miss Bingley offered at once to ring for a servant. Elizabeth said she would rather choose for herself.

Darcy waited until her footsteps had faded along the passage. He wrote a fourth line to his steward, and crossed it out. Then he sanded the page, folded it, and rose.

"I believe I left my pen-knife in the library," he said, to nobody in particular, and went out.

#

Netherfield's library was a sad place. Mr Bingley, who confessed he was more of a buyer of books than a reader of them, had not yet bought many, and the previous tenant had taken his own away. Elizabeth stood with a single candle before shelves that held a great many sermons, several volumes of agricultural reports, and one very old atlas, and wondered whether she could decently go back to the drawing room with nothing.

"The poetry is on the bottom shelf, by the window," said a voice behind her. "All eleven volumes of it."

She did not jump, quite. She turned, and he was standing just inside the door, with the light from the passage behind him.

"You found your pen-knife, then," she said.