Page 56 of Mr. Darcy’s Fiery Passion

He went and stood by the window, and heard his own words again.

You need never be a burden. I would see to it. After everything you have done for me, it is the least I could do.

He had not offered for her. He had settled an account.

Under his glove, his palm still held the heat of her. An hour ago she had shaken against him among the orange trees. She had hidden her face in his coat.

She had cut his meat and turned his pages. She had dressed his hands in the small hours when they bled. And he had offered to pay her for it, with a roof over her mother's head. That was how she had heard it. He could see it now, too late. He had made her the thing she had told him in the lane she could never bear to be. A weight he would generously carry.

He had not said that he wanted her. He had not said one word about himself at all.

The supper dance was called, and the couples went in two by two. He saw her rise on her crutch behind her mother's party. She fell a little behind them in the doorway.

He reached her in the passage outside the supper room. For one moment there was nobody between them. "Elizabeth."

She stopped. After a moment she turned round. Her face was perfectly composed. It was her Meryton face, the one she wore for Mr. Collins. "Mr. Darcy."

"I spoke very badly in the conservatory. I must..."

"You spoke very kindly." Her voice was light and even. "You have been kind to me for three weeks, sir. You need not be kind any longer. My ankle is nearly well, and your hands are healed. Nobody owes anybody anything now."

"That is not what..."

"Lizzy!" Mrs. Bennet's voice came through the supper room door. "Lizzy, where are you? You are to sit by Jane!"

"I am wanted," said Elizabeth.

She dropped him a small curtsey, balanced on the crutch. It was very correct. It was the curtsey she might have given Sir William. Then she went in.

He stood alone in the passage.

Nobody owes anybody anything now.

She had taken his own words and handed them back to him. He had talked of what he owed her. So she had cancelled the debt, there in the passage, in one light sentence. And if there was no debt, she was telling him, there was nothing between them at all.

He went in to supper. They had put him at the far end of the table, between Mrs. Long and Miss Bingley.

Between the white soup and the jellies, Mrs. Bennet stood up.

She had a glass in her hand. Mr. Bennet closed his eyes.

"I have such news!" she cried. "Mr. Phillips sent word this very afternoon. The roof is on at Longbourn, and the new floors are down, and the plasterers may finish around us. And Mr. Bennet says an engaged girl cannot sleep one more night under her intended's roof! It is not done, he says."

She sighed a little at the blue chamber she must give up. She beamed down the table at Jane. "So we go home tomorrow, Mr. Bingley. Though of course we shall be back and forth a great deal now."

There was laughter, and a scatter of applause. Bingley went red to the ears. Jane looked at her plate and smiled.

Darcy looked down the table at Elizabeth.

She was looking at her plate too. She was not smiling.

Tomorrow. The carriage would come round in the morning, and she would get into it. She would go home, and they would be acquaintances again. And the last thing he had said to her would be about a debt.

The last carriage left Netherfield a little after one. By two the house was dark.

Darcy sat in the library in his shirtsleeves and waited.

The fire was low. Her chair stood empty across the hearth from his, with the footstool before it. Her book lay on the table where she had left it. He sat with his bare hands on his knees and listened for the crutch on the boards.