Page 61 of Mr. Darcy’s Fiery Passion

He found her again in the hall an hour later.

The trunks were going out to the carriage. Her mother was in tears on the stairs, and Mr. Collins was fussing over the hatboxes. Jane stood by the door with Mr. Bingley, and neither of them was attending to anything else.

"Miss Elizabeth," said Mr. Darcy.

She turned. He stood a few feet away with his hat in his hand.

He looked worse than he had on the stairs. He held his hat in both hands. "May I have a moment?" he said. "Only a moment. There is a thing I..."

"We are all in a great hurry, sir," said Elizabeth.

She said it pleasantly. Elizabeth said it in the voice she kept for Sir William and Mrs. Long. She kept it for Mr. Collins too, when he talked of chimneys. She turned to Jane and asked her whether the workbasket had gone out.

She felt him stand there behind her.

"Darcy!" Mr. Bingley called from the door. "The carriage is round. Hartley expects us by four."

She held the head of her crutch so hard that her fingers ached.

"Miss Elizabeth," he said at last, very low.

She heard him bow. She heard his step go away across the marble.

She went to the morning room window to watch them go. She found herself there without meaning to.

The carriage stood at the foot of the six steps. Parrish was strapping a portmanteau to the back. Mr. Bingley went down the steps two at a time and turned back to wave at Jane in the doorway.

Mr. Darcy went down them slowly. He stopped at the bottom. For a moment she thought he would turn round.

He did not. He got into the carriage, and he did not look back at the house.

Parrish looked back. He finished with the portmanteau, and then he lifted his eyes to the morning room window. He touched his hat to her. It was a small, grave movement, very correct.

He climbed up beside the coachman, and the carriage went away down the drive.

She stood at the window until it had passed the lodge gates. Then she stood a little longer.

He did not look back, she told herself. Remember that. When you are tempted to think of him, remember that he did not look back.

Their own carriage came round at eleven.

It was the same three miles she had walked a hundred times. She sat by the window and watched them go by. There was the lodge, and the turning for the old lane, and the long hedge toward Meryton. Her mother talked the whole way. Jane held her hand and said nothing, which was worse.

Longbourn had a new roof. The east end smelled of fresh timber and wet plaster, and the scaffolding was gone. Mrs. Hill stood on the step with Sarah, both of them crying.

Her father got down and looked up at his house. "Well," he said. "It has a roof. That is more than it had."

"And your library, Papa?"

"Is in the barn, drying, a shelf at a time." He looked at the new timber of the east end. "Most of it. Not the Milton." He shrugged. "One cannot have everything. Your mother has a new drawing-room floor, and she is happy. I shall learn to be."

Jane got down after him, and turned, and held up her arm. "Lean on me, Lizzy."

Elizabeth looked at her sister's arm. "No," she said. "Thank you, Jane. I can manage."

She put the crutch under her arm and did not lean on it. She set her left foot down on the gravel, and then her right, and she walked.

It hurt. It hurt with every step, from the heel to the knee. She walked up the path to her own front door on her own two feet. Nobody carried her. Nobody gave her an arm. Nobody had to bear any of her weight at all.