Page 66 of Mr. Darcy’s Fiery Passion

"You keep all of it, sir."

Mr. Bennet gave a short, dry laugh. "She will not thank you, you know. She has a great objection to being obliged." He looked at the full shelves, and his mouth twitched. "She gets it from me."

"There is one more thing, sir. Mr. Wickham."

Mr. Bennet's face changed a little.

"He has gone to Newcastle until the spring," said Darcy. "When he comes back, do not let him near your younger daughters. I cannot tell you how I know what he is. I can only tell you that I know."

Mr. Bennet was silent a moment. "Lydia will be inconsolable," he said at last. "I shall bear it. Thank you, Mr. Darcy." He set the two volumes on the new shelf by themselves, at the height of his own eyes. "She did not go to Netherfield, you know. She told her mother the carriage would jolt her ankle. That ankle takes her out walking every morning."

"Every morning, sir?"

"Every morning this past week. Mr. Jones told her to walk it a little farther each day, and she has taken him at his word. A week ago it was the end of the garden. She comes back with her boots wet through and her face very cheerful. And she tells me nothing at all." Mr. Bennet took off his spectacles and folded them. "She walks out every morning, Mr. Darcy. Always the same way."

"Which way?"

"Through the home wood, and out at the back of it, into the old lane. She has gone that way since she was a girl, whenever she does not wish to be found. She thinks nobody knows."

Darcy knew. She had told him herself, in the library at two in the morning.

It is where I go when I do not wish to be found.

She had not told her father. She had told him.

18

The mud in the old lane had frozen in the night. It crunched under Elizabeth's boots and gave a little under the crutch.

She still leaned on the crutch going uphill. Mr. Jones had told her to walk the ankle a little farther each day, and Jane had made her promise to take the crutch. The ankle took her weight now. By the time she came over the rise, it ached from the heel to the shin.

At home she was very cheerful. She helped Jane with the wedding clothes and laughed at her mother's lace. She read to her father in the evenings. Out here there was nobody to be cheerful for. So she let her face do as it liked.

Jane's banns had been read twice now. Mr. Bingley had heard them both from the Netherfield pew, pink to the ears. Mr. Darcy had not come down for either.

He is in town, she told herself. He is very busy, and very glad to be.

The lane climbed toward the rise. She knew every rut of it. She had walked a little farther every morning this week. For some days now she had stopped at the same place.

It was a stretch of slope below the rise, where the ground fell away toward the stile. Nothing marked it. There was a ditch, and a hedge, and a flat stone at the edge of the ruts.

She had fallen here. She had sat in that ditch in the cold and waited for the dark. And he had come up the lane with a lantern on his wrist and said her name.

The next night there had been the wing chair, and his mouth on her. Her face grew hot in the frost.

She sat down on the flat stone to rest her ankle, and looked at the ditch.

You are a fool, Elizabeth Bennet. You limp all this way every morning to look at a ditch.

She did not turn back. She never did, until her feet were cold through.

Behind her, a long way off, a gate clicked.

She turned on the stone. The lane ran back toward Longbourn between its hedges, white with frost and quite empty. A man came round the far bend on foot.

He was bareheaded. His greatcoat hung open. He walked very fast. She had seen him walk that fast once before, in the dark, with a lantern swinging from his wrist.

She knew him long before she could see his face.