Page 12 of A Promise Made

Lizzy wondered if she could engineer some time for Jane and Mr Darcy to be together in order to observe their interactions further. It should not be too difficult.

* * *

Mr Bennet continued to be surprised and a bit dismayed how irritating he found Lizzy to be, now that he was spending quite a bit of time with Darcy.

Working side-by-side with a capable young man who had been trained in estate matters matched the vision he had imagined of having a son.

In contrast, Lizzy seemed to be merely a distraction for both of them.

Chapter Eleven

Darcy felt quite satisfied but also surprisingly troubled by his work at Longbourn.

His plans were working out splendidly. Mr Bennet was becoming quite a congenial partner in meeting with tenants, and Darcy truly enjoyed riding the estate and making sure the repairs and improvements were being done properly. Both he and Mr Bennet revelled in speaking with experts in different fields—John Johnstone, for example, was the foremost practitioner of the Elkington method of proper drainage—and it was heartening to see older farmers who at first balked at an idea such as crop rotation begin to change their mind even before annual yields could be compared.

Darcy could see the efficacy of his father’s habit of meeting with, speaking with, and listening to his tenants. It was possible to make changes by mandate from the master, but changes were swifter and happier if the master did more listening and suggesting rather than decreeing, and if there was communication amongst tenants as well.

The reason he was troubled was that Miss Bennet and Miss Elizabeth seemed to be wherever he was more commonly than seemed natural. He was a bit anxious that one of them might have a tendre for him.

What do I mean one of them?

Since his arrival, Miss Elizabeth had behaved so much like a little sister to him—teasing him, provoking him, even laughing at him at times—that it seemed impossible that she could be infatuated with him.

So…did that mean that the placid—almost dull, if he was honest—Miss Bennet had a hidden passion for a man she barely knew?

That, too, seemed unlikely. He persevered on his course: treating them as a gentleman ought to treat very young ladies in whom he had no romantic interest.

For a while, they kept turning up….

However, finally the two young ladies left him alone, and he could no more identify what had changed than he could fathom what had motivated their persistent attendance in the first place.

All told, Darcy was pleased by the results of his time at Longbourn: the agricultural improvements that had been accomplished, the anticipated increases in rents on Lady Day and crop yields at harvest. He planned to go to London in early December, where he would finally meet Mr Collins, the current heir to Longbourn. No matter the results of that meeting, he would collect his sister from their relations and return to Pemberley.

Soon, he would be managing Longbourn from a distance and Pemberley in person, as it should be.

Chapter Twelve

Lizzy admitted that every single one of her theories regarding the reason Mr Darcy had suddenly taken an interest in Longbourn had fallen by the wayside. It was almost impossible to truly disprove her various notions, but when evidence countered rather than buttressed her ideas, she had been sanguine about letting them go.

This latest idea—that Mr Darcy had fallen in love with Jane—had inadvertently turned harmful, and Lizzy was very sorry for that. For days, she had contrived to throw Jane and Mr Darcy together. From what she observed and what Jane reported, Mr Darcy was always very polite. But the man’s somewhat stiff manner had become even stiffer, and she was certain that it was inspired by irritation or caution rather than attraction.

The harmful aspect is that her machinations had worked in the opposite direction for Jane. Her sister had not seemed particularly interested in Mr Darcy when Lizzy began her campaign, but the more Jane saw of him, the more she spoke of him when it was just the two ladies alone in their bedroom. By the time Lizzy decided that Mr Darcy had no romantic interest in her elder sister…Jane seemed on the path to falling in love with him.

Which meant that she would be responsible for breaking her beloved sister’s heart. She felt dreadful, and she told her father about her scheme, asking for his intervention.

He gave her a long look of disappointment, and she hung her head, unable to bear such disapproval from her dearest parent. His voice was sharp as he scolded her: “Lizzy, I told you very clearly and openly that Mr Darcy has an excellent reason to help us but that I cannot share the reason with anybody without hurting innocents. Do you think I would have said those things if Mr Darcy’s reason was that he had marital designs on Jane?”

“Maybe. You had a long meeting with Mr Darcy that first day. He could have been taking that time to prove to you his character and his financial situation. I would think that securing a wealthy husband for Jane while working to improve the income for Longbourn, and thus finally collecting funds for dowries for the rest of us—well, I can imagine you believing that was a wonderful and attainable goal.”

Her father tapped his desk thoughtfully. He suggested, “And my reluctance to tell you this would be because you would tell Jane, and then she might feel compelled to go along with the plan?”

“Exactly.”

“Lizzy, has it ever occurred to you that you need not use your admittedly sharp mind to discover the thing I am not sharing with you? You could choose, as your mother and all your sisters have done, to simply accept his presence and his help. What he is attempting to do is a very good thing for you, as well as for the entire family—and I would very much appreciate you not mucking about with your theories and your interference. If you drive him away simply because I have not indulged your curiosity…well, how could any of us forgive you?”

Do…not…cry…Lizzy ordered herself. It was a point of pride that she never cried for emotional reasons, and tears were unusual for her even when she was in physical pain. Two years before Mr Darcy’s arrival, she had broken her arm when she fell from a tree, and she had yelped in pain upon impact with the ground. There had certainly been a few times when her eyes had filled with tears, but she never actually wept, and she even managed the pain of having the bone set without crying out.

Now, subjected to her father’s frown, she again managed not to cry, but as she blinked back the tears that filled her eyes, she admitted to herself that she had rarely been so close to sobbing.