Page 43 of Undone

Darcy returned to Netherfield before breakfast, though he had no intention of joining the others until he had mastered himself. Bingley's voice carried faintly from below as he crossed the hall, cheerful enough to assure Darcy that his absence would pass unnoticed for a time. He went directly to his chambers, dismissed his valet, and stood before the window, though he scarcely saw the grounds beyond.

His thoughts remained upon Oakham Mount.

Elizabeth had believed him.

The knowledge settled upon him with a quietness he had not expected. She had accepted every painful confidence he had placed in her keeping without once doubting his sincerity. She had sought the truth before condemning him, trusted her own judgement above appearances, and in doing so had restored something he had long believed lost.

His trust had not been misplaced.

A faint smile touched his lips before another recollection intruded.

Her cousin had proposed to her.

Even now the remembrance robbed him of ease. When Elizabeth first spoke those words, before she assured him she had refused, he had known only a moment of cold disbelief. Thethought of her belonging to another, particularly such a man as she described, had been more painful than anything he had thought possible.

He loved her.

The truth presented itself without struggle. It explained too much to be denied. He had looked for her each morning before he acknowledged why. Her opinions had come to matter above those of almost every other person he knew. Her happiness had become more important to him than his own.

He loved her.

Had that been all, he might almost have welcomed the discovery.

Instead, it brought with it a fear unlike any he had known before.

He turned from the window and crossed the room slowly, troubled now by a different recollection. Collins had not merely offered marriage. He had used the entail of Longbourn as though Elizabeth's future dependence ought to persuade her to accept him, making a threat of what should have been an unhappy circumstance.

Foolishness might explain much of Collins's conduct, but it did not explain everything.

He was Lady Catherine's rector.

Richard had asked him in London whether there was anyone he truly suspected of standing behind the strange succession of disappointments which had attended his life. Darcy had answered that no one entirely fitted the pattern.

It had not been the whole truth.

He had deliberately withheld two names.

George Wickham and Lady Catherine.

Both possessed sufficient cause to wish him unhappy. Yet neither accorded with the chronology of unfortunate events for which he could account. His aunt had not begun pressing Anne upon him until years after the pattern first emerged, whilst Wickham's resentment, though long-standing, could not account for its earliest manifestations.

For that reason he had dismissed them both, though never without suspicion.

Now Wickham was in Hertfordshire.

So too was Lady Catherine's rector.

Wickham's conduct, however disagreeable, admitted of an obvious explanation. Elizabeth had been publicly slighted at the assembly. Any man seeking to injure Darcy's reputation might naturally conclude she would receive his tale with sympathy. Wickham had merely taken advantage of an opportunity.

Yet seeing him beside Elizabeth continued to trouble Darcy.

He had sought Elizabeth out and attempted to prejudice her against him. Collins, on the other hand, had arrived and proposed marriage with astonishing haste. One man had long possessed cause to hate him. The other worshiped a woman who had never forgiven his refusal to marry her daughter.

Darcy pressed his fingers against his brow as another possibility presented itself. It was entirely possible that Collins's arrival had no connexion to Lady Catherine beyond the ordinary one between patroness and rector. The man was, after all, the heir to Longbourn and had reasons enough of his own for visiting the family. His offer for Elizabeth might have been nothing more than the absurd consequence of proximity and an inflated opinion of himself.

Darcy pressed one hand against the mantel and considered what he would have thought had Elizabeth not been involved. He might have dismissed Collins as a vain clergyman andWickham as an opportunist renewing an old injury. Their presence in the same neighbourhood might have appeared unfortunate, but no more.

The attention both men had fixed upon Elizabeth made coincidence difficult to accept.