Page 2 of The Longbourn Bloodline

“I am going for a walk,” Elizabeth announced.

“A walk! In December! You will catch your death, and then where shall we be?”

“Considerably quieter, I should think.”

She did not wait for her mother’s response. She was already moving through the door, down the passage, and past the kitchen where Hill supervised preparations for heaven-knew-what elaborate welcome for heaven-knew-whom. Her pelisse hung by the back entrance. She pulled it on without ceremony, wrapped a shawl over her shoulders, and stepped out into the December cold.

The lane from Longbourn toward Meryton was rutted with frost, the hedgerows stripped to dark skeletons against a white December sky. Elizabeth walked briskly. Out here, she could breathe, no matter how cold and bracing the air was.

Poor Jane, though. She often wondered how her elder sister could sit at the window seat and let her mother’s words wash over her. Mamma said whatever crossed her mind, whether complaints about the Bingley sisters’ ill-mannered slights or lamentations over Jane’s hopes dashed, as if the family were not aware of the mortifying Netherfield ball where Bingley’s friend, that most disagreeable Mr. Darcy, had looked with great disapproval at the entire Bennet lot.

But there Jane sat with her embroidery and her melancholy, and now that a new heir was appearing, Mamma would dangle her most beautiful daughter at this new prospect—no matter how ill his breath or bilious his digestion.

Even more galling than that, Papa would enjoy the spectacle. Elizabeth recognized his amusement in the way he teased about the gentleman’s purpose and baited Lydia with the militia. He would find it all a joke while Mamma displayed Jane like livestock at a fair, Mary pounded the piano hard enough to ward off evil spirits, and Lydia and Kitty dreamed about officers becoming Bennets.

Elizabeth saw through her father’s game and declined to be charmed by it.

Which made her next encounter all the more provoking.

A man on horseback appeared around the lane, pulling his reins as he approached.

“Miss Elizabeth.” His dark eyes swept over her unattended state with undisguised censure. “One must marvel at your endurance, or perhaps your desperation, to frequent such deserted lanes alone. Do you make it a habit to brave the mud and the elements without an escort, or is solitude a necessary refuge from your own drawing room?”

Mr. Darcy remained upon his horse, looking down upon her with that immovable air of consequence that always made her fingers itch to box his ears.

Elizabeth kept her voice cool and her pace steady, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a dropped eye. “Mr. Darcy. I had not expected to see you in Hertfordshire. Has Mr. Bingley sent you to collect a misplaced sixpence, or perhaps to assure himself that we did not make off with the Bingley family seal or a chipped teacup from the ball?”

“I am here on my own account,” he said. “Not Mr. Bingley’s.”

“Ah, I perceive then that the road to London proved so deficient in amusement that you felt compelled to retrace it.”

“Neither.” He dismounted with the fluid economy of a man who did everything competently and wished you to notice. The bay horse snorted and shifted, and Darcy settled it with a hand on its neck—an absent gesture, practiced and proprietary.

“You brave these lanes with a singular disregard for your own safety, Miss Bennet. A rider rounding this blind turn might easily trample a pedestrian who insists upon walking in the middle of the road without a care for traffic.”

Elizabeth didn’t break her stride, giving him a cool glance over her shoulder. “You need harbor no fears for my safety, Mr. Darcy. The ruts in these lanes are far too deep for any sensible horseman to ride at a reckless pace—unless, of course, he is more eager to break his own neck than to endanger mine.”

Darcy winced as if she had struck gold in his tooth. “I was sorry to hear of your cousin Collins’s death. A riding accident, I understand.”

“Yes. He fell from his horse on the road quite like this one, rutted and iced. A dreadful business.” She said it with the appropriate gravity, though Collins had been dead for three weeks now and the household’s grief, such as it was, had been substantially eclipsed by the question of his successor.

“A great loss, naturally.” Darcy’s tone suggested it was nothing of the sort. “Though I confess I was sorrier still to learn you had refused his proposal beforehand. You might have been settled as a clergyman’s widow with a small pension and no husband to endure. In material terms, Miss Bennet, it would have been a considerably better arrangement than your present one.”

Elizabeth stared at him, mouth momentarily gaping. The impropriety of the remark was breathtaking—a gentleman did not reference a lady’s refused proposals, particularly not with the air of a man discussing poor investments at his club. That he said it with apparent sincerity only made it worse.

“I did not know you took such careful interest in my romantic decisions, Mr. Darcy. Particularly given that my situation must be so very far beneath your general notice.”

“I take an interest in the welfare of the neighborhood,” he said, recovering with the air of a man who had rehearsed formality until it functioned as a shield.

“How generous. We are all sensible of the honor.” Elizabeth drew her shawl closer against the wind, which had sharpened in the last quarter-hour. “And yet I find you here, on the lane to Longbourn, examining my father’s hedgerows as though they owed you a report. If you are not collecting forgotten items from Netherfield, what business brings you to our corner of the world? Have you come to remind us of Mr. Bingley’s absence? Or merely to enjoy the December air, which, as we have established, is not generally recommended?”

Darcy fell into step beside her—uninvited, as though walking with Elizabeth Bennet down a frozen lane were a thing he had every right to do. She felt a spark of irritation at his presumption, sharpened by the uncomfortable awareness that his stride, being considerably longer than hers, required visible adjustment to match her pace. She did not wish to be accommodated by Mr. Darcy.

“You are entirely correct, Miss Elizabeth, that I am not collecting forgotten items,” he said. “But perhaps retrieving forgotten impressions and past observations—particularly about characters I have found hard to forget.”

“Your past observations, Mr. Darcy, revealed the essential character of the man who made them. Neither the December air here nor the characters in this vicinity see any reason to revise their opinions.”

“Perhaps I seek not opinions but information, Miss Elizabeth,” he said, his voice dropping into that measured cadence that usually preceded some unasked-for judgment. “Not of the trivial sort bandied about in your drawing rooms. One observes that an estate like this—left to drift without management, its tenants idling and its boundaries neglected—requires more action than resignation. A property does not maintain its dignity by accident.”