Page 41 of Near Pemberley

The quiet severity of the reply silenced her entirely.

Even Mrs. Hurst looked slightly uncomfortable.

Georgiana lowered her work into her lap and glanced towards her brother with an expression partly anxious, partly grateful.

Bingley himself said nothing further, yet the look he directed towards Darcy contained more seriousness than his countenance commonly expressed. Something seemed struggling within him – regret, perhaps, long suppressed and now unwillingly awakened.

The conversation soon dispersed into fragments and, finally, into silence.

Darcy remained among them only as long as civility required.

There was no longer any possibility of ease in society.

During the days which followed, he became almost entirely withdrawn.

The guests at Pemberley, though treated with every outward propriety, gradually found themselves deprived of nearly all his company. He breakfasted early, rode out frequently upon estate business, and spent long hours shut within his study under the pretence of correspondence and accounts.

The pretence was not wholly false.

Work became, if not relief, at least occupation.

He buried himself in estate matters with an attention approaching severity. Tenant reports were examined more closely than before; steward meetings prolonged; harvest preparations reviewed repeatedly. Men who had served him for years began quietly remarking among themselves that the master had become more exacting than usual.

Once, while reviewing accounts with the steward, Darcy found himself asking the same question twice.

The steward, after a moment’s hesitation, supplied the answer again.

Darcy apologised briefly and returned to the papers before him.

It was an error he would not ordinarily have made.

His thoughts continually escaped him.

Elizabeth’s face, as he had last seen it, haunted him with painful persistence. Then came the recollection of her agitation, of her tears, and of the abruptness of her departure after all that had passed between them.

Again and again, he attempted to reason himself into patience. Whatever difficulty had arisen belonged properly to her family. He possessed no claim upon her confidence. To intrude himself where he had not been invited would be presumption.

And yet he could not remain wholly inactive.

Not now.

The old habits of reserve and distance, which once might easily have persuaded him to silence, no longer governed him so completely. He had changed too much for that. Or rather, he had begun to understand how often such reserve had served chiefly his own comfort.

If Elizabeth Bennet suffered, could he be content merely because propriety offered him an excuse for inaction?

Once honestly considered, he could no longer answer in the affirmative.

Yet whenever he attempted to persuade himself that silence remained the wiser course, his thoughts returned to Lambton.

She had said she was glad they had met again.

The words had been simple enough, and he was not vain enough to mistake them for more than they were.

Yet they remained with him.

For a man who had once believed himself regarded with nothing but resentment, they had meant a great deal.

And because they had meant a great deal, the thought of her present distress became harder still to endure.