Page 49 of Elizabeth Bennet and the Scottish Laird

Then it was gone. The door closed behind him with a crack that echoed through the silent room.

Elizabeth stood rooted to the carpet, staring at the closed door, whilst the fire crackled and Mary's pianoforte stumbled through yet another repetition of that wretched passage.

Jane crossed to her swiftly. “Lizzy.” Her hands closed around Elizabeth's, chafing warmth back into fingers gone cold as ice. “Lizzy, look at me. What just happened? What are we to do?”

Elizabeth looked down at the brooch pinned to her bodice. The silver gleamed in the firelight, beautiful and old and heavy against her heart. Faithful forever. The words blurred before her eyes.

“I do not know.” Her voice sounded strange and far away, as though it belonged to someone else entirely. “Jane, I do not know. But you must not speak of this. Not to Mama. Not to anyone.”

“Lizzy, he threatened us.” Jane’s whisper carried a fierceness Elizabeth had never heard from her. “He stood in our father’s house and threatened us. That is precisely the sort of thing one does speak of.”

“To whom?” Elizabeth whirled on her sister. “To Mama, who would have it round Meryton by Thursday and would still tell me to marry him before the month was out? To our uncle Philips, who would want something written down? There is nothing written down. He said that circumstances might compel decisions he would rather not make. Repeat that aloud in a drawing room and hear how it sounds. Two women who stand to keep a house by it, accusing the man who owns the house.”

She stopped. Her hands had begun to shake, and she pressed them flat against her skirts until they stilled. “And if it reached Mr Darcy.”

Jane said nothing. She did not need to.

“If it reached Mr Darcy, he would come here,” Elizabeth said. “He would come here and say something he could not take back. And then Mr MacKinnon would have precisely what he has been hunting since Lady Catherine’s visit — proof that I am not his. He would not need to threaten anyone after that. He would simply be a man wronged, doing what any man in his position might do, and every soul in Hertfordshire would agree he was within his rights.”

Her voice had steadied somewhere in the middle of it. That frightened her rather more than the shaking had.

“No one must know what transpired in this room,” she said. “Please.”

Nodding, Jane pulled her close. Elizabeth pressed her face against her sister's shoulder, desperately trying not to think about the choice that lay before her.

Marry Malcolm at Christmas, and secure her family's future at the cost of her own happiness.

Or refuse, and risk losing everything.

Beyond the frosted windows, the sky hung low and grey, threatening snow that would not fall. Elizabeth thought of dark eyes that held hers across a crowded room. They were quite unlike Malcolm’s grey-green ones. She thought of a voice, low and fierce, declaring that her character was beyond reproach.

She thought of a great many things she ought not to think, and the brooch burned cold against her skin. From somewhere deep within the house Mary played on and on, the same halting passage, a lament that would never find its resolution.

Chapter 16

The news reached Darcy over breakfast at Lucas Lodge, delivered by his sister in the measured tones she adopted when she feared her words would wound.

“Mrs Annesley has agreed to escort me to Longbourn for the lessons, now that she has joined us again.” Georgiana turned her teacup in its saucer, her gaze fixed upon the delicate pattern of roses along the rim. “Miss Elizabeth sent word this morning. She believes the arrangement will prove more convenient for all concerned.”

Darcy's knife went still against his plate. “More convenient.”

“Yes. We will set off at half past ten. We are to begin today.”

The longcase clock in the corner marked the silence that followed, each tick precise and remorseless. Darcy found himself studying the congealing fat on his plate of ham and eggs, his appetite quite vanished.

“I see.” He set down his knife and pushed the plate aside.

Georgiana looked up at him then, and the gentle knowing in her expression told him his composure had not deceived her in the least. She had always possessed the ability to see through him, his sister, even as a child when she would watch him with those solemn eyes and perceive what others missed entirely.

“Fitzwilliam.” She reached across the damask tablecloth and laid her fingers upon his hand. “I know you hold Miss Elizabeth in high regard. I have watched you these weeks past. The alteration in your countenance whenever she enters a room. The attention you pay to her every word, as though she were speaking truths of the utmost importance. I ceased being a child some years ago, whatever you may prefer to believe.”

He could find no reply. The admission she sought lodged somewhere in his throat and refused to emerge, and so he merely looked down at her small hand upon his whilst the fire whispered in the grate and the clock measured out seconds he would never reclaim.

“After what Aunt Catherine said the other day…” Georgiana drew a breath. “After the accusations she levelled and the scene she created in the Longbourn drawing room, well, I daresay propriety demands you keep your distance now. I know your purpose here was to ...”

“You are right.” The words came out rough, stripped bare of the ease he had meant to affect. “I have been thinking only of myself.”

She pressed his fingers gently. “I am sorry, Fitzwilliam. Truly I am. I can see how much this pains you.”