Page 102 of Dear Friend

Jane did not answer immediately. “He told me Mr. Darcy left Netherfield yesterday.”

Elizabeth's breath caught before she could control it. She had known Darcy would not call because she had told him not to, but somehow she had not considered that he might leave Hertfordshire entirely. “Where has he gone?”

The question escaped too quickly, and the silence behind her told Elizabeth that Jane had noticed.

“London, Mr. Bingley believes. He left yesterday morning and gave no certain date for his return.”

Elizabeth pressed her fingers against the windowsill. She ought to be satisfied. Had she not told Darcy she did not wish him to call upon her again? He had done precisely what she asked, yet the knowledge that he was no longer at Netherfield produced an ache so immediate that she despised herself for feeling it.

“Lizzy,” Jane said softly, “did you quarrel with Mr. Darcy?”

Elizabeth closed her eyes. “No.”

Jane said nothing, and somehow the silence was worse than another question. Elizabeth had spent two days carrying the whole miserable affair alone, retreating to her room whenever the tears threatened and emerging only when she could trust her face again. She could not even seek relief in writing to Julia. The very thought of putting her private feelings upon paper now made her stomach turn, and the one person she had lately come to speak to with an openness almost equal to Julia was the very man who had caused it all.

Her eyes opened and settled upon Jane. Jane, who would listen without judgement, who would not repeat a word, and who had been waiting patiently for two days rather than forcing a confidence Elizabeth was not ready to give.

The resistance went out of her.

“Yes,” Elizabeth said quietly. She lowered herself onto the sofa and pressed her fingers briefly against her eyes. “Yes, Jane. I quarrelled with Mr. Darcy, and I think if I do not tell someone what happened, I shall go quite mad from thinking of it alone.”

“Oh, Lizzy.”

“Please do not look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“As though my heart has been broken.”

Jane rose and came nearer. “Has it?”

That was considerably harder to answer. Elizabeth blinked rapidly as tears threatened to fill her eyes and looked away from Jane. “I do not know.”

Jane sat beside her without pressing for more. Elizabeth stared at her hands, trying to decide how to begin an account she had imagined giving a dozen times since Saturday. Each attempt required her to speak aloud facts which still seemed impossible, and worse, to admit how completely she had trusted Darcy before discovering how much he had concealed from her.

“I discovered something about Mr. Darcy at the ball,” she said at last. “Something he should have told me himself.”

“Did Miss Bingley tell you?”

Elizabeth looked sharply at her. “Why would you ask that?”

“I saw her speaking to you shortly after we arrived.”

Elizabeth sighed. “Yes. She told me something, and I did not believe her.” Heat crept into her cheeks at the recollection. “I defended him, Jane. That is perhaps the most humiliating part. I stood there inventing explanations for Mr. Darcy because I was so certain he would never deliberately deceive me.”

“And Miss Bingley was telling the truth?”

“Enough of it.”

Jane reached for her hand. “What did he do?”

Elizabeth hesitated before forcing the words out. “He read my letters to Julia.”

Jane stared at her. “Your letters?”

“All of them, or nearly all. Mr. Darcy was at Willowbrook before coming to Hertfordshire. My letters arrived there while he was in residence, and he read them. Even after he came here, the letters I continued sending to Julia were forwarded to him.”

“I do not understand.”