Page 41 of Dear Friend

I begin to think him possessed of the enviable ability to mistake endurance for encouragement.

I have not yet discovered how one discourages a gentleman who refuses to perceive that he is being discouraged. If you have any wisdom upon the subject, I should be very glad of it, though I suppose I must first solve the lesser difficulty of obtaining an answer from you.

Longbourn itself is in some commotion, though nothing so serious as the word suggests. New families are spoken of as coming into the neighbourhood, the officers continue to provide Kitty and Lydia with inexhaustible occupation, and Mama has determined that between gentlemen newly arrived and officers already present, at least three of her daughters ought to be married before Christmas.

She has announced this at dinner nearly every evening, and the number of prospective husbands increases whenever the story is repeated.

Papa remains unmoved by the whole business. He says he will not have any of us pressed into a match we have not chosen for ourselves, a declaration with which I find myself disposed to agree with him.

I miss you, Julia.

That is a poor conclusion after so much nonsense, but perhaps it is the truest one.

I once supposed absence must become easier merely by becoming familiar. I find instead that one grows accustomed only to the shape of it. There are still things I hear and immediately wish to tell you. There are still moments when I enter Meryton and expect, for no sensible reason, to see you where you used to be.

So I shall continue to believe you are somewhere to be told all these things one day.

I hope you are well. I hope you are stronger. And until I know otherwise, I shall keep enough faith for both of us.

Yours, always,

Elizabeth

Darcy remained very still when he reached the end. Then he released a breath he had not been conscious of holding, and with it some portion of the uneasiness that had attended him these past weeks.

It was so immediate, and so complete, that there was little purpose in denying it. Elizabeth was not ill. No calamity had overtaken Longbourn. Her silence had arisen from fear for Julia, not from anything which had happened to herself, and the knowledge released an anxiety Darcy had not fully appreciated until it was gone.

The relief was followed almost at once by something less comfortable.

Elizabeth was suffering.

Not as she had suffered in March, when Julia's sudden removal had left her frightened and bewildered. Seven months had altered the nature of it. She had learnt to live beside uncertainty, to joke around it, to fill pages with Meryton gossip and her mother's matrimonial schemes, but the uncertainty remained beneath everything.

But if she answers...

Darcy's eyes returned to the unfinished sentence.

He understood it.

In the days after Ramsgate, Darcy had more than once wondered what might have happened had he delayed his visit by even a day, and there were possibilities his mind still refused to pursue very far. Even now, with the immediate danger past, another uncertainty had taken its place. He did not know what lasting injury the affair might have done to Georgiana's confidence, nor whether she would ever cease to blame herself for having been deceived. He wanted to believe that time, affection, and Mrs. Annesley's steady companionship would restore what Wickham's conduct had shaken, but wanting it did not make it certain.

Elizabeth's fear was different, but Darcy understood the impulse beneath it. So long as she did not ask the question, hope remained possible. She knew the reasoning was unsound. Her letter made that plain enough. Yet knowing a fear to be unreasonable did not always make one more capable of facing it.

She was simply afraid.

Darcy wished, suddenly and uselessly, that he could relieve her of it.

Unwilling to pursue the thought any further, Darcy turned his attention to Bingley’s unopened letter beside him. He broke the seal and began reading.

Dear Darcy,

I have been the worst sort of friend these two months past and have not written half so often as I ought, though I hope you will forgive me when you hear the reason. As you know, I have been at Hull nearly the whole time, buried in a matter of trade which I could not in good conscience abandon halfway through. The negotiations continued considerably longer than I expected, but they are concluded at last and rather better than I had dared hope.

I shall spare you the particulars, since you have never shared my enthusiasm for the finer points of a shipping contract. I will tell you only that the profit has been handsome enough to persuade me finally to do what I have threatened to do these two years past.

I have taken a lease upon a property in Hertfordshire. Netherfield Park, it is called.

Darcy frowned and stopped. For a moment he thought he must have mistaken the words, and his eyes returned at once to the sentence.