Page 29 of A November to Remember

Miss Elizabeth fell silent for a long while. The wind howled around them, bending the branches of the oaks, but Darcy was insulated within the small space they occupied.

“Sometimes I wish I had a brother,” she said finally. She stepped away from the horse, smoothing her hands over her pelisse. The spell was broken, the real world rushing back in.

“I must take my leave, Mr Darcy,” she announced, her tone returning to its usual cadence. “I promised my mother at breakfast I should only walk to the Mount and back. If I delay any longer, she will dispatch my father to search the hedgerows for my remains, an errand he would find exceedingly tedious.”

Darcy did not want her to leave. He wanted to stand on this wind-blasted hill and speak with her until the sun went down.

“Of course.” Darcy bowed stiffly. He knew what he must do. This was the perfect moment to apologise for the assembly, for the word tolerable. He had to explain the panic, the crowds, the stupidity of his own mouth.

He opened his mouth to speak.

I must ask your forgiveness, Miss Elizabeth. I am but a fool.

“I trust your journey back to Longbourn will be uneventful,” he heard himself say instead.

He briefly closed his eyes in agonising frustration. He was a coward. He was a wealthy, educated, powerful coward who could command a room of hundreds but could not utter a simple apology to one woman in a field.

Miss Elizabeth smiled, unaware of his internal battle. “As long as I do not encounter any more equestrian ambushes, I am certain I shall survive the journey. Good day, Mr Darcy.”

“Good day, Miss Elizabeth.”

She turned and began the descent down the winding path, her dark pelisse disappearing quickly against the bleak October landscape.

Darcy stood beside his traitorous horse, watching the exact spot where she had vanished. They had conversed and they had shared a moment of honesty. She had smiled at him, had insulted him only once, and had not attempted to throttle him.

Darcy mounted Roc and turned the horse back towards the miserable walls of Netherfield Park, and a small, inward curve formed in the left corner of his mouth.

It was a victory, and Fitzwilliam Darcy intended to claim it.

Chapter Seven: A Predictable Downpour

November 1st, 1811

Jane Bennet stared at the thick, cream-coloured letter in her hands as if it might spontaneously combust.

“Well? Read it aloud, Jane!” Her mother abandoned a half-eaten muffin, gesturing to the note.

Jane cleared her throat and held it at a safe distance. “Miss Bingley writes to invite me to dine at Netherfield today. It is to be an intimate gathering of ladies, as Charles—that is, Mr Bingley and his guests—are engaged to dine with the officers in Meryton.”

The silence that descended on the breakfast parlour was absolute, a vacuum that typically preceded a disastrous storm.

Mrs Bennet, very calmly, turned her gaze to the window, where a bruised grey ceiling of cloud was assembling itself over Hertfordshire. Her eyes narrowed.

“The gentlemen are engaged,” she whispered, the words rolling off her tongue like an incantation. “The Netherfield ladies are alone. You shall go, Jane. But you will most certainly not take the carriage.”

“Mamma, it is three miles.” Jane’s heart began a slow descent towards her shoes. “And the sky looks ready to open.”

“Nonsense. The horses are wanted on the farm. You shall take Nelly.”

Jane cast a desperate glance at the head of the table, but her father’s newspaper remained an impenetrable fortress of apathy.

“Papa?”

The paper lowered exactly one inch. “I never interfere with your mother’s ambition, my dear. Do try not to drown. It would be most inconvenient for you.”

“A little water never harmed anyone.” Mrs Bennet poured herself more tea. “Your grandmother rode through a monsoon in eighty-nine and came away four shillings the richer at whist. Weather, Jane, is not an obstacle. It is an instrument of providence. You shall go there, and if by any chance it turns worse, they shall be forced to host you for the night, and you shall spend the evening with your beau. Matter closed.”

There was no force in the British Empire capable of deflecting Mrs Bennet in the grip of a matrimonial vision. Lizzy might have managed it. Lizzy would have delivered a blistering treatise on the dangers of a pleurisy and barricaded the stable door with her own body. But Lizzy had walked to Lucas Lodge to sit with Charlotte, and Jane had none of her sister’s martial spirit. Jane’s talent had always been for surrender conducted with dignity.