Page 26

“It is Eliza Bennet,” she said. “Do not tell me this is about Charles. It is about her.”

“It is only about Charles.”

“Caroline! Mr Darcy!”

Mrs Hurst had come to the door of the breakfast parlour with her bonnet on and her pelisse half buttoned. “The carriages are waiting. Make haste!”

Miss Bingley turned to her sister with the brightest smile Darcy had ever seen on her. “We are quite ready, Louisa.”

There had been a hard frost overnight. The gravel was still white where the house kept the sun off it, and the cold stung Darcy's face as he came down the steps. Two carriages stood at the door. The horses stamped and blew clouds into the air. Bingley was already sitting in the second, with his hat pushed back. Hurst was climbing in after him, grumbling about the step.

At the bottom of the steps Miss Bingley stopped, with one hand holding up her skirts, and looked round for Darcy's arm.

He gave it to Mrs Hurst. He handed her into the first carriage, handed Miss Bingley in after her with perfect politeness, and shut the door on both of them. Then he walked on to the second carriage and got in beside Hurst. He did not look back to see what Miss Bingley made of it.

“Darcy!” Bingley grabbed his hand and shook it. “I should say I have never been so nervous in all my life.”

He talked the whole way into Meryton about Jane, and the frost, and how many days it would take them to get to Scotland, and he did not seem to need anybody to answer him. Darcy did not. He sat with his hat on his knee and watched the white hedges go past.

He was thinking about the road yesterday, and about the way Elizabeth had looked at him when the actress owned the truth. She had looked at him as if she were seeing him properly for the first time. He had deserved that for perhaps a quarter of an hour. For the rest of the autumn he had deserved nothing of the kind.

The church stood a little way back from the Meryton road, with frost thick on the churchyard wall. The Longbourn carriage had got there first, and the Bennets were crowded together in the porch. Mrs Bennet was fussing with everybody's lace and nobody's lace was right. Miss Lydia was telling anyone who would listen that her toes had gone quite dead. Jane stood a little apart on her father's arm. She was pale, and perfectly calm, and she was smiling.

Bingley saw her, and after that he did not see anybody else.

Darcy had only just come through the gate when Elizabeth came down the path to meet him.

“Mr Darcy.” She curtseyed. “Good morning.”

That was nothing new. She had always been polite to him, most of all when she was about to say something cutting. But this morning there was nothing cutting waiting behind it. She looked at him quite openly, and her cheeks were pink with the cold.

“Miss Elizabeth. I hope your sister is well?”

“Very well. You would never know anything had happened.” She paused, and he knew what she was not saying.

“I am very glad to hear it.”

“You would not let me thank you yesterday, so I will not try again. But Jane asked me to tell you that she thinks it was very good of you.” Her mouth curved. “She said it three times on the way here, so I am sure she means it.”

He could not think of a single thing to say. A part of him felt guilty, for he had never told her the full truth – that he too had wanted to stop this marriage once more. That he had somewhat encouraged Miss Bingley’s venture, though he hadn’t known what it was exactly. He wanted to tell her and in that moment, he almost did.

Just then, her mother called her from the porch, and she turned and went back up the path. Darcy stood at the gate a moment longer, turning his hat round in his hands, before he followed her in.

It was hardly warmer inside than out. The windows were narrow and let in only a little grey light, but somebody had put holly along the altar rail and on the sills. The family filled the front pews. Mr Bennet brought Jane up the aisle looking very dry and very unconcerned, though Darcy noticed how tightly she was holding his arm. Bingley made his responses so loudly that they must have heard him in the back row. Jane made hers so quietly that only the parson and the two witnesses could have caught them.

Darcy stood at Bingley's shoulder. Across from him, a step behind her sister, stood Elizabeth.

He meant to keep his mind on the service. He owed Bingley that at least. Yet twice during the prayers he looked up and found her looking at him. The first time she looked away at once. The second time she did not. She held his eye for a moment, very serious, and then turned back to Jane. There was nothing in her face of the girl who had stopped him short at Hunsford. She did not seem to be finding fault with him, or making up her mind about him. She only seemed to be looking.

It was ridiculous that it should please him so much. The church was freezing, and he knew exactly what he had done to earn her good opinion and exactly what he had done to lose it. If she knew the rest, she would not look at him like that. He told himself so quite firmly.

Afterwards, in the vestry, the parson opened the register. Bingley signed with a great flourish, and Jane signed underneath in her small, neat hand. Darcy signed his name as witness and put the quill down in the tray. Elizabeth picked it up. For a moment her fingers were where his had just been.

She bent over the book and signed. Then she looked at his name, just above her own.

“You write a very even hand, Mr Darcy.”

“Miss Bingley once told me the same thing.”