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“Forgive me,” she said to Jane, low enough not to disturb Miss Darcy’s playing. “I have a slight headache. I thought I might find somewhere quieter.”

Jane looked at her with an expression that meant she did not entirely believe the headache and was choosing not to say so. “Of course,” she said.

Elizabeth slipped out, already knowing where she would go.

Though the library at Netherfield Park did not have an impressive collection, that was all the better for her present purposes, for Elizabeth wanted only a little quiet and privacy. It was conveniently close to the sitting room, and ought to work admirably for her purposes. Hurrying a little, Elizabeth reached it in mere moments. She walked through the open door and stopped abruptly.

Mr Darcy was there, Mr Bingley at his side. They stood by the window at the far end, their backs three-quarters toward her, deep in conversation. Neither had heard her.

Elizabeth should have announced herself, but she did not. The ache in her chest kept her rooted firmly to the spot.

Mr Bingley was speaking. She caught the tail of it: “—not see how things presently stand. You cannot pretend things are as you had hoped.”

“I cannot in good conscience continue to bind someone to an arrangement they find repugnant,” Mr Darcy said. “The obligation weighs too heavily. I see it in every forced smile, every dutiful word.”

The room was quite still. Elizabeth stood in the doorway and felt the sentence settle heavily in her stomach.

“She has tried to make the best of it,” Mr Darcy continued, and there was something in his voice she could not bear to examine. “I have seen her try. And I have watched it cost her, week after week, and I cannot —” He stopped and took a heavy breath. “It is not honourable to hold someone to an obligation they discharge only out of pride and necessity. Regardless of my own feelings. Surely we cannot go on so.”

Regardless of my own feelings.

She did not hear the rest. She was aware of Mr Bingley beginning to respond — his voice, the warm, earnest tone of it — but the words did not reach her, because she was already moving. Not running. She was not going to run through Netherfield’s corridors. But she moved back through the door with quiet speed, desperate to be gone, and the door made no sound as she drew it closed behind her. Elizabeth walked and did not stop until she had turned two corners and reached the window at the eastern end of the passage. She stood there with her hands at her sides and her eyes on the winter garden below.

I cannot in good conscience continue to bind someone to an arrangement they find repugnant.

She was the someone. She was the arrangement. She was the repugnance, and the forced smiles, and the dutiful words. Apparently, she had been performing them with such convincing accuracy that the man for whom she had been performing was now working out the honourable mechanism of removing himself from the situation.

The garden below was bare and frost-silvered and entirely unhelpful.

Elizabeth thought she had been honest with herself, only to walk into a library and discover that her accounting of her own feelings had not been complete at all, because she had not accounted for the possibility that what she felt was entirely irrelevant. The image of Mr Darcy standing at that window and thinking about repugnance and forced smiles while she had been sitting in Miss Darcy’s music room trying not to look at the door he might come through hurt her more than she ever thought it could.

Elizabeth pressed her fingers briefly to her eyes.

Regardless of my own feelings.

She returned to those five words, which could mean two devastatingly different things. With the last small gasp of hope she could muster, Elizabeth reminded herself that she did not know what he felt. She knew what he had said, which was that she found the arrangement repugnant and that he could see it and that he could not in good conscience continue to bind her to it. That was what he had said. She was going to be accurate about what had been said and not embroider it into something more comfortable.

Elizabeth straightened. The corridor was empty. Crisp and flowing, the soft sounds of Miss Darcy’s playing drifted toward her; the concerto nearing its end.

She was not going to go back to the library. She was not going to seek Mr Darcy out and correct his impression of her, because she did not know how to correct it without saying more than she could say.

Most importantly, Elizabeth was not going to cry. This was Netherfield. If she cried, the servants would hear, and that was a final humiliation she did not think she could bear.

She was going to return to Miss Darcy’s sitting room, where she would drink whatever was left of the tea and be adequately composed. Elizabeth let out a long, slow breath, gathering her resolve. That was exactly what she would do, and she would do it because it was the only thing available to her. Because Jane was in that room carrying her own weight and did not need Elizabeth’s added to it. And because the alternative was standing at this window for the rest of the morning, achieving nothing besides being rude to Miss Darcy.

With concentrated effort, she turned from the window and walked back down the corridor, found the sitting room, and went in.

Miss Darcy remained concentrated on her playing. She was so immersed in the music that she likely had not even realised Elizabeth had been gone from the room. Jane looked up when she entered, a question in her expression that she would not ask and Elizabeth could not answer. Elizabeth sat down beside her and accepted her cup and did her best to be entirely composed.

Jane took her hand briefly and said nothing. She only gave a gentle smile, which at once told Elizabeth that she had not been as composed as she had hoped. Both were very welcome at that moment: the smile, full of a sister’s love, and the silence, full of a sister’s understanding.

She sat with Jane and listened to Miss Darcy play. The room was warm, while outside, the Hertfordshire winter pressed grey and unforgivingly against the glass. Elizabeth held herself very still and thought about nothing at all, with a determination that was its own kind of answer, and that she recognised even as she practised it as something she could not keep up for long.

∞∞∞

Bingley’s reply arrived before Darcy had finished speaking.

“But surely Miss Bennet’s discomfort comes from believing you feel trapped, not from her own reluctance?”