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Jane blushed, looking out into the gardens as though searching there for words, and Elizabeth took pity on her.

“I ended the engagement,” she said. “I told Mr Bingley that I could not marry him, as I did not love him. After months watching him and Jane pretending not to love each other, the idea of spending every Christmas for the rest of my life watching their poor pretendings was more fatiguing than I could bear, so…” She stopped, laughing, as Jane turned to her in indignant protest.

“You ended it?” Charlotte asked incredulously, stopping in her tracks.

“I did,” Elizabeth confirmed, nodding.

“Lizzy proposed it entirely of her own free will, and refused to be dissuaded,” Jane said, finding her voice, “though I begged her to think of herself.”

“I thought of myself a great deal,” Elizabeth assured her sister. “I decided that the version of myself that was most true to the person I wish to be could not marry a man who so clearly loved another, especially when he was showing such excellent taste by loving the best person that I know.”

Charlotte was staring at her friend silently. “Lizzy. You know that was likely your only chance of a respectable marriage. And you gave it up for your sister’s happiness.”

“When you say it like that, Charlotte, it makes me sound very noble,” Elizabeth said with a smile. “I promise you, I did not feel so noble in the moment.” She glanced sideways at Charlotte and found her friend watching her a little askance. She met her eyes, and Charlotte raised her brows. “Is there something else you wish to ask me?”

“There is,” Charlotte said at once. “Namely, what else factored into your decision? I know there must be something — do not trouble to deny it. You are speaking very quickly and brightly, Lizzy, and making jokes, which is what you do when there is more to a story than you are sharing. I have come all the way from Kent for this full story, and I will not be put off with whatever version of it you share with Mrs Long.”

That surprised Elizabeth into a laugh, but it faded away, and she suddenly found herself quite miserable. “I…I could not marry Mr Bingley when my feelings were…were with someone else,” she said softly. It was difficult enough to get the words out. Elizabeth could not find the will to say them lightly.

Charlotte was silent for a long moment. “With whom do your feelings lie, Lizzy?” she asked at last.

Elizabeth glanced up at Jane. She had told her sister of the horrible proposal at Pemberley, and her refusal, but had not wanted to talk too deeply, and Jane was too gentle to push. Charlotte had no such compunctions. “With Mr Darcy,” she said finally.

Charlotte’s eyebrows drew upward. “Mr Darcy? The same Mr Darcy whom you assured me was the proudest, most disagreeable man in England?”

Elizabeth winced. “The very same,” she confirmed. She pressed her lips together, but continued. “He proposed to me at Pemberley. I refused him.”

Charlotte had shown remarkable restraint the entire day, not reacting with more than a wry expression to the news of Lydia’s marriage, Mr Bennet’s dressing down of her husband, Elizabeth’s breaking of her engagement to Mr Bingley and Jane’s subsequent engagement to the same person. But the news that Elizabeth had refused such a proposal produced a gasp worthy of any gossipy matron at a Meryton sewing circle.

“Mr Darcy proposed to you? And you refused him?” Charlotte said incredulously. She blinked, shaking her head slightly as though to clear it. “You refused Mr Darcy of Pemberley?”

“I refused the man who informed me, in considerable detail, that he was condescending to propose to me despite the undeniable fact that the world would see a union with me as a degradation. I could not marry anyone who proposed with such a detailed accounting of every reason I was unsuitable without ever mentioning any reason that I was. He would be sure to pull out the list any time I displeased him, do not you think?” Though Elizabeth did her best to make light of it, she could not quite summon a smile.

Charlotte was quiet for a moment. “That does sound like him,” she admitted. “I do not know Mr Darcy well, but Lady Catherine speaks of him…quite often,” she said, and Elizabeth caught the pained note in her friend’s voice. “Quite often, indeed. She describes him as a man of the highest distinction, who says exactly what he thinks and considers that to be a great virtue.”

“It is not,” Elizabeth assured her with feeling.

“Yet your…feelings are with him to the extent that, even after such an insulting proposal, you could not continue with your engagement to Mr Bingley?”

Elizabeth was horrified to find that her lips were trembling, and she pressed them tightly together. “It does not signify,” she said after a moment. “I refused him quite thoroughly, and my family has now become entangled with Mr Wickham to such a degree that I can only imagine it has made any connection to me even more degrading than it would have been before. I…I am sure that it was he that found Lydia, and convinced Mr Wickham to marry her. Surely paying Mr Wickham’s debts and purchasing him a commission, along with having to deal with Lydia, must have cured him of whatever he might have felt quite comprehensively.”

Charlotte, who had received rather a lot of shocks in the course of a brief conversation, stared at her, knocked almost speechless by this latest revelation. “He…you believe that he paid Mr Wickham’s debts?” she asked.

“I believe that Lydia’s wedding occurred rather more conveniently and easily than it had any right to, and I know that Mr Darcy rode away from Pemberley announcing his intention to help find her the very day we learned that Lydia had gone away. We have heard nothing from him since, but I do not know why Wickham would have married a fortuneless girl, or how he cleared his debts and purchased a commission without Mr Darcy’s assistance.

“Lizzy,” Charlotte said softly. “He has no reason to do so unless..”

“He is an honourable gentleman,” Elizabeth interrupted. “Though one who is very unskilled at proposals.” She swallowed heavily, twice, and Jane gently laid an arm about her shoulders, while Charlotte looked on her pityingly.

“Well,” Charlotte said, taking her arm and steering her back toward the house, “I think it a very poor state of affairs that Hertfordshire has become so interesting now that I no longer reside here.”

But while the three ladies had taken it for granted that no one could have overheard their conversation, they were quite mistaken. As they walked back toward the house, none of them saw Mr Collins. He had not taken himself down the lane, but had gone to the other side of the garden wall. Having happened to be out of their sight when they began their so interesting conversation, he had taken pains to ensure that he was not discovered. When the ladies had gone back into the house, he stood outside the wall for a full minute, processing what he had learned.

Mr Darcy, Lady Catherine’s own nephew, promised by the will of his departed mother and his most excellent aunt to his cousin Anne, had proposed marriage to Elizabeth Bennet. He had no choice — he had, in fact, considering his particular closeness to Lady Catherine and his natural and professional concern for the moral welfare of persons of rank, a sacred duty to inform his benefactress of what he had discovered. He thought uncomfortably of Mr Bennet’s warning. Certainly he would understand that this was something beyond what he could be expected to hide. Certainly a gentleman of Mr Bennet’s age and experience would know…well, regardless, Mr Bennet was not one to hold a grudge, and could not shut his heir out indefinitely! He would write to her the moment they returned to Lucas Lodge.

Chapter 25

Two days later, Lydia arrived at Longbourn in a positive whirlwind. She tumbled out of the carriage almost before it had come to a halt, already talking.