“I am sorry,” she said suddenly, without preface. “It seems wherever I go of late, other people must alter their plans. I had not thought to make a career of discomposing gentlemen who travel to London.”
“Do not take so much upon yourself, Princess,” he said. “Your affairs are not significant enough to influence the world’s revolutions.”
The title slipped out before he could stop it, weighted with all the scepticism and vexation he felt. He had refused, hitherto, to address her thus, preferring the plain Miss Bennet as a small defence against what was a dangerous falsehood. Now that single word fell between them with a force that surprised even him.
Her head came up, eyes widening. For a heartbeat he saw the hurt there, naked and unguarded, and regretted his lapse.
Then she mastered it.
“Quite so, Mr. Darcy,” she said, after a pause that felt longer than it was. “Pray do not fear that I shall forget it.”
She curtsied again, a movement of perfect correctness and absolute distance, and turned towards the door.
He watched her go, the slight sway of her skirts, the set of her shoulders. The room felt colder after she had left it, though the fire burned as brightly as before.
He told himself that he had merely reminded her of the falsehood she continued to embrace. If she chose to be wounded by the title she claimed, that was no concern of his.
Yet as he sat with his book, the memory that troubled him was not of a scheming impostor enjoying her triumph, but of a young woman at a window, looking towards a road that came within ten miles of home and might as well have been ten hundred.
Chapter Eleven
Elizabeth’s first waking thought was that she had slept badly; the second, that Mr. Darcy had called herPrincessthe previous day in such a manner that the word had felt like an accusation rather than a title.
She lay still for a moment, staring up at the low, smoke-darkened ceiling of the little bedchamber. The thin winter light that crept about the edges of the curtains was of that peculiar grey which suggested that the sun had technically risen, but with little enthusiasm for the task. The coals in the grate had burned low. The bitter air nipped at her nose.
Memory trickled back in uncomfortable detail.
Her inquiry about Longbourn. His refusal, precise and entirely reasonable, and yet delivered with a coolness that had made it feel like a rebuke.Longbourn must remain ten miles off.His face when he said it, all duty and no indulgence. That dreadful “Princess,” as he reminded her that there were other people in the world who each had their own concerns, as though she believed otherwise.
She could not decide which stung more: that he so thoroughly misjudged her, or that some part of her had known, even as she spoke, thatwhat she askedwasunreasonable, and she had asked it nevertheless. If she had been so bluntly denied, was it not her own fault?
It was only that she wanted her family. She missed the way a single, quiet word from Jane could make any folly seem less dreadful. She missed Mary’s solemn lectures, which had so often been tiresome but now, in memory, appeared almost comically dear. She wanted her father’s dry wit from behind his newspaper, and her mother’s unregulated laments about nerves and neighbours, which had always filled the house with such ridiculous animation. She missed even Kitty and Lydia—their noise, their thoughtlessness, the flutter of ribbons and exclamations. Yes, at thirteen and fifteen they ought to have been quieter and more composed, but they werehers, and home had never been home without them.
A brisk knock sounded upon the door. Before Elizabeth could answer, Mrs. Hobart swept in, wrapped in a thick shawl over her travelling gown, her lace cap perfectly placed upon her head.
“Are you feeling better, then?” she inquired, hoping for a positive response.
“I only required a little rest,” was Mrs. Hobart’s tart reply. “I told you as much. And now you must rise and have your breakfast, for Mr. Darcy sent word that we are soon to depart.”
“Has the coachman seen to the traces?” Elizabeth asked. “Anders thought that they would require attention before we could proceed.”
Mrs. Hobart’s hand fluttered. “I would not know. In any case, the servants say a multitude of things, my dear. They always will. It is their profession.” Her tone now acquired an injured air. “We have already sacrificed an entire day to the caprices of weather and apothecaries. It reflects most unfavourably upon the efficiency of the English postal roads.”
Elizabeth did not believe that the snowstorm could be fairly laid at the door of the Post Office, nor their delay here upon the apothecary, but shelet the remark pass. “You are quite right that we ought to be ready. I shall dress at once.”
“Do. I have ordered breakfast to be brought up here. It will never do for you to go downstairs into that draughty common room when there is a chill upon the air and I am still recovering.” Mrs. Hobart pressed a hand to her bosom in genteel indication of the nerves in question. “The landlord was only too pleased to assist a princess.”
Elizabeth regarded her companion with a mixture of gratitude and unease. It was true that Mrs. Hobart had undertaken the tedious, practical cares of the journey with brisk efficiency. It was equally true that she relished invoking the name of the Thurnian court whenever she wished to curry favour or carry a point.
“If you please,” Elizabeth said quietly, “you will remember that my grandfather wished my presence to attract as little notice as possible upon the road. We seem to have left that instruction behind somehow.”
Mrs. Hobart gave a small smile, more indulgent than obliging. “And so it shall, my dear. For our safety we must avoid the newspapers and the fashionable inns. But there is no harm in permitting an obscure country landlord to understand that he has been honoured. If he tells a few neighbours, what of it? You shall not pass this way again.”
There was a dreadful, suffocating certainty in that. Elizabeth forced a smile.
When she was dressed and ready, the breakfast arrived, carried by a maid whose nose was red with cold and whose curtsy was so low that her cap nearly slid from her head. Mrs. Hobart kept her a full three minutes, instructing her upon the way the cups were to be placed and the ashes removed from the grate, while Elizabeth longed to send the poor girl away so that she might complete her other duties.
On descending, Elizabeth discovered that Mr. Darcy had been downstairs an hour before them.