Georgiana’s face changed. It did not brighten exactly, for she was too gentle to seize upon what she sensed might wound him, but some small seed of hope had been nurtured.
He had not meant to do that.
“Then perhaps she will,” Georgiana said.
“Perhaps.” It was a dangerous word. It held almost nothing and allowed almost everything.
Georgiana came back to him and kissed his cheek. “Good night, Brother.”
“Good night, Georgiana.”
At the door she paused once more. “If she does come again, I shall speak to her more.”
“I think she would like that.” This time he said it before caution could stop him. Georgiana smiled.
When his sister had gone, Darcy stood alone in the quietroom, with the house settling around him and the dark descending outside. Miss Elizabeth might be persuaded into Derbyshire again. It was a cautious bit of hope, no more, but after the day they had experienced, even that much felt unsafe.
He did not know whether Miss Elizabeth wished him to come to Lambton. He did not know whether her aunt had spoken for her or only from kindness. He knew only that doing nothing would be safest and that he could not decide tonight.
Tonight, he had only the memory of her backward glance and the knowledge that the morning would come soon enough.
Darcy did not sleep a great deal that night.
He lay in the dark of a house he had lived in all his life and listened to it settle around him. He knew these sounds. There was the faint complaint of old wood, the distant shifting of a door, the small noises of Pemberley at night that had been familiar to him since boyhood.
Until this past year, he had never once wished for someone beside him to hear them too.
He thought of the whole long day of her, which he had been recalling piece by piece. The way she had drawn Georgiana away on some pretext when his sister was floundering. The way she had been aware of young Henry Atherton, calling out an alarm but already moving while everyone else stood about. The steadiness with which she had remained with and spoken to the frightened Pelham girl during the storm.
He knew, by now, exactly what manner of woman Elizabeth Bennet was.
What he did not know—what none of that long, happy listcould tell him, what no amount of lying awake would yield—was the one thing that mattered.
He knew what shewas. But he did not know what shefelt.
Miss Elizabeth’s countenance as she stood near the carriage came back to him. It was the face of a woman who had forgiven him, and that was no small matter. Did it, could it, mean anything more?
She no longer despised him. He was nearly certain of it. There had been an evening in a Kent parsonage last April when he would have given a great deal for such grace.
But a man could not live upon the bare absence of a woman’s contempt.
He turned it over and over, but he could not decide whether Elizabeth Bennet liked him. Whether she would be glad to see him in the morning, or only sorry he had come. Whether he would be finishing a sentence she wished finished, or proving himself the very man she had called out in April, a man who supposed wanting a thing was the same as deserving it.
To go and be wrong was to shame them both.
To stay and let Monday carry her south was to lose her without ever learning whether she might have been won.
Darcy turned the whole of it over until the window went from black to grey. He resolved nothing. He decided nothing. And somewhere near dawn, Darcy fell asleep still not knowing what he was going to do.
CHAPTER 12
Elizabeth woke before the inn had begun to stir. She lay watching the ceiling pale from grey to white. When lying still was no longer possible, she rose.
Whenever her mind would not quiet itself, walking was the cure—the road, the air, the steady work of putting one foot before the other until thought wore down into distance—it soothed her. This morning in particular, she stood in need of such a remedy. She had one half-boot in her hand before she stopped. If she went out and he came, she would not be there.
She set the boot down.
This was foolish. There was no reason to suppose Mr. Darcy would come. They had made their farewells. He had handed her into the carriage and wished her a safe return. A man did not pursue departed guests five miles into Lambton the next morning merely to finish a sentence he had thought better of completing.