These Three Remain

There had been no Mrs. Collins when he had taken his leave of Netherfield. Who was she, and who was her friend that Her Ladyship would hold forth upon Collins’s relations? He took a deep, steadying breath and turned back to his relatives.

“Mrs. Collins?” Fitzwilliam queried. Darcy almost blessed him aloud.

“A modest, steady young woman my new rector recently took to wife, having met her during a visit I encouraged him to make to an estranged relative on his father’s side. ‘Come back with a wife, Mr. Collins,’ I told him, ‘and you come back with all you will need for a useful life.’ I cannot say how often he has thanked me for that advice. She is exactly what I would have chosen for him. Not above herself, quiet, but with agreeable manners, as is her father, Sir William Lucas, who was lately here to visit them. I am informed that you have already made their acquaintance, Darcy.”

Lucas! Darcy searched his memory for a name. Charlotte…Miss Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth’s close friend and confidante! How many times had he observed them tete-a-tete? Miss Lucas had married Collins? That could only mean…! His fingers crept to the pocket of his waistcoat, but they found nothing. Where? Of course, he had left them upon the road! Looking up, he caught Richard regarding him curiously, his brow crooked at the disposition of his hand. Self-consciously, he smoothed down the waistcoat and essayed a response. “Yes, Ma’am. Last November in Hertfordshire. I…I had accompanied a friend who was in search of property in that neighborhood. In the course of that search, I met Sir William and his family.”

Was fate to bring back into his life the reality of which those threads had been merely the shadow? He strained to know, to be certain who this friend could be, and yet, if it was Elizabeth, what should be his course?

“I am informed that you have also met Mrs. Collins’s friend, Miss Elizabeth Bennet. It is quite annoying, Darcy, that I shall not have the pleasure of making a first introduction.”

Elizabeth! It was Elizabeth! Darcy’s heart began to pound, and his hands went cold as ice. How should he meet her? As indifferent acquaintances? As familiar antagonists? Had she completed her sketch of his character, or had she refrained as he had asked? And Wickham! With what other falsehoods had he plied her after Darcy had abandoned the field?

“Darcy?” Lady Catherine’s voice brought him back to the present. “I was saying, I am much put out that I will not have the pleasure of making a first introduction, for Miss Bennet assured me that you were well acquainted. I find that she is rather close to impertinent on occasion, which might lead her to overstating the situation. Is this true that you are acquainted?”

“Quite true, Ma’am. The society in Hertfordshire was small, and we were thrown in each other’s way rather often,” he confessed.

“Is that so?” Richard pursed his lips, a wicked gleam lighting his eye. “Then perhaps we should pay Mr. and Mrs. Collins and Mrs. Collins’s friend a visit tomorrow. What do you say, Darcy?”

A shiver of alarm passed through Darcy. Tomorrow? He gathered himself to discourage the project when a thought struck him. Would it not be better to have their first meeting away from the eyes of Lady Catherine? Although he would need to exercise caution where Richard was concerned, it was the perfect opportunity to test his own composure and discover how Elizabeth meant to go on.

“An excellent notion, Cousin,” Darcy answered him. “I could not, in good conscience, deny you the felicity of becoming the object of Mr. Collins’s admiration a moment longer than tomorrow.”

Darcy gave the bell pull a quick, impatient tug. Finally permitted to excuse himself to prepare for dinner, he had almost fled his aunt’s and cousins’ company for the sanctuary of his bedchamber. Fletcher had not been there ready for him, a singular circumstance in and of itself and, at this juncture, a disconcerting one as well. Where was he? If he was dallying with…Darcy strode back across the great high-ceilinged bedchamber, his back stiff in agitated aggrievement with his valet’s absence, but then stopped short. No, that could not be! Fletcher was now a man betrothed. Knowing his valet as he did, Darcy discounted his first, ungenerous impulse. Fletcher held his simple sense of honor too close to trifle with his beloved’s affection and trust. Perhaps a few more minutes of solitude would not be amiss if he was leaping to such unwarranted conclusions. Darcy strolled slowly to one of the great windows and stared out onto the green, rolling grounds that were Rosings Park. He must come to terms with himself and stop this ridiculous beating of his heart.

Elizabeth…here! It had taken all his power of will to keep the thought from himself as his aunt pontificated on the Bennet family, the new rector’s wife, and all her latest projects in the village. But now, away from the scrutiny of his relations, the realization burst upon him like a flood. She was here! She had been in the very salon he had just left, and more than once, from the length of his aunt’s discourse. She resided in the house at the end of the lane, just beyond the gate where Collins had stood greeting their arrival. She walked the lanes and paths of Rosings. That flash of color in the grove! Might it have been…? The rush of blood through his body made the fine lawn of his shirt feel like rough linsey-woolsey and the collar tight and irritating. He turned to a mirror and hooked the fingers of both hands into the knot at his throat, pulling it apart in increasing frustration until it finally fell to the carpet at his feet. It was only then that he dared to look at his reflection, praying that he didn’t look like…He groaned and turned away. Yes, he did…the veriest mooncalf!

To what had he pledged himself only just that morning? Had he not released those embroidery silks to the spring winds in solemn resolve to put from him all thought and desire of her? There was no possibility of avoiding the disturbing reality of those threads now, nor a voice whispered insistently, did he want to do so. Rather, he must needs master this irrational impulse that urged him to tear down to the parsonage immediately and insist on the privilege of drinking in all her remembered loveliness. He briefly imagined such a scene as he loosed the first two buttons of his shirt, but the memory of Elizabeth’s challenging eye overarched by that expressively raised brow stayed his flight into fancy. No, such fashionable, violent adoration she neither expected nor craved. She would want the truth from him, as he, when the heat that now consumed him cooled, would want from her. And the truth was, nothing had changed. All the impediments remained, and he still would be guilty of trifling with her should he in any way indicate the tumult of his emotions and thus raise her expectations.

Darcy closed his eyes as he sat down heavily on the edge of his chamber’s imposing bedstead, its grandeur as richly apparent as its lack of human comfort. He had never slept well at Rosings. Elizabeth. The conflictions of the previous autumn were returned now tenfold with her reentry into his life. The torments of his imaginings of her would be nothing compared with her actual presence. He shifted uncomfortably and unbuttoned his coat as he considered his dilemma. Were his desires merely manifestations of selfish willfulness, a lack of self-control? Or was it his duty and his beliefs, the code of conduct in which he had been raised, being shown inadequate? In four months he had not discovered the answer, but above the confusion, he did know this: beginning with the visit to the parsonage tomorrow and for the length of this reacquaintance, he must be careful — very, very careful.

The sound of hurried footsteps from the other side of the dressing room door brought Darcy up off the bed with a jerk. Fletcher! Quickly, he composed his features and turned to face the door as it swung smartly open.

“Your pardon, sir!” The valet bowed from the doorway. Darcy could see that he was panting slightly from his run. But from where?

“Fletcher!” Darcy’s voice was more stern than he intended, but there was no other means of concealing his true state. “Where have you been while I have cooled my heels awaiting your attention? I would not have thought that you would find anything of overpowering interest at Rosings to cause such negligence!”

“That is true, Mr. Darcy. Nothing precisely at Rosings, sir, nothing at all. Precisely.” Fletcher paused only a heartbeat before continuing. “May I help you with your coat, sir? Shall I have water for the bath sent up? It is ready and waiting.” He pulled the kitchen bellrope then advanced upon his master. In a trice, Darcy’s coat was down his arms and flung uncharacteristically upon the bed. “There. Your waistcoat now, sir?”

“Fletcher, where were you…precisely?” Darcy’s brow lowered at the valet’s busyness.

“Just now, sir?”

Darcy nodded.

“Why, in the kitchen, sir, testing the water that it —”

“Before that.” Darcy cut him off.

Fletcher’s mouth shut with a snap, and a curious look washed over his features. Then, lowering his eyes, he confessed. “I was at the parsonage, sir. But it was on your behalf, Mr. Darcy.”