Page 40 of The Cherry Trees of Rosings
Mr. Darcy looked conflicted. Charlotte affronted.
Elizabeth sighed.
“Charlotte, nothing untoward has happened between me and Mr. Darcy,” she said. “Surely you can see these are extraordinary circumstances?”
Then she added quickly—on seeing the still-affronted look on Charlotte’s face and the deepening guilt on his: “Mr. Darcy hasnever broken propriety with me… other than what could not be avoided.”
She looked in his direction. He was staring at the floorboards, hands in his coat pockets.
“...I was helping him write a letter.”
Silence permeated the room once more.The only sound, that of a distant owl hooting somewhere outside the window.
Charlotte “hmm-ed” after a beat. Elizabeth frowned at her in exasperation. “You had some news, Charlotte, did you not?”
Mr. Darcy raised his head.
“Yes,” Charlotte answered, a half-uncertain, half-disapproving cast to her brows as she glanced at the empty chair again.
“I have found a way for you to visit Mr. Darcy.”
And so, there they were.
“How did you do it?”
Elizabeth asked Charlotte as the covered cart they were in rattled and bumped along the road.
Their pace was slow enough to not risk danger in the darkness—and relative quiet—of the night. Yet fast enough so they could reach their destination in a few hours.Elizabeth did not know wherethey were going though.
“It is something only Mrs. Collins can do,” Charlotte replied, in her usual ironic self-confidence.
Elizabeth rolled her eyes.
It wasjust like her friend to persuade the most unpersuadable to do as she wished. She peered through the tiny window on her side at Colonel Fitzwilliam on horseback.
He, and two other footmen from Rosings, were accompanying them on the journey that had unfolded in the most dramatic—albeit clandestine—manner.
As it turned out, Lady Catherine had some people on her employ who were more loyal to her nephews than the ladyship herself. But the cart belonged to a parishioner who owed Charlotte a large kindness. After all, they could not risk taking a carriage from Rosings.
Elizabeth did not know how Charlotte had managed to arrange it all.But she had.
And so there she was.
Sitting beside Charlotte—cloth bag with some bare necessities and a change of clothes near her feet—bumping along on the main highway, with Mr. Collins and Maria sleeping soundly far behind in the parsonage and none the wiser.
“I must say, I never imagined I would do something like this.”
Elizabeth turned back to Charlotte. Her voice was a hushed whisper in the stark silence. “Least of all with you!”
“Why not? IsMrs. Collinstoo practical to do such a thing?”
“Stop that, Charlotte! You know what I mean.”
They were silent for some more moments. Each lost in their own thoughts.
“What I cannot believe is finding Mr. Darcy in your room,” Charlotte said.
Elizabeth’s cheeks grew heated.
