Chapter 3
Library
Darcy House
London
“In March or early April, it is advisable to shear the Cotswold ewes in preparation for lambing. The Cotswold ewes generally birth…”
Elizabeth Bennet stood a few feet inside the breakfast room at Netherfield, her cheeks flushed pink, her fine eyes brightened with exercise. Her sensible pelisse was spattered with mud, and her dusky curls were windswept under her warm cap.
“I am here to care for my sister,” she said to Miss Bingley. “May I see her?”
Darcy shook his head and started reading once more. “The Cotswold ewes generally birth one to three lambs…”
“Do you not feel a great inclination, Miss Bennet, to seize such an opportunity of dancing a reel?”
She looked up at him, her dark eyebrows lifted, her eyes dancing, but did not speak. He stared at her in astonishment and repeated the question.
“Oh,” the lady replied, her exquisite lips curling up in amusement, “I heard you before; but I could not immediately determine what to say in reply. You wanted me, I know, to say ‘Yes,’ that you might have the pleasure of despising my taste; but I always delight in overthrowing those kind of schemes and cheating a person of their premeditated contempt. I have, therefore, made up my mind to tell you that I do not want to dance a reel at all; and now despise me if you dare.”
Darcy stared down at her, his heart in his throat.
“Indeed I do not dare,” he said.
“Cotswold ewes generally birth one to three lambs, and those with triplets…”
With a huff of frustration, Fitzwilliam Darcy, master of Pemberley, set the book aside carefully – even when he was distressed, he always put books down with respect – and leaned against his favorite wingbacked chair in his favorite room in Darcy House.
He adored libraries, and was pleased to be master of not one but two fine ones; this one, though only a quarter of the size of the library at Pemberley, was full of some of the finest books available to a wealthy gentleman.
Usually, he could read anything, even a treatise on sheep, with rapt attention, but today, like so many other days of late, his thoughts continually shifted to Miss Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourn, second daughter of a country gentleman and a solicitor’s daughter, impecunious, with manners that were not those of the fashionable world.
Miss Elizabeth Bennet, with her fine eyes and pleasing figure, with her vigor, with her arch smile and clever speech, teased Darcy when no one, not even Bingley, dared.
This could not be love, of course. He was far too sensible a gentleman, with far too great an understanding of his own consequence and responsibility toward his family, to fall in love with Miss Elizabeth Bennet.
No, it was merely that she was so very unusual.
The ladies of the ton, the unmarried ones, anyway, either pursued him or ignored him.
The latter group was largely composed of the highborn daughters of dukes and marquises, though in truth, even some of those young women chased him.
Yes, he, with his handsome face and figure, his vast fortune, his great estate, and close connections to the Earl of Matlock, was a great matrimonial prize.
Elizabeth had never mentioned his wealth, never hung on his arm or complimented his writing. Did she know how very effective her manners were in capturing his interest?
Probably? He hoped she had not been too distressed when he left Netherfield a few months previously. She must have known that, in spite of his obvious attraction toward her, there was really no hope of an offer of marriage. Their positions in life were too disparate.
It would fade, this bizarre, uncomfortable longing to return to Hertfordshire, to ride to Longbourn, to ask her father for his blessing, to take her as his wife.
Surely it would fade?
I hope you enjoyed this excerpt from my novel, Elizabeth Bennet’s Inheritance!