Chapter 1 #2
“Do you want to converse with me? I thought we both meant to pretend the other did not exist.”
His lips quirked as if he meant to suppress a smile. “Conversation will pass the time far better than silence will.”
“An excellent point.” Elizabeth considered a moment. “You may refer to me as Miss L.”
“Miss L?” He chuckled. “Very well. I am Mr D.”
“It is a pleasure to not quite make your acquaintance, sir.”
“Likewise, I am sure,” he replied drily. “Tell me, Miss L, where are you from?”
“England,” she responded pertly. “And you?”
That brought an outright chuckle. “I, too, am from England. I suppose we wish to avoid any identifying aspects, yes?”
“Precisely,” Elizabeth said. She enjoyed playing this little game with him. “So we are at once robbed of the usual niceties of conversation. No discussion of connexions, or families, or mutual friends, no talk of estates or counties…it is utter freedom from the commonplace polite social discourse.”
Which suits me better than you can know.
“As we are at that, let us also eschew the usual conversational gambits—I will assume that you enjoy music, can net a screen, and have read all the things common to young ladies. You may also assume I went to university, I fence, I ride, I play cards.”
“But you do not enjoy dancing?”
“Why do you think that?”
“You are in here, are you not? Or was it this fine, hard, musty-smelling sofa which drew you?”
“The sofa, naturally.” He quickly suppressed another small smile which threatened. “Pray forgive me for presuming to think you were—”
“In heated pursuit of you?” she asked drily.
“Yes.” He looked down a moment. “I am too much accustomed to a certain sort of lady, I fear.”
“Either that or too much accustomed to thinking yourself irresistible.” She smiled as she said it, hoping to remove a bit of the sting from her words. After all, she did not know this man enough to really tease him.
“It is not that I think I am irresistible,” he replied soberly. “But any man of a certain standing and wealth who is not yet married is pursued like a fox in the hunt these days. I cannot abide these matchmaking mothers and the insipid young ladies they thrust at me.”
The matchmaking mothers she could not disagree with, but insipid? The young ladies of Hertfordshire were hardly that.
Clearing her throat, she said, “I suppose Hertfordshire must be uncommonly rich in avaricious matrimony-seekers?”
“Almack’s is nothing to it.” He had clearly missed the note of satire in her voice.
“I do not think I have ever met such people, nothing of beauty or elegance among them. There is one matron among them, five or six daughters to her credit, who nearly grappled Mr Bingley to the ground when she saw him.”
Perversely, this deeply offended Elizabeth even as she owned it was likely true. “How dreadful. No doubt Mr Bingley was appalled?”
“Do you suppose I know Mr Bingley well enough to comprehend his feeling in such matters?”
Of course Elizabeth could not mention that she knew Meryton well enough to know that any stranger at all was likely to be connected to the party from Netherfield Park.
Nevertheless, as Mr Bingley had reportedly brought seven gentlemen with him, it still did not give away this particular man’s identity.
“Perhaps you do; perhaps not,” she replied. “But surely you must have seen how he bore it? With disgust? Did he try to get away?”
“Decidedly not.” The gentleman shook his head. “In fact, he attached himself to the only handsome girl in the room and, as of my last observation of him, appeared to be enjoying her charms enormously.”
The only handsome girl in the room, hmm?
So not only are the rest of us insipid, we are ugly too?
Elizabeth did not have any great opinion of her own beauty, even if others did consider her handsome, but all her sisters, and many of the Hertfordshire ladies, were considered uncommonly pretty.
This man seemed to completely lack feeling, or understanding that by his manner of complimenting Jane he was simultaneously slighting every other lady who had been in the room.
Including me. But why should I care for this man’s good opinion?
“Are you a visitor here as well?” he asked her.
She made a noise that she hoped suggested agreement. “Do you intend to remain long in the neighbourhood?” Elizabeth asked, eager to leave the subject of where she lived behind.
“I must leave tomorrow. I had thought to remain longer but…family matters call me away.”
“Family matters do that at times.” Elizabeth rose and went over to the window.
It was a steep drop to the ground, but she wondered if she might be able to manage it.
If she did not find a way out, it could be some time before they were discovered.
It was unlikely Mrs Bennet would notice her least favourite daughter’s absence.
Even if she did, Mrs Philips lived only steps away; no doubt Mrs Bennet would think Elizabeth had returned to her aunt’s apartment.
Jane was busy enjoying herself as she should and might also think Elizabeth had returned to their aunt’s home.
Perhaps someone will notice Mr D is missing and come to find us.
“If only I could use my hair like Petrosinella,” she mused aloud.
Unaccountably this made Mr D laugh abruptly and loudly. “Am I the ogress in that scenario?”
Elizabeth turned towards him again. “I did not say that.”
“In any case, the ogress used Petrosinella’s hair to climb into the tower.”
“How do you suppose she got out? I daresay by the same means.”
“It does not say so.”
“Neither does it speak against it,” Elizabeth retorted, crossing her arms over her chest.
“You know the tale well, then.” Mr D leant back on the sofa, the picture of ease. “Did someone translate it for you, or are you—”
“I can read Italian, and French, and a little German.”
“That is uncommon in even the most well-educated ladies.”
She shrugged. “My father believed—” She choked a little on the past tense but hurried past it. “—there should be both breadth and depth to a proper education, for ladies as well as gentlemen. He recommended some works to me to extend my understanding.”
“Your father is interested in your education?”
She considered briefly whether to tell him her father was dead but instead said, merely, “Is that so extraordinary?”
Mr D evidently perceived this as an invitation to debate literature with her.
They discovered they had read many of the same things but often with very different opinions.
Even when they agreed, Elizabeth found herself offering opinions not her own for the purpose of provoking debate, working their way round to her favourite Greek mythology.
“No one in their right mind would think that Persephone was the true villain,” he declared warmly.
“What I think,” she replied loftily, “is that pure villainy does not exist. There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.”
“You believe that within every villain resides a hero?” he asked, his scepticism plain.
“And within every hero, the potential for villainy,” she said.
“And what do you suppose brings out one versus the other?”
Elizabeth considered it a moment, then said, “Temptation. Greed. Lust. Even the very best of men, and women, can be lured into deviltry given such inducements.”
She saw him mouth the word lust, his lips curling around it in disgust. “Persephone was a victim,” he insisted. “She did nothing wrong.”
“She went,” Elizabeth replied.
“She was abducted!”
“Having been tempted by a narcissus,” Elizabeth countered. “Can there be a more apt metaphor? It was her own vanity which doomed her.”
“Hades abducted her. Against. Her. Will.”
“Perhaps,” agreed Elizabeth. “But perhaps there was something within her that longed to be seduced.”
This caused him to bolt upright from his position on the sofa. “Persephone was an innocent dragged off against her will.”
“What part of it was her will, or not her will, we cannot say,” Elizabeth countered. Then, just to be contrary, she added, “Perhaps the true villain was Zeus who, in essence, permitted Hades to take her.”
Even the absence of light could not disguise the fact that Mr D went pale, and Elizabeth noticed that one hand, dangling by his side, had clenched into a tight fist. Belatedly she realised she had angered him. How odd. Nothing else we have discussed has seemed to distress him so.
“Are you meaning to tell me that, of all parties, you think Hades the most virtuous?”
“I say nothing for who owns the greater share; I only say there is good and evil in all parties.”
“Even Zeus.” It was Mr D who made that conclusion, though it appeared to displease him to say it. He stalked towards the unlit fireplace, resting one hand on the mantel.
Elizabeth rolled her eyes at Mr D’s evident pique.
Was it not he who had urged them towards debate?
Then again, this was what her mother so often lamented: the freeness with which she ran on with her opinions.
‘Any woman with the disadvantage of a fine mind’, her mother often counselled, ‘should do well to conceal it as best she can. Certainly at least until she is married’.
She was just about to say something mollifying when Mr D said, stiffly, “Perhaps we ought to have heeded your original directive and remained in silence together.”