CHAPTER 10 #2
“In a favourable connexion.”
“Lord Pomington’s survival has done me more credit than I expected.”
Hartwood’s mouth twitched. Beaker’s did not.
“We are considering,” said Beaker, “whether there may be some limited advantage in placing a portion of Miss Bennet’s affairs with a younger man.”
“And you have come to inspect the younger man?”
“His chambers,” said Beaker.
“His clerks,” said Hartwood.
“His habits.”
“His address.”
Beaker looked at him directly.
“And his temper.”
Darcy was silent for one second.
“A comprehensive visit.”
“Miss Bennet is a comprehensive client,” said Hartwood.
That, Darcy suspected, was true.
He thought of the firelit room in Portman Square, the hideous dog in its ridiculous garment, the housekeeper giving orders as if she had been born to command armies, the companion who made propriety sound like furniture, and Miss Elizabeth Bennet standing in the middle of it all with gratitude, decision, and green eyes that saw far too quickly.
“Yes,” he said. “I had gathered something of the kind.”
Hartwood looked amused. Beaker looked unsurprised.
“Miss Bennet is intelligent,” said Hartwood.
“Quick,” said Beaker.
“Generous.”
“Impatient.”
“Accustomed to being obeyed when she is right,” Hartwood added.
“And sometimes,” said Beaker, “before it has been proved that she is.”
Hartwood’s glance warmed with old affection. “She is not a client for a man who requires slow weather.”
Darcy inclined his head.
“I do not require it.”
“No,” said Beaker. “I should think not.”
There was a pause then, not empty but measuring.
Darcy knew what they saw, or rather what they had come to discover: not whether he could impress a rich client with splendour, but whether he could be trusted with one despite having none.
Whether reduced circumstances had made him mean; whether ambition had made him careless; whether economy had become shabbiness; whether pride had outrun sense.
It was a fair inquiry.
He disliked it no less for being fair.
“There may be lease work,” said Beaker.
“There is always lease work,” Hartwood observed. “It is one of the penalties of property.”
“Heavy,” said Beaker.
“Unromantic,” said Hartwood.
“Not especially profitable.”
Darcy looked from one to the other.
“You recommend it handsomely.”
“We recommend it accurately,” said Beaker.
“If such work came to you,” said Hartwood, “would you object to beginning where there is more tedium than consequence?”
“No,” said Darcy. “Consequence often hides in tedium.”
Beaker regarded him for the first time with something almost like approval.
“Brentwood said as much.”
The words struck Darcy harder than they should have done.
He had not been sentimental about Brentwood in life, because Brentwood would not have permitted it; he found now, inconveniently, that death had made the old man less manageable.
“I am honoured,” said Darcy, and meant it.
Hartwood rose first.
“Then we have stolen enough of your time.”
Darcy stood with them.
“That is all?”
“For today,” said Beaker.
The answer was precise enough to be threatening.
Hartwood took up his hat.
“We wished to see the chambers and understand your arrangements. Any future division of labour must be properly supported. Miss Bennet is young, and her affairs are not inconsiderable.”
“I understand.”
“I believe you do,” said Hartwood.
Beaker’s eyes moved once more around the office.
“Quiet,” he said.
This time Darcy understood it for approval.
They left as they had come: courteously, calmly, and with the terrible air of men who had learned everything they meant to learn and nothing they had not intended to reveal.
Darcy stood for a little while after the door closed.
The memory of the basket had not yet faded. The note still lay in his desk. Now two of the oldest and most respectable men connected with Miss Bennet’s affairs had come to inspect his chambers, his clerks, his paper, his habits, and his temper.
He did not know whether to be flattered, used, or wary.
Possibly all three.
By evening, no further manifestation of Miss Bennet had occurred. Darcy made the mistake of considering this significant.
The following morning began well enough to be suspicious.
The affidavits were where they ought to be. Jenkins had discovered nothing further alarming in the outer office. The day, he told himself, would now behave like a day.
It continued to do so for nearly an hour.
Then Jenkins knocked.
Darcy did not look up at once. He finished the line before him, sanded it, and said, with full suspicion, “Yes?”
“There is a lady to see you, sir.”
For one remarkable instant, he still hoped.
“Her name?”
Jenkins consulted the card.
“Miss Elizabeth Bennet, sir.”
Darcy did not immediately answer.
Jenkins, who had now lived through basket, old solicitors, and a lady calling upon his employer within three days of all ordinary expectation, had achieved a condition very near religious awe.
“She is not alone, sir,” he added.
“No?”
“No, sir. There is a companion. And—”
He stopped.
“And?”
“And the dog, sir.”
There are moments in life when a man feels, with complete clarity, that refusal is possible only in theory.
Darcy set down the pen.
“Show them in.”
Jenkins vanished.
Darcy rose, though he did not know why standing should better prepare him for what was plainly inevitable.
There was the faintest movement beyond the half-open door. A pause. Then Miss Elizabeth Bennet appeared as if she had done nothing in the least extraordinary.
This was untrue.
She wore a blue walking dress, beautifully fitted and entirely proper, yet with some particularity of arrangement — the fall of the ribbon, the choice of gloves, the small defiance in the set of her bonnet — which suggested less obedience to fashion than a private treaty with it.
She was not dressed to astonish; she was dressed as a young woman accustomed to being seen and not at all accustomed to being governed by the seeing.
The result showed more individual temper than she perhaps knew, or perhaps more than another lady would have wished to reveal.
She looked every inch a young lady of fortune, and yet not at all like a young lady waiting to be directed by it.
In her arms, Lord Pomington wore a coat in exact harmony with her own.
Of course he did.
Mrs. Doddridge followed with a flat parcel of papers and the expression of a woman who had never in her life assisted in anything irregular.
Miss Bennet looked at Darcy with a strange gleam in her eye.
It was not flirtation. Not precisely triumph. It was the lively satisfaction of a person who had found the next piece of a puzzle and intended to see where it fitted. It ought to have made her alarming.
It did make her alarming.
It did not make her less warm.
“Mr. Darcy,” she said, with a curtsey as composed as if young ladies called upon solicitors with elderly companions and overdressed dogs every morning, “I hope I do not interrupt you.”
Darcy looked at the packet in Mrs. Doddridge’s hands, then at Lord Pomington, who regarded him with the grave suspicion of an animal being asked to approve a subordinate, and finally at Miss Bennet.
“Not at all,” he said.
This was untrue in every possible sense.
Her eyes brightened.
“Excellent. I have come on business.”
“So I perceived.”
“Did you?”
“I am learning to perceive Miss Bennet’s business by stages.”
Mrs. Doddridge accepted the chair nearest the door and sat with her hands folded over the packet. Pom-Pom, after one moment of apparent deliberation, permitted himself to be placed upon a second chair and immediately behaved as if he owned it.
Miss Bennet sat.