Chapter 6
“Can you believe it?” Louisa Hurst laughed to her sister over the late breakfast they were eating at Netherfield Park. “Lord Grantchester engaged, and to Little Miss Nobody from Hertfordshire! I never thought I’d see this day.”
“Nor did his mother,” remarked Caroline Bingley, somewhat slyly, before they both burst into fresh peals of laughter.
“It will be Lord Keeble next, mark my words. From what we saw last night, if that vulgar Mrs Bennet had her way, she’d marry off any of her remaining daughters to Lord Keeble, or maybe all of them… ”
Darcy glanced disapprovingly at this conversation over the top of his newspaper. He would have preferred any other topic at the breakfast table this morning, but such irreverence and callous disrespect to everyone involved made it all the more unbearable to him.
Rather morose this morning, Bingley ate his toast and eggs in silence, only replying to questions when prompted.
It crossed Darcy’s mind that a return to London might be best for the whole household.
Perhaps he ought to throw in his lot with Bingley’s sisters and get them all away from this place as soon as possible.
Hurst was as hungover as he always was at this time of day.
Sitting in an armchair some distance from the breakfast table, he nursed a glass filled with some ungodly concoction of whiskey, egg, and hot pepper.
Darcy was surprised to see him out of bed at all and certainly expected no conversation from him.
“Where do you think the wedding will be held?” speculated Mrs Hurst. “Grantchester Abbey is a magnificent setting, but Lord Grantchester has so many friends in London that I suppose it would make more sense to marry there.”
“Yes, London would be best, wouldn’t it?” Miss Bingley agreed. “All the best people would attend, and he could bring the Dowager Countess of Grantchester up to London more easily than get all his friends out to Grantchester Abbey.”
“True, true. But then, which church? St. George’s, St. James’s —”
“Mrs Bennet will probably want them married in the parish church here,” interrupted Miss Bingley with great hilarity. “Can you imagine all of Lord Grantchester’s fashionable friends squeezed in with the Meryton locals?”
“How funny that would be!” her sister agreed. “Dear me, you tickle me, Caroline. Now, another big question is where they will live after they marry. I can’t imagine Lord Grantchester spending all his time at Grantchester Abbey, can you?”
“London,” Caroline Bingley returned quite definitely. “He is a city man through and through. He was going straight back to London this morning, I believe. Anyway, his mother has the run of Grantchester Abbey, and I can’t imagine him turning her out into the Dower House.”
“The Dowager Countess could keep his wife company at Grantchester Abbey while Lord Grantchester occupies himself in London,” suggested Mrs Hurst with great amusement. “It could prove a satisfactory arrangement all round. What do you say, Mr Darcy?”
“What?” Darcy questioned, having tried hard and failed to ignore this grating conversation.
“Do you think that Lord Grantchester and his new wife will live at Grantchester Abbey with his mother after the wedding?” Mrs Hurst explained again.
“I think that will be a decision for the people concerned,” answered Darcy, his voice terse. “I do not approve of casual speculation on such private matters.”
“How cross you gentlemen all are this morning,” remarked Miss Bingley with a sweet, though rather artificial, smile. “I suspect that all this talk of weddings makes you uncomfortable, Mr Darcy. Am I right?”
“If you count disapproval as discomfort, you are welcome to think so, Miss Bingley,” he replied.
Forcing out a tinkling laugh, she met his gaze with flirtatious eyes.
“Are you perhaps jealous that your friend will reach the altar before you, Mr Darcy? There is a year’s betrothal planned, I understand. You would have adequate time to find your own wife in that time and even to —”
“I have no plans to marry at present, Miss Bingley,” Darcy cut her off curtly. “None whatsoever. Now, I suggest we discuss something other than weddings.”
“Did I do the right thing, renting Netherfield Park?” Charles Bingley suddenly asked them all, looking up from his plate. “Caroline and Louisa urged me to caution, but I rushed ahead as usual. Now I wonder if I have been rash.”
Miss Bingley sighed impatiently, never having sympathy for her brother’s occasional vacillating and doubtful moods.
“You have taken the lease now, Charles,” she told him flatly. “You cannot undo that, but you could still go back to London. It would be a waste of money, but if none of us likes it here, why should we all suffer from what you now admit was a mistake?”
“I did not say it was a mistake, or that I do not like it here,” Bingley replied sullenly. “I was only feeling a little uncertain this morning. That was all.”
“So, you do plan to stay?” asked his younger sister, making a disapproving sound in her throat but then laughing.
“It is up to you, of course, but I cannot think why you should wish to live here, unless one of the local girls caught your eye last night. Do you perhaps fancy Mrs Bennet for a mother-in-law, and Miss Eliza Bennet for a wife?”
Louisa Hurst fell about in laughter at this suggestion. “Oh Caroline! Just think, Charles could marry Miss Elizabeth Bennet, who goes galloping about everywhere on foot, or one of those dreadful shrieking younger Bennets. My ears hurt just thinking of them.”
“Yes, any of the Bennet girls would make an excellent match,” Caroline continued to tease her brother.
“Jane Bennet aside, all are equally unexceptional in looks, and entirely lacking in fortune or connections. What do you think, Mr Darcy? Which Bennet should be my brother’s wife?
Sharp-tongued, plain-speaking Elizabeth or one of the two who made a display of themselves on the dance floor with Lord Keeble? ”
“That is a most unedifying question,” Darcy replied levelly.
“I suppose you intend only a harmless joke at your brother’s expense, but I do not see the humour.
You know full well that the Bennet girls’ lack of money and connections must be a bar to their marrying well, whether to your brother or anyone else. What more is there to be said?”
“Jane Bennet is marrying well,” pointed out Miss Bingley archly, always seeming to miss the extent of Darcy’s distaste for her attempts to draw his conversation or curry his favour. “Don’t you think so?”
“That is different,” Darcy said, feeling glad that his own sister was Georgiana and not Caroline Bingley, and sorry for Bingley that both character and close proximity in age prevented him from exerting any real influence over his younger sister, never mind the elder.
“I don’t like you talking like this about the Bennets,” Bingley announced to his sisters with uncharacteristic anger, just as Darcy was reflecting on his friend’s too-amenable personality. “They seem a goodly family to me, and have been nothing other than friendly and welcoming to any of us.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Charles,” sniffed Caroline Bingley, rolling her eyes at him. “You know what we mean.”
“I do not,” Bingley persisted. “Nor do I see how you can simultaneously congratulate Lord Grantchester on marrying Jane Bennett but mock the idea of your own brother marrying into the Bennet family. Of course, I hardly know them, and have no mind to, but if I liked a lady well enough, and she was free, then…Well, I should.”
He spoke so strongly and with such feeling that his sisters fell silent and looked at one another with raised eyebrows. Darcy looked hard at his friend, also taken aback by the force of his defence of the Bennets. How badly smitten was he with Jane Bennet?
After a short pause, Mrs Hurst laughed more kindly.
“You misunderstand us, Charles,” she explained more patiently.
“By virtue of her beauty and sweetness of nature, Jane Bennet is the only Bennet daughter worthy of attention from any man of sense and fortune. You must see that her sisters cannot rival her excellent qualities. That was the core of our joke. We will not make it again if it upsets you.”
“No one could rival Miss Bennet,” Bingley muttered, largely to himself, before his voice rose again slightly. “But I will hear nothing against her sisters. Do you understand?”
“Of course we do, Charles,” agreed Caroline Bingley more soothingly now, as if speaking to a young child. “There is no need to be agitated.”
No need to be agitated?! Good God! Darcy threw his napkin onto the table rather than utter such oaths aloud. There was every need to be agitated, whether on Jane Bennet’s account, Lord Grantchester’s account, and now Charles Bingley’s account, too.
“As your sister suggested earlier, you can return to London any time you wish, Bingley. I would be happy to accompany you. Personally, I have neither reason nor desire to linger in this district.”
In London, he hoped Bingley could more easily put Jane Bennet from his mind. Darcy could also find a good time to speak to Lord Grantchester. It was not a conversation to be postponed too long.
“Exactly, Mr Darcy. You put the case so much more clearly than I did,” Miss Bingley simpered.
“Mr Hurst and I do wish to be back before the Coverton House ball next week,” Mrs Hurst came in behind her sister. “We could all travel together. None of us really wants to spend the entire summer buried in the Hertfordshire countryside, do we?”
For some minutes, Bingley appeared to be giving this idea serious consideration and almost began to nod, before hesitating and then shaking his head.
“Not yet. I do wish to stay a little longer in the Hertfordshire countryside, and I hope you will all have patience with me. I shall think about what you say, though, Darcy.”
Caroline Bingley gave a huff of impatience and sought Darcy’s eye. Avoiding her gaze, he set down his teacup and rose from his seat.
Grantchester and Keeble would be back at Belton Manor again in another week, and Darcy might grasp the nettle of speaking to Grantchester then. As for Bingley’s plight, he could not make all his friend’s decisions for him and would not seek to exert any influence — not yet.
“In that case, shall we shoot today, Bingley?” Darcy said to his friend. “Weather looks good for it.”