Chapter 2
THE KITCHEN YARD GATE swung inward under Elizabeth’s hand, its hinges giving their familiar, reluctant groan.
Sarah pressed against her leg, then stopped at the gatepost, ears forward, while the ewes pushed through with the determination of creatures that knew where the kitchen garden lay and intended to reach it.
Elizabeth closed the gate behind them and latched it. The iron catch dropped into place, and Sarah sank to her haunches, forepaws planted on the wet flagstone, her attention fixed on the sheep.
“Good girl.”
The ewes scattered toward the kitchen garden, their muddy hooves leaving prints across the stones. The nearest lowered its head to a tuft of parsley growing against the wall and began to eat as though the garden belonged to it.
Elizabeth clicked her tongue twice, sharp and clear.
Sarah left the gatepost, cutting across the yard with her belly low to the ground. At her approach, the ewe lifted its head and turned toward the corner pen without further persuasion. The other two followed, their hooves clicking on stone, with Sarah at their heels.
Against the stone wall where the kitchen yard met the stable lane stood the pen, its posts weathered gray and its gate hanging crooked on its hinges.
Elizabeth held the gate open while Sarah swept the ewes through, then closed it and tested the latch.
The wood was damp under her palm. She had been kneeling in wet grass for more than an hour, and her skirt hem was heavy with moisture, the fabric dark and streaked with mud where she had brushed against the broken hedge.
Her hands were cold, the skin at her knuckles rough.
She wiped her palms on her skirt and turned toward the house.
Mrs. Bennet stood in the back doorway in her morning cap, a shawl pulled tight across her shoulders. Her gaze went from the penned sheep to Elizabeth’s damp, grass-stained skirt.
“Lizzy,” she said. “Did you hear anything about Netherfield while you were out? Anything at all?”
Elizabeth picked up her basket from beside the gate. “I was mending the boundary hedge, Mama, not looking for the latest gossip.”
“The hedge! What can the hedge matter at such a time?” Mrs. Bennet stepped back to let Elizabeth pass. “Mrs. Long called this morning, and she says Mr. Bingley, the new tenant at Netherfield, is a young man of considerable fortune from the north of England.”
Elizabeth carried her basket into the kitchen, warm from the morning fire and thick with the smell of bread and tallow. Sarah followed, her nails clicking against the flagstone floor.
“He came down on Monday in a chaise and four,” Mrs. Bennet continued, following close behind. “To see the place, you know, and was so delighted with it that he signed the lease right there. He has taken possession, and the rest of his servants will arrive by week’s end.”
Elizabeth set her basket on the table. There was a pot of tea keeping warm by the fire, and she poured herself a cup, letting the heat seep into her fingers.
“His name is Mr. Bingley,” Mrs. Bennet said. The name emerged with the particular emphasis she reserved for information she considered both valuable and recently acquired. “He has five thousand a year. Five thousand. And he is unmarried.”
The tea was strong and too hot. Elizabeth drank it anyway.
“I hope he comes to the assembly,” Mrs. Bennet said from the cupboard as she sorted through a stack of linens. “Jane must wear her best muslin. The one with the sprigged pattern. I will have Hill look at the trim.”
Sarah lay beside the hearth, her muzzle on her paws and her eyes half-closed. The firelight caught the white blaze on her chest and the darker markings along her back.
“I have no doubt he is quite pleasant,” Elizabeth said to give her mother the participation she wanted without sharing her enthusiasm.
“Agreeable.” Mrs. Bennet turned from the cupboard, a tablecloth draped over one arm. “Mrs. Long says he is handsome, and his married sister will come down with her husband. His other sister will join them. A party of four or five, she said. Perhaps more.”
She followed Elizabeth through the passage that led from the kitchen to the front hall, her voice carrying ahead of her into the narrower space.
The paper on the walls had faded from its original blue to something closer to the color of old milk.
The floorboards creaked underfoot in the sequence Elizabeth had memorized as a child: third board from the left, then the fifth, then the seventh.
Years of damp and settling had loosened them all.
“Jane will look very well in the sprigged muslin,” Mrs. Bennet said. “And you must wear something that does not make you look so brown. That walk put color in your cheeks, but it is not the sort of color that becomes a young woman at an assembly.”
Elizabeth reached the foot of the stairs and set one hand on the banister. The wood was smooth from generations of hands, polished by use to a dull sheen that caught the light from the front windows.
The library door opened, and Mr. Bennet looked into the hall.
“Have you settled the wedding date, my dear, or only Jane’s gown?”
Mrs. Bennet drew herself up. “You may laugh, Mr. Bennet, but Mrs. Long says he is young, handsome, and worth five thousand a year.”
“Then I am surprised you have left anything to chance.”
“You know very well what I mean.”
“Your meaning is seldom obscure.”
He glanced at Elizabeth, amusement in his eyes, then withdrew into the library and closed the door.
Mrs. Bennet watched the door for a moment before turning back to Elizabeth. “Change, then sit with Jane. I have a great deal to tell you about the assembly. Lydia has asked twice about the officers, and Kitty is no better. I cannot manage them both and plan for Jane at the same time.”
Mrs. Bennet turned toward the parlor, still talking. Her voice receded down the hall, punctuated by the occasional emphatic phrase that carried back to where Elizabeth stood: five thousand a year, the best muslin, a party of four or five.
Sarah followed as far as the passage and sat at the junction of hall and kitchen, ears cocked toward Mrs. Bennet’s voice as she listened for a command.
Elizabeth climbed the first step, then stopped. The stranger on the dark horse returned to her thoughts, not because he spoke, but because it seemed he knew what to make of her and saw no reason to explain it.
She continued up the stairs, her damp skirt dragging at each step. Below, Mrs. Bennet constructed an entire future around a man named Bingley who had five thousand a year and a chaise and four.
Elizabeth changed into a clean, warm gown of brown worsted, too worn to count as her best, then went downstairs to the parlor. Her mother’s voice carried through the open door into the passage, punctuated by Lydia’s laughter. Jane sat beneath the window with her needlework.
She stepped into the warmth of the room.
The parlor fire burned low in its grate, taking the chill from the small space.
Tallow candles stood on the mantel and side table, their flames adding a waxy smell to the older odors of damp wool and beeswax polish.
The furniture dated from an earlier decade, when Longbourn’s fortunes permitted some generosity in its upholstery.
The sofa’s green brocade had faded to the color of moss after a dry summer, while the armchair by the fire carried a permanent hollow shaped by Mr. Bennet’s evening posture.
Jane sat near the window in the best light, her needlework spread across her lap.
She wore a pale blue gown that caught what remained of the afternoon sun and turned it to something warmer against her skin.
Her hands moved with the ease of long habit, the needle dipping in and out of the fabric, her eyes fixed on her work.
She kept her eyes down when Elizabeth entered, but her mouth curved in the small, private smile that was Jane’s version of a greeting.
“Yes, Mama,” she said. “I am sure he is agreeable.”
Mrs. Bennet stood at the fireplace, a hand resting on the mantel. “Agreeable is not the point, Jane. That is what one says of Mr. Phillips when he brings news from Meryton. This is a young man with five thousand a year and no wife, who has taken Netherfield, not three miles from our door.”
Elizabeth’s two youngest sisters occupied the settee. Lydia sprawled across the cushions with her head on one armrest and her feet against Kitty’s thigh. Kitty sat wedged into the opposite corner, refusing to move.
“Captain Carter dances very well,” Lydia said, addressing her remark to the ceiling as though settling a matter of grave importance. “He told me so at the Phillips’s last month, and I have never known an officer to lie about his dancing.”
“Captain Carter praises everyone,” Kitty said. She had a piece of embroidery in her lap, though the needle had not moved in some time. “He told Mary she was graceful, and Mary trod on his foot twice during the same set.”
“Mary does not count. Mary is serious.”
“Mary is sitting right here,” Mary said from her chair near the bookcase without looking up from her volume.
Elizabeth crossed to the window and took the seat opposite Jane. The old, uneven panes made the light waver as it entered the room. Beyond the glass, shoots appeared in the herb beds, and the apple tree beyond the wall held its blossoms against a sky the color of watered milk.
Sarah settled near the hearth, circling twice before dropping onto the rug with a sigh. She closed her eyes, her tail thumping once against the stone and falling still.
Mr. Bennet’s library door stood ajar, the gap enough for him to hear every word without participating.
“Jane, wear the one with the green pattern,” Mrs. Bennet said, moving from the fireplace to the center of the room. “It brings out the color in your eyes, and a young man notices these things, whatever he may say about a lady’s conversation.”
“I am sure he will notice Jane regardless of what she wears,” Elizabeth said.