Chapter 28 #2
“The yard is no place for you.”
“It is dry, and I have walking shoes.”
Darcy met his aunt’s gaze. “Georgiana may decide whether she wishes to cross a hall and step into a yard.”
Jane rose. “I will go with them.”
Lady Catherine could object to a dog, a yard, and Elizabeth, but not to three young women walking ten paces from an open door under the eyes of half the household. She settled for a look that promised later correction.
Sarah stood near the mounting block with mud upon her paws and a burr caught in the hair beneath one ear. She had seen Georgiana through the open doorway and watched the three women approach without moving. When Elizabeth stopped, Sarah’s attention shifted to her face.
“Come,” Elizabeth said.
Sarah crossed the yard, then halted and waited while Elizabeth removed the burr. Only after Elizabeth touched her shoulder did she turn toward Georgiana.
“She knew I was here,” Georgiana said.
“Before we reached the door. She hears carriages, voices, and footsteps long before we notice them.”
Sarah approached Georgiana and raised her head to accept the offered hand. Her interest held no excitement, and after a moment she looked back to Elizabeth.
“My brother wrote that she commands sheep better than many people command a drawing room.”
Elizabeth looked toward Darcy, who had followed them outside with Bingley. “Did he?”
Georgiana’s color rose. “I should not have repeated it.”
“I am less offended than the drawing rooms might be.” Elizabeth rubbed the mud from Sarah’s foreleg with a cloth a groom brought from the stable. “Mr. Darcy once believed her work proved something about my station. Sarah has never forgiven him for being wrong.”
Darcy stopped beside his sister. “Sarah has shown no sign that she remembers the offense.”
“She has the dignity to conceal it.”
Georgiana looked at them. Darcy’s letters had described Elizabeth’s wit, but they had not shown how he received it. He did not retreat behind silence or answer with the cold correction Georgiana had seen him give others. He listened, considered, and allowed the amusement in his face to remain.
A small group of sheep moved beyond the kitchen garden where a gap in the hedge opened toward the north field. Sarah turned at once, but she did not leave Elizabeth’s side.
“She wants to go,” Georgiana said.
“Yes, but she is waiting to learn whether I want the same thing.” Elizabeth raised two fingers, then pointed toward the opening. Sarah ran across the yard and through the gap without a bark.
Georgiana’s gaze followed Sarah as she circled the sheep and pressed them away from the garden wall. “May I call her back?”
“When she has turned them. Hold your hand low, then bring it toward you.”
Sarah completed the arc and paused at the field’s edge. Georgiana copied the signal. The dog returned, slowing as she entered the yard, and stopped before her.
“She obeyed me.”
“No, she obeyed your signal,” Elizabeth said, “which is safer for both of you. Trust should not depend upon a mood.”
Lady Catherine had come to the doorway with Anne behind her.
She saw Georgiana touch Sarah’s head and Darcy standing near Elizabeth with none of the distance she expected him to preserve.
Jane and Bingley had moved toward the garden gate, their conversation quiet enough to exclude no one and private enough to please Mrs. Bennet, who peered through the drawing-room window.
“This is the animal Mr. Collins described?” Lady Catherine asked.
“Sarah,” Elizabeth said.
“I do not require her name.”
“She answers better when people use it.”
Lady Catherine’s gaze moved over the yard, the field, the dog, and the mud upon Elizabeth’s glove. “A young woman who spends her time among livestock cannot expect to acquire the accomplishments required in a different sphere.”
Elizabeth folded the cloth and gave it back to the groom. “I have not found that reading, music, and livestock exclude one another.”
“They encourage different habits.”
“Useful habits need not injure the ornamental ones.”
Georgiana laid her hand on Sarah’s head. “She is better trained than many dogs at Pemberley.”
“Pemberley’s dogs remain in their proper place,” Lady Catherine said.
“So does Sarah,” Elizabeth replied. “Her place changes with her work.”
The answer displeased Lady Catherine because it carried no challenge she could condemn, or submission she could reward.
She saw what Darcy had seen and drew the opposite conclusion.
Elizabeth managed the dog, the servants knew her expectations, Bennet trusted her judgment, and Georgiana had spoken more in the yard than she had during half the journey from Rosings.
None of it made Elizabeth less dangerous.
It proved that her influence did not depend upon beauty, flirtation, or accident.
“We have remained long enough,” Lady Catherine said.
Georgiana’s hand left Sarah. “May I say goodbye?”
“You have done so.”
Elizabeth spared Georgiana the need to answer. “I hope we shall meet again, Miss Darcy.”
“So do I.”
Lady Catherine heard the reply and looked from Georgiana to Elizabeth.
She had found no vulgar ambition, no attempt to secure Georgiana’s favor, and no disorder in the dog she expected to despise.
None of this reassured her; it removed the easiest grounds for dismissal and left Elizabeth’s influence untouched.
“Miss Elizabeth, I require a word with you.”
Jane stopped beside Bingley, while Darcy’s attention fixed upon his aunt.
“Elizabeth has received enough of your attention for one afternoon,” Bennet said.
“This concerns my family.”
“Then I suggest you discuss it with them.”
Lady Catherine ignored him. “Miss Elizabeth?”
Elizabeth rested one hand upon Sarah’s neck. “You may speak here.”
“I have no intention of discussing a private matter before the entire household.”
“Then it cannot concern me.”
Darcy stepped forward. “Whatever you wish to say to her, you may say in my presence.”
Lady Catherine turned on him. “That is the difficulty.”
No one moved toward the house. Bingley remained beside Jane, Georgiana stood near Elizabeth, and Anne lingered by the gate, watching her mother with evident concern.
The visit had failed to produce the faults she sought, but it had not altered her purpose. Courtesy had reached its end.