Chapter Three
Miss Elizabeth Bennet was all I could look at during the Lucas dinner. She had seemed pretty at the ball, but now I got the opportunity to listen to her speak, to see her countenance altered by laughter and good humor.
She had an archness to her, but it didn’t come across as if she thought herself better than others. She was a bit self-deprecating as well, willing to poke fun at herself if it meant that everyone would laugh.
All of this had the effect of making her even more beautiful, and I found myself unable to look away.
After the dinner, I joined the periphery of a conversation that she was having with some of the others, and she caught my eye and then turned pointedly away and said to Miss Lucas, the eldest daughter of the man whose house we were in, “What does Mr. Darcy mean by listening to my conversation with Colonel Forster?”
Both Miss Lucas and Miss Bennet looked at me, then.
I felt foolish and idiotic, but I could not simply walk away, not now.
“That,” said Miss Lucas, “is a question only Mr. Darcy can answer.”
To which I likely should have said something, but my tongue was not loose enough to supply a quick reply.
“Well, I daresay I fall under his scrutiny,” said Elizabeth, “and I must begin with my own impertinence. It is the only way to keep on the balance with him, do you not think, Charlotte?”
Miss Lucas, who was Charlotte, raised her eyebrows. “This is not for me to say. I think, however, what this gathering needs is a bit of music. And if I play, you know what you must do.”
“Oh, dear, Charlotte, no one is inclined to hear my voice,” said Elizabeth. “Everyone will be saying that I must keep my breath to cool my porridge.”
“Positively no one says that about your singing,” said Miss Lucas. “Your voice is more pleasing than mine, which is why you must sing if I play.”
I wanted to hear her sing. I quite did.
Miss Bennet made an exasperated noise in the back of her throat, but she allowed Miss Lucas to steer her to the piano forte, and she sat up straight and sang in a clear and melodious voice.
I was charmed, though I suppose I might have admitted, if pressed, that her voice was not extraordinary and that she hit a wrong note here and there, on occasion.
Overall, however, she was lovely and her voice was lovely, and I stared at her, lips parted, and joined in when others entreated her to sing again.
She got up from the instrument and waved them all off. “Oh, no. Would that I had sisters, I must say, then I might pass this off to one of them. But as it is, someone else must provide the entertainment. I am quite finished.”
Elizabeth’s mother Mrs. Bennet came to sit down next to Miss Lucas, and she began to sing, and her voice was a low, rich velvet, and a crowd came round to listen to her.
Miss Bennet went over to the periphery and I followed her.
When I arrived closer, I spoke, so as not to continue the impression that I was hovering about her and only watching her, though this was accurate. “I quite enjoyed your singing.”
She looked up at me. “Oh, you did.” There was something in her voice, a hint of amused knowing.
“You do not believe me?” I said. “Is this because of the ball at Meryton? Whatever you may have overheard, I wish to explain it, for I did not mean it.”
She studied my expression. “Yes, I heard all about you from James.”
“Your brother spoke to you of me,” I said, chagrined.
“You needn’t worry,” she said. “I know that whatever it was you may have said about me, it wasn’t about me at all. And you needn’t worry about James and Mr. Bingley, for James is not the sort to entangle himself into a matter wherein he isn’t wanted.”
I furrowed my brow. “I haven’t any notion what it is you are talking about.”
She licked her lips, having not expected that. She lowered her voice. “I am talking about—”
But at that moment, Sir William Lucas himself interrupted us both. “I see that a few couples are starting to dance.”
It was true. The song that Mrs. Bennet was singing had started out quite slow, but it had grown more jaunty towards the end, and there were several people lining up to dance.
“Nothing like dancing, after all,” said Sir William.
“I suppose that’s true,” I said, turning to look out at the rest of the room and then going back to fix my gaze on Elizabeth.
“I consider dancing to be the truest sign of refinement,” said Sir William, “the pinnacle of what a civilization can accomplish.”
“Well,” I said, coughing, “don’t savages dance?”
He only smiled. “Your friend Bingley is quite proficient.”
Mr. Bingley was dancing with his daughter, Miss Lucas, so perhaps this was the reason he was speaking to me.
Sir William seemed to be making conversation for the sake of making conversation, which was fine, as far as that went, I supposed, but I suspected he had some hidden motivation for approaching me in the first place.
Perhaps it was to feel about for Bingley’s intentions.
If so, I was not sure what to say.
Bingley himself mostly ignored women, except for dancing, that was.
Well, and occasionally, he might have long conversations with women at dinners.
He seemed to have utmost patience for conversations about things like gloves and ribbons, I had to say, which was perhaps why his sister thought men were interested in such things. I could not be certain.
But if Sir William thought that Mr. Bingley might be at all interested in marrying his daughter, that was very unlikely. I didn’t think that Mr. Bingley was serious about anything, least of all his future.
But Sir William continued, “And you must be quite adept as well, Mr. Darcy. You have a house in town?”
“I do,” I said, now quite thrown by the change of subject. I must have been correct in the first place. He was making conversation for no reason, just to have something to say.
“I had considered settling in London at one point,” he said. “But I did not think the air might agree with Lady Lucas.”
What was I to say to this? Did he expect me to defend the air of London? Did he think I truly thought that he could afford to keep a house in London in addition to his holdings here?
“Perhaps you dance in your London house quite often,” he said, seemingly unaffected by my silence.
“Well, truthfully, not often,” I said.
“I have an idea,” he said, smiling at me. “You might grace us with a dance here, and look at this! A quite lovely partner is practically in arms’ reach, Miss Bennet.”
I had not thought to dance, but I turned to her and said, “Would you care to dance, Miss Bennet?”
“I am not over here begging for a partner,” she said. “You mustn’t think that I have any intention to dance at all.”
Which was the polite way of saying no for a woman. Women did not turn down the man, but the activity.
Sir Lucas was not to be put off. He tried to convince her but she stayed firm, and then she took her leave from the both of us, leaving me there with the man, who prattled on a bit longer about positively nothing.
Eventually, I was saved by Miss Bingley, who declared that she had need of me this instant, and I said to Sir William, gravely, that I must see to her, and together we walked off, out of the room, and stood out on the terrace surrounding the room we’d been in, next to an open doorway.
I daresay we were visible to anyone who may have walked by, and I was careful about such things, because the appearance of impropriety is not something to be taken lightly.
I had no desire to be off and alone with Miss Bingley or to be thought to have done anything untoward to her.
“Charles says we may all go home in a fortnight,” she said, gazing out into the darkness. “I should be happy to go tomorrow. These people, this company. They are so insipid and yet so self-important.”
I was inclined to agree with her. I knew not what to say about that conversation with Sir William. What an empty-headed man, in truth.
“You must have been thinking the same,” she said.
“I was mostly thinking about Elizabeth Bennet,” I muttered.
She turned to me, quite surprised. “Miss Bennet? Oh, yes, the pretty one.” Her nostrils flared. “The one with the brother that Charles finds so interesting.”
“I suppose everyone thinks she’s pretty,” I said. “But she does have quite bright eyes and she is aloof in a certain way, and I don’t think she likes me. That’s perhaps my own fault, I cannot say, but I would like to correct it if I could.”
“Well, when am I to wish you joy?” she said, arching an eyebrow.
I scoffed. “I am only commenting that she is pretty, not committing myself to matrimony, Miss Bingley.”
She looked relieved.
“Indeed, I have no intention of marrying anyone, not for some time,” I said.
She looked less relieved. She turned away from me. “I understand that Miss Bennet has some benefactor. I think it is that woman, Lady Susannah Wilmont.”
“Who?” I said.
Miss Bingley turned back to the gathered assembly of people. “She is there, seated, with her gray hair and her cane and that dress that is only ten years out of fashion.”
I spotted the woman now. I remembered her from dinner. She had spoken a few times, each time with a sense of disdain. She had not liked the potatoes or someone’s joke or the lateness of the hour in which we had sat down to eat. “And she is a benefactor to Miss Bennet?”
“I understand that Lady Susannah, who is an heiress and who’s father was a baron, lives at Trawlings.”
“What is Trawlings?”
“It is the estate between Netherfield and Longbourn,” she said. “You know this. We have driven past it.”
I had paid no mind to such things, so I said, “All right, if you say so.”
She glared at me. “I hear that Miss Bennet goes to read to her daily, to tend to her, and is her companion, though she does not live there. And that, as long as Miss Bennet does not marry, she will inherit all of Trawlings.”
“Does not marry?” I said.