Cutthroat Warfare
The hour of Elizabeth and Georgiana’s visit to the frog pond found Mr Bennet engaged in a cut-throat game of strategic warfare using chess pieces.
When the ladies returned, Elizabeth felt herself quite as morally superior as Mary, because she refrained from telling Mr Darcy the one move that would have turned his certain defeat into probable victory.
She enjoyed the superiority of her moral position for a moment, but as happened far too often, it made her pensive and introspective.
She could have rescued poor Mr Darcy from her father’s evil clutches quite easily—not because she was a more-than-adequate chess player, but because she knew her father so well.
She had spent a good deal of time playing with Mr Bennet, Sir William, and Charlotte.
She knew her father’s thinking so well it might as well have occurred within her own head.
This led to the disconcerting thought that she knew all there was to know about how her father thought of chess, literature, the war, estate management, and any number of other topics—but she knew next to nothing about how he thought of his responsibilities as a father (if at all).
While she had always known of the defects of her family, as had Jane and Mary, why did it take a stranger to point them out?
More importantly, why had the sisters done nothing about it for years?
Certainly, it was difficult and seemed unnatural to discipline their own parents, but had they even tried?
She reflected ruefully that Jane was older than Mrs Bennet had been when Mary was born. Mayhap it was time to take some of the blame herself, little as she enjoyed the feeling.
Perhaps… just perhaps… it was time to actually do something to improve the family before one of them fell victim to the next Wickham.
The hour of Elizabeth and Georgiana’s visit to the frog pond found Mrs Bennet engaged in a cut-throat game of strategic warfare using place cards.
In her mind, the rules were as labyrinthine as chess, if not more so. At least with chess, the game ended in a matter of hours, and the tipped-over king did not have to starve in the hedgerows.
She had five eligible ladies (three if one discounted the odd ones like Lizzy and Mary) to be matched with three eligible gentlemen.
The question was how to position the pieces to gain the most sons.
Even that was too simple. One wealthy son was worth a dozen poor ones, so at a minimum she needed to promote Jane.
Mr Bingley had been acquainted with her for quite some time with nothing to show for it.
Should she put them together as usual so they could spend yet more time getting to know whatever trifles about each other they did not already comprehend, or move them apart to incite a little jealousy?
The colonel was handsome (more or less), amiable (usually), and the son of an earl (second).
Would a bit of attention from that quarter prompt Mr Bingley to act?
The colonel wore his red coat well when he chose to do so, though he dressed as a gentleman that evening.
Could he be enticed by one or another of her daughters?
The matriarch was aware he had spent a good part of the afternoon with Kitty and Lydia, and it seemed reasonable that a soldier would want a lively and pretty wife.
The argument against that was that Lydia was still young, and like it or not, Longbourn would be dull as a tomb when she left.
It was all most vexing, and that was before she even considered the conundrum that was Mr Darcy.
Since there were eight ladies to four gentlemen, the numbers were vastly uneven no matter what she did.
After a great deal of thought, she finally did her best. She settled Lizzy and Mr Darcy as far apart as possible so their long-standing animosity would not disturb anyone, having conveniently forgotten his words about her from the previous afternoon.
She put Mary close to Lizzy since she was equally unlikely to attract any man of sense.
Miss Darcy, naturally, must be placed as far as possible from all the eligible gentlemen, especially Mr Bingley, even though two of the three were her guardians.
She eventually decided it was better to promote the colonel to her younger daughters, since trying to make Mr Bingley jealous was as likely to end in a duel as a courtship.
She was quite pleased with the eventual result, and returned to the parlour like a conquering hero, just in time to see her foolish husband defeat Mr Darcy in a game of chess.
With such an ignorant husband, it was no wonder her daughters had no serious suitors!
Elizabeth was deep in thought while Miss Darcy sat close watching her brother being thrashed by Mr Bennet.
Both noticed Mrs Bennet enter from the dining room, and Elizabeth suppressed a groan at what her machinations were likely to be.
They normally seated themselves informally, but with such an abundance of game, Elizabeth thought it likely her mother could not resist the temptation to interfere.
As she expected, once the matron was seated, she began chastising Mary for some imaginary offence, though she did it at least quietly enough that the gentlemen would not hear.
Elizabeth thought that was one of the things she and Jane would likely have to attend to soon, though her younger sisters’ behaviour was clearly more critical.
Mary took her mother’s venom for as long as she usually did, and then disappeared as was her custom, leaving Elizabeth wondering when the play that comprised the Bennet family life had become so absurd.
She did not have long to do more than notice that Miss Darcy had watched the interaction and, if the expression in her eyes was any indication, she might be seeking Tom Kendall and his friends if it continued.
With a laugh, she decided everyone was being too serious. Dinner was called, and she forestalled the awkwardness likely to follow if any gentleman showed her real or feigned preference with a bright, arch little speech.
“Miss Darcy, if you are mathematically inclined, you will clearly observe that the ladies outnumber the gentlemen two to one. I propose the satisfaction of escorting you and leaving the rest to fend for themselves.” She proceeded to bow regally in a fair approximation of Mr Collins.
“It would be my greatest pleasure, my dear Miss Elizabeth,” Georgiana replied with exaggeration and a deep curtsy; then they departed, giggling, towards the dining room.
Unknown to them, Darcy and the colonel chuckled and sought their own victims. There had never been any serious chance of diverting Mr Bingley from Jane, so that couple was quickly settled.
Mary had disappeared like a ghost a few minutes earlier, so the two men reluctantly escorted Kitty and Lydia while cursing either their bad luck or Mr Bennet.
Elizabeth entered with Miss Darcy on her arm only to be confronted with something that left her ready either to laugh or cry.
Mary was already standing by the table with an unusual smirk on her face, while Mrs Bennet had a characteristic look of thunder on hers that usually presaged an outburst of great proportions.
She had no idea what the conflict was, so she looked around only to see place cards on the table.
Longbourn was an informal house, and they used place cards so seldom that Elizabeth was certain some poor servant had been sent to Meryton to buy them.
The matriarch had clearly spent the previous hour meticulously setting them up much like her own chess game, and equally clearly, Mary had undone the whole effort in a minute like a sore loser knocking the board to the floor.
All found their cards and sat, only to discover a pre-emptive separation of the sexes.
Elizabeth was seated in the place of honour next to her mother at the foot of the table, with Jane across from her and Georgiana on her right.
Mr Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam were in the places of honour next to an amused Mr Bennet at the opposite end.
The rest of the party were carefully designed to thwart the matron’s plans, with the remaining inhabitants seemingly arranged so as to put every potential couple as far from each other as they could be, but on the same side so they could not even look at each other.
Jane was next to Elizabeth, while Mr Bingley was next to the colonel, with Lydia next to him.
Mary had placed herself next to the colonel, and Kitty was in the forgotten position in the middle (as usual).
Jane and Elizabeth found the whole business ridiculous, as did most of the men as far as they could tell. Miss Darcy joined in their laughter, while Mrs Bennet fumed.
Dinner proceeded almost as one might expect if one had sent Lydia and Kitty to school for a year.
They did not shout, giggle, or say anything indecorous.
In fact, they took up their previous discussions with Miss Darcy as if they had never stopped, while Mary, seeing her distance from the young heiress too late to remedy it, settled for talking to the colonel throughout the meal.
Mrs Bennet eventually became interested in the discussion surrounding her, and Miss Darcy, growing cleverer by the minute, spoke at great length about lace, ribbons, gloves, bonnets, and all the other things of interest to them—with some of it even true.
In the end, Elizabeth thought it might well have been one of the best meals she could remember at that table.
Best of all, she enjoyed a reprieve of a few hours before she would have to speak to Mr Darcy.
The separation of the sexes was a silly tradition at Longbourn because the only male in the family spent most of the day separated anyway.
Even though Mary’s seating arrangement had put the gentlemen together, they still decided some brandy, cigars, and whatever other mysterious things men did sounded appealing, so they spent half an hour together while the ladies withdrew.
They entered to general laughter to find Mary and Miss Darcy playing duets together on the pianoforte while Elizabeth looked on. To the untrained eye, it might appear that the vastly more skilled Miss Darcy was giving a lesson, but none of those ladies saw it that way.
When tea and coffee appeared, Mr Darcy approached with a look that could be boldness or diffidence, depending on how one wished to interpret it.
“Miss Elizabeth, might I join you?”
“I should be delighted, Mr Darcy,” she said, and mostly meant it. She wanted to be able to talk to the man without arguing, a skill at which she had very little practice.
They spoke awkwardly of the commonplaces for a while, marvelling at how difficult it was.
The lack of their usual props in the form of Mr Bingley’s joviality or Miss Bingley’s sneering comments, coupled with both members’ attempts to avoid saying too much or too little, left things somewhat stilted.
They faltered until they finally settled on Derbyshire as a topic.
With that, the conversation flowed more easily, with Mr Darcy surprising her with how warmly he could speak when talking about his home or his sister.
The colonel joined them and spoke animatedly enough to entertain Elizabeth and annoy her in equal measure.
She wanted to get to know Mr Darcy better and perhaps talk about something meaningful, but in that time and place, she mostly thought that her father and Georgiana’s words were accurate: It seemed a hopeless business.
More people came and went, and while the discussion was generally adequate, she mostly found herself frustrated.
Mr Darcy made a determined effort to be sociable, and while she was supposed to be the clever and outgoing one, she found herself nearly as taciturn as he ordinarily was by the time the carriage was called for.
The most frustrating part was that many of the people joining them did so specifically to protect Elizabeth from the dreaded Mr Darcy, and she could not disabuse them of the notion without saying too much.
Their earlier ease over talking about Derbyshire had vanished as more and more people crowded into the discussion.
As the party left the room, she took the excuse of bidding farewell to the Darcys and decided that since they had broken nearly every rule of propriety, perhaps one more minor breach could be excused.
“Miss Darcy, it has been quite a week.”
“I must say it all sounds quite exciting,” her friend replied carefully.
“Perhaps the most exciting of my life,” Mr Darcy said with an intensity that made her shiver slightly, followed by a quick look around for eavesdroppers.
Drawing a breath, Elizabeth said something that could easily be misinterpreted, but could not possibly be bandied about as indecorous—or at least she hoped not.
“Miss Darcy, after such a week, I believe my sister Jane and I will watch the sunrise on Oakham Mount around eight tomorrow. Perhaps you and your groom could join us? It is an easy twenty-minute ride from Netherfield, or about three minutes for a Peregrine.”
She hoped she was not too obvious in looking at Mr Darcy when she said it.