Oakham Mount
“Ladies, well met,” said a surprisingly nervous-looking Mr Darcy.
“Good day,” Jane answered for the Longbourn ladies.
“It is a lovely day to watch the sunrise. Do you do so often?” Miss Darcy asked.
Mary looked suspiciously at her sisters, who were studying the Netherfield party too intently to answer, and said, “Lizzy does a few times a week, Jane a few times a month, and I—”
“A few times a year,” Elizabeth replied with a smile belying any criticism.
“Might you introduce your friend, Miss Darcy?” Elizabeth asked. She, of course, knew exactly who he was but did not wish to say.
“Mr Tom Peregrine, may I introduce Miss Bennet, Miss Elizabeth Bennet, and Miss Mary Bennet. He is a groom at Pemberley and one of my oldest friends,” Georgiana offered with a smile.
“It is an honour,” Tom said politely, which earned him brilliant smiles from Jane and Elizabeth, and a look of approval from Mary that was the best to be expected.
“Former groom,” Mr Darcy added.
Mary looked perplexed, though Elizabeth knew what was happening, and Jane just assumed any friend of Georgiana Darcy would be of sufficient character to advance quickly.
Darcy continued, “I have had my eye on him for some years, Miss Mary. He has recently done Pemberley a great service, and I have advanced his inevitable promotion by a year or two. I suspect he will eventually be a bailiff or steward. As such, he will take a higher position and begin training in the necessary skills.”
Mary nodded, having joined Jane in a thorough lack of suspicion as to what the great service was.
Tom bowed, having nothing to add, and simply pointed to the first rays of sunrise peeking over the horizon. Everyone joined him in turning towards the spectacle and watched it in peaceful contemplation.
Perhaps a quarter of an hour later, they nodded in acknowledgement and moved to form a circle.
Elizabeth had been surprised by Mary’s request to join the pair that morning but thought that if she and Jane were to begin treating Mary better, rejecting her first real overture in months would be counterproductive.
Elizabeth said, “Mary, I hate to distress you, but I must warn you that our meeting was not entirely by chance.”
“As if it could be,” Mary scoffed.
Georgiana giggled, and Elizabeth wondered if the poor girl was hopelessly corrupted by a few hours with Lydia.
Mary surveyed the assembled. “May I amuse myself by guessing what comes next?”
Elizabeth was sceptical of the plan, but Jane smiled kindly. “Of course, Mary.”
“I collect you are all tired of trying to work out whatever is vexing you in a parlour filled with chattering gossips. Lizzy, I suspect, deduced that an hour of honest and private conversation is worth a month in company and decided to get it over with.”
Georgiana burst out laughing, followed closely by the colonel, with the rest joining in nervously.
Elizabeth, after a moment of shock at Mary’s unaccustomed boldness, said, “Very clever, Mary.”
“Very obvious, more like,” Mary grumbled, but she did not deceive anyone.
“Pray, what other insights do you have to offer, Miss Mary?” Bingley asked.
Mary looked about and found Mr Bingley and Jane smiling encouragingly as expected, Lizzy nodding, and even Mr Darcy smiling in amusement.
“I cannot say with any decorum,” Mary replied shyly.
“I suspect that ship has sailed,” Elizabeth replied with a hint of a smile.
“Very well, I shall attempt it. I suspect Mr Bingley and Jane have either already reached an understanding or are close. They wish to discuss details outside of our mother’s hearing.”
Jane answered kindly, “You are correct, Mary. He has already asked, and I have answered, but we have things to settle before we make an announcement. We are in no great hurry.”
Mary assumed the other issues were probably Mr Bingley’s sisters and his friend. She turned slightly.
“Miss Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam came to guard your flanks in true cavalry fashion to preserve the appearance of propriety. Colonel, I will tell you that those two paths you see to your left are the only entrances. I have no notion why Mr Peregrine is here.”
Georgiana surprised everyone. “Lizzy wanted to meet him since he performed a great service to me.”
“Ah, the town crier, I presume,” Mary asked and accepted a nod from the reticent young man.
The fact that Georgiana had inadvertently called Elizabeth ‘Lizzy’ did not escape anyone’s notice, but none remarked on it.
Mary turned to the last group.
“And finally, you two are the reason for this charade. Unless I am mistaken, you will take that path behind you to the overlook with the oak bench next to the cliff. Mr Darcy will speak, and Lizzy will decide if she can relinquish her first impressions and give the man a chance, in a place where she can push him off the cliff if it goes ill.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed heartily while Elizabeth scowled and Mr Darcy chuckled.
Having survived eighteen years of Mrs Bennet’s scowls, Mary found her next elder sister’s unintimidating.
“Either remove that scowl and do what you intended all along, Lizzy, or tell me where I err. We only have a few hours before breakfast.”
Elizabeth frowned slightly more, then finally laughed gently. “Well done, you. I am no longer nearly so nervous as I was.”
“Thank you,” Mary said with a slight blush.
Looking at her shoes in no way served to hide her pleasure at having acted well and been acknowledged for once.
“Shall we, Miss Elizabeth?” Darcy asked gently.
He considered offering his arm but either did not wish to be too forward or did not wish to give her a firm hold as they walked next to the edge. Of course, it was considered a cliff in Hertfordshire, but would be a hillock at most in Derbyshire, yet it was still high enough.
They walked fifty yards, turned a corner out of sight and hearing of the rest of the group who, they trusted, could fend for themselves, and arrived next to the oak bench.
Darcy removed his handkerchief to wipe away the dust and helped Elizabeth to be seated, though whether he was procrastinating or being polite was hard to say.
Elizabeth was tired of waiting and wondering. “Your sister made some rather bold conjectures to me in my uncle’s office. Is there any truth in them?”
Happy to get to the heart of the matter without beating about the bush with polite diversions, Darcy answered honestly. “Her knowledge is incomplete, but not inaccurate.”
Elizabeth pondered for a moment. “It seems hard to believe.”
“Will I have a chance to amend what your sister calls your first impression?”
Elizabeth sighed. “In truth, it is your second impression that has left the most indelible mark. I admit my first impression was quite favourable.”
“At the risk of being unoriginal, may I quote something Georgiana said that is both accurate and complete?”
“By all means.”
“We are a family of idiots—absolute, complete, and utter fools.”
Elizabeth had to laugh a little. She had mostly forgotten that trifle among the tumult of events, but it all returned quickly.
She finally said, “Are you able to explain your… inherent stupidity?”
Darcy chuckled nervously. “It is my only defence, weak as it may be.”
Elizabeth thought he looked too serious. “Do not carry it too far. If I preferred stupidity, I would have accepted Mr Collins’ offer.”
Darcy swallowed, having been unaware that such an offer had been made.
It now appeared obvious it had, and his respect for Mr Bennet increased marginally.
It still was not high, but it was a start.
Naturally, given Georgiana’s actions of the previous summer, he had little cause to boast about parental effectiveness.
“I am especially happy to know that you escaped his attentions, and my aunt’s as well.”
“We are not discussing Mr Collins or Lady Catherine. Tell me this, Mr Darcy. What is your goal for this conversation?”
Darcy looked like a man who had spent some time trying and failing to find the right words.
He finally said, “I hope to accomplish over several months what Bingley managed in a few weeks.”
“Which is?”
“To attach my heart, the missing piece, the woman I love who loves me in return.”
“And you believe I might be her?”
“I do.”
The simplicity of the statement belied all traditional courtship rituals, which in truth seemed designed primarily to be opaque and confusing.
Elizabeth looked at him carefully and finally sighed. “You are safe from the cliff for the moment.”
He exhaled in relief, then chuckled. “Hillock at best.”
Elizabeth laughed with him, though she was still tense as a bowstring.
“Thirty seconds!” she said somewhat incongruously.
When he looked confused, she added, “Thirty seconds was the difference between misery and happiness for Jane.”
“Would you care to explain?”
Elizabeth sighed. She had no notion why she raised the subject, except that it was something that would have to be either explained or forgiven.
“You remember when Sir William interrupted us at the ball, of course. It was not lost on me that you looked in some alarm at the neighbourhood’s expectations, and my mother did us no favours at supper.”
Feeling nervous, he asked, “Do you think she cares what I think about what she says now?”
“Not yet, but I can assure you that if she perceives a whiff of matrimonial scent aimed at one of her daughters, she will become very interested,” she replied with a grimace.
“Go on.”
Elizabeth sighed, trying to remember the despair of those months without letting it overwhelm her.
“Mr Bingley went to town for a few days, Miss Bingley closed the house, and you all left. Naturally, she left a nasty note to Jane, implying that Mr Bingley had abandoned her in favour of Georgiana.”
“She did not!” he said, jumping from the bench in anger, but she took his hand and pulled him back.
“The note has been dealt with and burned. Let us leave it in the past. Shall I continue?”
He nodded.
“In January, Jane went to Gracechurch Street with my aunt and uncle, confused, heartbroken, and miserable. My mother could not stop repining the loss of not one but two suitors in the same week, and I begged Jane to escape.”
“Understandable,” Darcy said, looking decidedly uncomfortable.
Elizabeth sighed, “You need not admit your part in breaking her heart. As the injured party, it is her right to forgive or not, and she has done so. I can imagine the arguments you used. I assume they comprised lack of fortune, lack of connections, entailed estate with too many daughters, and not to put too fine a point on it, a total want of propriety for much of my family. Am I near the mark?”
He squirmed but nodded while eyeing the edge of the cliff nervously.
“Jane called on Miss Bingley and Mrs Hurst, and they treated her shamefully. To use her own words, they had nothing, in short, to recommend them, not even being excellent walkers. They treated her infamously, and Jane bore it.”
“For thirty seconds?” Darcy asked softly.
Elizabeth laughed somewhat brittlely.
“Fate took a hand. Your pride should indeed be under good regulation, as it took an act of pure chance to save Jane. Mr Bingley found her entering my uncle’s coach with tears in her eyes.
He asked what was happening, and she simply gave him the offending letter and suggested he ask his sisters, then told her coachman to drive on. ”
He looked stunned. “I am surprised Bingley never told me any of this. In truth, I am surprised he did not discuss it with his fists. He is tougher than he looks when we spar at Gentleman Jackson’s.”
Elizabeth sighed. “Jane begged him not to. She also gained his sisters a reprieve. He was livid, and about an inch from casting both out to starve in the gutters.”
“I am surprised he did not apply the same to me,” he said confusedly.
Elizabeth sighed. “Jane explained it to me. His sisters were thinking only of themselves. You were thinking of your friend. She is convinced that she must accept some blame. Mrs Collins, who was Charlotte Lucas, told her all the way back at Lucas Lodge that night Sir William ambushed you, that she needed to show more of what she felt. She also thinks anyone who runs from our family is showing more good sense than malice.”
“They may well be the two most forgiving people I have ever met.”
“If we are to have any hope at all of success, we will have to become the third and fourth.”
He looked her directly in the face, and for the first time since Georgiana had given him a metaphorical caning, he began to feel a faint bit of hope.
He rather boldly reached over to take her hand, and she neither pulled away nor gripped his.
She said, “Thirty seconds either way and I would not have met Miss Darcy in the streets of Meryton.”
Darcy noticed that she still called her by her formal name, so he was definitely not out of the woods yet. “What do you need, Elizabeth?”
She looked at him pensively.
“Explain to me in some detail why a man of sense and education, and who has lived in the world, is ill qualified to recommend himself to strangers—or even treat them with basic civility."