Chapter Eleven #2
“This particular mishap was not my fault,” Elizabeth informed Miss Bingley pertly. It was the truth. She glanced at Mr. Darcy. It was also a tease.
Mr. Darcy said nothing, but he met Elizabeth’s eye, his gaze promising retribution. Elizabeth felt a little thrill in the pit of her stomach.
“They never are, are they, dear?” Miss Bingley asked, the sweetness of the words undercut with the rancour of the message.
Elizabeth did not reply, as Charles and Jane were arriving.
Charles offered her his other arm and she took it without comment, though she would have rather Mr. Darcy offered his.
Instead, Mr. Darcy was left to lead Miss Bingley into dinner.
No doubt the deluded woman thought it a great honour to her.
She gathered her wits and determined not to be petty. It was beneath her.
Elizabeth was seated next to Charles and Mr. Darcy sat next to Jane, with Miss Bingley on Elizabeth’s other side.
So close, yet too far away to speak to one another.
It did not really matter, she consoled herself, dipping her spoon into her soup with rather more energy than required.
It was not as though they could converse frankly in the presence of the other three people now seated at the dining table.
She placed her spoon down and waited for the footman to remove her bowl.
Charles leaned over just a bit. “Was there something wrong with your food?”
“Not at all,” she responded quietly. It was not the food, it was being so close to Mr. Darcy without being at liberty to speak with him. She was too anxious to eat.
He waited another moment, but when she did not elaborate, he gave her a sympathetic glance and resumed his meal.
Elizabeth’s eye wandered to the windows. It was dark, but there seemed to be something drifting in the wind. Was that . . .?
“It is snowing!” she exclaimed happily and stood to go look.
Miss Bingley huffed at the impropriety, lifting another spoonful of the soup to her lips.
“Oh,” Elizabeth said, half-turning to address the entire party. “I beg your pardon.”
“Not at all,” Charles said from just behind her. Elizabeth suspected that her new brother had stood and joined her to make her own breach of etiquette less noticeable, and she loved him for it.
“Does it not normally snow here?” he asked amiably.
“It varies,” Jane said from her seat at the table.
“There are many years where we have only rain and frost in December,” Elizabeth explained. “But last year was very cold, as you know, and the spring very wet.”
“It was the same in Derbyshire,” Mr. Darcy said. Elizabeth turned to face him, as he remained at the table. “Planting was delayed, and because there was so much rain in the summer, the harvest was smaller than normal.”
“But you have managed Pemberley so brilliantly that you will hardly see the difference.” Miss Bingley nearly purred her words.
Mr. Darcy’s incredulity was quickly masked, and Elizabeth turned back to the window to peer out into the dark. The flakes were coming thick and fast.
Miss Bingley must have been waiting all day to offer Mr. Darcy such praise.
Elizabeth wondered, laughingly, whether she had been composing delicate little compliments to use should the opportunity present itself.
But Miss Bingley could not have chosen worse, for a conscientious landowner such as Mr. Darcy, no matter how well he had planned for such a contingency, would be accepting lowered rents and anticipating greater expenditures during the winter so that his tenants neither froze nor starved.
Even Papa had told Mamma they should have to economise this year—after Jane’s wedding, of course.
Mr. Darcy did not deign to reply, and Miss Bingley fell silent.
No doubt the woman had returned to her soup, since no further discussion was to be had.
But having committed to her breach in propriety, Elizabeth stood at the window for a few moments longer, watching the peaceful sweep of the snowflakes as they drifted to earth.
She took a deep breath and released it slowly.
Charles was still beside her when she turned, and Elizabeth blushed to think that she had been keeping him from his meal. “Forgive me, Charles,” she told him quietly. “I still adore the first snowfall.”
“I, for one, detest the stuff,” Miss Bingley said. “It fouls the roads and makes visits difficult, if not impossible. And what if one requires deliveries of coal or food?”
“That is why landowners spend much of the autumn preparing for winter, Miss Bingley,” Mr. Darcy said pleasantly. “Pemberley itself is essentially cut off from both Lambton and Kympton after a heavy storm. We are required to care for ourselves.”
Elizabeth was impressed. That was a proper set-down without any sign of it being so. Charles held out her chair for her, and she slipped back into it with whispered thanks. Her new brother smiled at her and returned to his own seat.
“Although we do not often have storms that cut us off from town for more than a day or so,” Elizabeth said, “we also prepare as though it could. For if the shopkeepers cannot reach their shops to open them, or there is illness in the house and we cannot go out, we must be prepared.”
“And do you manage the larder, Miss Eliza?” Miss Bingley asked, her lips raised in a mocking smile.
Elizabeth was suddenly afraid that her early morning visit to the kitchen had been discovered, but although her cheeks warmed a bit, she quickly rallied. “We all of us grew up on an estate, Miss Bingley. It would have been strange had we not been trained to run one.”
It was Miss Bingley’s turn to blush. “And your mother taught you? How extraordinary.”
“Caroline,” Charles said without any hint of malice, “tread very carefully.”
Elizabeth thought the calmness in his voice more powerful a warning than if he had raised it. Miss Bingley, however, would not be deterred.
“Eliza does not mind, Charles. After all,” Miss Bingley said, “your mother is not from the landed gentry, is she? What could she possibly teach you?”
“She learned how to be mistress of Longbourn from our grandmother Bennet,” Jane said before Elizabeth could respond.
Jane always knew when to step in. Elizabeth reminded herself that Mamma needed no protection from her, any more than Jane did.
Mamma, despite her nerves, was a good mistress, and the Bennets were the oldest family in the area.
A great house had stood on the same site at Longbourn for close to three hundred years.
Caroline Bingley had money and nothing else.
Not even the respect of a brother who was likely to rise far above his father’s expectations.
“Your grandmother?” Miss Bingley asked, for once caught off guard.
“Yes,” Elizabeth replied, now more in control of her ire. “My grandmother was mistress of Longbourn for thirty years when our grandfather passed, and she lived with us until her own death five years ago. My mother was very happy to learn from her.”
Her grandmother had taken such pains with them all. She would have been saddened by Lydia’s marriage, but then, had she been here, she might have prevented Lydia from becoming such a flirt in the first place.
“I am sorry for your loss,” Mr. Darcy said, looking directly at her. “It sounds as though she was very much loved.”
“She was.” Elizabeth smiled. “Jane, do you recall her teaching us to sled when we studied the Cimbric War?”
Jane laughed. “She was irrepressible.”
“It sounds as though she was a little like our Lizzy,” Charles said as the soup bowls were removed, and the next course brought in. There were several dishes, and they all smelled heavenly.
“You know, Lizzy,” Jane said after everyone had been served, “now that I think on it, you two were very much alike. She loved the cats in the barn and would take you out there to play with the kittens. Mamma was always unhappy when their little claws snagged your clothes, so Grandmother bought you a special dress to wear out to the barn, do you remember?”
Elizabeth nodded. “It was made of a rougher material, and it itched, but I did not mind, for the kittens could climb all over me and Mamma did not care. And when the puppies were born . . .”
Jane nodded. “And she taught you how to climb trees.”
“You climbed trees?” Miss Bingley’s eyebrows rose almost to her hairline. “How . . . charming.”
“Oh, it was the best way to pick apples, you see. Or throw them at marauders.” Elizabeth glanced over at Mr. Darcy. His expression told her nothing, but the light in his eyes meant that he found the notion of her climbing trees more amusing than shocking.
Jane laughed a little louder this time, which for Jane meant that it could be heard. “You mean the Lucas boys?”
Elizabeth met her sister’s eye. “There are so many of them.”
“And what was their offense, Miss Bennet?” Mr. Darcy asked in a sonorous voice that sent a glorious shiver down her back. Elizabeth broke away from her sister’s gaze to meet his. Her breath caught in her throat at the dark intensity of his stare.
“They were stealing apples, Mr. Darcy,” Elizabeth managed to say.
“Perhaps they were hungry,” he replied.
“Did you ever stage a raid on a neighbour’s apple trees, Mr. Darcy?” Elizabeth heard Miss Bingley’s affected gasp, but ignored it, for Mr. Darcy did not look away.
“I must say I did. I believe that is where my cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam learned the skills he now uses against Napoleon.”
“Were you hungry, Mr. Darcy?”
“Of course, and the neighbour’s apples always tasted better in any case.” One corner of his mouth curled up slightly. “But surely the Lucas boys knew you would defend your family’s interests with vigour. It is in your nature to protect those you love.”
Her heart raced. Was this an acknowledgement that he did not hold her terrible words at the parsonage against her? They were seated at a family dinner—they were not alone. But it might be a very long time before she had another opportunity such as this.
“Little did they know,” Elizabeth said directly, “that had they simply asked, I would have said yes. For I knew that they would also have been generous with me.”
This was skirting too close to intimacy, but neither of them looked away.
“What are you talking about, Miss Eliza?” Miss Bingley said, and Elizabeth could hear the taint of desperation in the woman’s tone.
Mr. Darcy flinched and cast his eyes down at his plate, at last breaking the connection. For a connection it had been.
Elizabeth willed her heart to slow to a more normal beat as she focused on the food, picked up her fork, and began to eat.