Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
THE GENTLEMAN WITH THE TORTOISE
Elizabeth
My sister did not weep about the door. She wept about the curtain.
Jane had borne the snub itself with the composure that was her particular gift, that gentle, unwavering steadiness I had spent twenty years admiring and only recently recognized as armor.
The Bingley sisters were not at home. Very well.
Jane had smiled at the butler, thanked him with her customary warmth, and walked to the waiting carriage as if she had merely been passing and thought to leave her card.
It was only when she climbed inside, she told me, that she had looked up at the house.
“The curtain moved, Lizzy. Someone was standing very close to the glass. A tall figure, quite still.” She had turned her teacup in its saucer without drinking. “It looked very like Mr. Darcy.”
That was Tuesday. By Wednesday afternoon, I had managed something that resembled calm, though really it was fury in a better dress. My sister had sat on this very sofa, in this very drawing-room, and quietly come undone, and I had been holding myself together ever since.
“Lizzy.” Jane looked at me from her end of the settee, where she had been pretending to read a novel for the better part of an hour. “Do you think Mr. Bingley knew I called?”
“No,” I said, with more certainty than the evidence warranted, because Jane needed conviction and I could give her that, at least. “Caroline manages him. She arranges, contrives, and smooths away anything that does not suit her plans. She cut you, plain and simple, and whether Bingley was aware or not is incidental.”
“But if Mr. Darcy was there… then he witnessed the cut, and would Bingley be notified?”
“Mr. Darcy is no friend of ours.” I refrained from rolling my eyes. My poor sister has suffered enough at the hands of that arrogant Netherfield party. “I daresay he might have advised the Bingley sisters not to receive you.”
My sister’s face twisted with new anguish, and I feared I had gone too far.
“Truly, Jane. These people are not worth our notice. Darcy may stand at windows and scowl until the last trump, but it changes nothing. You called with courage, and you were treated with contempt. Neither of those things reflects upon you.”
Jane wrung her hands until I worried she would sprain both her wrists. “Lizzy, you were not there. I know I erred in going alone, but Miss Bingley wrote me the sweetest letter when they quit Netherfield.”
“That is because she never thought she would see you again.” I have learned not to be surprised at her generosity. “I am angry on your behalf, Sister, and my wrath should do well enough for the both of us.”
I stomped my foot for emphasis, and Jane almost smiled, which was the first useful thing that had happened all day.
“I do not want you to quarrel with anyone on my account,” she remarked. “If we should encounter Mr. Darcy in company, I would not have you… I know how you feel about him, and I understand why, but I will not be the cause of unpleasantness in our aunt’s home.”
“I shall be civility itself.”
“That is precisely what worries me.”
Mrs. Gardiner entered from the morning room, closing the door behind her. She carried a list in one hand, and a sprig of rosemary in the other, casualties of her ongoing battle with the window-boxes.
“You are discussing it again.”
“We are not,” I said too quickly.
“Jane’s novel is upside down, and you are sitting with your jaw set at the angle you adopt when you are about to say something very clever and extremely unkind.
” She sat in her chair by the fire, regarding us both.
“Jane, my love. I know it stings. And Elizabeth is composing a magnificent speech this very moment, but listen to me: when I was seventeen, a girl I admired cut me dead at a dance, and my mother said, Marianne, some people are not worth the crease in your forehead. Then she gave me a biscuit and sent me to bed.”
“That is very wise, Aunt.”
“It is practical, which suits better. Miss Bingley’s good opinion is a prize of no great value, and her ill opinion is of even less.” She turned to me. “And you, Elizabeth, will stop sharpening whatever weapon you are honing. Your eyes have gone narrow.”
“My eyes are perfectly serene.”
“Your eyes are the same eyes that told Mrs. Long her turban was a triumph of ambition over taste. I know those eyes.”
I was halfway through composing my defense when the drawing-room door swung open and Sarah, the housemaid, appeared.
“Ma’am,” she said to Mrs. Gardiner, “there is a gentleman at the door. Mr. Darcy. He says he has brought a tortoise for the children, by arrangement with Mr. Gardiner.”
Jane and I exchanged a glance—troubled on my part, nearly colorless on hers. Mrs. Gardiner, blissfully unaware of the significance, beamed like a woman whose husband had finally remembered her birthday.
“A tortoise! How splendid. Edward did mention something yesterday, but I thought he was being whimsical.” She rose, smoothing her skirts. “Show him in, Sarah. And fetch the children.”
“Aunt.” My voice came out thinner than I had intended. “Jane and I are acquainted with Mr. Darcy. From Hertfordshire.”
“Are you? Then you shall introduce us. How convenient.”
There was not a single respectable excuse for escape.
Jane sat beside me, pale and stiff, and I would not leave her to face him alone.
Even if I could, this was my aunt’s house, her guest, and I was only a guest myself.
Besides, a gentleman’s daughter does not bolt from a drawing-room simply because an insufferable man appears with a tortoise.
Stay. Be civil. Be so perfectly, beautifully civil that he feels the sting of every syllable.
Jane sat very still as solid footsteps resounded in the hallway, and the door opened.
Darcy stood in the doorway, wicker basket in hand, turning sideways to fit through. For a moment, he did not see us, and his face was unguarded—almost tentative, as if he cared very much whether he would be welcome.
Then he saw Jane, and his face changed. Recognition, a bracing, a tightening around his eyes. He inclined his head.
“Miss Bennet. I trust you are well.”
“Quite well, Mr. Darcy. Thank you.” Jane’s composure held, but only just; I could see the effort it cost in the set of her shoulders and the careful steadiness of her voice.
Then he saw me.
His face lost all color. I watched it happen—a man discovering the furniture rearranged by someone with a grudge.
Good. Did you think you could hide behind a curtain, sir? Did you think my sister had no one to defend her?
“Miss Elizabeth.” His voice dropped half a register and acquired the particular stiffness that formal men adopt when the ground beneath them shifts. “I was not aware you were in London.”
“Were you not?” I stood, because sitting while he towered was a concession I refused to make. “How very startling for you. We are full of surprises here in Cheapside.”
“Elizabeth,” Jane murmured.
I adjusted my expression by several degrees toward something Mrs. Gardiner would not feel obliged to address later. “I meant only that my visit was arranged rather recently, and I suppose my uncle had no reason to mention it. You have been in communication with Mr. Gardiner, I understand?”
“I called yesterday on a matter of business, and the question of the tortoise arose quite naturally from the conversation.”
“Quite naturally,” I echoed, and smiled the sort of smile that does not invite comfort.
Mrs. Gardiner curtsied politely. “Mr. Darcy, welcome. I am Mrs. Gardiner, and I am excessively grateful to you. My husband told me of your offer last evening, and I confess the children have spoken of nothing else since breakfast. May I see him?”
She peered into the basket, and whatever Darcy had been bracing for in my direction was momentarily set aside.
“This is Bertram,” he said. “He belonged to my father when he was but a boy. I am afraid he has been rather neglected in my care. A bachelor’s household in London is no place for a creature accustomed to a garden and children.”
“He is magnificent.” Mrs. Gardiner touched the edge of the shell with one gentle finger. “My husband said you were generous, Mr. Darcy, but I think he understated the matter considerably. Parting with a creature your father loved must cost you a great deal.”
Something passed across his face, too quickly for me to name. “It costs less than keeping him where he is not happy. He deserves a proper home.”
“Then he shall have one.”
The children descended, as children do when promised a miracle: at full speed, in glorious disarray, and loud enough to rattle the windowpanes.
Alice led the charge, hair escaping its ribbon, face set with the gravity of the eldest child leading the brigade.
Samuel followed, questions already forming.
Rose, four and always running, collided with the basket before anyone could stop her.
“Is that him? Is that the tortoise? Can I hold him? Is he alive? Why is he not moving?” Rose demanded while Thomas’s nursemaid carried him to peer into the basket.
“He is shy,” Darcy said, and knelt.
He knelt on my aunt’s carpet, this man of ten thousand a year and all the pride that Derbyshire could furnish, set the basket on the floor, and lifted the tortoise out with both hands, steadying the shell against his waistcoat, and held him where four children could see.
“You must be patient,” he said. “He is very old, and he has come a long distance. If you are gentle and quiet, he will put his head out presently.”
“He is beautiful,” Alice breathed. She extended one careful finger to the dome of the shell. “Look, Samuel. The markings are like a little country of their own.”
“What does he eat?” Samuel asked, crouching beside Darcy with his chin on his knees.