CHAPTER 1 A WOLFHOUND CHOOSES
I wasn’t sure which required more fortitude—the cool glass beneath my palm or the prospect of three weeks in Mr. Collins’s parsonage. If one believes a parsonage might serve as a sanctuary, one clearly hasn’t spent any significant time with a man who considers a dove to be a sound marriage advisor.
Standing at the window of the small but painfully tidy chamber Charlotte had prepared for me, I surveyed the quiet proof of a newlywed life.
The books were aligned like a regiment of well-ordered soldiers, the workbasket—perfectly placed to catch the afternoon light—looked as if someone had spent an entire afternoon trying to make a living out of a neat stack of mail.
The view of the lane was so unremarkable that any guest could immediately plot an escape route to the garden.
Charlotte, practical to her bones, had evidently decided that her finest matrimonial strategy was to maintain three months of conspicuous inconspicuousness.
The letter in my pocket crinkled as I shifted my weight.
Jane’s latest missive, bright as a summer day in London and devoid of any mention of the gentleman who vanished from Netherfield, could only have been written by a girl who never admitted to being a little jealous.
I’d read it four times on the journey, scrutinizing each carefully constructed sentence for the unhappiness my sister would never express outright.
I am quite well. I have called on Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst. They were perfectly civil.
Perfectly civil. Jane, who found goodness in everyone and would have described Attila the Hun as “perhaps a touch enthusiastic about horsemanship,” had managed only “perfectly civil” regarding the Bingley sisters. It was a small, calculated concession. I snorted to myself.
A door slammed somewhere below, followed immediately by Mr. Collins’s voice, which projected through the floorboards as if he had been granted the singular honor of delivering a royal proclamation to the entire parish.
My shoulders tensed beneath my traveling dress.
I had committed to three weeks of this, for Charlotte’s sake, and I would survive it through liberal applications of long walks and the strategic deployment of selective deafness.
“Lizzy!” Charlotte’s voice floated up the stairs, expertly modulated to convey urgency without alarm—a skill she had no doubt perfected in the short months of her marriage. “Lady Catherine’s carriage has been spotted on the lane. We are summoned to Rosings for dinner.”
“How swift her summons.” I had been at Hunsford for precisely four hours—barely enough time to unpack my plainest gowns and contemplate the merits of feigning consumption.
A glance in the small mirror showed me presentable enough for a country neighbourhood.
I descended to find Mr. Collins already in raptures about the honor, the condescension, and the particularly flattering notice her ladyship took of his humble household.
“And I am told,” he announced, quivering with significance, “that her ladyship’s nephews have arrived for their annual Easter visit. Mr. Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam. You will recall Mr. Darcy, Cousin Elizabeth, from the Netherfield Ball, where I had trodden on your toes at least thrice.”
“I recall him perfectly, Mr. Collins.”
“A most distinguished gentleman. Ten thousand a year, and the grandson of an earl on his mother’s side. You will wish to make a better impression than you did in Hertfordshire, I am sure.”
I summoned my sweetest smile, the one that had caused my father to retreat hastily to his library on more than one occasion. “I shall endeavor to be precisely as impressive as I was before.”
Charlotte caught my eye with a look that blended sympathy and warning. Mr. Collins, oblivious as ever, continued his effusions all the way to the carriage.
Rosings Park embodied excess in a manner that only truly vulgar wealth could achieve.
I counted fourteen windows across the front facade alone, each one gleaming with the kind of aggressive cleanliness that spoke of an army of servants and a mistress who inspected their work with a magnifying glass perpetually in hand.
The great hall swallowed us whole—marble floors, portraits of disapproving ancestors, and enough gilt to make the eye water.
A footman led us toward the drawing room with the solemnity of a funeral procession.
And then something enormous and grey appeared from the shadows with all the subtlety of a cannonball and planted its nose firmly in my hand.
I yelped most undignifiedly. The creature—a dog, I realized, though of a size that seemed to belong more properly to mythology—gazed up at me with liquid amber eyes and the unmistakable expression of a soul who had been waiting its entire life for this precise moment.
“Caractacus!” a sharp voice rang out. “Come here at once!”
The dog ignored this command with magnificent indifference. Instead, it pressed closer to my skirts, its great plumed tail sweeping the marble floor with slow, deliberate wags.
“I do apologise.” The voice resolved itself into Mr. Darcy, emerging from the drawing room with an expression of profound irritation. “He is not usually—Caractacus, heel.”
The wolfhound glanced back at his master, looked at me with what could only be described as canine devotion, and with great dignity planted his considerable bulk directly upon my feet.
I surprised myself by laughing. The sound escaped before I could contain it, and the dog’s tail accelerated its tempo in apparent approval.
I dropped, most unladylike, to embrace the great creature when his long, wet tongue found my wind-chapped cheekbones, eliciting more laughter while Darcy sputtered and his aunt gasped with outrage.
“He seems to have made his choice, Mr. Darcy.” I scratched behind one enormous ear. The fur was coarser than I expected, wiry and warm. “I am afraid you have been thoroughly displaced.”
A brief change passed over Darcy’s features—surprise or annoyance, or some other quicksilver emotion gone too swiftly to grasp. “Caractacus has never behaved this way with a stranger.”
“Then I am honored by the distinction.” I kept my voice light, my attention on the dog.
Far easier than meeting those penetrating dark eyes and remembering the last time I had seen him, watching me with an intensity that had made my skin prickle like autumn frost. “Though I confess I have done nothing to deserve such devotion.”
“No. Neither have I.” His voice was a low rumble, almost as if it were a theatrical aside.
Before I could unravel this peculiar statement, Lady Catherine’s voice swept through the hall with all the delicacy of a mallet to fine china. “Darcy! What is the meaning of this delay? And why is that creature not in the kennels where it belongs?”
“Caractacus does not care for the kennels, Aunt.”
“A dog’s preferences are hardly—” Lady Catherine emerged into the hall and stopped dead at the sight of her nephew’s prized wolfhound plastered against my hems and ruffled petticoats. “What on earth?”
“Miss Elizabeth Bennet, your ladyship.” Mr. Collins performed a bow so deep it seemed to defy both propriety and the natural limitations of the human spine. “My wife’s particular friend, come to stay with us at Hunsford. I believe I mentioned—”
“Yes, yes, the girl from Hertfordshire.” Lady Catherine’s gaze swept me from head to hem and found me as wanting as last season’s bonnet. “I see Darcy’s dog has taken leave of its senses.”
“Animals are such excellent judges of character,” I said with honey-sweet innocence, looking directly into her ladyship’s imperious eyes. “One can always trust their instincts in matters of discernment.”
Charlotte made a small, strangled noise. Darcy’s jaw tightened with such force I feared for his teeth. And Caractacus, the magnificent traitor, pressed even closer to my legs.
Dinner proved precisely the ordeal I had anticipated, with the added complication of roughly twelve stone of canine devotion.
Lady Catherine held forth on every conceivable topic—the proper management of servants, the shocking state of modern manners, particularly among young women of obscure birth, and the many ways in which my upbringing had clearly been deficient.
I answered with just enough deference to satisfy Mr. Collins and just enough wit to satisfy myself, a delicate art that would have challenged a seasoned diplomat.
The wolfhound lay beneath the table with his massive head planted firmly upon my feet.
I had made several earnest attempts to dislodge him.
Truly, I had. But Caractacus possessed the immovability of ancient monoliths and the stubborn determination of—well, of a Bennet, if I am to be honest. He had followed me into the dining room despite Darcy’s increasingly exasperated commands, positioned himself beneath my chair, and apparently settled in for the duration of the meal and possibly the remainder of my natural life.
“The dog has never behaved in this manner,” Lady Catherine announced for at least the fourth time, as if repetition might alter the facts. “Darcy, your hound is making an absolute spectacle.”
“I am quite aware, Aunt.”
“He should be removed forthwith.”
“He does not wish to be removed.”
“Since when do we consult a dog’s wishes on matters of proper behavior?”
“Since he weighs twelve stone and has decided to defend his position with the tenacity of a medieval knight.” Darcy’s voice was dry as autumn leaves.
I glanced up and caught him watching me—not the dog, but me—with an expression I could not properly decipher.
“I find it easier to choose my battles.”
“Ridiculous.” Lady Catherine attacked her pheasant as if the bird had personally offended her. “Miss Bennet, I understand you have four sisters.”
“I do, your ladyship.”
“And none of you properly accomplished, I suppose. Can you play the pianoforte?”
“A little, and very badly.”
“Do you draw?”