Chapter 2
Fitzwilliam Darcy stood beside the window, his hand on his hip as he watched tiny snowflakes falling and making a thin blanket on the ground.
It was a dreary day, even with all that Charles Bingley, his host and one of the best friends he had in the world, had done to cheer the party gathered in the lavish drawing room of Netherfield Park.
Nonetheless, he knew it for a certainty: it was time to leave.
He had not outstayed his welcome, for that was impossible — Bingley was too generous, good-natured, and fond of company to ever wish for a friend to leave his roof.
However, he had outstayed his own patience for being a guest. He had come to see the new house he had let in the early autumn and had stayed for the shooting.
Pleasant as the visit had been, he found himself growing restless.
“Comes away from the window, Mr Darcy. You will catch your death,” Miss Caroline Bingley urged. “The draught is terrible near the windows.”
“There is no draught. I had the windows properly sealed when we first arrived at the beginning of the autumn,” Bingley argued cheerfully.
“No one need fear for their lives while they are a guest in my house.” He smiled broadly and invited Darcy to join him at the hearth, which was ablaze with a pleasant fire.
Darcy did as he was bidden, but knew that his dissatisfaction was not due to the cold, or the snow, nor even the company that he was keeping at Netherfield Park.
Far from it; it was the lack of company he was keeping. He missed his little sister dreadfully.
Thankfully, that would soon be mended, for Georgiana was in Town, and he would join her before the week was out.
His aunt in London had insisted that she be allowed to come to her and spend the holidays.
And he could not but agree. Indeed, he was simply glad that his sister had agreed to leave Pemberley and keep any society beside himself.
For all its charms, the visit to Netherfield had left him missing Georgiana and worrying over her in equal measure.
After her difficulties the previous summer, he did not like being away from her for any length of time.
And since he had left her at Pemberley earlier in the autumn, the urgency to return to her and assure himself that she was well had grown with every passing day.
He longed for the company of his own family, small as it was.
It was only the two of them, now that their parents were gone.
His mother had passed only a few short hours after Georgiana had been born, nearly seventeen years before, but Darcy still missed her.
Her absence was all the more painful during the holidays.
She had tried to make the Christmas season special for them all, and it was only at her urging that his late father would put away his work and enjoy himself for a little while.
After his mother had passed, he and Georgiana saw him rather less, even though he tried to be present for important occasions.
But it was never the same. Darcy assumed that seeing Georgiana was simply too painful for their father, especially as she grew into adolescence and began to resemble their mother more and more.
For himself, he found the resemblance comforting, but perhaps it had only reminded their father of everything he had lost.
Now their father had been gone these five years, and Georgiana was all the family he had.
“You could change that,” Georgiana had once shyly pointed out. “If you were to take a wife, she could help you run the estate, and I would have more company to enjoy when you are on your long trips to London.”
Darcy had no objection, but not even for the sake of giving Georgiana company would he compromise on what he wanted in a wife.
She must have good connections, of course; he owed that much to his family.
Nor had he any intention of marrying any of the young ladies who were sometimes a little too ambitious in their pursuit of him through the drawing rooms of London.
His future wife must be as insightful as she was elegant, as kind as she was well-read and accomplished, and must love him as fervently and entirely as he loved her.
If that made him fastidious, then so be it; he would marry for no less.
He joined Bingley at the fire, and in watching the rest of the company. While Mr Hurst, the husband of Bingley’s elder sister, dozed on a sofa, Mrs Hurst and Miss Bingley played at cards.
Darcy took care not to look too closely, not wishing to give Miss Bingley any notice that could be mistaken for encouragement, and could only lead to disappointment.
Caroline Bingley had made no secret of her interest in becoming Mrs Darcy, but while she was a very pretty woman, Darcy had not the least intention of gratifying her.
It was only too evident that Miss Bingley was interested in him firstly for his estate, secondly for his family’s name, and a distant third — if even that — for his character and person.
He could not begrudge her wish to make an advantageous marriage, but neither could he respect her indifference to any more substantial qualities.
Worse still, Miss Bingley had a deplorable tendency towards schemes and wiles.
Perhaps she was not entirely to blame. Mrs Hurst, the eldest of the Bingley offspring, was just as vicious a gossip as her younger sister. Indeed, no doubt Caroline Bingley had learned the deplorable habit from her elder sister as they were growing into womanhood.
The Hurst family was not a happy one. Louisa Bingley had not married for love, but for her husband’s social standing.
And he, to his detriment, had married her for her dowry, with little thought of lasting compatibility or esteem.
They seemed to have settled into a peaceful sort of mutual contempt.
Mrs Hurst made frequent strictures against her husband, while he seemed content to doze, play cards, and drink rather more than was good for him.
Darcy sighed, glancing over at his friend. “I am afraid the time has come for me to leave you,” he said in an undertone, not necessarily for everyone to hear. Bingley looked dismayed. But before he could say anything, Mrs Hurst burst into the conversation.
“Leave us? The very idea! Where will you go?” Mrs Hurst threw her cards onto the table, not caring that they had been revealed to her sister. “The weather cannot permit a long journey, I daresay.” She turned around to glance at her husband. “Tell him, Mr Hurst.”
“I will do nothing of the kind,” Mr Hurst said with a yawn. “Mr Darcy is a grown man and well able to ascertain whether the roads are passable for himself.”
“But it is Christmas week, sir! You cannot think of leaving at a time like this.”
“On the contrary, the weather will not detain me, and the date is all the more reason for me to go. I am to join Georgiana to celebrate the Christmas season with her, along with my aunt and the rest of the Fitzwilliam side of the family.” While willing to say all that was proper on going away, Darcy was, in fact, hardly sad to be leaving.
Bingley was always pleasant company, and he would miss his friend, but he could not say the same of the hard-drinking Mr Hurst, his quarrelsome wife, or the too-persistent Miss Bingley.
Caroline turned to her brother, then to her sister. “Well, why do not we all go to London for Christmas? It is so quiet here, I am bored to distraction!” She cast a glance toward Darcy and raised her eyes to his. “Surely it would be more pleasant to travel in a group than alone?”
Bingley’s smile grew even broader. “I agree! It would be wonderful for us to all travel to London together. Then I need not worry that you have met some misfortune on the road. And we may be a merry party for Christmas, after all.”
Caroline rose from the card table, making her way over to the gentlemen at the hearth. She clasped her hands, beaming at them in her enthusiasm. “I must confess, I wish you had suggested our departure earlier, Mr Darcy,” she purred. “Do you not find this neighbourhood rather dull?”
“I agree,” Mrs Hurst said, and joined the others at the fire.
“No doubt Mr Hurst would be content to sit here in the country and rot away with a glass of port. But I must have some kind of excitement in my life. Just think of the parties that we are missing at this very moment!” Mrs Hurst fanned herself and sneered at her husband.
The Hursts had no children. Darcy suspected there was little chance of them, given the contempt with which they seemed to view each other.
Bingley sighed, shifting his weight to his other foot. “I hear it was not always such a dull neighbourhood. Since Mr Bennet’s death, the neighbourhood has lost the society of his five daughters.”
“Five daughters? My heavens, did Mrs Bennet not produce any sons for the poor fellow?” Caroline Bingley looked aghast at the thought.
As if the misfortune of not having sons was all the woman’s fault.
She gave Darcy a significant smile, as though promising that she would not be so careless as to leave her husband without an heir.
“The poor man! He must have been driven to distraction with so many daughters.”
Bingley went on without the slightest knowledge of his sister’s manoeuvring or concern for her sniping.
“I’m told that four of the five sisters live in a cottage outside of Meryton with their mother.
They never go out, thus depriving the neighbourhood of some very excellent company, as Sir William tells it.
Lady Lucas was adamant in her agreement with her husband.
As she would tell it, Miss Jane Bennet, the eldest, is very beautiful, even more so than her own daughter, Mrs Charlotte Collins. ”
“She is not much prettier than Mrs Collins?” Caroline gave a derisive laugh. “Poor woman! To be handsomer than Mrs Collins would be to be hardly tolerable.”