Chapter 7
Elizabeth bit her lip, trying not to cry. It would do no good, in any case. Her dream of a school was finished.
“I am sorry, Lizzy,” Mr Gardiner said. Mr Bennet patted her shoulder.
She raised her chin and gathered her poise. “Well…perhaps this is not our year to begin a school, but certainly we have plenty of prizes still to distribute. If everyone who wants to participate in the dog cart race would follow me, we could—”
“Who is that?” Lydia interrupted.
Elizabeth turned to see a carriage coming round the bend in the drive. “I do not know.”
“I daresay the Bingleys forgot a sign or two! Look, there are more!”
The carriages came, and came, and kept coming.
The men who had been put in charge of the hoped-for traffic ran to their stations, guiding coach after coach into the areas they had previously set up for the purpose.
Another thing—these were fine carriages; there was not a shabby one in the bunch.
Not only were there more vehicles than Elizabeth had ever seen on Longbourn’s property, but they were full.
Whole families emerged, the children running happily ahead of their parents towards the booths.
Ladies carried covered dishes. Men carried unstrung bows.
The contests! They were all here for the fair!
A man, finely dressed, taller than the rest, descended from one of the last of the carriages.
Behind him, a slender man with red-gold curls peeking out from his beaver climbed out of the final vehicle.
Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley! Mr Darcy held out his hand towards his carriage door, helping a young lady out.
Together, the three of them followed the crowds congregating on Longbourn’s vast lawns.
“Everyone to their places!” Elizabeth called joyfully. “We shall have our Christmas fair after all!”
It was madness. There were twice as many children as she had expected, based upon previous years.
She would have lost her mind, except that Mr Darcy brought over a lovely older woman and the younger girl, just as she was trying to organise the ring toss into something like orderly turns out of sheer chaos.
“Miss Elizabeth Bennet,” he began. “Might I introduce you to my aunt Lady Matlock and my sister, Miss Georgiana Darcy. Her ladyship is a master of grand entertainments, as the last summer fête at Matlock proved—you had what, nearly a thousand in attendance?”
Elizabeth curtseyed, looking from Miss Darcy to her obviously sophisticated aunt—the brooch at her neck was probably worth a king’s fortune—and feeling, in her rather garish yellow apron, somewhat tongue-tied.
Lady Matlock stepped into the breach. “We are so pleased to meet you, Miss Bennet,” she said, then rubbed her palms together.
“What have we here? A ring toss? One of my favourites.” She clapped her hands, drawing the attention of the shouting children.
“Here now, listen to me,” she called in a carrying voice that somehow had the effect of quieting them all at once.
“Shall we count off? You, you, you, and you,” she ordered, “will be the team leaders.”
Miss Darcy looked at Elizabeth and whispered, “We just do as she says now, and it will all go off perfectly.” Elizabeth laughed. Mr Darcy smiled—a smile such as she had never before seen on him—a wry, friendly smile; he bowed, then left them.
More quickly than Elizabeth could believe, the countess had the wildly excitable children all in four perfectly straight lines of nearly equivalent numbers and was calling the first throws. Miss Darcy gave her a ‘you see?’ look; Elizabeth grabbed her pencil and notebook and hurried to keep score.
They did not have much chance for conversation until the story hour began, with Jane dressed as a strikingly beautiful Scheherazade summoning all the children to gather round beneath their one large canvas tent to hear a selection of parables.
Mr Bingley, Elizabeth noticed, trotted after them all, a look of dazzled wonder in his eyes, and she had to smile.
“I am famished,” Elizabeth said. “I was so worried about the fair this morning, I did not feel much like eating. Would you like to—” She halted mid-sentence, chagrined. “Was I truly about to invite a countess for sausages? I apologise—we can go up to the house and—”
“I have been smelling them all morning. I am famished as well,” Miss Darcy asserted.
Lady Matlock’s lips curved into a smile. “Miss Bennet, nothing could be better at a fair than hot sausages. Lead the way.”
“I cannot thank you both enough—for coming, for helping, for bringing your friends,” Elizabeth began. The three ladies sat together at wooden benches, munching companionably in a fashion Elizabeth could never have thought possible.
Lady Matlock smiled. “Do not thank us. We are here at Darcy’s behest. There is not much I would refuse him.
He saved my youngest son’s life once, you know.
” She proceeded with a tale of bravery, when her son, an army colonel, was surrounded by cutthroats on the streets of London, and Mr Darcy intervened against four attackers.
Together, they had overcome the ruffians.
“He is indeed good to those he loves,” Elizabeth agreed heartily.
“Yes,” added Miss Darcy fervently, “but he is also, simply, good. I know of no man with a finer character than my brother.”
Miss Darcy was not a talkative girl—in fact, quite the opposite.
There was something in her declaration that, unaccountably, brought Lieutenant Wickham’s version of Mr Darcy’s character to her recollection, and she suddenly wondered why she had accepted his appraisal so easily.
Impulsively, she decided to ask for some evidence of the lieutenant’s assertions—he had grown up with Mr Darcy, he had proclaimed, so these ladies should know him at least a little.
“I met a man recently who said he was a dear friend of your father’s. A Mr George Wickham. He was in our local regiment—” She broke off suddenly, for Miss Darcy had abruptly clutched at her aunt’s arm, turning pale. Lady Matlock’s expression, in turn, iced over.
“Is he here? Or n-near?” Miss Darcy asked, horror in her tone.
“No! No, he is gone. He left the militia for Newcastle. Weeks ago,” Elizabeth assured her, abruptly sorry she had ever brought up his name.
Lady Matlock placed an arm about her niece, who had gone from seeming mature for her age to a frightened young girl in an instant. “Let us just say, ‘good riddance’, and leave it at that,” she said firmly. “Oh, I see jugglers! How fun! Should we watch?”
Miss Darcy seemed to take hold of herself. “Y-yes. I would enjoy that.”
Thanks to Lady Matlock, all was smoothed over easily, but Elizabeth was left with more questions than those with which she had begun.