Chapter 7 #2
“Then I hope to contribute something more tolerable,” he said, arranging his napkin as if it might occupy him for the evening.
Miss Kendrick inclined slightly toward him—not forward enough to presume, but near enough to show attention.
Candlelight admired her; the ivory of her shoulder, the clean line of her profile, the quiet confidence with which she observed rather than merely waited to be observed.
“Sir Edward swears we shall be fed as though the roads were open to every market in England,” she said. “I am braced to be astonished.”
“Kelton has never lacked for astonishment,” Mrs. Barlow returned, accepting wine from the footman with a murmur. “Our host would feed the county if he could find a table long enough.”
At the head, Sir Edward proved her point by carving with cheerful vigour and dispatching portions as if victory depended upon speed.
Lady Montford’s hand barely lifted, and yet everything near her moved into proportion—dishes advanced and retreated, conversation caught a gentler cadence, a guest who had been overlooked found a plate appear before him as if conjured.
“Mr. Darcy,” said Mrs. Barlow, “you have come down from the north. We shall require an account of Derbyshire that makes us long for it.”
“Pemberley is quiet at this season,” he said. “Derbyshire keeps its charms best when it says nothing about them.”
“A county after your own heart,” she observed, amused. “And London? You are lately from Town, I think?”
“Lately,” he allowed. “I was there on… business.”
“Business,” Mrs. Barlow repeated, as though the word itself were entertaining. “How fortunate that other people’s accounts keep society in motion.”
Miss Kendrick’s glance flicked toward Mr. Kendrick, who was in the act of enlivening Sir Edward with an account of a neighbour’s fox that had learned every trick available to an honest fox and one or two that ought to have been impossible.
The story drew in the Wilcoxes, who contributed embellishments with generous good will.
Laughter travelled the length of the table and returned again like a friendly messenger.
“You have a way of letting people talk themselves into comfort, Mr. Darcy,” Miss Kendrick said softly, so that only he could hear. “I rather think your intent is to fool others into letting their guards down.”
Darcy considered denying it and found he lacked the energy for pretence. “Comfort is an art best practised by others,” he said, and left it there.
Plates arrived; platters lingered just long enough for a second helping if one were quick.
The Wilcoxes celebrated every dish as if it had traversed oceans to reach them.
Colonel Fitzwilliam, whose appetite was as honest as his laugh, made Miss Clara Montford’s quiet admiration seem like shyness rather than design; by the time the footmen removed the first course, she had volunteered a remark of her own and looked pleased by it.
Sir Edward noticed and sent an approving nod down the line that made the young lady glow.
Mrs. Barlow, finding Darcy immovable on London chatter, drifted to safer ground—the superiority of Kelton’s cook over most, the surprising usefulness of wassail in subduing gloomy tempers, the rumour that a certain neighbouring family had slaughtered their Christmas beef too early.
She had a knack for turning gossip into entertainment without drawing blood, and she exercised it with an expert’s restraint.
Darcy answered when required and otherwise allowed the stream to pass.
Miss Kendrick did not chatter. She asked questions that had the shape of conversation rather than interrogation: whether he hunted more in autumn or winter; which road he found least ill-tempered between Derbyshire and Northamptonshire; whether he preferred a small house well-arranged or a large one indifferently kept.
None of her questions were idle. She listened to his answers with a focus that made a lesser man eager to provide better ones.
Across the table Mr. Kendrick and Sir Edward had discovered a mutual enthusiasm for horses that threatened to annex the entire end. Mr. Wilcox claimed expertise with a humility that convinced no one and endeared him to all.
Darcy lifted his glass and let the wine rest against his lip without drinking.
The room had gathered itself into a picture any traveller would remember: warmth, abundance, faces cheerfully lit, old friends rediscovering shared ground while new acquaintances found their footing.
It was not a picture that admitted him easily.
He was present in it, to be sure—placed where he ought to be, included where inclusion was required—but presence alone did not confer belonging.
He set down his glass and reached for the dish before him because doing something always felt truer than being seen to do nothing.
From his left, Mrs. Barlow said with pleasant malice, “You will forgive me, Mr. Darcy, if I declare myself jealous of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s knack for gathering stories. He arrives and half our table becomes a theatre.”
“He has had practice,” Darcy said. “The army does not short its officers of audiences.”
“And you?” She smiled sidelong. “Do you leave your audiences behind in Derbyshire?”
“I have none,” he said, and applied himself to his plate.
“Now that,” murmured Miss Kendrick, “is the first untrue thing you have said tonight.” She did not look at him as she said it; she applied herself to the fish with quiet attention, so that he could not be sure he had heard correctly.
If the remark had been meant as a tease, it was of the lightest sort and vanished at once, leaving behind the faintest disturbance—like the trace a fingertip leaves on a glass before it fades.
At the far end, Colonel Fitzwilliam had produced some anecdote from Portugal—judiciously pruned of horrors, embellished with a donkey of improbable character—which set Mr. Kendrick laughing so heartily that a footman nearly spilled a dish from simple sympathy.
The room answered with good humour. Darcy kept his place, answered what was put to him, and in spite of himself measured, in some private part of mind, how easily other men arranged themselves among their fellows and how little appetite he had for the arrangement.
Miss Kendrick matched her brother’s charm in another register.
She was attentive without being coy, intelligent without pedantry.
When Sir Edward praised Kelton’s cook to the skies, she remarked with just enough mischief, “It is fortunate, sir, that you have never dined at Kendrick Hall. Our cook is capable of feats you would declare unnatural.” The claim drew the expected protests, which she met with graceful deflection, never pressing her advantage too far.
Darcy found himself the object of several more of her questions, posed with the same balance.
Did Derbyshire’s hills make hunting more arduous?
Was it true that the mills of the north had grown so numerous that they threatened the scenery?
Did he prefer books of history or of poetry on winter evenings?
They were questions that might have been commonplace from another mouth; from hers they carried the air of genuine interest.
He answered with civility, offering nothing more than the truth as he saw it, yet aware that she was a woman any man might be proud to claim as partner in such conversation.
She had poise enough to rival the finest salons of London and beauty enough to turn the head of any who cared to look.
She was, in short, everything society would approve for him.
And still—her polished laughter, her careful interest—none of it rang with the unstudied warmth of Elizabeth Bennet, who would have asked no less but with half the ceremony. He felt the lack like an old bruise.
Mrs. Barlow, not to be outdone, sought to divert him into London gossip. “We hear the season will be thinner than usual,” she said, “and that certain ladies of consequence have declared Bath the more fashionable retreat. What say you, Mr. Darcy? Shall London be deserted after Twelfth Night?”
“I cannot speak for London,” he replied. “My business there did not extend to the entertainments of the season.”
She tilted her head. “You must allow me to call that ungenerous. Why should Derbyshire have all of you while London starves?”
Darcy inclined his head, but did not smile.
The Wilcoxes rescued the moment with a lively tale of a card party that had gone on so long the candles guttered before the wagers were resolved.
Sir Edward roared his approval, Lady Montford murmured a tactful reminder that cards were not the only amusement of Christmastide, and the table turned toward safer ground.
Plates cleared again, wine refreshed, the hum of talk shifted as naturally as the flame of a candle bends toward a draught. Mr. Kendrick, ever alert to the mood, was the first to mention it.
“Your pheasants are admirable, Sir Edward, but I wonder what sport we shall have if the snow continues. I met a fellow on the road this morning who swore the drifts out on the fields were high enough to bury a pony.”
“That fellow should have tried the Northampton road,” said Wilcox jovially. “I saw a coach half over and its passengers digging like miners. If this storm does not cease, Christmas will be kept in barns.”
Several gentlemen contributed their own accounts: blocked lanes, wagons abandoned, labourers hired to shovel at a guinea the mile. The consensus formed swiftly—no prudent man would attempt travel again until the roads were beaten clear.
Sir Edward shook his head in mock reproof. “Then what do you make of these two cousins of mine, charging straight into the worst of it? They have put me in danger of defending their judgment all evening.”
Richard laughed and raised his glass. “Defend it only if we perish in the attempt, sir. If we live to eat your supper, it is justification enough.”
The laughter was general. Darcy allowed himself neither smile nor protest. He knew well that they thought him reckless or proud; perhaps he was both. The ribbon in his pocket weighed more than the judgment of strangers.
Miss Kendrick, seizing the moment, leaned forward just enough that her words carried to those nearest. “Surely a gentleman might prefer snowbound miles to musty coaching inns,” she said lightly.
“Even the worst drifts cannot rival damp sheets and thin soup. I would rather be stranded in a carriage with frost at the windows than in a public room smelling of ale and wet wool.” Her eyes flicked toward Darcy, bright with the implication.
Darcy bowed his head in acknowledgment, offering nothing more.
To say he agreed would be encouragement; to say otherwise would be false.
He chose silence, and felt the silence noticed.
Once, he might have met such playfulness with equal spirit.
But Elizabeth’s arch glance came to mind unbidden, and against that memory, any reply felt hollow.
Mrs. Barlow smiled like a woman storing something away for later.
The Wilcoxes drank to the storm as if it were another guest at the table.
Sir Edward declared that if any travellers had the misfortune to be caught abroad, Kelton’s doors would be open, and Lady Montford, with gentler emphasis, added that she would have her husband inquire whether the local inns could offer any comfort to ladies who might otherwise suffer.
It was spoken as a kindness, but Darcy felt in it a shadow of inevitability, as though the storm itself had drawn up a guest list and meant to deliver it to Kelton’s door.