Chapter Nine #3
“Good.” She turned slightly and extended a hand toward the woman in the burgundy habit. “Allow me to present Lady Caroline Yorke, who is my guest at Rosings this fortnight. And her daughter, Miss Eliot.”
Lady Caroline came forward at once, her hand extended, her manner carrying the warmth of a woman who has decided in advance that she approves and intends the other party to know it. “Mr. Bennet. I am very glad you have come.”
James took the offered hand and bowed with the composure that was natural to him, meeting her gaze steadily. “Lady Caroline. The pleasure is mine.”
“I doubt that, as yet,” she replied, with a directness that was entirely without offence, “since you cannot yet know what you have come for. But I hope it may become so.” She turned slightly, drawing her daughter forward with a gesture that was both natural and deliberate—the movement of a mother who has rehearsed this moment and is determined that it shall appear unrehearsed. “My daughter, Fiona.”
Fiona stepped forward and curtseyed with a grace that owed nothing to self-consciousness, meeting his eyes briefly as she rose.
Up close, the impression of the first moment was confirmed and deepened.
There was a quality of attentiveness about her, a sense that she was listening to more than was being said, that made her stillness feel inhabited rather than merely composed.
“Mr. Bennet,” she said. A pause, and then, with a faint smile that reached her eyes before it reached her mouth: “I hope the roads from Hertfordshire were not too disagreeable.”
“Tolerable, I should say,” James replied, and then, because the word had already served him once that morning and he found he wished to say something more, added: “The last few miles were rather better than tolerable, in fact. The country improves considerably as one approaches Rosings.”
It was not a remarkable observation, but he had made it looking at her, and she understood him—he could see that she understood him—and the colour that had risen to her cheeks at his entrance deepened by a degree that she managed, this time, with somewhat less equanimity.
“Fiona is very fond of this part of Kent,” Lady Caroline said, with the smooth ease of a woman who has been smoothing conversational surfaces for twenty years and does it without thinking.
“She has been drawing the old citadel this past fortnight. We had intended to ride out to it again this morning, before the light grows too strong.”
“The old citadel,” James repeated, with genuine interest. “I noticed it from the road. Roman, I thought.”
“Partly,” Fiona said, and the single word carried a quiet confidence that had not been present in her first remark—the confidence of someone speaking about a subject they know well and are pleased to find taken seriously.
“The foundations are Roman, but the upper structure is much later—Norman, or perhaps early Plantagenet. The two periods sit rather oddly together, but I find that the oddness is part of what makes it worth drawing. Things that have been added over time have a character that purpose-built things do not.”
She stopped, as though suddenly aware that she had said more than the occasion strictly required, and glanced briefly at her mother with the faint self-consciousness of a young woman who has learned that enthusiasm, in company, is a thing to be measured.
Lady Catherine, who had been observing the exchange with the composed satisfaction of a woman whose arrangements are proceeding precisely as intended, said nothing. Lady Caroline’s expression was one of transparent maternal satisfaction, carefully disguised as nothing in particular.
“That is a very perceptive observation,” James said, and meant it.
Fiona looked at him again—a direct, considering look, brief but unhurried, the look of someone revising an opinion they had formed too quickly.
Then she smiled, fully this time, without the caution of the first attempt, and it transformed her face in the way that a smile sometimes does when it is the expression a face was designed for—not prettifying it, exactly, but making it suddenly and completely itself.
“You are kind to say so,” she replied. “Most people find the subject less interesting than the ride.”
“Then most people,” James said, “are missing the better half of the excursion.”
Lady Catherine allowed a moment’s pause—the pause of a woman who has observed what she needed to observe and is now ready to proceed.
Then she turned to Lady Caroline with the brisk satisfaction of someone whose arrangements are proceeding as intended.
“Caroline, you must not keep the horses waiting any longer. The afternoon light will not last.”
Lady Caroline smiled—a smile of such serene, knowing warmth that it contained, for those who could read it, both gratitude and a private amusement at the transparency of the stage management.
“Of course,” she said. “We shall be back before five.” She turned to James with the ease of a woman who has decided, in the space of a five-minute conversation, that she approves of him and intends him to know it.
“I hope, Mr. Bennet, that we shall have the pleasure of your company at dinner this evening. Lady Catherine has been kind enough to include us in the party.”
“I am honoured,” James said.
Fiona had moved toward the door, and was in the act of adjusting the angle of her hat—correcting, at last, the slight tilt that had been there since the beginning—when she paused and glanced back at him over her shoulder.
It was not a calculated glance; it had the quality of something done before the thought to do it had been completed, and she seemed, for a fraction of a second, surprised to find that she had done it.
“The citadel is best seen in the morning light,” she said, as though the observation were entirely practical. “But the ride is pleasant at any hour.”
Then she was gone, following her mother through the great door and down the steps to where the horses waited, and James stood in the hall of Rosings Park and watched the door close behind them.
Lady Catherine turned to the footman. “Show Mr. Bennet and Mr. Collins to the parlour,” she said, with the brisk precision of a woman whose household runs on her instructions.
“And tell Mrs. Dawson to send tea directly—and something warm. Our guests have ridden from the parsonage.” She glanced at James with the satisfaction of a woman whose arrangements are proceeding as intended.
“Come. Mr. Collins will keep you company while I attend to a brief matter. I shall join you presently, and we shall speak properly.”
James followed, and Collins fell in beside him at once, already speaking of the parlour’s aspect, of the quality of Lady Catherine’s tea, of the extraordinary condescension of being received in the south rooms. James listened with the patience that Collins reliably required, saying nothing.
But as James Bennet passed through the doorway into the warm, well-ordered parlour, he found himself thinking, with a clarity that had nothing to do with fortune or family or the particular wishes of distinguished personages, about a pair of grey eyes, and a smile that had arrived, when it came, like something long overdue.
***
The south parlour at Rosings received the morning sun well.
At eleven o’clock it lay in broad, unhurried bands across the Turkey carpet and the pale green of the walls, lending the room a composed brightness that belonged entirely to early autumn—warm still, but with a coolness at the edges that reminded one the season was turning.
The grate was empty and clean, the September air sufficient without it.
Two windows stood open an inch, and from somewhere beyond them came the distant, rhythmic sound of a lawn being raked.
It was, James thought, a room arranged to receive people of consequence.
Not ostentatiously—there was nothing showy in the proportions or the furnishings—but with the quiet certainty of a household that has never needed to prove anything to anyone, and knows it.
The chairs were well-made and well-placed.
The writing table in the corner held nothing superfluous.
Even the flowers on the mantelpiece—late dahlias, deep red and amber—had been chosen with the kind of deliberate eye that never advertises its deliberation.
It differed somewhat from the parlour he had seen on his previous visit.
A servant appeared within two minutes of their being shown in, bearing a tray of tea, cold meats, sliced fruit, and bread, which he set upon the low table without ceremony and withdrew.
Mr. Collins had fallen promptly upon the refreshments with the quiet but unmistakable enthusiasm of a man who considers any food offered at Rosings to be a form of divine favour. He was now engaged in the serious business of his plate.
James Bennet had accepted a cup of tea and taken the chair nearest the window. He settled into the particular composure of a man waiting for something important, resolved to wait without restlessness.
Lady Catherine entered at five minutes past eleven.
She came in without announcement, closed the door behind her with the quiet authority of a woman in her own house, and crossed the room to the head of the table.
Her ladyship did not hurry or pause to arrange herself.
She arrived, as she always did, with the settled composure of a person who has never been required to make an entrance because every room she enters is already hers.
James rose. Collins rose a half-second behind him, nearly upsetting his plate, and executed a bow of considerable depth.
“Mr. Bennet,” Lady Catherine said, with a brief nod that acknowledged the courtesy without dwelling on it. “Sit down, both of you.”