Chapter Six
Supper was over, and singing began to be talked of.
Mr Hutton leaned over to Mary, to whom he had been talking very seriously throughout the meal, and said; “M-Miss M-Mary, it would g-give me the greatest p-p-pleasure to hear you p-play. Do you have the Haydn with you, or am I to be d-disappointed?”
“I know it by heart, Mr Hutton,” Mary said shyly.
“Of course I shall play it for you.” And she went to the pianoforte, sat down, and played a lovely, simple air with unaffected grace.
Afterwards she was so astounded by the enthusiastic applause that she froze, her hands over the keyboard, her eyes as wide as a startled deer.
Seeing her sister’s panic, Elizabeth rose and went to her.
“Let us have a duet, Mary!” She mentioned another piece that they both knew well and had often played together, and they played and sang very prettily, Elizabeth taking the trickier high part, her voice supporting Mary’s weaker one so that they sounded very well together.
Again the applause was most enthusiastic. Mary caught a glimpse of Mr Hutton standing, clapping vigorously, and blushed scarlet. Elizabeth made her stand up and they both curtseyed to the audience. Mr Bingley approached, a huge smile spread across his face.
“Charming, charming! Well, my friends,” he turned about to face his guests, “this seems like the most opportune time for me to thank you all for attending our ball,” he paused as they applauded again, and bowed, “and to share with you the information that the two talented ladies who have just entertained you so well, I am proud to claim as my future sisters. Yes,” he nodded and smiled as a gasp went through the room, “the lovely Miss Jane Bennet has tonight consented to make me the happiest man alive!”
“You’re already the happiest man alive, Charles!” one of his friends shouted, “but now you’re the luckiest, too!”
Amid the laughter and cheers, Darcy escorted a blushing Jane to Bingley’s side. He took her hand in his and kissed it flamboyantly.
Left with her sister and a somnolent Mr Hurst, Caroline Bingley buried her face in her hands and groaned. Could this wretched night get any worse? She flinched as a screech sounded behind her.
“Oh, Mr Bennet!” Mrs Bennet screamed. “You teasing, teasing man – you let out not a hint of this!” she whacked him gently on the arm.
“Oh, Jane – Mr Bingley!” but there was a whole crush of people between herself and her daughter and son-to-be, and she had to content herself to wait.
They came to her, soon enough, and she embraced Jane with tears of delight, and Mr Bingley no less happily.
“You will be the happiest couple in the world!” she cried. “Oh Jane, you will never want for anything!”
“I assure you that she will not, Mrs Bennet,” Mr Bingley said jovially.
“I fully intend to order Jane her own carriage as a wedding-gift, and while we may not have the family jewels of some of the oldest families, I have some very nice pieces left to me by my mother, and I am sure that I can find more that will do justice to your daughter’s beauty.
Indeed, just a few weeks ago I saw a wonderful sapphire necklace in the window at Garrards that would match her blue eyes quite perfectly.
” He kissed Jane’s hand again, and she smiled at him, a blaze of love in her gaze, though she said softly that she needed no such extravagant gifts.
“Sapphires from Garrards! A new carriage! Oh, Jane!” Mrs Bennet fell weeping on her daughter’s neck.
Caroline Bingley ground her teeth. She had been the one who pointed that necklace out to her brother, hinting that he might buy it for her.
And now this country nobody would be the one draped in the jewels she had coveted.
Hatred coursed through her, but then she took a deep breath and comforted herself that such nouveau riche jewels would be beneath her, once she took possession of the Darcy ancestral jewels.
She had coaxed Georgiana into talking about them once, when looking at the painted images of spectacular pieces on the Darcy ancestors in Pemberley’s portrait gallery, and coveted them ever since.
The necklace of pearls and diamonds worn by Darcy’s mother in her portrait made the sapphires at Garrards look like cheap glass beads.
Comforting herself by imagining the magnificent choker around her own throat as she hosted a ball for the cream of the Ton in Darcy’s grand house in Town enabled her to paste a smile onto her face as she went to congratulate her brother and welcome Jane to the family.
“Miss Bingley looks as though she just tasted a lemon, doesn’t she?
” Mrs Gardiner said softly, having walked up beside them, unnoticed by Elizabeth and Darcy.
She spoke so quietly that only the two of them could hear her, but Darcy let out a snort of laughter and Elizabeth had to hastily bite her tongue to suppress an impending fit of giggles.
“Aunt Madeline, that is unkind,” Elizabeth said primly, when she finally got control of herself. “Surely not a lemon. Perhaps an unripe gooseberry?”
Darcy had to turn his back, covering his mouth. His cousin had a wicked wit and sense of humour, and clearly Elizabeth had spent a lot of time in her company. He could hear them now behind him, discussing what Miss Bingley might have eaten to put that expression on her face.
“No – I know – curdled milk,” Elizabeth said with satisfaction.
“Soured wine!”
“An apple with a wasp in it.”
“Please cease,” Mr Darcy choked out, “or I am going to disgrace myself with a fit of laughter I cannot control.”
He felt Mrs Gardiner’s hand press lightly on his arm. “All right, Fitzwilliam, we will not force you to make yourself ridiculous.”
“Oh, Mr Darcy could never look ridiculous, he is without fault; we concluded that a few days hence,” Elizabeth said lightly.
“You said such; I never claimed it. I said that anyone might be made ridiculous by one whose first object in life is a joke.”
“And I said that is no faithful picture of me, I love to laugh but I do not laugh at what is wise or good!”
“Now, now, play nicely, my dears,” Mrs Gardiner said, hearing their voices becoming raised.
Mr Darcy and Elizabeth both paused, glanced at their mutual relative, and silently acknowledged her to be correct.
“I no longer believe that your defect is your propensity to hate everyone,” Elizabeth offered, in a quieter tone.
Darcy smiled. “I do believe that you choose to wilfully misunderstand, but it is done so charmingly that I cannot call it a fault in you. Besides, your eyes sparkle in a particular way when you are deliberately misinterpreting my words, I am learning to recognise when you are teasing me.”
Elizabeth smiled at that, her cheeks turning bewitchingly pink.
Darcy gazed into her fine eyes and thought about asked her to dance, before realising regretfully that he had already done so twice and a third time would be well beyond the limits of propriety.
Instead he bowed to them both. “May I escort you back into the ballroom? Cousin Madeline, might I request a dance?”
“How delightful!” Mrs Gardiner said, “I should love to.”
On re-entering the ballroom, Elizabeth looked around a little fearfully for Mr Collins, but he was nowhere in sight.
As Mrs Gardiner and Darcy walked to join the dancers, Elizabeth looked for Charlotte; but she was dancing too.
In the end she spotted Mary sitting down, and went over to join her, but to her surprise found that she was in very earnest conversation with an unfamiliar gentleman.
On seeing Elizabeth, Mary smiled and called her over to introduce Mr Hutton, who was so delighted that a young lady was talking to him without so much as mentioning his stammer or looking at him with pity, he almost forgot to stammer at all.
He made a very good impression on Elizabeth, who, on seeing a slightly insecure, jealous look on Mary’s face, consciously made an effort not to appear too vivacious and charming.
She could not help a start of surprise, though, when Mr Hutton said;
“Oh, I would not have missed this b-ball for the world. Both Bingley and D-Darcy wrote to me, saying that I must c-come, for this part of Hertfordshire held such an abundance of b-beauty I would be foolish to m-miss out.” He smiled, bowing slightly to both ladies, leaving them in no doubt what type of beauty his friends had described.
“Of Mr Bingley, I can well believe it,” Elizabeth said, “but Mr Darcy? Surely you exaggerate.”
“N-Never, Miss Elizabeth. Let me see, what did the letter say?” He frowned, looking upwards in thought. “I have lately found much felicity, in admiring the sparkling eyes of a beautiful woman – of whom there are several hereabouts…”
“Oh, shocking!” Elizabeth and Mary cried at once, both blushing, and Mr Hutton chuckled.
“Honestly, I was quite shocked too, I had no idea that D-Darcy could wax so eloquent! I d-decided I had to come for m-myself to see whose eyes had engendered such sentiments.” His gaze rested curiously on Elizabeth for a moment, and he offered her a small bow.
Scarlet-cheeked, she could not meet his gaze, recalling Mr Darcy’s words of just a few moments ago.
Your eyes sparkle in a particular way, he had said, and earlier when they were dancing he had called her uncommonly handsome.
Thinking that Mr Darcy might possibly admire her created an unfamiliar warm feeling in Elizabeth’s stomach.