Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
The courtship, such as it was, began on Monday.
Mrs. Morgan had drawn up the scheme. Three outings on three different days, each designed to show Ramsgate that Mr. Darcy and Miss Bennet were a pair whose attachment had preceded the incident at the baths and would survive its aftermath.
Fitz had departed that morning, seeking Mrs. Younge and Wickham’s trail. He had clasped Darcy’s shoulder in the hall and said only, “Keep her close. Keep them both close.”
Which left Darcy to the promenade.
Miss Bennet was waiting at half past ten. The apothecary had prescribed rest, warm drinks, and fresh air, and she looked much improved.
“You look as though you are about to face your own execution,” she observed.
“I am about to walk very slowly in public while people observe me. It is not materially different.” He offered his arm and they set off, Georgiana and Mrs. Morgan trailing behind.
“You are marching,” she said, after ten yards.
“This is how I walk,” he said.
“Yes, but we are strolling. Do you know how to stroll?”
He paused. “I am acquainting myself with the concept.”
“Slower,” she instructed as she smiled at a couple walking past. “Your legs are very long. And you are holding your arm like a fence post. Bend it a little. I am supposed to be taking a pleasant turn with a man who is courting me, not gripping a railing.”
He adjusted his arm. She adjusted her grip.
“Better. Now look at me occasionally.”
“I am looking at the promenade.”
“I know. Everyone can see that you are looking at the promenade. Look at me as though I have just said something that interested you.”
“You have said several things that interested me.”
“Then it should not be difficult.” She tilted her face up towards his with an expression of cheerful expectation.
He looked down at her, amused. “You are very good at this. And you are very short.”
“I am not short. You are only excessively tall. And it is not difficult to be good at strolling.” She paused. “But you are doing well.”
“What did you expect?”
Her mouth curved up into a mischievous little smile. “Honestly? That you would walk three feet ahead of me within the first hundred yards.”
From several paces behind them, next to Georgiana, Mrs. Morgan said, “He nearly did.”
“I did not,” Darcy protested. He had walked ahead of his intended the night Fitz had arrived, and he felt rather stupid about it, but he had not been himself.
“You stopped yourself,” Mrs. Morgan said serenely. “Which shows improvement.”
Miss Bennet pressed her lips together, and Darcy found, to his surprise, that he did not mind being laughed at by her. Perhaps because her laughter seemed warm rather than pointed.
They had reached the far end of the promenade and were making their way back when she said, without appreciably moving her lips, “Do not look to your right.”
Naturally, he looked to his right.
Three women stood there, clearly having found something more interesting than the sea. The eldest had a pocket-glass, which she was holding to her eye.
“I told you not to look,” Miss Bennet said pleasantly, still smiling at nothing in particular.
“She has a pocket-glass,” Darcy said, incredulous.
“Her name is Mrs. Holt. She knows everything that has happened in Ramsgate for thirty years, and she requires the glass. She is almost entirely blind without it.” A pause. “Smile at her.”
“I will not smile at a woman directing a pocket-glass at me.”
He heard a tiny sigh. “Then look at me instead.” She turned her face up towards his. “Look at me as though you are a romantic.”
He looked and was drawn into her gaze. He looked down at her, the pink cheeks, the fine eyes, and forgot what he was supposed to be doing.
A woman approaching from the opposite direction glanced at them, her gaze lingering with rapid calculation.
Miss Bennet lifted her chin, directed a light remark at him, and laughed.
It was not her real laugh, but it was a convincing one.
Then she turned her face to the sea and squeezed his arm.
“We have stopped walking, Mr. Darcy,” she whispered.
They had stopped. He resumed his stride and attempted an expression of relaxed pleasure in his betrothed’s company.
“You now appear as though you have some indisposition of the stomach,” she said. “A little less effort, perhaps.”
He grunted. “I am not accustomed to appearing to feel things I do not feel.” It was a half-truth, for he was feeling something altogether improper for a stroll with one’s betrothed.
She glanced up at him, undaunted. “And what is it you feel at present?”
Well, he could not tell her that. “Observed,” he said. That was also true.
“That is because you are. Try to look as though you do not mind it.”
“Do you not mind it?”
“Enormously,” she said. “But I am a woman, Mr. Darcy. Our mothers tell us the skill is a necessary accomplishment.”
He was very glad he was not a woman.
“Very well done,” was Mrs. Morgan’s verdict. “But Mr. Darcy, do try to smile.”
“I was smiling.”
“You were not,” said all three women at once.
Darcy thought he had been. He had certainly been amused.
The next outing to the lending library was easier, if only because it was not so public.
They browsed the shelves together, and here Darcy felt himself on firmer ground.
Miss Bennet favoured novels and histories and, to his surprise, a slim volume on agricultural reform, which she opened with every indication of genuine interest.
“My father’s estate is not large,” she said, without looking up, “but it could be better tended. I have opinions.”
“I do not doubt it.”
She looked up. “You said that without flinching. You are improving.”
“It was a compliment.”
Miss Bennet chuckled. “It was an acknowledgment. A compliment would require you to suggest that the opinions are welcome.” She turned a page. “You may attempt one, if you like.”
He looked at her bent head. “I find your interest in estate management speaks well of your—” He stopped. “This is more difficult than the promenade.”
“On the promenade you only had to look at me. This requires more thought.” She closed the book and tucked it under her arm, already moving to the next shelf. “Let us come back to it. What are you looking for?”
“I was not looking for anything specific.”
She ran a finger along the spines without touching them, reading titles the way other people read faces. “A lending library is not a room you wander. It is a room you interrogate. What do you want to know?”
He watched her move along the shelf. “At present what I wish to know cannot be found in a book.”
She tipped her head to one side before pulling a novel off the shelf, examining the first page and replacing it. Pulled out another. “Georgiana says you read history almost exclusively.”
“Georgiana speaks to you a great deal.”
“Your sister is starved for conversation.” She turned, holding out a volume. “Here. Try this.”
He took it. “This is a novel.”
“Astute. Yes.”
“I do not read novels.”
“I know. That is why I am giving you one.” She was already moving again, unhurried, perfectly content to peruse.
“You spend all your time reading things that have already been decided. History, accounts, letters. Things with conclusions. A novel has not decided anything yet. You must experience the story along with the characters to discover how things end.”
He looked down at the book in his hands. Then at her, picking her way through the shelves with her agricultural reform tucked under one arm.
“My father’s estate,” she said, from two shelves along, “is entailed away from the female line. We have grown up knowing that Longbourn is our home now but will not always be. It makes one pay attention.” She disappeared around the corner, her voice trickling back to him.
“The compliment you were attempting, by the way? You could simply say that you find it useful. That a woman who understands land is better company than one who does not.”
“I find it useful,” he said. “A woman who understands land is better company than one who does not.”
She peeked around the corner and shook her head at him. “I said you could say that. That does not mean you should simply repeat it back to me.”
“I was demonstrating comprehension.”
“You were—” Her lips parted in surprise. “You are doing that on purpose.”
He said nothing, but something must have shown in his face, because she laughed—the real one, the unguarded one—and pulled back again, vanishing from his view.
He looked at the novel in his hands, then put it back.
Church was the final act. They sat together near the front, and Darcy was aware of every eye in the congregation upon them. He did not squirm, nor did he tug at his cravat. He suspected that if he did either, it would be discussed at length around every dining table in Ramsgate.
Miss Bennet opened her hymnal and found the page without hesitation. He was still looking for the right place in his book when she wordlessly tilted hers so he could see.
Afterward, several women converged upon them in the churchyard. Darcy braced himself.
“Miss Bennet!” The first was a stout woman of middle age in a truly extraordinary bonnet, a towering confection of silk flowers and ribbon that suggested its owner had gone to the milliner with no budget and no restraint.
She planted herself before them. “We had so hoped to meet you. We had heard you were quite the beauty and I must say . . .” Her gaze travelled over Elizabeth. “Yes, I think we must agree.”
As she was by herself, Darcy was uncertain who else was included in “we.”
“You are very kind,” Miss Bennet said warmly. “And what an extraordinary bonnet.”
The woman beamed. Before she could press further, she was smoothly elbowed aside by two others who had been circling.
The taller of the two was angular and sharp-eyed, with the brisk manner of a woman accustomed to being first with information. “Is it true you first met at Mr. Darcy’s estate?” she demanded.