Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Franks arrived at seven, assessed Darcy in a single glance, and said, “You slept, sir.”
“I did.”
“I thought so. You look almost agreeable.” He produced the coat. “Shall I lay out the good cravat?”
Darcy paused. “The good cravat is for formal occasions.”
“Yes, sir,” said Franks, as if this concluded the matter, and helped him into his coat.
As he tugged at his cuffs, Darcy reviewed the work set in motion. He had not yet met Elizabeth’s relations, but their work on her behalf was quick and clever.
Their own gossip was beginning to find its channels.
Mrs. Gardiner’s butcher on Gracechurch Street served half the great kitchens west of Regent Street, the linen-draper two streets north dressed many of their ladies’-maids, and between them, it seemed, no servants’ hall in the better squares was more than two conversations removed from the Gardiners’ table.
Franks had quietly set the valets in motion. When the maids began their chatter, the valets were to give an answer, and given their status in the household, much of the gossip was being strangled before it could bloom.
There were small signs that their efforts were taking hold. He had joined Elizabeth for several calls yesterday and there had been none of the pointed questions he had been warned to expect.
The rumours were not dead, precisely. But Darcy thought them considerably diminished.
He nodded at Franks and went downstairs.
Bingley arrived at Bereford House shortly after breakfast and without prior notice when he ought to have been in the country. This was entirely in character, but Darcy was still surprised to see him.
“I will not keep you,” Bingley said, dropping into the chair across from Darcy’s desk with the ease of a man who considered himself at home in any room Darcy occupied. “I only wanted to tell you something, and it is better done in person.”
Darcy set down his pen. The fire had burned to a low, steady heat; November light came grey through the window and caught the edge of the inkwell.
Bingley’s version of not keeping someone generally ran to three-quarters of an hour, but he said this with less than his usual buoyancy.
He had a more serious quality, a man who came with something considered rather than something that simply occurred to him in transit. Darcy waited.
“I am in town on a purpose,” Bingley said. “Not my ordinary business. There is a lady.”
“There generally is,” Darcy said drily.
Bingley smiled, but it was the contained smile of a man who found the subject too serious for his usual treatment of it.
“This one is different.” He looked at Darcy directly.
“Miss Jane Bennet of Longbourn. She has come to town quietly to see her sister and stay with her aunt, no fuss, no announcement, because she wanted to discover whether we could like each other properly, without her mother and my sisters pushing us together from either side. And I believe that I shall find I like her very much indeed, and that she is not indifferent to me, and I wanted you to know.”
Darcy said nothing. He was still, in some still-functioning portion of his mind, processing the name. Miss Jane Bennet of Longbourn. He was silent long enough that Bingley was looking at him with some concern.
“Forgive me,” Darcy said. “I have just realised that you have been courting Elizabeth’s sister.” He leaned back in his chair as he absorbed the coincidence of it. The speed as well, for he had only been at his estate a little more than a month. “And you are speaking to me because—”
“Because her father has given me his approval, and I intend to deserve it.” Bingley stopped. Tried again. “I am telling you because I want you to know that my intentions towards your sister are honourable.”
Darcy said nothing for a moment. There was something deliberate in the declaration, an unusual absence of Bingley’s easy charm that was new. “And your sisters know you are in town?”
“Yes. But they do not know Miss Bennet is.” Bingley smiled ruefully. “They are still at Netherfield,” he said, with the tone of a man reporting something with which he made an uneasy peace, “and I have taken the only coach. My sisters have been rather too keen on the Bennet connexion of late.”
“Have they?” That was a surprise.
“Of course.” He said it without accusation, simply as a fact.
“You know Caroline. She set her sights on you and did not get what she wanted, so she has amended her strategy. A Bennet sister for me would preserve the Darcy connexion for her. Keep her in the proper orbit, so to speak.” He looked at the window.
“Her enthusiasm for Miss Bennet has approximately nothing to do with Miss Bennet’s excellent qualities. I am aware of this.”
Darcy said nothing. He was acquainted with Caroline Bingley’s desire for social ascension. It was her most reliable characteristic.
“And yet you are pursuing the acquaintance.”
“Because Miss Bennet is entirely worth pursuing,” Bingley said simply. “Whatever Caroline’s reasons, they are not mine. My reasons are my own.” He looked back at Darcy. “She is a good woman. I want to do this properly. I simply wanted you to know.”
Elizabeth always spoke of her elder sister with affection. He ought to have paid it more heed. He glanced at his watch. Elizabeth had reminded him that her sister and aunt would be here this morning and asked him to stop in and be introduced.
“Come,” he said, and stood. “I think you had better meet my wife.”
He walked with Bingley through the hall, but before they reached the door, he heard Elizabeth’s delighted laugh, and then another voice, lighter, answering it, the two of them deep in some exchange that wanted no audience. He paused a moment with his hand on the door. Then he opened it.
A young woman sat on the settee beside Elizabeth, the two of them mid-sentence and so wholly engrossed in each other that the interruption lingered for a moment without registering.
A woman a few years older than himself looked up from her chair across the room.
This must be the aunt, Mrs. Gardiner. He had expected her to be older.
Mrs. Gardiner looked at her nieces and said, “Jane, Elizabeth.”
Miss Bennet looked up.
She was, Darcy noted with a detached assessment, extraordinarily beautiful.
Not fashionably beautiful, not prettily beautiful, but the kind of beautiful that portrait painters requested to paint and poets embarrassed themselves over.
Hers was a beauty that was made to be gazed at.
But as Elizabeth glanced over to see him there, he concluded that there was a kind of beauty that was made for proximity.
For the breakfast table and the cold drive home and the dark of the night.
He had formed, over the past months, some decided views on which he preferred.
Bingley stilled beside him.
Jane Bennet’s colour changed and steadied again in the space of a breath. “Mr. Bingley.”
“Miss Bennet,” Bingley replied with some surprise.
Elizabeth looked from her husband to Bingley and then to Jane, and a smile broke across her countenance that had nothing composed about it.
“Jane,” she said, with the amusement of a woman who has just caught her sister in something. “You did not tell me that your Mr. Bingley and my Mr. Darcy were acquainted.”
Miss Bennet had barely recovered from her own shock. “I would have done before the end of our visit today. I did not know it myself until very recently, and I had no idea of meeting him here today.”
Elizabeth tipped her head to one side. She opened her mouth. She closed it again. This, Darcy knew, was not a common occurrence.
“Elizabeth, this is my good friend Mr. Bingley,” he said.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Bingley,” Elizabeth said pleasantly as she rose. “Gentlemen, allow me to introduce my aunt Mrs. Gardiner, and Mr. Darcy, this is my sister Jane.” She smiled at Bingley. “I believe you are already acquainted with my sister, sir.”
“I have had that pleasure,” Bingley said, his eyes lingering on Miss Bennet.
Elizabeth motioned at the chair nearest her sister. “Do sit down, Mr. Bingley.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Darcy,” Bingley said at last.
The men sat, Darcy on the chair nearest his wife, Bingley on the other side of Miss Bennet. Mrs. Gardiner asked Bingley something about his journey to town. Bingley talked, because he generally did, Miss Bennet listened intently, and Elizabeth was warm and easy, a perfectly composed hostess.
Elizabeth then asked Bingley about Netherfield with every appearance of genuine curiosity, whether the shooting had been good, whether the neighbourhood suited him, whether he intended to remain in town for the season.
Bingley answered with enthusiasm, said the neighbourhood was everything agreeable, said the October shooting was excellent, said he was sorry only that the autumn’s invitations did not come off as planned.
“I am sorry to hear it,” Elizabeth said amiably.
“It was, rather,” Bingley agreed. “I had expected Darcy to come after Michaelmas—well, we intended it, but of course it came to nothing in the end.” He said this with cheerful regret.
“I suppose he had an excellent inducement to remain in town, eh, Darcy? But what are the chances? Three miles from Longbourn, Miss Bennet said.”
“Yes, three miles if one crosses the fields,” Elizabeth said.
Darcy had not known that Bingley’s estate was so near to Mr. Bennet’s.
“A shame, really. We might all have been together much of the autumn.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Yes, a great shame.”
“Well. Perhaps another time.” Bingley said.
“Yes, perhaps,” Elizabeth said. She reached for her tea and drank from it, and Mrs. Gardiner said something gracious, and Miss Bennet turned to Bingley with some question about his plans for Netherfield’s gardens.