Chapter 8 #2
“The hour?” Elizabeth asked, amused. “Does the answer to my aunt’s question require so exact a science?”
Mr. Darcy turned to her, his consideration not quite proof against her smile. “Pemberley is not at its best from every point at every moment. However, it is at its best every moment from somewhere.”
“I see. There is a proper time for every prospect.”
Aunt Gardiner laughed. “Then I am very glad I asked. I had expected one answer and find I am to receive an almanac.”
“A short one, I hope,” said Elizabeth. “Though perhaps Mr. Darcy’s list of favourite prospects is not short.”
“No,” he agreed with a chuckle. “I cannot honestly claim that it is. On an early summer morning, the path above the stream. In the evening, the rise beyond those birches. The house is best seen from there when the light hits the windows and turns it almost gold.”
Elizabeth thought that would be a fine view indeed.
“And at this hour?” asked Aunt Gardiner.
“At this hour,” he said, looking towards the slope beyond the lawn, “there is a walk above the meadow. The grass stands high there in summer, and the skylarks rise from it towards evening. Georgiana is fond of the butterflies there. My mother preferred the sparrows.”
“The sparrows?” Elizabeth asked.
Mr. Darcy’s expression softened, though his eyes remained on the trees. “She said they were the least vain of birds, and therefore the best company.”
“That,” said Elizabeth, quite charmed by this notion, “sounds like a woman I would have liked to know.”
Mr. Darcy might have answered, but they had drawn near enough to the party for Colonel Fitzwilliam to see them.
He broke off from a conversation with two gentlemen and came forward at once.
His hat was in his hand, and he replaced it on his head as he walked towards them, his countenance bright with exaggerated relief.
“Darcy! You return at last. I have been governing in your absence, and the strain has very nearly ruined me.”
“You appear undamaged,” said Mr. Darcy.
“That is because I know how to suffer with dignity. Mrs. Gardiner, Miss Bennet, your return restores elegance, sense, and the possibility that someone will contradict me.”
Elizabeth smiled. “I can provide only the last with confidence.”
The colonel smiled. “Then you provide what is most required.”
The party received them with either sincere or polite flutters of interest with one exception. Miss Bingley, after one quick glance at Elizabeth’s gown and another at the half-boots just visible beneath it, declared that she was amazed Miss Eliza had the spirits to rejoin them after such an alarm.
“I find my spirits very well supported by dry stockings,” said Elizabeth. “And by the prospect of cold chicken eaten out of doors.”
Mr. Bingley laughed. “A most rational recovery.”
Miss Bingley’s smile remained fixed. But she was not finished. As the party resettled itself, Miss Bingley fell in beside Elizabeth for a few steps.
“You will allow me to observe, Miss Eliza, that Derbyshire improves Mr. Darcy wonderfully. Louisa remarked upon it the instant we came down—she never sees him so easy as in his own home. In town, every word examined minutely, but here, there is nothing at stake, and a man may be charming at no cost at all.” She smiled with perfect kindness.
“I say this only because a stranger to the family might take the difference to be something more than it is.”
Elizabeth took her seat by her aunt with her cheerfulness intact and her certainty rather less so. She understood that Miss Bingley was jealous—but that did not make what she said false.
The servants had reassembled the picnic beneath one of the great oaks. The cloths had been smoothed, the cushions restored, new plates set out. Elizabeth was hungry though she had been eating all day.
What had been disordered by alarm now became almost festive.
The company settled in altered groupings, for interruptions such as they had experienced always gave people permission to begin again.
Aunt Gardiner was placed in a comfortable chair with a view of the water, and Elizabeth was given a seat near her.
Mr. Darcy, after seeing them accommodated, was immediately claimed by Sir Carstairs with a question about the road to Matlock.
Elizabeth watched Mr. Darcy answer. He gave the man his whole attention, though Colonel Fitzwilliam was trying, from only a few yards away, to draw him into some nonsense about whether the fish ought to be commemorated in song.
Mr. Darcy did not rush. He described the turn in the road, the better inn for changing horses, and the place where the hill grew difficult to traverse after rain.
Only when he had satisfied every question did he return to his cousin.
“I still maintain,” said the colonel, “that any fish which has thrown a gentleman into such heroic attitudes deserves at least a stanza. Two, if it proves larger in the telling.”
“Master Henry will be certain that it does,” Elizabeth said.