Chapter 4
TOWN AND COUNTRY
Mrs Bennet’s effusions upon the success of the evening carried all the Bennet ladies home at the conclusion of the assembly, and as Mr Bennet was still up with his book, they were retailed again for his edification.
He heard of Jane’s having danced twice with Mr Bingley and Lizzy having danced with him once.
He heard of Colonel Fitzwilliam, rumoured to be the son of an earl, befriending the whole neighbourhood, though he was unfortunately required to refrain from the dance.
And when the master of Longbourn categorically refused to hear an account of the fine gowns worn by Mr Bingley’s sisters, he heard instead how the gentleman’s other friend had been shockingly rude to Lizzy.
“But,” Mrs Bennet added with a sniff worthy of a duchess, “Lizzy loses nothing by not suiting his fancy, for he is a most disagreeable, horrid man, not at all worth pleasing. It was apparent from the first moment that he is excessively conceited and fancies himself very great indeed. I only wish that you had been there to give him one of your set-downs. Goodness knows he deserved as much.”
“Well, if he has insulted my Lizzy, I must also wish that I had been there,” Mr Bennet replied.
Elizabeth, with her intelligence and wit, was of all his daughters the most like him, and had long been acknowledged as his favourite, just as Jane and Lydia were his wife’s.
“Perhaps I shall have an opportunity to contrive a little cutting jest whenever we do meet. You have not been made wretched by the man’s foolishness, I hope, Lizzy? ”
“Not at all, Papa,” Elizabeth declared with unfeigned good cheer.
“What care I for the opinion of such a churl? I had a splendid time tonight, as I believe we all did.” This opened the door for her youngest two sisters to brag of having got more dance partners than their elders, and closed it quite firmly on the subject of the hateful Mr Darcy.
The return journey to Netherfield was similarly dominated by a single voice, in this case, Miss Bingley’s.
She seemed to feel it incumbent upon her to voice any number of strictures against those she had so recently met, relating in minute detail every perceived failure of fashion, elegance, manners, and worth, while her sister nodded along, looking for all the world like a plump little bird picking at seed.
“In short,” she declared as the carriage turned into the long drive at Netherfield, raising a quiet cough from Darcy’s cousin, “I saw nothing tonight of fashion, or taste, or real elegance. We shall have to rely upon ourselves for entertainment while we reside in the area, for there is quite obviously no one here who may provide the sort of company to which we are accustomed.”
“I hope, Miss Bingley,” said the colonel, “that when you marry, you may wed a gentleman who spends most of his time in London, for you will not find many country neighbourhoods different in essentials from this one. I should hate to see you confined to an estate for most of the year, and unhappy.”
“Everyone who is anyone spends most of the year in London,” the lady said dismissively.
Darcy hoped Fitzwilliam would allow the subject to drop, but it was not to be.
“They may not say much about their time in the country, Miss Bingley, but every estate owner I have known spends at least half the year at home. Even my own father, with all his social and Parliamentary obligations, returns to Matlock for the whole of every summer, and for the Christmas season whenever possible. Some years, he is there from Midsummer Day to Twelfth Night.” His grin flashed white in the dim carriage interior.
“And of course Darcy here spends nine months of the year at Pemberley and one of the other three in Kent with his aunt.”
“But surely when Mr Darcy marries, he will take his wife’s tastes into account. After all, that is why one has a steward—so that one may go about as one chooses.”
In faint hope that it might persuade the woman to desist in her pursuit of him, Darcy said firmly, “When I am wed, I shall be even more determined to remain at home whenever possible. I want my children to be reared at Pemberley, and like my own father, I intend to be closely involved in their upbringing. I could never consider a lady who does not prefer the country, or who would leave all the care of her children to servants.”
He did not think that would deter her for long, but it did end her conversation for the moment.
Into the uncomfortable silence which followed, Bingley interjected, “I liked our new neighbours very well, for my part. I must consider what sort of entertainment I might offer them here, for several of them promised me that we should be invited to the events they are planning.”
“Perhaps a ball,” Louisa Hurst suggested with an edge of disdain. “Someone should show them how such a thing ought to be done.”
“That is a fine notion, Sister, and one which had already occurred to me, as it happens,” Bingley replied, seemingly oblivious that his sister had meant to insult the taste of the local populace, not seriously suggest providing them a worthy entertainment.
“I mentioned to several of my neighbours how shocking it is that the assemblies are quarterly rather than monthly, and that I hoped Netherfield’s ballroom might be up to the task of providing us another evening of dancing before January’s assembly. ”
“I did not—” Mrs Hurst sputtered, before biting back whatever she had meant to say, and taking a breath before suggesting quietly that she had been making a jest.
In his usual affable manner, Bingley indicated that he thought it a splendid idea, even if it had been intended as a jest, and he meant to pursue it. Darcy could feel his cousin shaking with silent laughter beside him. “I suppose,” he murmured, “that you would enjoy a ball, too.”
Fitzwilliam laughed, drawing all eyes to himself as the carriage slowed for the turn which would bring it to the front of the house. “Certainly, I would enjoy a ball, Cousin! You might also, if you allowed yourself to do so.”
“Oh, Darcy would never even think of enjoying a ball,” Bingley quipped. “Unless, perhaps, all the ladies there were already married.”
“If you will arrange such a ball, my friend, I shall do my utmost to enjoy it,” Darcy retorted drily.
The footman looked quite taken aback when he opened the carriage door to find all the gentlemen laughing and the two ladies with sour expressions.
Darcy and Fitzwilliam met in the stables the next morning.
Both were in the habit of rising long before their host and his sisters, so they had arranged to fill their early hours with one of their favourite activities.
It was a bright, sunny morning, but chill, the grass washed lightly with frost. Boreas stamped his hooves and snorted a cloud of fog as Fitzwilliam led him towards the mounting block.
Darcy suspected it stung his cousin’s pride to use it.
He could mount without one, but Darcy knew it was a rather painful manoeuvre and thought it only sensible that Fitzwilliam avoid it when possible.
He also thought that if it were himself, his pride would certainly chafe at using the block, so he did his cousin the courtesy of checking the fit of his own mount’s saddle while Fitzwilliam mounted up.
Fitzwilliam turned Boreas to the south. Darcy followed on his own Zephyr, unconcerned with their route, caring only that he was out of doors with a good horse under him and the sun coming up over the trees to bathe the world in light unimpeded by clouds.
“Fine morning,” he commented as they broke into a canter across the stubble of the autumn barley.
“Aye.” Fitzwilliam looked about with interest. “Fine country, too.”
“It is well enough.”
His cousin grinned. “Were I to place you in an identical vista in Derbyshire, you would call it heavenly.”
“If it were in Derbyshire, it would be.”
“You are such a partisan.” He smiled and shook his head. “It will do Pemberley no harm if you should allow that other parts of England might, perhaps, be fine and fair.”
Darcy grinned. He said such things largely to get a rise from Fitzwilliam. “It is prettier than Kent; will that do?”
“Oh-ho! Never let Lady Catherine know you said such a thing. She will cut you off.”
“In that case, I must write to her directly and make my sentiments about Hertfordshire known,” Darcy retorted.
“On no account am I visiting Rosings Park without a man at my back,” Fitzwilliam declared, laughing.
Darcy grimaced at the reminder that he was expected in Kent in March.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh, sister to Fitzwilliam’s father and Darcy’s late mother, was determined to marry her daughter to her wealthy nephew and thereby keep Rosings Park in the family—by which she meant the Fitzwilliams, not the Darcys.
No doubt if she succeeded and there were issue of the marriage, she would promptly begin planning a wedding between Darcy’s child and one of her brother the earl’s younger grandchildren.
Why she did not think to marry Cousin Anne to Fitzwilliam, who had far more need of the wealth of Rosings, Darcy had never truly understood, though he suspected part of his own appeal was his attachment to Pemberley.
He would not wish to spend a great deal of time at Rosings even if it were his, and he would not be surprised to learn that his aunt anticipated having free rein over the estate even after the wedding, were he to be the groom.
“Do you think if I were to make it clear to my aunt that, were I master of Rosings, I would install a steward loyal to me alone and be very much involved in the running of the place, she would reconsider her insistence that I marry Cousin Anne?”
Fitzwilliam cast him a look of bafflement which shifted to one of contemplation.
“I believe I see whither your thoughts tend, but I cannot answer you with any surety. Lady Catherine is convinced that all her plans must come to pass precisely as she envisions them. Would such a declaration shake her certainty? I cannot say. But I expect it is worth a try.”
“Would you wed Cousin Anne, if my aunt gave up on me and turned her gaze in your direction? It would set you up extremely well.”
Fitzwilliam was silent for a moment, apparently contemplating the hill towards which they were riding.
“I dare say I should have given you a different answer a year ago, but no. I would not.” At Darcy’s expression of surprise, he shrugged and added, “Life is too short to marry a lady whose company one does not enjoy. Perhaps my cousin would have been a very different creature had her mother allowed her to be educated, to go about as much as her health allowed, and to have friends, but she did not. There are not enough riches in England to persuade me to tie myself to a cross, ignorant woman. I do not require great beauty, but I must have pleasant conversation at my table!”
Darcy could not fault him for wishing to acquire an agreeable companion in return for his name, and only cautioned, “That table may not have much meat upon it if you do not marry well, however.”
Fitzwilliam grinned. “My prospects are not so dire as all that, I assure you, Cousin. Come now, let us ascend this rise, which I am told is called, somewhat in jest, Oakham Mount, and see what we may see of the landscape.”
They rode up to the top of the prominence, where the whole of the area was spread out before their eyes, even to the Great North Road stretching along a part of the eastern horizon.
The gently undulating landscape was a patchwork of greens and browns, broken by stone walls, hedges, stands of trees, roads, houses, the cluster of buildings that was Meryton, and the occasional stream or pond.
It was a peaceful scene at this early hour, and in the stillness, Darcy asked his cousin a question which had been preying on his mind more and more as the days went by.
“Are you going back to your regiment?”
“Likely not,” Fitzwilliam replied quietly. “It does not seem that I shall be fit for service again.”
“You are always welcome at Pemberley.”
His cousin turned his head and granted him a small smile. “I know, and I thank you for it. I am considering my options at present. My general thinks there may be work for me in London at the War Office. I also have an invitation to make my home with Aunt Beresford,” he revealed.
Darcy was quite sure he would choose the War Office, if there truly was a place for him there, over being a constant guest in another’s home, however happily offered. “If you choose London, I will insist you reside at Darcy House.”
“Unless I marry a lady with a town house of her own, I shall take you up on that, Cousin.”