Chapter 2
Mr. Darcy
Mr. Darcy was regretting Hertfordshire before his boots had touched its soil.
The road from London had been long, the carriage stuffy, and Bingley had spent the final thirty miles extolling the virtues of his new estate with the breathless enthusiasm of a child on Christmas morning.
The house was spacious. The grounds were green.
The neighbours were reputed to be friendly.
Bingley could find cheer in a coal mine.
"You will like it, Darcy. I am certain of it. The air alone is worth the journey."
The air smelled of sheep and damp hedgerow. Darcy said nothing.
Netherfield was tolerable. A large house, well situated, with good bones and indifferent furniture.
Bingley's sisters, Caroline and Louisa, had already begun cataloguing its deficiencies, which they intended to remedy at considerable expense and with considerable commentary.
Mr. Hurst had found the wine cellar and pronounced himself satisfied.
That was the extent of his contribution.
Darcy had come because Bingley had asked him, and because Pemberley was quiet without Georgiana, and because London in autumn held nothing for him but card parties and the suffocating attention of women who knew his income to the shilling.
He told himself the country would be restful. He told himself it would be brief.
He had been at Netherfield for two days. It felt like twelve.
The mornings were the worst. At Pemberley, his mornings had a shape to them.
He rode before breakfast. He read correspondence in his study, where the windows faced east and the light was clean and sharp.
He walked the grounds with his steward, discussing drainage and tenant repairs and the new planting along the south meadow.
There was purpose in those mornings. There was quiet.
At Netherfield, the mornings began with Caroline.
She appeared at breakfast in a different gown each day, as if the dining room were a stage.
She asked his opinion on wallpaper patterns.
She asked whether he preferred salmon or trout.
She commented on his reading habits. She said things like "I do so admire a man who reads" while looking at him as though he were a portrait she intended to purchase.
He had taken to eating breakfast very quickly.
His sister Georgiana had written to ask if the countryside was pleasant.
He had written back that the countryside was green and the company adequate.
He did not mention that Caroline Bingley had seated herself next to him at every meal, or that she had begun each morning by asking his opinion on some aspect of the house, as if furnishing Netherfield were a shared endeavour and not the most transparent attempt at domesticity he had ever witnessed.
He missed Pemberley. He missed his library and his dogs and the particular quality of light that came through the gallery windows in October. He missed speaking to people who did not require him to smile.
On the morning of the third day, Bingley announced they should ride into Meryton.
"There are shops, I am told. And an apothecary. And people."
"People," Darcy repeated.
"You say it as if it were a disease."
"In my experience, it frequently is."
Bingley laughed, because Bingley laughed at everything, and Darcy permitted himself to be dragged along because the alternative was remaining at Netherfield with Caroline, who had spent breakfast examining the drawing room curtains and making pointed observations about the taste of previous tenants.
Meryton was a small village. One main street, a smattering of shops, a church with a squat Norman tower, an assembly room above the inn, and the sort of unhurried bustle that suggested everyone knew everyone else's business and rather enjoyed it.
Women stopped on the pavement to talk. A boy chased a dog past the blacksmith.
Two old men sat on a bench outside the post office, watching the street with the air of theatre patrons who had seen the show before but came for the company.
Darcy kept his face carefully neutral as they rode in.
He could feel the glances. A new gentleman on a fine horse in a small village was a spectacle, and he was aware that his bearing did nothing to diminish the effect.
He sat very straight in the saddle, which was simply how he sat, but which he knew from experience suggested to strangers that he considered himself above them.
He did not consider himself above them. He simply did not know how to sit any other way.
Bingley beamed at strangers like a spaniel with a county seat.
They tied their horses near the draper's shop and walked the length of the high street.
Bingley greeted every person they passed with the unguarded warmth of a man who had never been given a reason to distrust a stranger.
Darcy walked beside him, hands clasped behind his back, and offered brief nods to anyone who caught his eye.
He was aware that this made him appear proud.
He was also aware that the alternative was Bingley's indiscriminate friendliness, and he could not bring himself to attempt it.
It would feel like wearing another man's coat.
He had been introduced to a Mr. Bennet two days prior.
A quiet man with clever eyes and a dry manner.
Five daughters, no sons, an entailed estate.
The wife was, by local reputation, a woman of considerable anxiety about the marital prospects of said daughters.
Darcy had noted this, resolved to keep a safe distance, and moved on.
They were near the apothecary when it happened.
The high street was busy. A cart had stopped to unload barrels.
Several women with shopping baskets crowded the pavement.
Darcy's horse, Caesar, was tied to a post but shifting restlessly at the commotion.
Caesar was a well-mannered bay gelding who tolerated most things, but he had not been exercised that morning and was inclined to fuss.
Bingley had already struck up a conversation with the draper about local hunting, and the draper was answering with the sort of detailed enthusiasm that suggested Bingley had just become his favourite customer.
Darcy stood to one side, examining a display of ribbon he had no interest in, and waited for it to end.
Two young women emerged from the milliner's shop across the street. One was tall and fair, with a serene beauty that made men walk into posts. The other was shorter, with brown hair escaping from under her bonnet and an ink stain on her glove. Darcy barely registered them.
What he registered was the piglet.
A small pink creature, roughly the size of a terrier, was trotting along behind the brown-haired woman like a very determined, very short footman. It had enormous ears and an air of total confidence. It navigated the cobblestones with the purposeful trot of a creature on important business.
Darcy stared. He had seen a great many things in his eight-and-twenty years. He had never seen a young gentlewoman walking through a village with a pig at her heels.
The pig wandered. As pigs do. Its snout caught some smell near the gutter, and it veered sideways, away from the young woman, across the pavement, and directly into the path of Caesar.
Caesar stamped. The pig was small enough to be crushed by a single hoof.
Darcy moved before he thought.
He crossed the distance in three strides, bent, and scooped the piglet out from under Caesar's feet. The animal was warm and surprisingly solid, its body tensing in his grip before relaxing almost immediately. Small hooves pressed against his waistcoat. A pink snout bumped against his chin.
For a fraction of a moment, the pig looked up at him. Bright dark eyes in a round pink face. Its ears were enormous and slightly velvety. It was, he supposed, not entirely unattractive. For a pig.
It settled against his chest with a small grunt and closed its eyes.
Darcy stood in the middle of the high street, holding a pig.
Several passers-by had stopped to stare.
A woman with a market basket stood frozen mid-step.
The boy who had been chasing the dog earlier was now watching with his mouth open.
Even the two old men on the bench had sat forward with renewed interest, as though the show had finally produced something worth the price of admission.
He was acutely aware that this was not the sort of behaviour expected of a gentleman of ten thousand a year, and he was also acutely aware that the pig was very warm and very soft and was making a low, contented rumbling against his waistcoat, a sound he had never heard a pig make before, like a small bellows working steadily.
He did not know what to do with his hands. He was already using them to hold the pig. He could not bow, or tip his hat, or do any of the things a gentleman did when standing in a public thoroughfare. He could only stand there, holding a pig, and hope that no one he knew would ever hear of this.
"Oh! Oh, I am so sorry, sir. Truffles! You wretched creature, come here at once."
The brown-haired woman was rushing toward him, her bonnet slightly crooked, her cheeks flushed with exertion and embarrassment. She reached for the pig. Her hands brushed against his coat as she took the animal from his arms.
"I do apologize. She wanders. I cannot seem to keep her from wandering. Your horse, is he quite all right? She was not stepped on? Oh, thank goodness."
She was speaking very quickly and not quite looking at him. The pig, now in her arms, was looking back at Darcy with an expression he could only describe as devoted.
"The animal is unharmed," Darcy said. His voice came out stiffer than he intended. It usually did. There was something about speaking to strangers that locked his throat into a register that sounded, even to his own ears, like a magistrate passing sentence.
"Thank you. Truly. She is very small and not at all sensible about horses." The young woman glanced up at him. Dark eyes, bright with intelligence and something that might have been laughter, or mortification, or both. "I am Miss Elizabeth Bennet. This is my sister, Miss Bennet."
The fair-haired woman had arrived and was offering a graceful curtsy. Bingley, who had materialized from somewhere, was already bowing and introducing himself with the barely contained delight of a man who has just encountered the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.
Darcy bowed. "Mr. Darcy."
"You are Mr. Bingley's friend. From Derbyshire." Miss Elizabeth adjusted the pig in her arms. The animal was staring at Darcy over her shoulder. "We are grateful for your quick hands, Mr. Darcy. Truffles is not always so foolish, but she has a talent for finding trouble."
"Evidently."
He meant it as a mild observation. It came out as a judgment.
Miss Elizabeth's chin lifted a fraction of an inch. "She is young yet. She will improve with experience."
"One hopes."
Something crossed her face. Not offence, precisely.
More like a door closing. She tucked the pig more firmly against her chest and turned to her sister, who was deep in animated conversation with Bingley.
After a moment of pleasantries, the sisters departed.
Darcy watched them go. The pig's face, peering over Miss Elizabeth's shoulder, grew smaller and more mournful with every step.
Its ears drooped. If a pig could look betrayed, this one did.
He became aware that he was staring after a woman and a pig in the middle of a village street, and that Bingley was beside him, grinning.
"Miss Bennet is an angel." Bingley's voice had taken on the dreamy quality it assumed when he had been struck by a woman's beauty, which was roughly twice a season and always with absolute conviction. "Did you see her eyes? They were the colour of — I don't know. Something blue. The sky, perhaps."
"She had a pig."
"That was Miss Elizabeth. Miss Bennet was the fair one. Was she not the most beautiful creature you have ever seen?"
Darcy was not looking at Bingley. He was looking at the corner where the brown-haired woman and her pig had disappeared.
"I suppose she was tolerable," he said.
Bingley sighed. "You are impossible."
They walked back to their horses in silence.
Or rather, Darcy walked in silence. Bingley walked in a state of rapturous monologue about Miss Bennet's eyes, Miss Bennet's smile, the breathless reverence with which Miss Bennet had said the words "how do you do.
" Darcy let him talk. Bingley in love was Bingley at his most harmless and his least interruptible.
Darcy gathered Caesar's reins and mounted. As he settled into the saddle, he noticed a small muddy mark on his waistcoat. A hoof print. Tiny and precise, like a stamp.
He brushed at it with his thumb. The mark did not come off.
He told himself he was not charmed. He was Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley, and he was not the sort of man who was charmed by a small pig with large ears and a woman who carried it through a village like a reticule with hooves.
He told himself this for the remainder of the ride home, through the stable yard and up the drive and into the hall where Caroline asked him what he had bought in Meryton and he said "nothing" in a tone that discouraged further enquiry.
He was still telling himself when he dressed for dinner that evening and found a second hoof print on his cravat. Small and perfect, pressed into the white linen like a seal. He removed the cravat and set it aside rather than sending it to be laundered.
At dinner, Bingley mentioned that a neighbourhood dinner was arranged at Lucas Lodge for Thursday.
"Sir William Lucas is hosting. Apparently, the whole neighbourhood will be there. The Bennets, the Longs, the Gouldings. It will be wonderful."
"Wonderful," Darcy repeated, in a tone that conveyed the opposite.
"You might try to enjoy yourself," Bingley said. "You might even speak to someone."
"I spoke to someone today. I said 'the animal is unharmed.' That is quite enough speaking for one week."
Caroline, who had been arranging her fish on her plate with the fastidious attention of a woman composing a still life, looked up. "What animal?"
"Nothing," Darcy said. "A pig in the road. It was of no consequence."
But later, alone in his room, he kept returning to the young woman who had come running for it. The flush on her cheeks. The way her chin had lifted when he said "one hopes," as if she had taken his measure in a single glance and found him precisely as wanting as he feared he was.
He set the cravat on the dresser and turned down the lamp.
He did not examine why he kept it.