Chapter 3
Elizabeth
Elizabeth took considerable precautions.
She put Truffles in the kitchen. She latched the door.
She latched the window. She placed a turnip in the centre of the floor as a bribe, because Truffles loved turnips with the single-minded devotion other creatures reserved for love or revenge.
She instructed Hill to check the latch twice.
She instructed Mary, who was staying home with a cold, to check on the pig every quarter hour.
She placed a chair against the kitchen door for good measure.
"She will not get out," Elizabeth told Jane, who was watching these preparations with the gentle scepticism of a woman who had seen the pig escape from a locked root cellar, a barred woodshed, and the arms of a grown man.
"Of course she will not," Jane said.
They both knew she would.
The dinner at Lucas Lodge was the first real neighbourhood gathering since the arrival of Mr. Bingley and his party.
Mrs. Bennet had been in a state of preparation since Tuesday.
Jane's hair had been arranged three times.
Kitty's gown had been smoothed twice. Lydia had been threatened with confinement to her room if she said anything inappropriate, a threat so frequently issued and so rarely enforced that Lydia had not bothered to look up from her fashion plate.
Elizabeth had dressed carefully, though she would not have admitted it.
Her green muslin was clean and freshly aired.
Her hair was pinned neatly. She had checked her gloves for ink stains and her shoes for mud, and she had scrubbed under her fingernails with uncommon attention, because the last time she had been introduced to a gentleman she had smelled faintly of pig.
She was not doing this for Mr. Darcy. She was doing it for herself. There was a difference.
Lucas Lodge was a short walk from Longbourn, close enough that the Bennets went on foot.
The evening was cool and clear, with a half-moon sitting low above the treeline.
Elizabeth walked beside Jane and tried not to think about the man from Meryton.
The one who had saved Truffles with such quick, certain hands and then spoken to Elizabeth as though she were a servant who had spilled something.
"Evidently," he had said. And "one hopes." Two words each, both delivered with the warmth of a solicitor's letter.
She had thanked him. She had been grateful. And he had looked at her as if she were a mild inconvenience attached to a pig.
Sir William Lucas greeted them at the door with his customary enthusiasm.
Sir William had been knighted after an address to the king during his time as mayor of Meryton, and he had never quite recovered from the experience.
He mentioned it at every opportunity. He was a kind man, a generous host, and he shook hands as though each guest were a visiting dignitary.
"Welcome, welcome! The Bennets! How wonderful. Miss Bennet, you look radiant. Miss Elizabeth, charming as always. Mrs. Bennet, we are honoured. Mr. Bennet — ah, is the pig with you this evening?"
"The pig is at home," Elizabeth said firmly.
"Pity," said Mr. Bennet.
The drawing room was full. The Longs were there, and the Gouldings, and several families Elizabeth knew by name and face but not well enough to claim friendship. Charlotte Lucas found Elizabeth immediately and pressed a glass of wine into her hand.
"You look as if you need it." Charlotte had heard the full account of the Meryton encounter within a day of it happening — Elizabeth had walked to Lucas Lodge the morning after and delivered the story over tea, complete with voices — and had been following the situation with the quiet interest of a woman who found other people's romantic entanglements more entertaining than her own absence of them.
"Do I look that anxious?"
"You look as if you are preparing for battle." Charlotte glanced across the room. "He is here, by the way. Near the fireplace."
Elizabeth did not need to ask who. She could see him.
Mr. Darcy stood near the mantelpiece with a glass he had not drunk from, surveying the room with the fixed expression of a man enduring a toothache in public.
He was tall. She had not quite registered how tall he was in Meryton, when she had been too busy retrieving her pig to catalogue the details of his person.
He was broad in the shoulder, dark-haired, and handsome in the way that a very expensive piece of furniture was handsome.
Impressive. Well-made. Entirely uninviting.
Bingley, by contrast, was everywhere. He moved through the room like a warm current, shaking hands, laughing, asking questions with such apparent sincerity that Elizabeth could see half the mothers in Hertfordshire mentally drafting wedding invitations.
He found Jane within three minutes and stayed within three feet of her for the rest of the evening.
Jane glowed. She could not help it. When Jane was pleased, her whole face softened into something so lovely it was almost painful to look at directly. Elizabeth watched her sister smile at something Bingley said and felt a sharp, protective tenderness.
"She admires him," Charlotte observed.
"Everyone admires Mr. Bingley. He is very amiable."
"That is not admiration, Lizzy. That is attachment. And it is entirely mutual."
Elizabeth said nothing. She had noticed.
Sir William, who could not leave a gentleman standing alone at a party without attempting to remedy it, appeared at Elizabeth's elbow and steered her toward the fireplace with the cheerful determination of a man performing a public service.
"Miss Elizabeth! You must allow me to introduce you properly to our new neighbour.
" They had reached Darcy before Elizabeth could object.
"Mr. Darcy, Miss Elizabeth Bennet. You may recall meeting her in Meryton — a rather memorable occasion, I understand.
" Sir William chuckled. He was the sort of man who chuckled at his own wit before delivering the punchline. "Something about a pig?"
"We have met," Elizabeth said. She curtsied. "Mr. Darcy was kind enough to save my piglet from his horse. I remain grateful."
Darcy bowed. His expression did not change. "Miss Bennet."
"Miss Elizabeth Bennet," Sir William corrected helpfully. "Miss Bennet is the eldest. The fair one. Over there, with Mr. Bingley."
"I recall," Darcy said.
A silence opened between them like a hole in a conversation. Elizabeth waited for him to say something. He did not. He stood with his glass and his fixed expression and his extremely expensive coat and said nothing at all.
"Are you enjoying Hertfordshire, Mr. Darcy?" she tried.
"It is pleasant."
"High praise."
Something flickered behind his eyes. Surprise, perhaps, at being teased. Or discomfort. It was difficult to tell with a man whose face appeared to have only one setting.
"The country has its charms," he said, after a pause long enough to have walked to the refreshment table and back.
"You will turn our heads with such flattery, sir."
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at his glass. Elizabeth had the distinct impression he wanted to say something but could not find the door through which to say it.
Sir William, sensing the conversational emergency, launched into an account of the local assemblies, the quality of the roads, and the excellent situation of Netherfield Park, which he described with such enthusiasm that one might have thought he were selling it.
Darcy listened with the polite rigidity of a man who had been trained from birth to endure exactly this sort of thing.
Elizabeth excused herself and returned to Charlotte.
"Well?" Charlotte said.
"He is the most disagreeable man I have ever met. He said four words to me. One of them was 'pleasant.'"
"Perhaps he is shy."
"He is not shy. Shy people fidget. He stands there like a column in a cathedral."
Charlotte smiled. "Some people are better in small groups."
"Or alone. On a mountain. In another county."
The evening continued. Dinner was served, and Elizabeth was seated far enough from Darcy to avoid further conversation but close enough to observe him.
He ate without enthusiasm. He answered questions addressed to him with a brevity that bordered on rudeness.
He did not laugh at any of Mr. Long's jokes, which, to be fair, were not very good, but which deserved at least the courtesy of a smile.
Bingley laughed enough for both of them. He laughed at everything, even the jokes that were not jokes, and his laughter was so genuine and warm that Elizabeth liked him despite her best efforts to be critical of any friend of Mr. Darcy's.
After dinner, the party returned to the drawing room.
Charlotte played the pianoforte with the competent, unhurried touch of a woman who practised because she enjoyed it and not because she wished to be admired for it.
Mary would have played had she been present, and Elizabeth was privately grateful for her sister's cold.
Mary played with great feeling and no accuracy, and the combination was difficult to survive at close quarters.
Lydia was talking too loudly about officers.
The militia was expected in Meryton any day now, and Lydia had already begun collecting intelligence about the regiment with a thoroughness that, if applied to any other subject, would have made her a credit to her sex.
Mrs. Bennet was telling Lady Lucas, at a volume that carried across the room and possibly into the garden, that Mr. Bingley had sat beside Jane for the whole of dinner and was clearly in love.