Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
WHAT CANNOT BE GOVERNED
Elizabeth
Mama had been cooking since dawn, which meant she had been plotting since midnight, because in the Clark family, pastry and planning were indistinguishable arts.
Naturally, she enlisted her daughters to stir, chop, and bake, and had transformed the kitchen into something between a military encampment and the costume room of a theatrical production.
Cinnamon and I had arrived at dawn, as contractually, I was allowed one weekly visit with my family, and Mama immediately recruited me to kitchen duties.
“You are up early,” I said, though the observation was less about her hours and more about the fact that she had clearly been awake long enough to bake three varieties of biscuits and begin a syllabub.
“You have finally arrived.” Mama wiped her hands on her apron, the one her mother had embroidered with the Clark family crest, a rolling pin crossed with a sheaf of wheat, which she claimed was a real crest and Papa claimed was an invention, and neither of them would concede the point.
“The napkins need pressing. Lydia has been told twice and has pressed nothing but her opinions upon Kitty about which ribbon to wear.”
“Good morning to you, too, Mama.”
“Good morning is for women who have not been awake since four. For the rest of us, there is purpose.” She laid the pastry over the pie dish with a flourish.
“The walnut biscuits are for the table. I have made twice the usual quantity because Miss Darcy consumed four the last time she visited, and a girl who eats with that appetite requires feeding, not correcting.”
Cinnamon took her place beneath the kitchen table, intent on reclaiming every inch of her domain and every morsel that might drop from above. I dried my hands on my apron and began transferring biscuits to the good Wedgwood plate. “How many are we expecting?”
“The full Netherfield party. Mr. Bingley, Mr. Darcy, Miss Bingley, Mr. and Mrs. Hurst, and Miss Darcy.” Mama ticked them off on floury fingers.
“Fourteen with our family and Mrs. Long. It is unlucky to have thirteen, you know. I have seated Mr. Darcy to my right and Mr. Bingley beside Jane, and if Caroline Bingley does not approve of her placement beside Mary, she may take the matter up with the Lord Almighty, who, I am told, also seats people according to His purposes.”
“And Mr. Hurst?”
“Mr. Hurst will be seated where the food is. His requirements are simple, and I intend to meet them generously. A well-fed man is an allied man.”
Jane appeared in the kitchen doorway, already dressed in her blue muslin with her hair pinned in the soft arrangement that made her look like a portrait of a woman who had never experienced a moment’s anxiety.
She had, naturally, experienced many, and her calm was armor of the most effective variety.
It let her move through the world without anyone feeling obliged to protect her, both a virtue and a danger.
“Mama, shall I arrange the flowers?”
“You shall arrange yourself beside the dining room window where the light catches your hair to the best advantage, and leave the flowers to Kitty, who will get them wrong, and Mary, who will correct her.”
“Mama.” Jane’s reproach was gentle and entirely ineffective.
“I am not scheming, Jane. I am hosting. There is a distinction, though I grant the tools are similar.”
Lydia exploded through the kitchen door with Kitty in her wake, both of them mid-argument about whether officers wore their dress swords to dinner or only to balls.
“Lizzy! Is Mr. Darcy terribly handsome when he is not being insufferable? Because Kitty says he scowls even at dinner, and I said that scowling men are quite exciting in novels but insupportable in person.”
“Mr. Darcy scowls at approximately the same frequency that you talk, Lydia, which is to say constantly and without sufficient provocation.”
“Then he will be exhausting.” Lydia seized a walnut biscuit from the cooling rack and ate it in two bites.
Mary came in last, carrying a book that was not Fordyce’s sermons but a volume on household management. She set it on the table, poured herself tea, and said nothing, but her silence was the attentive variety of a girl who noticed things that louder sisters missed.
“Mary, you will help me with the syllabub,” Mama said. “Your hand is steadier than mine for the whip.”
Mary flushed with quiet pleasure and took up the whisk.
My hand went to my ear before I could stop it, and the going was reflex, and the reflex carried a memory—flour on his cheek, flour on my brow, the warm kitchen at Netherfield where the flour had meant something neither of us had said and both of us had understood.
Mama took a towel and wiped my ear.
“There is no flour behind my ear, Mama,” I protested.
“No. But there was something in your face just now that looked remarkably like it.” She turned back to her pie.
“The carriages will arrive at four. Mr. Bennet,” she raised her voice toward the library door with the projection of a woman who had been summoning her husband from behind his newspaper for a quarter of a century, “if you intend to participate in this dinner, you will require a clean cravat and a willingness to engage in conversation with persons who do not live between book covers.”
“I have been informed,” Papa’s voice emerged from the library, “that one of our guests assessed my cleverest daughter’s intelligence and concluded she was fit for employment. I look forward to examining his criteria.”
“Thomas.”
“I am merely intrigued, my dear. A man who evaluates minds the way a vintner evaluates grapes deserves rigorous questioning, and I intend to provide it.”
The Netherfield party arrived at four. Mrs. Long, having already been dropped off by her nephew in a gig, settled herself in to appraise each new arrival with a critical eye, no doubt gathering gossip the way squirrels hoarded nuts.
Mama placed Jane near the door, understanding that proximity and good lighting were the twin pillars of romantic opportunity.
Bingley entered first, because Bingley entered everything first—rooms, conversations, affections—with the heedless enthusiasm of a man who had never met a threshold he did not wish to cross.
“Miss Bennet.” An easy smile brightened his face as he bowed. “What a pleasure. Your home is warm, and I say, whatever is in the kitchen smells delectable.”
Jane smiled at him with a dangerous warmth that I recognized as her heart already halfway given. “Thank you, Mr. Bingley. You are most welcome.”
“Quite attentive,” Mrs. Long murmured to no one in particular, though the murmuring was pitched to carry exactly as far as Mama’s left ear. “He went straight to her. Did not even glance at the furnishings.”
Caroline and Mrs. Hurst descended next, handed down by Darcy and Mr. Hurst. The two Bingley sisters, however, kept their imperious gazes on our furnishings, curtains, wallpaper, and artwork.
“What a charming room, Mrs. Bennet.” Caroline flicked her fan appraisingly. “So cozy.”
“We find it sufficient,” Mama said, with the steel-tipped pleasantness she reserved for women who confused wealth with worth.
“The proportions suit a family. I am told that fashionable London drawing rooms are considerably larger, though I have observed that the conversations in them tend to be rather smaller.”
Georgiana followed the Bingley sisters into the room.
She stood with her back straight, a pleasant look on her face, and her hands clasped before her.
Her gown was one I hadn’t noticed previously, a pale blue with embroidery that suggested a London designer, and her hair was styled with such meticulous care that not a single curl was out of place. Yet, she offered no smile.
“Miss Darcy.” I took her hand, and for a fraction of a breath, the careful mask slipped. Her fingers tightened on mine before she drew her hand back.
“Miss Bennet,” she greeted. “Thank you for the invitation. It is very kind.”
And then, there was Darcy.
He stooped a little to get through the doorframe; Longbourn’s doorframes weren’t built for men his height.
When he straightened, his eyes met mine, and the encounter was brief and devastating in its ordinariness.
It wasn’t a clandestine meeting in a dark corridor or a late-night kitchen encounter, nor was it a library rendezvous in nightclothes.
This was a drawing room, with every member of both families present, and the sheer normalcy of it made it all the harder to dismiss the blush that crept up my neck.
He bowed, and I curtsied. The forms were observed. And between the bow and the curtsy lived everything we had not said in the kitchen and everything we could not say here.
Mrs. Long’s fan accelerated its flutter, her gaze moving between us like a metronome, measuring the bow and the curtsy, and the fraction of a second the eye contact held beyond what propriety recommended.
As Darcy crossed the drawing room, Cinnamon launched herself from Papa’s chair and wound herself around his boots with a purr of such volume and conviction that it was less a greeting than a formal annexation.
“Hello, madam,” Darcy said, bending to scratch behind her ears. I was astonished that a man so proud would stoop for a mere feline, but I noticed his expression soften ever so slightly as he did.
Caroline, standing too close, produced a sneeze of considerable force.
“Charles.” She pressed her handkerchief to her face. “I had hoped the animal situation at the Bennets’ would be more contained than at Netherfield.”
“Cinnamon lives here, Caroline,” Bingley said mildly. “She is a member of the household.”