Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE FIRST FRAY
Darcy
I daresay we survived the Longbourn dinner, Georgiana and I, despite Caroline’s sneezing fits and Bingley’s clumsy page turning. Elizabeth ended the evening in high spirits, and it did me good to see her family embrace Bingley and his conversations with Miss Jane Bennet.
The morning after, however, brought little to celebrate. Elizabeth had not returned to Netherfield, and the breakfast room would be the quieter for it. I noted her empty chair with a pang—for Georgiana’s sake, of course.
Caroline, as always, was up early and already presiding without the need for a footstool.
Mr. Jones had examined her ankle and declared it a modern miracle—no swelling or bruising—according to Mrs. Hurst, who had witnessed the examination, with the full confidence that Miss Bingley would be fit to dance at the assembly—not that she would deign to dance with anyone other than me.
As it was, Elizabeth had promised me the first set, and it was a secret I intended to keep.
“Good morning, Mr. Darcy.” Caroline looked up from her teacup with the appraising gaze of a woman who inventoried the mood of every man who entered her orbit.
“You are in uncommonly good spirits. One might almost think the Longbourn dinner agreed with you, though the syllabub was a touch heavy and the company rather more animated than one expects at a formal table.”
“The syllabub was excellent.”
“I did not say it was not excellent. I said it was heavy. There is a distinction, though not one the Bennets would recognize.” She sipped her tea.
“I notice Miss Eliza has not yet appeared. I do hope she has not forgotten that her duties extend beyond her family’s table, though I suppose when one is accustomed to country hours, the Netherfield breakfast room must seem rather secondary. ”
I did not dignify this with a response. I took my seat, poured coffee, and examined the sideboard, where Mr. Hurst was already stationed with the immovable dedication of a man whose breakfast was the organizing principle of his day.
He had secured eggs, sausages, a considerable supply of toast, and what appeared to be the entirety of the remaining cold ham.
“Mr. Hurst,” I said, “good morning.”
He grunted acknowledgment without lifting his fork.
Mrs. Hurst’s gaze flickered from the empty chair by the window to me. “It’s quiet without Miss Bennet’s cat, isn’t it? I had nearly gotten used to the sneezing.”
“Well, I haven’t,” Caroline stated pointedly.
A fleeting, ungentlemanly wish crossed my mind as I sipped my coffee: how I’d like that ginger cat to be here, just to make Caroline sneeze. I dismissed the unworthy thought, though I didn’t regret it.
The morning was fine with clear skies. Last evening’s dinner was still turning in my thoughts with the pleasant weight of a meal one has not quite finished digesting, not because the food sat heavily but because the conversation did.
The things most worth cherishing are generally the ones I have been wise enough not to attempt to manage.
I had said that to Mr. Bennet, and Mr. Bennet had raised his glass in a gesture of approval that still astonished me that I had earned it.
The door burst open, and Bingley entered at a pace suggesting that his valet had either abandoned him mid-dressing or had given up. His cravat was half-knotted, his hair still damp at the temples, and he carried one glove in his hand and wore its partner on the wrong hand.
“Morning! Morning, everyone. Forgive me. I overslept—the most extraordinary dream about a pianoforte that wouldn’t stop playing and pages flying everywhere, cannot imagine what prompted it—” He stopped at the sideboard and surveyed Mr. Hurst’s food fortifications.
“I say, Hurst, have you left any ham at all?”
“Early bird,” Mr. Hurst said, without remorse.
“There is toast,” Caroline said. “And do something about your cravat, Charles. You look as though you dressed during a tempest.”
Bingley tugged at the offending article, made it worse, and loaded his plate with what remained on the sideboard. He took the chair beside me, still radiating the faintly dazed energy of a man who had been vertical for less than twenty minutes.
“Darcy, old fellow. Splendid dinner last night, was it not? Mrs. Bennet is a remarkable woman. That pie, the mutton, and the biscuits, and Miss Bennet, Jane, she was well, she was—”
“Present,” I supplied.
“Yes, exactly! She was present, and the presence was—” He ran out of words, which happened to Bingley when his feelings outpaced his vocabulary, and where my response to that difficulty was silence.
I thought of Elizabeth at Longbourn wearing the old apron, likely immersed in a task her hands knew without conscious thought.
I recalled the Commerce game, the small space between our chairs, and that moment when she played her hand without glancing at me, and I played mine without glancing at her, and that avoidance with awareness was the most intense focus I’d ever known.
The door opened again, and Georgiana entered.
Not with the tentative, sidelong approach she had used in the early weeks at Netherfield, where every room was surveyed for threats before she committed to entering it, but with a directness that reminded me of someone whose influence I was tracking in the straightness of my sister’s spine.
Bingley, who was nearest the sideboard, leaped up before she was halfway across the room.
“Miss Darcy! Tea? Scone? Both? There’s honey somewhere. Hurst, have you commandeered the honey as well?”
“Tea, please, Mr. Bingley, with a drop of honey.” Georgiana sat, accepted the cup Bingley poured with his characteristic generosity—filled to the brim so that it sloshed as she lifted it—and took a scone from the basket he extended with the solicitous attention of a man who could not help feeding people.
“Thank you, Mr. Bingley.” Georgiana accepted the tea and tucked a scone onto her plate with the brisk appetite she had recently recovered—another small victory I attributed to Elizabeth’s influence, though Elizabeth would have dismissed the attribution and said Georgiana was merely hungry.
“The assembly is tomorrow evening.” Mr. Hurst yawned. “I don’t suppose we must attend. There was not a single person of note, and it was rather crowded and noisy.”
“Oh, but we must attend,” Mrs. Hurst argued. “To be seen.”
“Not only that, it will be capital fun.” Bingley buttered his toast with vigor.
“I, for one, am looking forward to it enormously. The Bennets will be there, and the Lucases, and I am told the fiddlers are rather good, and Miss Bennet, Jane, mentioned that the supper is always excellent, and I intend to secure the first—” He caught himself and studied his toast. “I intend to enjoy myself.”
Caroline’s gaze moved from Bingley to me over the rim of her cup. “And you, Mr. Darcy? Shall we expect you to participate, or will you resume your post against the wall with your distinguished air of country suffering?”
“I am looking forward to it,” I said, and meant it, and the meaning surprised me almost as much as it surprised Caroline. “Now that I know some of the local families, I expect the evening will be rather more engaging than our first assembly.”
“Really, Mr. Darcy?” Caroline’s eyebrow bolted toward her hairline. “You would find a provincial assembly engaging? How delightful. I suppose the country does improve upon acquaintance, though I maintain that improvement has its limits.”
“Everything has its limits,” Mrs. Hurst agreed, loyally.
“I should like to go,” Georgiana’s voice piped up, small but clear.
While she addressed the table as a whole, she was looking at me with the directness that Elizabeth had built in her, not defiance, not demand, but the steady assertion of a girl who had decided what she wanted and was trusting herself to ask for it.
“To the assembly,” she clarified, in case the table had misunderstood, which it had not. “I should like to attend.”
I set my coffee down. “Georgiana, you have not yet been formally presented—”
“This is not a London ball, Brother. It is a country assembly. Lydia Bennet is my age, and she has been attending since she was fifteen. She dances every set, and nobody thinks anything of it, and I should like—” She caught her breath, and the catching was the only sign that the request had cost her more than the steadiness of her voice suggested.
“Elizabeth says that confidence is not something one feels before doing the thing. It is what one feels after the doing, and I have not yet done any such thing.”
That was so precisely Elizabeth that I could hear her saying it.
“You wish to attend a public assembly,” I said, “with strangers.”
“With you, and with the Bingleys, and the Bennets will be there. Lydia promised to introduce me to everyone, which I suspect means she will talk continuously, and I will stand beside her and nod, and for a first assembly, that seems quite manageable.”
I ran the assessment. A guardian’s assessment, performed with the thoroughness that Ramsgate had taught me, was not optional.
The militia had decamped for winter quarters at Colchester a month prior.
I had confirmed this through the innkeeper, through my steward’s enquiries, and a remark to Sir William Lucas, who had noted their departure with the mild regret of a man who missed their patronage at his card table.
I need not worry about redcoats. Of the local families I knew, John Lucas was a sensible young man of no fortune and no ambition toward thirty thousand pounds.
The Goulding sons cared more about their gun dogs than heiresses, and the Longs had no sons.
Meryton was safe precisely because it was small and provincial and beneath the notice of anyone who would target a Darcy.
“I see no objection,” I pronounced.