Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
UP AGAINST THE WALL
Elizabeth
I had attended the Meryton Assembly more times than I could reasonably count, but I have never approached the rooms above the Red Lion quite in the state tonight.
My palms were damp inside my gloves, and my heart was doing that embarrassing lurch at the base of my throat.
I told myself I wasn’t staring at the entrance in case a certain gentleman had already arrived.
No one knew I had promised the first set to Darcy, and I couldn’t allow my strategic mother to guess. She would trumpet it to the surrounding five or six counties before the gentleman himself had arrived.
“Lizzy! Over here.” Charlotte’s voice blessedly found me before I had gawked at feathers and waistcoats to my mortification. I crossed to Charlotte and took her arm, and the arm was an anchor.
“You look well,” she said, studying me with the frank appraisal of a friend who could read volumes in the angle of a ribbon. “That green suits you. You have taken particular care this evening.”
“I have taken ordinary care. The green was clean and pressed, and the ribbon was available.”
“Available.” Charlotte’s mouth curved. “And the flush in your cheeks. Is that also available, or is there someone who has been exerting himself in that direction?”
“The room is warm.”
Charlotte’s eyebrow rose. “There is a draught from the card room that could chill wine.”
I ignored her with the dignity of a woman whose pulse was proving her a liar.
Our friends and neighbors milled through the entrance, familiar with the bustle gathering in the same rooms and the same dances, sharing the same gossip told in different ways. There was no sign of the Netherfield party, although like London royalty, they would no doubt arrive fashionably late.
“Elizabeth!” Mary King descended upon me as she’d done since we were in leading strings. “Is it true? About Miss Darcy? Lydia told me she plays battledore in the fields and climbed a stile, and that you smashed a shuttlecock into Mr. Darcy’s chest.”
I tried to hide the secret smile at the memory of that most satisfying moment, and was saved from relishing it by Mrs. Goulding drifting over.
“My dear Miss Bennet, we heard that Mr. Darcy attended your family’s dinner at Longbourn.
Was he very stiff? My husband says a man of ten thousand a year cannot eat common food without frowning, but I told him that was nonsense—”
“He ate two helpings and complimented the biscuits.”
“Two helpings!” Mrs. Goulding turned to share this intelligence with every matron in the room before the first set was called, and I did not mind, because the image of Darcy eating two helpings from Mama’s table was exactly the sort of detail that made him human in a room where his income had rendered him mythological.
Lydia erupted from somewhere behind Mrs. Goulding, with Kitty in her wake.
“Lizzy, tell them about Commerce! I won Commerce! I beat Mr. Bingley and Mr. Hurst and even Mr. Darcy, though in truth I think Mr. Darcy was distracted because he sat right next to you the entire game and never moved his chair even once, and Bingley noticed and—”
“Lydia.” I used the voice, the one Mama had perfected and passed down, the one that carried the weight of that is quite enough without requiring the words.
“Well, I did win,” Lydia muttered, deflating by half an inch before re-inflating with her usual resilience. “And Georgie says she will introduce me to her London friends when we visit, which I told Kitty is practically—”
“An invitation you have invented entirely,” I said, but without heat, because Lydia’s enthusiasm for Georgiana was genuine and ungovernable and exactly the sort of noisy, unquestioning acceptance that a girl who had spent two years in social terror needed.
The door at the far end opened, and a tall figure appeared. My heart swung upward before my eyes dropped with disappointment. It was only John Lucas, not the tall, dark-coated figure my nervous system had been monitoring for since we walked in.
Charlotte noticed, because Charlotte always notices.
“He will come,” she said without elaboration.
Lydia reappeared, dragging Kitty, both flushed from whatever social devastation they had inflicted on the Gouldings.
“Lizzy, when is Georgie arriving? I told Arthur Goulding she was brilliant at battledore and could eat four walnut biscuits in succession, and he said he did not believe any lady could eat four biscuits, and I said he clearly had not met Miss Darcy.”
“Miss Darcy is not attending, Lydia. She is not yet out.”
“Not out? She is my age, precisely seventeen, and I have been out since I was fifteen. That is absurd. Her brother keeps her locked away like a princess in a castle, and I told her she should insist—”
The doors opened again, and this time, my heart was right.
Sir William surged forward, already glowing. “Mr. Bingley! Mr. Darcy! What an honor! What a pleasure to welcome the Netherfield party once more. We are so delighted.”
“Sir William!” Bingley seized his hand and pumped it with that irrepressible warmth that made him impossible to dislike. “Splendid to be back. What a fine room, even finer than I remembered. And is that new bunting? Capital touch, capital.”
“Indeed, indeed,” Sir William replied, much pleased. “And may I say, the ladies of the neighborhood have been most anticipatory.”
But I was not watching Bingley. I was watching Caroline, who had entered behind her brother in a gown the color of burnt gold, one hand resting on Georgiana’s elbow with the proprietary firmness of a woman presenting a protégée.
“Chin up, Georgiana,” she murmured loud enough to carry, which made it a performance, not counsel. “Shoulders back. This is your first assembly, though I use the term loosely, since a country assembly and a London presentation are hardly comparable occasions.”
“I know, Miss Bingley,” Georgiana said, and her voice was small but steady.
She was beautiful. I had no other word to describe her. She looked nothing like the girl who had thrown apple cores at ducks. She wore ivory silk, pearl pins, and her hair was swept up in an arrangement that must have taken her lady’s maid hours of pinning.
“Good heavens,” Charlotte breathed beside me. “That is not the Miss Darcy you described.”
“No,” I agreed. “It is not.”
Mrs. Hurst positioned herself beside Caroline. “What a charming little room,” she announced to no one and everyone. “I do not suppose the fashions are up to date. One does one’s best with limited resources, I suppose.”
“Quite,” Caroline agreed, surveying the assembly with the satisfied air of a woman who had entered a room specifically to find it wanting.
Mr. Hurst, deposited near Sir William, was conducting his own assessment. “I say, Lucas. No peers here at all, are there? Not a titled man in the room. Extraordinary.”
Sir William’s smile held, just barely. “We are a modest neighborhood, Mr. Hurst, but a warm one.”
“Warm, yes. I can feel it. It is rather close.” Mr. Hurst tugged at his collar and glanced toward the card room with the expression of a man already calculating his escape.
And then, behind them all, came Darcy.
Tall, dark-coated, and reserved: the assembly Darcy, not the kitchen Darcy, and not the Commerce Darcy. He caught my eye across twenty feet of candlelit floor, and the catching held warmth, a private signal, and a flash of the man behind the armor.
I held onto it and tried not to let my cheeks flush. Our dance was a secret; I had informed no one, not even Jane, as I could not wear my heart on my sleeve the way she did.
“Georgie!” Lydia pushed toward the Netherfield party with the momentum of a girl who did not recognize social barriers. “Georgie, you came! I thought you were not out. Oh, look at your dress! Is that the ivory silk? You look like a duchess. Doesn’t she look like a duchess, Kitty?”
“She looks very fine,” Kitty agreed.
Georgiana’s smile flickered, pleased and nervous. “Lydia, I—”
“Miss Darcy.” Caroline’s hand tightened on her elbow, steering her away from my sisters and toward Lady Lucas, who was approaching with Maria in tow. “Lady Lucas, how delightful. May I present Miss Darcy?”
The snub was precise. The pivot from Lydia and Kitty to Lady Lucas was a statement of hierarchy delivered in three steps and a smile.
Lydia’s face went blank. “Did she just?”
“Yes,” I said. “She did.”
“I shall go tell Georgie that—”
“Not now, Lydia.”
Charlotte’s hand found my arm. She said nothing, but the nothing was eloquent.
Mrs. Goulding leaned toward Mrs. Long, behind her fan. “Returning to London before Christmas, she says. I wonder if Mr. Bingley knows, or if his sister has arranged everything without consulting him, which is the impression one receives.”
“One receives a great many impressions from Miss Bingley,” Mrs. Long replied.
Sir William, undeterred by Mr. Hurst’s rudeness and Caroline’s maneuvers, was beaming at Darcy. “Mr. Darcy, sir, how good of you to come, and with your sister! What a treat for the neighborhood. I was just saying to Lady Lucas, Miss Darcy will be the handsomest girl in the room.”
Darcy inclined his head, the minimum that courtesy required. “You are very kind, Sir William.”
“And will you dance tonight, sir? The fiddlers are in excellent form.”
“I intend to, yes.”
Sir William nearly lost his waistcoat buttons to joy. “Capital! Capital! Well then, the ladies will not want for partners tonight, that is certain.”
Darcy’s gaze traveled to me, a promise of our dance, and it was as if we were the only two in the room. Charlotte’s breath caught, and she squeezed my arm, encouraging. But Darcy was surrounded by the Hursts, each commenting to him with disparaging tones, and he made no move toward my direction.