CHAPTER 2 A FATHER’S VERDICT #2
When the interminable service ended, the family went through the motions of greeting neighbors, small talk amongst friends, exchanging gossip about the assembly, and glancing over at the Netherfield contingent, where a perpetually displeased Mr. Darcy had scowled through the entire sermon and was universally disapproved of by all.
Not that any of it delighted Elizabeth, who ordinarily would have joined in on the jesting, even proclaiming herself as one of the indistinguishable Bennet sisters, had she not been on the precipice of a marital disaster.
Unfortunately, the source of her distress paraded between her parents, and only his presence spared Elizabeth from the inevitable gossip and speculation on whether she had accepted a proposal in the middle of a promenade accompanied by fiddle music and stomping feet.
The party walked the mile-and-a-half back to Longbourn, forming into clusters. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet took the lane first, Collins between them, already expounding upon some deficiency he had identified in the sermon that Lady Catherine would have corrected with a single well-placed observation.
Jane and Mary trailed close behind, Jane because she was dutiful and Mary because she wished to issue a sermon correction and was waiting for a pause that would not come.
The laggards were, of course, Elizabeth, who wished to stay as far away from Collins as she could, and Kitty and Lydia, always hoping to spot a colorful redcoat or two.
Indeed, their wishes were fulfilled. Mr. Denny appeared from the churchyard gate with Captain Carter and a gentleman Elizabeth had never seen before—fair-haired, pleasant-featured, dressed in a gentleman’s clothing of excellent quality.
Immediately, Lydia and Kitty waved their bonnets and exclaimed at the top of their lungs.
“Mr. Denny! Captain Carter! Is that a new acquaintance?”
The men appeared beside them, unhurried and accustomed to being greeted by Meryton’s female population. The stranger was tall, pleasant to look at, with a gleam in his grey-blue eyes. He smiled and bowed with a flourish.
“Mr. Wickham, at your pleasure,” he said by way of introducing himself. “You must be the famous Bennet daughters, known throughout the county for your beauty and grace.”
“Oh, Mr. Wickham, how gracious of you to say so. I’m Lydia, the youngest, and these are my sisters, Kitty and Elizabeth.”
“What a sight for a gentleman so recently arrived in the neighborhood,” he said gallantly.
“Mr. Wickham arrived a week ago,” Carter said. “But now that he’s encountered the beautiful Bennet sisters, he will no doubt purchase his commission and join the militia.”
“Oh, Mr. Wickham, you must receive your regimentals,” Lydia said. “You would dazzle the Meryton High Street should you be so attired.”
“Why, Miss Lydia, how kind of you to say so.” Wickham fell into step with the sisters. “I have not yet decided, although Colonel Forster is ever so gracious. I have a living reserved for me up north in Derbyshire, and I find I may have business in that area.”
“Oh, Mr. Wickham, you don’t mean to retire from our Meryton society so soon.” Lydia pretended to pout. “You must not leave us here to endure dull assemblies without our share of officers.”
“Speaking of the assembly,” Denny said. “I believe we had newcomers. Surely, they provided excellent excitement.”
While Kitty and Lydia detailed the countenances of the Netherfield group, Mr. Wickham turned his attention to Elizabeth, a balm after all she had endured.
“I trust you enjoyed the assembly, Miss Elizabeth?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t say that I did,” she answered. “Merely survived.”
“Oh, Lizzy did more than survive,” Lydia announced.
“She was insulted by the most disagreeable man in England—did you hear? Mr. Darcy, from Derbyshire, ten thousand a year and not a shilling’s worth of manners—looked at all four of us and told Cousin Collins that we were not handsome enough to distinguish one from another and Collins should choose whichever one he found tolerable. ”
“Have you heard of this disagreeable creature?” Kitty rolled her eyes.
“Do you mean your Cousin Collins or this Mr. Darcy?” Wickham asked with amusement painted across his face. “Miss Elizabeth, you appear to be pained.”
“That’s because you haven’t heard everything,” Lydia crowed. “This Mr. Darcy acted as if none of us mattered, as if we were all wallpaper.”
“Indeed?” Wickham’s mouth gaped as if in alarm. “I have heard of his manners, though I confess I have not the pleasure of hearing about him from a source so reliable. He could not possibly mean the Bennet sisters, as the lot of you are the crown gems of Hertfordshire.”
“Oh, but he did,” Lydia chortled, “and when Cousin Collins asked about Elizabeth with the intelligence and pair of fine eyes, Darcy said, ‘Whatever you like.’”
“He did not say it like that,” Kitty said.
“Am I telling the story or are you?” Lydia nudged Kitty aside. “He said something like that, and oh, this is the best part—Collins thanked him, walked straight over to Lizzy, told her Darcy had commended her particularly, and asked her to dance.”
Carter barked a laugh. “Commended her particularly? On the strength of tolerable?”
Elizabeth said nothing, but she was aware of Mr. Wickham’s careful concern hovering at her side, and when he offered his arm, she took it, grasping at the solid strength.
“And then,” Lydia continued, because her stories had a structural resistance to interruption, “he proposed during the dance. During the actual figures. In pieces. One bit about the entailment, separated by a turn, and then a bit about Lady Catherine, in between another figure, and then a bit about shelving in the upstairs closet during the promenade—I ask you, who proposes by describing shelving?”
Denny choked. “But that’s absurd. What man proposes during a dance? In between promenading with other dancers?”
“I must say,” Wickham offered, his voice carefully light, “that a man who leads with his shelving is at least showing his hand early. One always appreciates knowing what one is getting. And what, pray tell, did Miss Elizabeth say to the shelving proposal?”
“She refused him.” Lydia delivered this with a dramatic flourish that startled a blackbird from the hedge.
“And he went straight to Mama, who is now picking out curtains. But to end Lizzy’s survival at the assembly, as we were leaving, Mr. Darcy glared at her as if she were an affront to the wallpaper.
I suppose he had meant to steer Mr. Collins away from all of us, as he was certain his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, would not have approved of Lizzy. ”
Denny whistled, and Carter shook his head with the sympathetic amusement of men who had been in enough country assemblies to understand the particular horror of a public proposal.
“Your Mr. Darcy sounds a delightful addition to the neighborhood,” Wickham said.
“He is not my Mr. Darcy,” Elizabeth said, faster than she intended.
“Assuredly not,” Wickham soothed. “I, as it happens, know a little about him, for my godfather was a prominent landowner from Derbyshire. He had left me a decent legacy and a living up in Klympton. The present Mr. Darcy has seen fit to exercise a little-known legal clause to deprive me of my inheritance.” He smiled—the kind of expression a man learns when his story has become comfortable enough to tell lightly.
“But that is an old wound, and not worth the walk. I’m considering the militia, since my expectations have been so thoroughly disappointed, and in the meantime, Denny and Carter are good enough to tolerate my company. ”
“That,” said Elizabeth, “is either a very admirable equanimity or a very good performance of one.”
Wickham laughed. “Then I consider it an honor that you’ve noticed. So tell me, will banns be posted soon?”
“If my parents have their way,” Lydia interjected. “Lizzy refused him, but look at him, walking between Mama and Papa.”
“Are you saying they would compel you to marry your cousin?” Wickham looked horrified. “Certainly, in God’s great England, young ladies are permitted to refuse. I had thought your father would be reasonable.”
“Papa was beastly.” Lydia dropped her voice to what she considered a whisper, but loud enough to alarm the magpies.
“He took Cousin Collins’s side. Said something about the entailment and his heart and how we’d all be in the hedgerows if Lizzy didn’t stop being difficult.
And now everyone expects her to marry a man who proposed on the advice of Mr. Darcy, who couldn’t be bothered to look properly at her. ”
A silence settled over Elizabeth’s predicament. Denny shuffled uncomfortably, and Carter studied his boots. Kitty had stopped performing Collins’s bow and was looking at Elizabeth with what might have been actual concern.
Wickham said nothing for several paces. Then, softly to Elizabeth alone, “You are very composed for a woman who has survived all that before noon on a Sunday.”
“What else can I be? Plotting my escape?” She said it like a jest because, truthfully, she was only twenty and not of legal age. She had saved her pin money, but she had no carriage and no means.
“Extraordinary.” He shook his head with an amused disbelief that was far more flattering than outrage. “Is there anything to be done? Forgive me, for I do not mean to intrude. Only that it seems a rather heavy burden for a walk home from church.”
“The burden, Mr. Wickham, is not the walk. It is the house at the end of it.”
He did not press, nor did he offer false sympathy or advice. He simply walked beside her at a pace that matched hers, letting the October breeze and the sound of Lydia’s ongoing commentary fill the space between them.
Elizabeth found it a relief to walk beside someone who expected nothing from her, who didn’t want her to marry anyone or compel her to feel grateful—so much so that the tightness in her chest eased for the first time since the library door had closed behind her.
“You know,” Wickham said after a while, addressing the group at large, “I shall miss this walk when I head north. The autumn in Hertfordshire is quite something.”
“North?” Denny said. “Still set on that, are you?”
“Business of a sort. Old friends. And I confess the change of scene would do me good. A man without a settled living must make his own opportunities.” He spoke with the ease of a man who had learned to make hardship sound like an adventure.
“You should join the regiment before you go,” Carter said. “Colonel Forster would have you in a heartbeat.”
“Perhaps when I return. My godfather’s heir left me without the living I was promised, so I must make my own way, but I confess there are worse places to settle than Meryton, if it will have me.”
“Meryton will have anyone who dances,” Lydia declared. “Unlike some gentlemen who attend assemblies only to scowl at the wallpaper.”
Elizabeth said nothing, again, as she thought about directions.
North. South. East. West. She couldn’t go to London to her uncle and aunt, as that would be where her parents would look first. She knew no one in the west, and as for the east, Collins would meet her at the end of the road in Kent. But north?
Could she impose on her? A friend who had once been her governess? She hadn’t seen Miss Cassandra Wren since that hasty departure, but they had kept a sporadic correspondence.
“You are deep in thought,” Wickham remarked when they approached the Longbourn gate.
She spotted Collins turning to watch the back group approach, his expression that of a man awaiting the natural conclusion of a story he had written.
“The north sounds very pleasant in autumn,” she said, releasing Wickham’s arm. “Perhaps it will also offer an escape.”
End of Excerpt: To read more, go to Darcy’s Road to Scotland: An Accidental Elopement Romance