Chapter Nineteen #2
The room did not go quiet, but only because it was already quiet, and had been quiet since she crossed the floor.
Calmly — and audibly — Mr Darcy said, “You are correct, Lady Catherine. Indeed, I am engaged to Miss Elizabeth Bennet.”
She turned, as did the rest of the assembly.
Lady Catherine had only to let her gaze follow those of the others assembled there to find her.
She examined Elizabeth with the thoroughness of an assessment that was not meant to be comfortable.
Elizabeth withstood it without quaking — or at least, only quaking inwardly, where Lady Catherine could not see.
“This is the young woman,” she said. It was not a question.
Elizabeth stepped forward, doing her best to ignore the attention of an entire room upon her at once, even as the attendees were making valiant efforts to appear that they were not listening. Elizabeth met Lady Catherine’s eyes. “I am Elizabeth Bennet, ma’am,” she said. “How do you do?” She bowed.
Lady Catherine sniffed at that, as though to underscore the point that social rules were for other people. “I have been better. I am confused, and I do not care for confusion. There is much to be explained.”
“Lady Catherine.” Mr Darcy’s voice was level and entirely without deference. “This is not the occasion for this conversation.”
“I disagree. Every occasion is appropriate for plain speaking.” Lady Catherine drew herself to her full height, though she hardly came to Mr Darcy’s shoulder. “You are aware, Darcy, that your mother and I had long planned —”
“So you have said,” Mr Darcy said. “I am aware that many things were planned before I had any part in the planning. I am also aware that such plans were never formalised, were never presented to me as binding, and are not relevant to a decision I have made freely and without consultation, because it did not require any.” He spoke without raising his voice.
He did not need to. The fascinated silence of their audience was doing the work for him.
“I believe we have said enough on this subject for the present.”
Lady Catherine looked at him for a long moment. If Elizabeth was not much mistaken, she was revising her strategy mid-execution and deciding that a strategic withdrawal would be advisable.
“We will speak privately, then,” she said, with a degree of authority that suggested a monarch issuing a decree.
“If you wish,” Mr Darcy replied. “I am quite at your service, Aunt.”
Lady Catherine held his gaze imperiously for one more beat, then looked at Elizabeth.
That she was being assessed and found wanting did not admit of a doubt.
Lady Catherine was thorough. In the space of mere moments, her expression communicated that she had formed certain conclusions about Elizabeth’s family, fortune, and motives, had filed these conclusions in an unfavourable position, and would be expanding upon them at a later date.
“Miss Elizabeth Bennet,” she said.
“Lady Catherine,” Elizabeth returned. This time, she did not bow.
Mr Darcy’s formidable aunt departed with a stateliness that suggested she refused to consider it a retreat. The room held its collective breath until she reached the door and then released it in a wave of resumed conversation far too animated to be about anything other than what had just occurred.
Charlotte appeared at Elizabeth’s elbow. “Are you all right?”
“I believe so,” Elizabeth said. She was aware of Mr Darcy crossing toward her through the room’s rearranged currents. She took a moment to gather herself, preparing to receive him.
“I apologise,” he said when he reached her. He said it quietly and directly, without preamble.
“You have nothing to apologise for.”
“Lady Catherine should not have addressed you in such a way.”
Elizabeth let out a long breath. “Perhaps. But I shall say this much for Lady Catherine: it was more honest than most things I have heard at assemblies.”
Mr Darcy studied her. Something unreadable moved through his expression.
“That is a very charitable interpretation,” he said.
“Only an accurate one,” Elizabeth said. “I have no interest in the flattering version.”
His brows pinched together, and then he said, “Will you walk with me?” With a slight movement, Mr Darcy indicated the far end of the room, where the corridor opened toward the anteroom that was kept available for exactly this kind of occasion.
For those who required a moment outside the machinery of the evening without actually leaving it.
She nodded and went with him. It was within the bounds of propriety, since the room was visible through the open door, Mrs Bennet was forty feet away and therefore practically adjacent, and several people watched them go with the attentiveness of an audience that had already had one scene this evening and were hopeful for another.
And in any case, she could hardly be more compromised by Mr Darcy than she was now.
The anteroom was small and lit by a collection of candles on a side table. Then there was a settee, two chairs, and a window that looked onto the street. It was empty, for now, though the noise from the assembly drifted through the open doorway, reminding them that they were not truly alone.
Mr Darcy turned to face her.
“I am sorry,” he said. “For what you were subjected to this evening. That should not have happened.”
“You did not invite her.”
“No. But her objection is not surprising, and her methods were —” He stopped and selected something more accurate, or perhaps more genteel, than whatever he had been going to say.
“She should not have spoken to you that way. Not here. Not in that manner. Whatever her opinion of the match, it was not her right.”
“Her opinion of the match appears to be shared by a number of people whose opinions carry weight.” Elizabeth kept her voice light, because the alternative was something she was not prepared to admit in an anteroom. “I am not unaware of that.”
“What she thinks,” Mr Darcy said, with a precision that suggested he had considered every word before releasing it, “does not determine what is true, or what is right. Still less what is mine to decide.”
“I do not want you to think,” he continued, more quietly, “that her view of this is mine. That her assessment of you —” He paused again.
Something moved in his expression that he was not, this time, entirely quick enough to clear.
“It is not mine. It is not accurate. And I am sorry that you had to stand in that room and hear such views.”
The careful distance he maintained was still there.
He stood two paces away, the distance of propriety, the distance he always kept, but his expression was not the composed evenness she had grown accustomed to reading as his ordinary state.
For the first time she could remember, he was obviously pained.
“You defended the engagement,” Elizabeth said softly.
“Yes.”
“You did not have to do it so directly.”
“I disagree,” he countered, flat and certain. “I did.”
“And you said —” Elizabeth stopped. She had been going to say, you said I was your decision, because that was what the words had meant, and she had been turning them over since he spoke them.
Standing in a cold anteroom with the candles perfectly still, she found she wanted to hear what he would say if she said it back to him.
But she did not, because she was managing herself very carefully.
She did not trust what she might say next.
So, she said instead, “Thank you. For what you said. And for —” She gestured, slightly, at the anteroom. “This.”
“Are you all right?” He said it directly, without the social preamble the question usually carried. Not I hope you are well. Just the question, plainly, as though he actually wanted the answer.
She considered giving him an accurate answer. She looked at the candles and thought about what accuracy would require and what it would cost, and arrived at a version that was more honest than what she would have given anyone else but Jane.
“I will be,” she said, which was as close to the truth as she could manage.
Mr Darcy received this in silence for a moment. “That is not quite the same as yes,” he said.
“No,” she said. “It is not.”
They stood in the anteroom with the assembly noise around the edges and the candles between them, and neither of them said anything further. It was not comfortable, exactly, but it was something that sat between endurance and its opposite, in the space she had not yet learned to name.
“We should go back,” Elizabeth said at last.
“Yes.” He did not move immediately. “Miss Elizabeth.”
She looked at him, waiting.
“For what it is worth,” he said carefully, “Lady Catherine has never been a reliable judge of what I value.”
“That is worth a great deal,” Elizabeth replied quietly.
Mr Darcy offered his arm, and they returned to the assembly. But Elizabeth felt the pressure of his arm and his words all the way across the room, and she spent the rest of the evening being pleasant to everyone and thinking about nothing else.
∞∞∞
Caroline had watched Lady Catherine’s dramatic arrival with careful, focused attention. What followed, she suspected, would be as relevant for her campaign as any news of troop movements towards the front or political upheaval in Paris could be for the struggle against Napoleon.
What she had observed was considerable. She had catalogued the position of the room when Lady Catherine entered, the quality of the silence, the shape of attention, and Mr Darcy’s defence of the engagement.
His behaviour was composure and nothing more; she would not assign it a warmth it did not contain.
He had stated the fact of the engagement and defended it from interference.
That much was surely duty, not attachment — it must be so.
He would have done the same for any commitment he had made.
Honour was not affection, and Mr Darcy was nothing if not honourable.
She had noticed Miss Elizabeth’s composure under Lady Catherine’s inspection, and would not deny that it had been genuinely impressive. There was a backbone there. Though, Caroline thought, it was not entirely surprising. She had never doubted Elizabeth Bennett’s backbone.
Quite the contrary. It was one of the things she found least objectionable about her, that unflinching quality of her composure.
Tonight it had been on full display. But backbone was not the same as belonging, and Elizabeth Bennet, whatever her qualities, did not belong in Mr Darcy’s world.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s arrival in a country assembly room to confirm this in front of forty witnesses had been quite useful.
Because what the room had heard was not merely a challenge, but the sound of the Darcy family’s objection to the match, made public and unmistakable.
Everyone would talk about this tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.
Lady Catherine must intend to visit Longbourn, and whatever happened there would be talked about as well.
Every conversation that followed would add another layer to the narrative that Caroline had been quietly building since December: a match made in unhappy circumstances, met with family opposition, sustained by nothing but the honour of a man who had too much of it to do otherwise.
Caroline accepted a glass of negus from a passing footman and considered the second thing she had catalogued, namely the exchange she had been close enough to partially hear between Mr Darcy and Miss Elizabeth after Lady Catherine withdrew.
She had not heard all of it, but she was confident that she had heard enough.
Thank you. For what you said. Elizabeth Bennet’s voice had been composed and quiet. And then, after a pause she could not interpret: That is worth a great deal.
The words were not enough, surely. There was nothing in them but mere politeness.
That was not the same as warmth, and not the same as attachment, and was precisely the response one would expect from any well-bred person who had just been publicly insulted and then apologised to.
She had been thanked for her patience and had thanked him in return.
This was manners. This was what manners were for.
What she had not heard, and what she noted the absence of, was anything from him that went beyond the obligations of a gentleman managing an awkward situation with decorum.
He had apologised for Lady Catherine. He had said his aunt was not a reliable judge.
These were the actions of a man who took his responsibilities seriously, not the actions of a man in love, and that meant that Caroline still had a chance.
She moved through the room with her glass and her assessment. Then she stopped near the window to look out at the darkness of the evening and allowed herself to indulge in a sense of optimism.
The engagement stood because Mr Darcy’s honour required it to stand.
That would not always be true. There would come a day — she was certain of it — when he looked at the whole of it clearly: the opposition, the gossip, the obvious unsuitability of Elizabeth Bennet, and on that day his honour would require something different of him.
She had been patient. Remarkably patient, given everything. And patience, in her experience, was not the passive thing people took it for. It was simply waiting with your eyes open.
The ground was shifting. She could feel it.
Caroline finished her negus and was perfectly composed. She went to say something charming to Lady Lucas, and all the while thought, with the steady focus of a woman who has not changed her mind and does not intend to, that it was only a matter of time.