Chapter 14
By eleven o’clock the following morning, Elizabeth had heard Mr. Bingley’s name mentioned seventeen times.
She had counted.
It was not that she disliked hearing of him, precisely.
On the contrary, from the little she had observed the previous evening, Mr. Bingley seemed everything amiable, cheerful, and eager to be pleased.
He had danced with Jane twice, looked at Jane far more often than twice, and smiled with such open delight whenever she spoke that even Elizabeth’s present misery could not wholly prevent her from approving him.
But there was only so much rapture over five thousand a year that any person could bear before breakfast had properly settled.
Mrs. Bennet sat in her favorite chair in the drawing room, declaring with renewed vigor that Mr. Bennet was the most provoking man in the world for not attending the assembly, though he had paid the first call and therefore might have presented his daughters with every advantage.
Jane sat with her work, her expression serene and her color rising whenever Lydia said anything too pointed about Mr. Bingley’s admiration.
Mary attempted to read, though she looked over the top of her book often enough to prove she was listening, while Kitty and Lydia whispered together upon the sofa, dissolving into giggles whenever officers were mentioned.
Elizabeth sat near the window with a piece of sewing in her lap and had not made three proper stitches since the Lucases arrived.
Their visit was expected. It was an old custom between the families that the morning after an assembly should be spent comparing impressions, exaggerating small incidents into intelligence, and determining who had danced with whom and whether it meant anything.
Lady Lucas had come with Charlotte, Maria, and two of the younger boys, though Sir William had remained at home, perhaps from having exhausted himself in civility the night before.
The room was full of talk, yet very little of it reached Elizabeth clearly.
Her thoughts had returned, again and again, to Colonel Darcy.
Not Colonel Darcy, she corrected herself bitterly. Mr. Darcy, now.
No uniform. No title of command to lend gravity to silence. Merely Mr. Darcy of Pemberley, handsome, reserved, and apparently capable of judging a woman’s worth by whether she possessed enough dowry to tempt him into civility.
She could hardly reconcile the man of the previous night with the one she had carried in memory for two years.
That first Mr. Darcy had stood in a damp cellar with a Roman coin in his hand and wonder in his face.
He had helped Uncle Philips without reward, introduced him to Lord Matlock, and by doing so altered the lives of the Gardiner children, her uncle, and Elizabeth herself.
Susie had spoken of him so often and so warmly that his goodness had become almost a settled fact in Elizabeth’s mind.
Whenever letters came from Derbyshire, Elizabeth found some reason to be nearby.
She had asked after Susie’s aunt, after Lambton, after Pemberley, after whether the estate continued to improve.
She had listened, though she pretended not to listen too eagerly, for any hint of Mr. Darcy’s doings.
He had repaired cottages. Paid old debts.
Treated his tenants with justice. Cared for his sister with devoted affection.
Served his county when another man in his place would have paid to remain comfortable at home.
Everything she learned of him had added another quiet line to the portrait she carried inside herself until, without meaning to, she had made him the measure of every other gentleman.
How foolish.
Elizabeth’s needle paused above the linen.
Not all foolish, perhaps. The good things were still true.
A man could be honorable in one part of his life and proud in another.
He could be generous to tenants and cold to strangers.
He could sacrifice for his family and yet look at a young woman in an assembly room and decide she was not handsome enough, not rich enough, not… enough.
The thought stung more deeply than she wished to admit.
It was one thing to be slighted by some ordinary gentleman, some foolish young man who had never meant anything to her.
It was quite another to be found wanting by the handsomest man she had ever seen, a man whose character she had admired before she even understood how much his opinion mattered to her.
Sorrow sat heavily upon her for a time.
Then, with the natural perversity of her spirits, sorrow began to warm into anger.
For what had he judged? A plain gown? A quiet seat by the wall?
The absence of lace? The dowry he supposed she lacked?
He had known nothing of her. Nothing of Netherfield, not that she wished him to know it.
Nothing of the economies she practiced by choice, the tenants whose cottages had been mended before drawing-room ornaments were purchased, the accounts she reviewed with Mr. Philips, the Gardiner children whose futures had been protected because she refused to treat fortune as a toy.
But even without Netherfield, even without ten thousand pounds, she was more than the contents of a marriage settlement. She was more than just the figure of her body and the figure in her bank account.
She worked hard. She tried to be kind, though she would never claim Jane’s angelic patience.
She took care where she could. She listened to tenants.
She stretched funds until they produced usefulness instead of vanity.
She loved her sisters, even when Lydia made it difficult, and she had learned, perhaps too young, that a woman must be clever with very little if she wished the people she loved to be safe.
She stabbed her needle down into the cloth with force. If Mr. Darcy would not see my worth beyond a dowry, then the loss is his, not mine.
“Eliza?”
Elizabeth started. Her needle slipped, pricking the tip of her finger. “Oh!”
Charlotte was watching her from the chair opposite, concern softening the usual dry intelligence of her expression. Jane, beside her, looked equally anxious.
“Are you well?” Charlotte asked. “You look as though you slept poorly.”
Jane leaned nearer. “Has your headache returned?”
Elizabeth looked down at her sewing and discovered she had stitched the same fold of fabric to itself. “No, no. Forgive me. I am quite well, only a little stupid from yesterday’s headache, I suppose.”
“It was severe enough to send you home,” Jane said gently.
“Yes.” Elizabeth smiled with more effort than she liked. “Though I am persuaded the cure was chiefly escaping Mama’s delight over Mr. Bingley’s fortune.”
Charlotte’s mouth curved. “Then you must be entirely restored, for you can still tease.”
“I should be very ill indeed before losing that faculty.”
Across the room, Mrs. Bennet was telling Lady Lucas that Mr. Bingley had looked at Jane at least six times during their second dance, and that she had counted not from vulgar curiosity but from maternal discernment.
Lady Lucas replied that it was only natural, for Jane had looked very well, though Maria thought Miss Bingley’s orange gown had been the finest in the room.
Lydia declared orange hideous unless worn with green ribbons, at which Mary murmured something about vanity in dress being a snare to the understanding.
Charlotte lowered her voice. “I only wondered whether you had formed an opinion of our newcomers before your retreat.”
Elizabeth set aside her sewing, glad to abandon the mangled work. “Mr. Bingley seems very pleasing.”
“Pleasing?” Charlotte repeated. “That is mild praise for a man who made half the room fall in love with his good humor.”
“He is eager to be pleased, which is no small recommendation in a stranger. He seems ready to like Hertfordshire, and that may make Hertfordshire very ready to like him.”
Jane’s blush returned, delicate and betraying. “He was very amiable.”
“So I observed.”
Charlotte glanced toward Jane with affectionate amusement, then back to Elizabeth. “And his sisters?”
Elizabeth’s brows lifted. “They seemed to consider themselves superior to the company, the room, the music, the neighborhood, and possibly the county.”
Jane looked distressed. “Lizzy.”
“I did not say they were unkind. Only elevated. Very elevated. One fears for them should the air grow thin at such heights.”
Charlotte laughed quietly.
“And Mr. Darcy?” she asked.
Elizabeth’s hand tightened in her lap before she could prevent it. She forced her fingers to loosen one by one. “Mr. Darcy is very handsome.”
Charlotte waited.
“And,” Elizabeth added, “he appeared rather removed from the gathering, at least from what I saw.”
“That was certainly true at the beginning,” Charlotte said. “But something must have altered his mood later. He danced more than I expected.”
Elizabeth looked sharply at her. “Did he?”
Jane nodded. “He danced with me.”
“Yes,” Charlotte said. “And with Mrs. Hurst, Miss Bingley, and I believe Maria King near the end, though he looked rather solemn through it.”
Elizabeth tried to arrange her thoughts and failed.
He had refused to dance when she was suggested, yet afterward had danced with others.
With Jane. With Maria King. Had he danced because Jane was beautiful and gentle and therefore worth civility, while Elizabeth was not?
Or had he noticed that she left? Had he known he had wounded her and tried, too late, to atone by behaving better to everyone else?
Jane’s voice drew her back. “He was very pleasant when he danced with me.”
“Pleasant?” Elizabeth repeated, perhaps too quickly.
“In a reserved way,” Jane said. “He seemed uncomfortable, not unkind. He asked about Hertfordshire, and whether Netherfield was generally thought a comfortable house. He also asked if I had enjoyed the evening.”
Elizabeth could almost hear him: grave, restrained, proper. Not cruel. Not warm either. The contrast only made him more difficult to dismiss.