Chapter 8 #2
Charles Bingley’s sisters were already at Netherfield Park by the time the two gentlemen arrived, and the four of them were soon taking tea in the drawing room.
Having announced that he would play some solitary billiards, Mr Hurst was left to drink alone in the games room as he undoubtedly intended, with no real objection from other members of the household.
As the maid withdrew, the ladies began to gossip, casting side glances at Darcy and Bingley in an attempt to interest them in the conversation.
“Did you see her skirts, Sister?” asked Mrs Hurst in mock horror, her tone deliberately hushed, yet entirely audible. “The hem was six inches deep in mud, at least.”
“Yes!” exclaimed Miss Bingley with equal enthusiasm. “Although I was almost too distracted by her hair to notice her hem at first. She looked positively wild. Her bonnet was hanging down her back like a farmer’s daughter or a field girl. How brown and freckled she will grow. Ugh!”
Charles Bingley frowned. “Who?” he asked, giving his sisters the curiosity they had sought to arouse, whereas Darcy had determined to pointedly ignore them and continued to flick lightly through the pages of a book of essays on classical sculpture. “Who are you talking about?”
“Oh, Brother! We are talking of Miss Elizabeth Bennet, of course,” Louisa Hurst replied with a sorrowful sigh.
“We passed her in the carriage as she was walking back from Meryton. Poor Jane has such a very unfortunate family. It really will be for the best if Lord Grantchester takes her well away from them.”
“I doubt Miss Bennet would agree with you,” Darcy interjected gruffly from behind his newspaper, thinking that it would be a very cruel thing indeed if Lord Grantchester were to take Jane Bennet away from her family, even if his intentions were good.
The closeness between the two eldest sisters was entirely obvious, and entirely laudable.
“How very dirty and rumpled Elizabeth Bennet looked,” Caroline Bingley agreed with her older sister, her voice mirroring the disdain of her expression. “I can barely describe it. I wish you had seen her, Charles.”
While Charles and Caroline Bingley bore a strong physical resemblance to one another in a blonde-haired, blue-eyed and cleanly-built mould, their personalities were entirely dissimilar.
Bingley looked puzzled by his sister’s assertions, his natural good-heartedness blocking any immediate understanding of their vicious intent.
“We saw Miss Elizabeth Bennet out near the woodlands too, didn’t we, Darcy?” he commented. “I saw nothing untoward in her appearance.”
“Nothing untoward?” questioned Mrs Hurst with exaggerated astonishment. “Did you not see the mud? Her bonnet? Her hair? Oh, what a sight she was, Brother!”
“I noticed nothing,” Bingley insisted doggedly, instinctively digging in his heels.
“You never do, Charles,” Miss Bingley remarked with a patronising note in her voice. “I sometimes wonder that you can tell one lady from another.”
“That is unfair, Caroline,” her brother protested. “Although we have not been in Hertfordshire long, I know all our neighbours by name, including the ladies. From the Bennet family, there is Mrs Bennet, Miss Jane Bennet, Miss Elizabeth Bennet…”
“I dare say you noticed Miss Elizabeth Bennet, Mr Darcy,” Caroline Bingley broke in as her brother seemed to be getting away from the point which most concerned her and her sister. “Unlike my brother, you are always so very perspicacious.”
Miss Bingley’s voice was sly and silky, making Darcy wary of his answer.
He had long disliked Caroline Bingley’s fawning interest in him, suspecting it largely a product of interest in Pemberley, his name, and his fortune.
However, she could not politely be ignored while he stayed under her brother’s roof.
“Yes, I saw Miss Elizabeth Bennet,” Darcy said blandly, lowering his newspaper. “I saw the mud, the hanging bonnet, and her hair in the wind.”
“There, you see, Brother!” crowed Mrs Hurst. “Mr Darcy backs us up.”
“I saw Elizabeth Bennet exactly as she was,” Darcy corrected her swiftly. “I make no judgement on her appearance.”
As soon as he spoke, Darcy was ashamed to realise he had told an outright lie. He had not judged Elizabeth’s appearance harshly, but he had judged it nonetheless, just as he had judged her figure and gait. Darcy’s silent conclusion had been that such a state of disarray became her.
The two ladies looked at one another uncertainly, and Darcy raised his newspaper again, lest anyone in the room might guess the unspoken thoughts behind his eyes.
“What a large pile of books she was carrying back with her,” Miss Bingley added after a short pause. “I believe she must be some kind of bluestocking. Such ladies are always neglectful of their appearance.”
“No doubt,” her older sister agreed glibly. “A young woman can read too much, do not you think, Mr Darcy?”
“I have never encountered that myself,” Darcy responded flatly from behind his paper shield. “In our age, a greater problem appears to me that young women read far too little, especially of the books that might improve their minds.”
As Miss Bingley and Mrs Hurst rapidly reversed their course and began to speak favourably of improving works, Darcy’s mind wandered away from the well-appointed Netherfield Park drawing room, and a small smile played at his lips.
What was Elizabeth Bennet reading, he wondered?
Poetry? Travel? Some sensational new novel?
Perhaps all of them, if she had taken so many books from Meryton’s lending library.