Chapter 23
“May I have the honour of this dance, Miss Bennet? Only if you are not too fatigued, of course. I should be glad to fetch you a glass of lemonade if you would prefer to sit out a little longer.”
As Charles Bingley spoke with his usual solicitous amiability, Jane rose from her seat, her blue eyes sparkling, her cheeks pink, and her lips curving in a definite smile. Beside her, Elizabeth smiled too, glad to see such health and happiness in her sister again.
“I should love to dance, Mr Bingley. Thank you.”
Tonight, Jane wore her best white muslin, their grandmother’s pearls, and matching pearl pins in her fair hair. Elizabeth considered her sister easily the most beautiful young woman at the Meryton assembly, and the many admiring glances Jane drew seemed to prove it.
The general admiration for her sister also relieved some of Elizabeth’s unspoken anxiety about how Jane might be regarded in the neighbourhood after the unexplained ending of her engagement.
She heard one man whisper to his friend that the Earl of Grantchester must have been a fool to let such a jewel slip through his fingers.
The joyous expression on Mr Bingley’s face as Jane took his arm touched Elizabeth’s heart, and she gave a very long sigh.
Their neighbour’s devotion was evidently unabated, and she supposed she would have to talk to Jane about detaching him.
It would be unfair to let a good man lavish such attention upon a lady when there could be no real hope for his suit.
After the debacle with Lord Grantchester, Elizabeth supposed Jane might not think again of marriage for a year or more, even if she really felt the equanimity she claimed regarding the break. Elizabeth hoped that Mr Bingley would find someone else who could return his affection without reserve.
“It is all very well sighing, Miss Lizzy,” snorted Mrs Bennet, who had been hovering nearby and now came to settle on the chairs. “You have not raised a finger to encourage Mr Bingley to dance with you, and you cannot complain now that he is dancing with Jane again.”
“It is all the same to me, Mother,” Elizabeth replied evenly, not wishing to be drawn into Mrs Bennet’s wrong-headed scheming. “How busy it is tonight! I suppose the fine weather brings people out.”
“Oh, do go to the retiring rooms and do something with your hair, Lizzy! Or try to make conversation with him next time rather than leaving it all to poor Jane.”
“Hardly ‘poor Jane’ tonight,” Elizabeth dismissed her mother’s frustration laughingly, looking to her sister on Mr Bingley’s arm.
“She is well, happy, and lovelier than ever. In any case, Jane and I have agreed that one of us will stay to keep an eye on Lydia and Kitty if the other dances. See, they are over there, about to dance with two of the Lucas boys.”
Besides her younger sisters, Elizabeth also spotted the tall, dark figure of Mr Darcy, bowing stiffly to Caroline Bingley as the introduction played.
She supposed he was dancing with Miss Bingley only out of politeness, seeing as he appeared to enjoy neither the company of that lady nor the act of dancing.
Must he always make himself so taciturn and unsociable?
All at once, she recalled a brief glimpse of Mr Darcy as they arrived, already dancing with his younger sister, their matching faces smiling and laughing, and Mr Darcy looking peculiarly young and handsome in these moments of unconscious frolic.
Was she merely repeating her old, bad habit of judging him too harshly on the basis of incomplete evidence?
That was quite possible. Mr Darcy seemed to have so many faces that it was hard to be sure of anything.
When they met while out walking the day before, he had seemed reserved or even shy at first. Then, he had suddenly invited Elizabeth and her family to call on him at Pemberley, an offer that had shocked her almost as much as his previous proposal of marriage.
Did he then not look down upon the Bennets and consider them beneath him?
Did Mr Darcy’s strange manner hide a kind of respect for her after all, or even liking?
Part of her hoped it did, and she trembled a little with that hope.
Why, too, had Mr Darcy not answered her when she offered to forget that he had ever talked to her of marriage?
“You are as bad as your father, Lizzy,” Mrs Bennet said sourly, breaking in on Elizabeth’s thoughts.
“Poor Lydia cannot move an inch without some complaint. She only had a little too much punch last time she was here, and it is hardly a capital crime. As for Jane, she is only dancing with Mr Bingley because you are not. Two dances now! She must be exhausted.”
“Jane has refused everyone but Mr Bingley,” Elizabeth pointed out to her ill-tempered mother. “She has had plenty of time to rest. Mr Bingley knows well that she has been ill and is taking good care of her. He will not let her overexert herself, I am sure.”
“You always have an answer for everything, Lizzy,” railed her mother.
“Well, tell me this, now that Jane has broken with Lord Grantchester, and you are refusing to even try for Mr Bingley, what will become of us when your father is dead in his grave, Charlotte Lucas is installed at Longbourn in my place, and Mr Collins turns us all out into the street?”
Elizabeth sighed, her eyes following her mother’s jaundiced gaze to where Mr Collins and Charlotte Lucas were holding court with local matrons by the doors to the refreshment room, with Sir William and Lady Lucas looking on proudly.
Thank goodness Mr Collins was staying at Lucas Lodge in the run-up to the fast-approaching wedding!
Elizabeth hardly knew if her own nerves would have withstood the strain of having him at Longbourn again, let alone her mother’s.
“Look at them!” Mrs Bennet continued resentfully. “Oh, that smug smile on Charlotte Lucas’s face makes me feel quite ill, and Mr Collins too. Gloating, I’ll be bound, thinking of all that will come to them so unfairly because of that dratted entail.”
“Charlotte and Mr Collins are only talking to Lady Lucas’s friends about the wedding,” Elizabeth noted, trying to talk sense to her mother, though with no real expectation that she would be listened to. “They look like any other engaged couple to me. Why should they not be happy?”
Her eyes took the pair in again as she spoke.
Mr Collins and Charlotte did look happy, even if love had nothing to do with the impending marriage on either side.
In fact, they looked far happier than Jane had ever done in the company of Lord Grantchester.
Elizabeth could not say that Jane had looked unhappy exactly during her engagement, only absent in spirit.
The realisation was underlined by the radiance and joy on Jane’s face as she danced with Mr Bingley.
Something important had been missing from the engagement to Lord Grantchester, although neither Jane herself nor Elizabeth had been able to name it.
Mr Darcy had somehow known, and the uncomfortable thought that he might have been right about this too made Elizabeth’s conscience twinge.
She looked away from the dance floor again and found that her mother was still talking, having taken no notice of Elizabeth’s words or her subsequent silence.
“…Of course, the Lucases have always been schemers. With a daughter as plain as Charlotte, what other choice does Lady Lucas have? None of her girls are a patch upon mine…”
Stifling a yawn, Elizabeth waited impatiently for the dance to end so that Jane would return to watch over their sisters and she could excuse herself to the retiring room.
While there were only a handful of late-arriving militia officers here tonight, this included the nefarious George Wickham.
Thankfully, he paid no particular attention to the Bennets tonight beyond a polite initial greeting.
Under Elizabeth’s watchful eye, he had circled the room several times in a manner that reminded her of nothing so much as a skulking animal.
If he had any principal objects of interest, they seemed to be Mr Bingley and his sister, although he did not approach them.
Elizabeth wondered if Mr Wickham wished to touch Mr Bingley for money or hospitality in some way, but was deterred by the presence of Mr Darcy.
Their affable neighbour might be good-natured and open-handed enough to fall for such overtures on his own, but Elizabeth was confident that Mr Darcy would see Mr Wickham off if he spotted him.
Mr Bingley’s protector would not long be in Hertfordshire, however, and she hoped he would warn his friend adequately before he left.
“Look, here is Jane back again, Lizzy,” prompted her mother, nudging Elizabeth’s shoulder. “Where is Mr Bingley? Quick, you must make him dance with you next before you lose your chance.”
“He is already dancing with Miss Darcy, Mother,” Elizabeth laughed, standing up and stretching herself as Jane sat down with a contented smile on her face. “You really ought to —”
“May I have this dance, Miss Elizabeth?” a deep, even voice intervened, and Elizabeth turned to find Mr Darcy at her side.
His jaw was set and his dark blue eyes were intense, as if he had steeled himself to ask her a difficult question. Mrs Bennet seemed agog at this development, and Elizabeth was inclined to accept the offer at least partly to tease her mother out of her fixation of matchmaking her with Mr Bingley.
She certainly did not suppose that she was likely to enjoy dancing with Mr Darcy, nor he with her.
Still, perhaps he was trying to make amends for the ill-feeling and harsh words that had passed between them.
Given her own admitted errors of judgement over the past few months, Elizabeth supposed she owed him something on that account, too.