Chapter 10
Upon her arrival at the parsonage, Elizabeth was notified that Mr. and Mrs. Collins had already left for their engagement at Rosings, and that she was expected to follow.
Changing as quickly as she could, she returned to Rosings along the same path, walking around to the front entrance.
As the footman took her coat, Mr. Darcy just happened to be walking past. He offered to escort her to see Lady Catherine.
They walked side by side toward the next ordeal with Lady Catherine and the slow unwinding of Rosings’ secrets.
Elizabeth entered the drawing room at Rosings with every wild impulse locked behind a mask of practiced calm.
She had come prepared for the atmosphere to be as heated as it had been the last time.
Still, it seemed the staff, determined to demonstrate loyalty to their mistress in her hour of distress, had exceeded even their usual excess.
The fire under the marble mantel roared at a size better suited to the deepest of winter than a bright afternoon in April.
The faintest whiff of rosewater contended with a much less subtle bloom of hothouse lilies, arranged in a blue-and-white vase so tall and slender it seemed to exist solely to provide Lady Catherine with a thing to mention, and then to mention again.
Every person in the room was already arranged as she had seen before, but it struck her as more theatrical now.
Lady Catherine herself occupied the largest chair, as always, as if she were a monarch at a private audience.
The cane, which Elizabeth had never seen used for its intended purpose, lay across her lap like a baton that she only used to conduct the rest of the household.
She was mid-monologue when Elizabeth arrived, expounding on the necessity of strict discipline in managing a parish school.
Mr. Collins, standing a few feet away, bobbed his head at each new imperative as if the fate of England depended on the strength of his approval.
Colonel Fitzwilliam, holding a teacup, was occupying the window seat, his gaze scanning the room. His posture was such that made Elizabeth think he had much experience detecting both threats and opportunities in every crowd.
After escorting Elizabeth to her assigned chair, Mr. Darcy stationed himself near the writing table at the far side of the room, as if he had started towards the fire but thought better of it at the last moment.
She could tell, even at this distance, that he was in a state of retreat: all his attention was funneled inward, the line of his jaw tense, his eyes fixed somewhere just above the rim of a ledger book that lay closed on the table.
Thinking… always thinking. He was at once the most visible man in the room and the most absent, a paradox she had come to understand in him and, lately, even to admire.
Miss Anne de Bourgh was seated in her usual chair near the fireplace, one shawl draped over her shoulders and another over her knees.
Hands folded in her lap, her gaze traveled repeatedly from the burning logs to the window and back again.
Elizabeth guessed it was her secret wish for the fire to be gone and the window to be opened.
Beside Miss de Bourgh, and marginally behind her, perched Mrs. Jenkinson.
The companion’s attire was as neutral as the rest of her persona: a clean but nondescript gray dress, a small cap rested at a slightly imbalanced angle, and a work-basket in her lap containing the same unfinished piece of white embroidery that Elizabeth had seen her with last week.
For all the impression of labor, the needle had not advanced more than a few centimeters, as if Mrs. Jenkinson’s true occupation was something other than needlework.
Charlotte had claimed the other end of the settee Elizabeth occupied, as usual. She greeted Elizabeth with a squeeze of her hand, the pressure communicating caution, watchfulness, and readiness.
Elizabeth accepted a cup of tea from the maid.
She settled herself more firmly beside Charlotte, the angle of their knees suggesting casual intimacy but also a readiness to rise at the first sign of trouble.
She did not bother to greet Lady Catherine, who had not paused in her monologue to allow for the interruption of their entrance; nor did she glance at Mr. Collins, who had turned his face toward Elizabeth now with an expression of nervous expectation, as if he had been waiting for her to put forward yet another urgent matter upon her arrival.
As Elizabeth took a sip of her tea, Mr. Collins relaxed and returned his full attention to his patroness.
Then Elizabeth began to watch.
Not Lady Catherine, whose need to dominate the room required no observation, but the edges of the scene, the places where power accumulated without being noticed, the subtle transfer of attention from person to person, the way that tension built up and resolved itself within a gaze, the twitch of a wrist, and the half-swallowed word.
It was not difficult to detect, after ten minutes’ careful observation, that Mrs. Jenkinson was the most attentive person in the room, not to Lady Catherine, and not even primarily to Miss de Bourgh, whose small movements and inhalations she tracked with a kind of practiced vigilance.
No, it was the company as a whole that Mrs. Jenkinson mapped with her eyes, always recalibrating her attention to the points of greatest potential.
Colonel Fitzwilliam shifted in his seat, and Mrs. Jenkinson’s chin lifted a bit. Her eyes remained upon him until his movement ceased.
A footman entered with a fresh pot of tea, pausing near Mr. Darcy. Mrs. Jenkinson stilled entirely until the footman retreated.
Lady Catherine raised her voice to hammer home a point about the moral laxity of the lower classes. Mrs. Jenkinson looked at Miss de Bourgh, scrutinizing her young charge for signs of distress.
Elizabeth, who had once prided herself on the ability to remain unseen in a crowded room, found herself impressed by the quiet efficiency of this surveillance.
It was, in fact, the exact opposite of Lady Catherine’s method—not the exercise of force, but the accumulation of detail so sophisticated that it rarely attracted notice at all.
She let her gaze drift, careful not to let it rest too long on Mrs. Jenkinson, but attentive enough to note the particulars.
The angle of the companion’s chair allowed a direct line of sight to both the fire and the two principal doors.
The subtle, almost imperceptible tensing of her posture whenever Miss de Bourgh’s hand moved toward her teacup, as if ready to intervene at the first sign of spillage.
It was as if Mrs. Jenkinson was expertly managing the environment to ensure that nothing and no one entered or exited her orbit unaccounted for.
After twenty minutes, Elizabeth set her teacup down on the small table beside her with deliberate quiet.
Charlotte, sensing the shift, straightened and tilted her head minutely.
Elizabeth considered her next move with the same care she might have given to a game of chess. Anything too abrupt would attract Lady Catherine’s attention. Anything too subtle might go unnoticed by the only observer who really mattered.
She settled on subterfuge.
At a pause in Lady Catherine’s lecture as her teacup was being refilled, Elizabeth acted.
“Colonel Fitzwilliam,” she said, raising her voice just enough to carry but not enough to sound forced, “is the view from that window as fine as I have witnessed in the park?”
Colonel Fitzwilliam smiled. “You have caught me out, Miss Bennet. I have spent some time trying to decide whether the south lawn is the product of nature or my aunt’s choice in gardeners. I am inclined to think the latter, but the effect is so seamless, it makes me doubt my decision.”
Elizabeth let the conversation flow, feeling interest pass through the room. Even Lady Catherine, momentarily diverted from her continuing monologue on charitable education, glanced toward the window with pride. It was enough to buy Elizabeth the space she needed.
She rose, made a show of fussing with her shawl, and drifted closer to the fire, hoping to appear to admire the famed vase of lilies, though in reality, it was designed to bring herself within a yard of Mrs. Jenkinson.
From this distance, the companion’s stillness was more pronounced.
The embroidery in her hands was a design of white-on-white satin stitch, a pattern so fine and repetitive that Elizabeth, who had herself endured the tedium of samplers, could not imagine anyone engaging it with real interest for more than ten minutes at a stretch.
Still, the needle did not move at all during Elizabeth’s approach, nor did Mrs. Jenkinson glance up, though Elizabeth could sense her awareness of her every step.
Elizabeth circled the vase, inhaling the scent of the lilies. As she moved to the window, she caught Colonel Fitzwilliam’s eye and nodded, inviting him to resume their earlier thread.
He did so with ease, launching into a story about the hazards of wild sheep in the north, though she could not understand why. Elizabeth only half-listened. She was watching the companion from the periphery, noting the way Mrs. Jenkinson’s gaze now tracked her own progress through the room.
Elizabeth let herself settle on the low stool near the colonel and joined in his banter.
Still, when the footman entered again, this time with a tray of pastries, she saw Mrs. Jenkinson’s eyes flick to the servant, then to the tray, then to Mr. Darcy at the far side of the room, before returning to Miss de Bourgh.
When Elizabeth looked up from her debate with the colonel about the merits of scones versus buns, she glanced up to find Mr. Darcy watching her. His eyes held the intensity of a man waiting for information before drawing a conclusion.
She tilted her head the smallest degree toward Mrs. Jenkinson.
With a slow blink, he understood at once. His gaze followed the line, took in the companion’s stillness, then flicked back to Elizabeth with a compression of his brows that signaled he was already revising something in his own calculations.
Elizabeth allowed herself a trace of satisfaction, then returned her attention to the Colonel, who was now speculating whether the lilies would outlast the day.
“It depends,” she said, “on how much the gardener is allowed to interfere. Sometimes a gentle hand prolongs beauty; sometimes it hastens the end.”
It was at this moment that Lady Catherine, her voice a full octave higher than it had been, brought her cane down with a thump on the carpet.
“Miss Bennet! You will tell us whether you consider the north or the south to have the finer climate. I am told that Hertfordshire is the mildest in England, but you must have an opinion.”
Elizabeth answered, as she always did, with pleasant candor and no trace of sarcasm. “The climate of Hertfordshire is more predictable, perhaps, but I believe true strength is built when surviving the unexpected. It is what gives character to a place, and to its people.”
Lady Catherine fixed her with a long, measuring look, as if trying to decide whether her answer was an act of insubordination.
Mr. Collins, sensing a threat to the smooth progress of the afternoon, jumped in with a eulogy tribute to the virtues of Kent and its produce, averting any hint of a crisis.
Elizabeth felt the moment pass, but its energy remained. Mr. Darcy had moved from the writing table to the fire, on the pretense of warming his hands, and now stood only a foot or two from where she perched beside the colonel.
In the interval when Mr. Collins fully diverted Lady Catherine’s attention, Mr. Darcy said so low she had to strain to hear it, “You are watching Mrs. Jenkinson.”
Elizabeth did not look at him; instead, she rose and once more examined the vase. “I am watching everyone. But she is the only one watching back.”
A beat of silence. “I had not considered her,” he said.
Elizabeth smiled at the vase. “No one does. That is rather the point.”
Mr. Darcy’s posture shifted, infinitesimally, toward Mrs. Jenkinson’s side of the hearth.
Mrs. Jenkinson, from her post at Miss de Bourgh’s side, caught this change with a single glance, though Elizabeth knew she could not have heard their exchange.
The rest of the visit proceeded as it always did, in a haze of the usual talk and carefully managed non-events.
But when the clock on the mantel struck, Elizabeth saw at once that the balance of the room had altered.
Lady Catherine swept into the corridor, with Miss de Bourgh trailing behind and Mrs. Jenkinson at her elbow.
Charlotte and Mr. Collins followed, arm in arm.
Elizabeth thought with amusement, Obviously, we have been dismissed.
She hung back for the briefest instant, feigning an interest in the lilies.
Mr. Darcy paused beside her. He did not look at her but spoke in an almost matter-of-fact tone. “I see what you mean now.”
Elizabeth nodded, keeping her voice light. “She knows everything that happens at Rosings. It is her business to see and not be seen.”
“Yet she saw us,” he said.
Elizabeth smiled again, this time at him. “Then perhaps we have become worthy of notice.”
“I wonder what she thinks we are up to.”
“It will keep her busy if we leave her wondering,” said Elizabeth.
They joined the others in the corridor.
Elizabeth felt a quiet stir of anticipation. At last, the investigation seemed to be moving in the right direction.
She walked on at Mr. Darcy’s side, wondering whether Mrs. Jenkinson would report what she had seen to Lady Catherine. Or would she keep her own counsel until it became more advantageous to share?
Elizabeth had the distinct impression they had just begun asking the right questions.