Chapter 9
THE DRAWING ROOM AT the Phillips house was too warm for the fire, though the damp afternoon gave Mrs. Phillips an excuse for keeping it.
Wickham stood near the mantel with his teacup in one hand, watching the company dispose itself according to rank and confidence.
The militia officers occupied the best chairs, local mothers claimed the settee, and their daughters crowded the window seats or found places on footstools.
A young woman at the pianoforte played a Handel air with more force than the room required. The officers nearest her nodded at suitable intervals without interrupting their conversations, while Wickham noted who received attention, who pursued it, and who had already surrendered the effort.
Kitty sat on the footstool beside Captain Carter’s chair.
With her back to the wall and her chin lifted, she spoke above the music with the bright insistence of someone convinced her story deserved attention.
Wickham knew the manner: the hurried speech of a young woman unaccustomed to holding an audience and afraid of losing it.
He moved to the sideboard and refilled his cup, angling himself to catch her words.
“and there was Elizabeth in the field with Sarah,” Kitty said, her hands in motion, the teacup abandoned on the floor beside her slipper, “and the sheep had gotten through the hedge because Papa has never had it mended as he should, and Lizzy had mud from her hem to her elbows, and Sarah, that is the dog, was running the whole flock back toward the gap while Lizzy stood there giving directions without raising her voice, not once.”
Wickham took a slow sip. The tea was strong and bitter, brewed too long on the sideboard’s warmer, but it gave him reason to stand there.
“Where did the sheep wander?” he asked, turning the cup between his fingers.
Kitty turned toward him, pleased by the interruption. “Onto Netherfield’s western pasture. The boundary runs along the ditch there, and the hedge is old and full of gaps the sheep find before we do.”
Wickham nodded, as if the geography of local pastures was a subject of genuine interest. “And was anyone from Netherfield about?”
Kitty’s face lit at the opportunity to carry the story further. “Mr. Bingley was there later, but the first time it was only Mr. Darcy on his dark horse. He sat there without offering to help, and Lizzy says he looked as though she were something the dog dragged in.”
Wickham set his cup on the sideboard. “Mr. Darcy is at Netherfield?”
“Yes. He is staying with Mr. Bingley.”
Wickham leaned one shoulder against the mantel. “And he saw your sister with the sheep and the dog before the assembly?”
“Two days,” Kitty said. She leaned forward, her voice dropping to what she seemed to believe was discretion.
“He was riding the boundary, and there was Lizzy in her muddy half-boots, directing Sarah and mending the fence with a fallen rail. She says he watched her the whole time and never spoke a word. At the assembly he refused to dance with anyone, and half the room heard him say that he was not about to dance with a woman who spent her mornings in a field.”
She delivered the last line with a flourish, as if she had rehearsed it, though her stumble over consequence and the hurried ending told Wickham otherwise.
The story had currency in the neighborhood.
He had heard pieces from two other sources, but Kitty’s version made the gossip harder to dismiss because she spoke as a sister.
“He formed his opinion of her there,” Wickham said. It was not a question.
Kitty nodded, eager. “Lizzy says so. She says he decided what she was before he knew her name, and the assembly only confirmed it.”
Wickham picked up his cup again. The porcelain was warm against his palm. “And the dog, Sarah. She is a working animal, not a pet?”
“Sarah manages the sheep. She spends most of her time with Lizzy and knows what to do. Papa says she is worth three hired men for keeping the flock in order.” Kitty’s pride in the dog was evident in the lift of her chin.
“Mr. Darcy admired her, though. Lizzy says he watched Sarah work and commented on her excellent training.
Wickham absorbed this. The Handel air ended with three emphatic chords, followed by a scattering of applause.
In the brief quiet that followed, Wickham heard Mrs. Phillips calling to the kitchen for more cake and Captain Carter clearing his throat to redirect the conversation to the regiment’s next review.
Kitty, sensing the room’s attention shifting, gathered her skirts and rose from the footstool.
She retrieved her abandoned teacup, found it empty, and carried it toward the sideboard where Wickham stood.
Her cheeks were flushed from the fire and from having held the floor for three uninterrupted minutes.
She smiled at him as she reached for the pot.
“You are a good listener, Mr. Wickham.”
He returned the smile. “You tell a good story, Miss Kitty.”
She poured the tea, her fingers trembling at the pot’s handle.
Wickham recognized the tremor for what it was: not nerves, but the aftermath of being heard.
He had seen it before. Young women accustomed to being talked over often shook when someone let them finish a thought.
Their voices grew steadier with practice, but the trembling took longer to leave.
He turned away and, taking his place by the window, traced the rim of his cup with a finger. The street lay quiet in the gray afternoon, the shop signs hanging still and a single cart moving toward the inn at the far end.
Darcy formed his opinion of Elizabeth Bennet when he saw her in a field with a working dog and a stray flock, before the assembly and the insult half the county now knew by heart.
He saw her direct the dog, mend the fence, and kneel in the mud, and Wickham could imagine the judgment that followed.
A gentleman’s daughter who worked like a tenant’s child offended Darcy’s every notion of order, and the assembly gave him the opportunity to say what he had decided.
His finger stilled on the cup’s rim. The truth, arranged with care, would do the work without invention. He needed only to connect what Darcy saw with what he said and let the neighborhood draw its conclusion.
Behind him, the conversation turned to the weather, the prospects of an early summer, and the merits of local cider against London porter. Kitty joined the young woman at the pianoforte, her voice lighter now, less urgent. She had given him what he needed and moved on, unaware of its importance.
Wickham finished his tea and set the cup on the windowsill. He would speak with Elizabeth Bennet before the gathering ended, once the conversation loosened and fewer ears stood between them.
He turned back to the company, where Captain Carter was describing the regiment’s new uniforms with more enthusiasm than the subject warranted. Wickham nodded at the appropriate intervals, asked the expected questions, and kept his thoughts to himself.
Elizabeth stood by the window with her cup balanced on the sill, tracing the condensation on the glass.
The light outside was gray and diffuse, and behind her the room had settled into the particular noise of a gathering that had exhausted its topics and was working its way toward departure.
Wickham watched her from the sideboard, pretended interest in the remains of a seed cake, calculating the distance between them, the number of bodies in the way, and the likelihood of someone overhearing.
Mrs. Phillips had moved to the pianoforte to adjust the girl’s fingering, and two militia officers were arguing over the merits of a bay mare they had seen at the inn stable.
Kitty had abandoned her footstool for a chair nearer the fire, where she sat with her ankles crossed and her attention fixed on nothing.
Everyone had turned to someone nearby, and no one was watching the window.
Wickham carried his cup across the carpet and stopped beside Elizabeth, leaving a courteous distance between them as he looked out at the same gray view.
“Meryton is kinder to the regiment than I expected,” he said. “I heard country towns could be wary of unfamiliar faces, but your neighbors have made us welcome.”
Elizabeth smiled, her attention still on the window. “Meryton is not large enough to sustain wariness. We run out of unfamiliar faces before we have time to hold a grudge.”
“A kind philosophy.”
“It is arithmetic, not philosophy.”
The dry edge of the remark interested him. A woman who made jokes was easier to read than one who made speeches, for her humor showed what she noticed and dismissed.
He sipped his tea and let the silence hold for a count of three. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped, not to a whisper but to the lower register he used for confidences.
“I hesitate to mention this, Miss Elizabeth, and you must forgive me if it is out of place.” He paused, as if the words cost him something. “But I have been turning a thought over in my mind, and I cannot quite dismiss it.”
Elizabeth turned her head, her expression open and curious. “What thought?”
Wickham studied the surface of his tea. “Miss Kitty told me that Mr. Darcy saw you with the sheep and your dog. I wonder whether his refusal to dance the night of the assembly had anything to do with that first impression.”
Her fingers tightened on the windowsill, a change Wickham noted without appearing to.
“Mr. Darcy is quick to judge,” he continued.
“I have known him long enough to observe the pattern. He decides what a person is worth at the first meeting and seldom revises the assessment, no matter what evidence follows.” He looked at her, his expression regretful.
“When he saw a gentleman’s daughter managing sheep and a working dog in a field, he found something contrary to his notions of order.
However unfair his judgment, I fear your standing never recovered. ”
Elizabeth’s chin lifted, and her fingers curled against the wood. When she spoke, she chose each word with care.
“Then you believe Mr. Darcy had formed his opinion before coming to the assembly? That the insult did not arise from the evening but revealed a judgment formed days before?”
Wickham did not confirm it outright because doing so made the suggestion his, and he needed it to remain hers.
“I would not presume to know Mr. Darcy’s mind,” he said, “but I know he is not a man who revises his first impressions. He saw a young woman too comfortable with livestock and field work to fit his idea of a gentleman’s household.
That is the disorder he finds...” He paused before the last word. “Unforgivable.”
Wickham lifted his hands. “I say nothing against your competence, Miss Elizabeth, which is clear to anyone with sense. Only that Mr. Darcy judges by another standard.”
Elizabeth’s teacup sat forgotten on the sill between them. Her shoulders drew back as she considered his words.
The room’s noise continued behind them. Someone laughed near the fire, and the girl at the pianoforte struck a wrong note before correcting it. Wickham waited. He had learned that the most effective lies were those people told themselves; his role was only to provide the materials.
“I see,” Elizabeth said at last, her voice dry. “Then I am to understand that my half-boots and the mud on my hem were indictment enough. He required no further evidence of my unfitness.”
Wickham recognized the tone: wounded pride finding its footing in irony. “I have perhaps said too much.” He offered a small, sympathetic smile. “Forgive me. The subject is uncomfortable, and I had no right to raise it.”
Elizabeth’s lips curved, but the smile did not reach her eyes. “You raised nothing I had not considered myself. Mr. Darcy’s opinion was plain at the assembly. Its origin changes nothing.”
But Wickham could see that it did. The set of her shoulders, her fingers gripping the sill, and the economy of her reply told him the suggestion had landed where he intended. She would turn it over in private, test it against what she knew, and find that it fit.
He changed the subject with the ease of long practice. “The regiment is to drill tomorrow on the common, so I hope the weather holds. There is nothing more tedious than standing at attention in the rain.”
Elizabeth looked again to the window. “I am sure the neighborhood will appreciate the spectacle, rain or no.”
They spoke of the drilling, of the likelihood of fair weather, of a book Elizabeth had been reading.
The exchange lasted two minutes, no more.
Wickham made it light, effortless, a return to the comfortable footing they had established before he raised Darcy’s name.
By the time Mrs. Phillips called for the tea things to be cleared, Elizabeth had recovered enough to contribute a dry observation about the regiment’s timing, but her fingers did not return to the cup on the sill.
Wickham excused himself to speak with Captain Carter and crossed the room with his empty cup in hand, his step unhurried.
Before joining the captain, he glanced back.
Elizabeth remained at the window, her profile sharp against the gray glass.
He had planted the suggestion, and wounded pride would tend it for him.
He set his cup down and joined the officers by the fire, where the conversation had turned to cards and the evening’s likely entertainments. No one had noticed the exchange at the window.