5. A Growing Attachment #2
Mr. Gardiner’s expression contained nothing but friendly amusement. “Do not appear so alarmed. I have been married long enough to know when a gentleman’s attention has departed the table.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“No need. I would not have brought porcelain if I required adoration.”
Mrs. Gardiner’s needle moved steadily through her work, though her eyes gave every appearance of following the exchange. “Mr. Gardiner, do not tease Mr. Darcy before tea. It may unsettle him.”
“I have seen no evidence that Mr. Darcy is easily unsettled.”
Darcy arranged the saucer beside its cup. “Your niece would disagree.”
“My niece makes a study of unsettling respectable people.”
“She is very accomplished.”
“And you admire accomplishment.”
“Some forms more than others.”
Mr. Gardiner’s grin deepened, but before he could reply, Georgiana and Miss Bennet returned. Elizabeth carried a sheet of music in one hand and a biscuit in the other, suggesting they had visited the tea table by a side route.
“Miss Darcy has been slandered,” Elizabeth announced. “The music is difficult, but not beyond her. Mrs. Younge is far too severe.”
Georgiana followed her in with visible pleasure and a faint anxiety that surfaced at the mention of her companion.
Mrs. Gardiner glanced toward the hall. “I had hoped to see Mrs. Younge before we left. I wished to ask whether she would accompany us to the panorama next week.”
“She has gone out,” Georgiana replied.
Georgiana sat near Elizabeth, smoothing her skirt before answering. “She is writing letters, I believe.”
Elizabeth accepted a cup of tea from Darcy and handed it to Georgiana before taking her own. “She must be a prodigious correspondent. She is nearly always writing when I call.”
The remark was innocent.
Georgiana’s spoon clinked lightly against her saucer.
Darcy noticed that and then resented noticing it. His sister merely said, “Mrs. Younge has many acquaintances.”
“I envy her industry,” Elizabeth replied, settling beside her. “I owe Jane three letters and have answered none of them properly. If I do not write soon, she will imagine London has swallowed me whole.”
“Would she be very worried?” Georgiana asked.
“Jane worries beautifully. She always thinks the best of everyone and fears the worst when affection requires it.”
“She sounds very kind.”
Elizabeth nodded. “She is. You would like her very much.”
“Then I hope I shall meet her one day.”
Elizabeth smiled at her. “So do I.”
Georgiana lifted her cup, and some of the tension left her shoulders. Darcy, watching from beside the tea table, told himself there was nothing peculiar in the scene. A young lady did not like to be teased over her companion’s habits. That was all.
Mrs. Gardiner asked him something about the panorama, and Darcy answered, though without the confidence that had once made him certain he knew every shade of Georgiana’s mood.
After tea, Georgiana went to the pianoforte.
She did not perform formally, but sorted through music and played snatches of whatever caught her fancy.
Mrs. Gardiner joined her, and Mr. Gardiner, having exhausted porcelain, took up the newspaper Darcy had set out earlier.
This left Elizabeth upon the sofa near the low table, and Darcy, after handing Mrs. Gardiner a footstool, allowed himself to sit beside her.
Not too near.
Near enough.
She noticed, of course. Miss Bennet noticed everything. Instead of remarking upon it, she leaned slightly toward the table and selected one of the almond cakes.
“I have discovered,” she said, examining it before taking a bite, “that your cook continues to be dangerous.”
“She will be flattered.”
“She should be. If ever she seeks another place, Aunt Gardiner may attempt to steal her.”
“I shall warn the housekeeper.”
Elizabeth’s eyes traveled across the room to Georgiana, who had begun a lively passage and then stopped to correct herself. “Miss Darcy plays with more confidence when she does not know she is being heard.”
“She does many things with more confidence when she forgets herself.”
“Were you like that at her age?”
“No.”
“Of course not.” Elizabeth brushed a crumb from her glove and gave him a look of mock gravity. “You were born at eight-and-twenty, already in possession of a house, a steward, and a disapproving opinion of inferior penmanship.”
“My penmanship is excellent.”
“I did not say otherwise.”
“You implied I judge others by it.”
“Do you not?”
Darcy hesitated long enough to condemn himself.
Elizabeth laughed under her breath. “There. I knew it.”
“Bad penmanship may conceal serious faults.”
“It may also conceal an impatient hand.”
“Which is itself a fault.”
“You are severe.”
“So I have been told.”
She rested back against the sofa, the plate balanced in one hand. “Tell me about Pemberley.”
The request struck him with unreasonable force.
“What would you like to know?”
“Anything. You speak of Derbyshire with such attachment, and yet I cannot assemble the whole of it from scattered pieces. I know there are hills, streams, a housekeeper with opinions on impressing visitors, and tenants who object to being maligned before breakfast. I require more.”
Darcy looked across the room. Georgiana had changed to a slower piece, her head bent over the keys, and Mrs. Gardiner sat nearby with her embroidery forgotten in her lap.
Mr. Gardiner had lowered the newspaper, pretending to read.
Darcy suspected everyone within ten feet had heard Elizabeth’s request.
Still, she had asked him.
He could answer her.
Darcy could have given her the account he offered to guests: the age of the house, the situation of the park, the improvements his father had made, the distance from Lambton, the quality of the woods, the approach from the north road.
Such answers came readily, dressed in proper phrases and polished by repetition.
They would satisfy any curious acquaintance.
Miss Bennet was not merely curious.
“Pemberley lies in a valley,” he began, choosing the words with less ease than he liked. “The house stands on rising ground, with woods behind it and the stream below. It is not a grand prospect in the manner some gentlemen prefer. One does not approach it and feel conquered.”
“That sounds a recommendation,” Elizabeth said, drawing her feet a little beneath her skirts as she settled more comfortably upon the sofa. “I do not know that I should like to be conquered by a house.”
“Many houses attempt it.”
“I have met several.”
“Pemberley is large enough to be accused of arrogance, I suppose, but it was built to belong to its place. My father used to say the best compliment ever paid the house was that no one could determine whether the grounds had been arranged for it or it for the grounds.”
Elizabeth held her plate but forgot the cake upon it. “That is a very fine compliment.”
“I think so. The stream winds before the house, then broadens where the banks have been opened. There are woods to the east where the paths are better kept near the house and less obedient the farther one goes.”
“Less obedient paths are always preferable.”
“I had begun to suspect you would think so.” Darcy rested one arm upon the back of the sofa, careful to leave a perfectly suitable distance.
“There is one walk my mother favored. It climbs behind the house through beech and oak. At the crest, if one has patience enough for the ascent, the valley opens below. The house is partly hidden by trees, and the water catches the light in broken pieces. In autumn, the whole hillside changes color before the lower fields have quite surrendered summer.”
Elizabeth did not answer.
Darcy had spoken too much. That must be it.
He had allowed sentiment to enter where description would have served.
Miss Bennet, who could enliven any subject from maps to melancholy poetry, sat with uncharacteristic stillness, her eyes fixed upon him rather than the pianoforte, the room, or even the almond cake she had praised with such sincerity minutes before.
He touched his cheek.
“Have I crumbs?”
Her attention snapped back to the present. “What?”
“On my face. You are staring with such intensity that I must conclude I have disgraced myself with cake.”
Color rose in her cheeks so swiftly that Darcy regretted the question and treasured the answer before it came.
“No,” she said, recovering enough to set the plate upon the low table. “No crumbs.”
“Then I have spoken too long of Pemberley.”
“Not at all.”
She adjusted one glove finger that did not require adjustment. Then, with a small burst of candor that sounded as though it had escaped before prudence could restrain it, she added, “I was thinking that I noticed your honor first.”
Darcy could make nothing of that.
“My honor?”
“Yes.” She glanced toward Georgiana, who had begun the same phrase three times and was now laughing with Mrs. Gardiner over her own mistakes.
“At the museum, even before my aunt introduced you, I thought you spoke honestly. Afterward, I saw how you treated my aunt and uncle, then your sister, then servants, children, people who could be of no use to you. I suppose I formed an opinion of your character before I attended properly to anything else.”
He ought to have thanked her. A gentleman should know how to receive praise without staring like a schoolboy.
Instead, Darcy said, “And now?”
Elizabeth looked at him then, directly enough to undo every sensible arrangement in his head.
“Now I find I have been very foolish.”
“That is difficult to credit.”
“It is true. I have spent so much time admiring your character that I neglected to observe what half the ladies in London must have known long before me.”
Across the room, Georgiana reached the end of the piece and let the final chord fade beneath Mrs. Gardiner’s praise. Mr. Gardiner turned a page of the newspaper with unnecessary noise.
Darcy did not move.
“And what is that, Miss Bennet?”
The question came out lower than he intended.