Chapter 1 #2
“No,” Miss Elizabeth said, “no, I…”
She peered down at her dress, and Darcy looked as well.
In the fall, the girl’s gown, a charming confection in green, had been badly torn, so much so that for a brief moment, he spied a portion of her body that was not ever meant to be seen by anyone save a lady’s husband. He swiftly averted his eyes.
“Lizzy!”
Now an older matron was present, whose still pretty face resembled Miss Bennet and Miss Elizabeth. “Lizzy, oh, cover yourself, my dear. Oh, Lizzy!”
Darcy looked around quickly. A circle had promptly formed, and while some of the older women appeared sympathetic and worried, many of the observers were obviously titillated and excited by Miss Elizabeth’s accident.
This was, he realized with disgust, especially true of Bingley’s sisters, who were both wearing superior smiles.
They did think rather a lot of themselves.
“I am sorry,” Darcy said stiffly. “That is, I apologize for the fall, which was not intended at all. I hope you are not injured?”
Miss Elizabeth’s arms were crossed in front of her chest, and her breathing was fast. “I am not. It is no great matter…”
She trailed off now, and her eyes were suddenly huge in her expressive face.
Darcy followed her gaze to a well-dressed man of some five and forty years, who was staring at the girl with a furious expression.
“No great matter?” the man demanded.
Miss Elizabeth gulped and said, “It was an unfortunate accident, that is all. Mr. Darcy happened to step on my dress and … and…”
She trailed off, her eyes now shiny with tears. The older man stared at her with disgust and turned toward Darcy.
“Mr. Darcy?” he asked.
Darcy straightened his back. “Yes.”
“Of Pemberley in Derbyshire?”
Darcy was not surprised at this individual’s knowledge of his circumstances. Pemberley was one of the finest estates in all of England, after all.
“Yes,” he said rigidly. “I do apologize for the fall, which was, I promise you, quite unintentional. Are you her father?”
The man turned bright red at these words, and his eyes narrowed. “I am not. My name is Mr. Stirling, and I am … I was engaged to Miss Elizabeth.”
It was odd, Darcy thought, how a room full of people could suddenly fall so silent. He could hear nothing but the whisper of ladies’ skirts and the murmurings of the gentlemen in the nearby card room.
A full thirty seconds passed before Miss Elizabeth whispered, “Was? What do you … that is, whatever do you mean, Amos?”
The man drew himself up to his not very impressive height and said, “That is Mr. Stirling to you, Miss Elizabeth. The betrothal is at an end. Do you think I would marry a woman who has been compromised by another man?”
Again, a few seconds passed in silence, and then the older matron, Miss Elizabeth’s mother, began pleading, “No, no! Mr. Stirling, pray do not! It is nothing, I promise you, nothing at all! It was an accident! Our good neighbors, I assure you, understand entirely. Oh Mr. Stirling, you could not be so cruel!”
Mr. Stirling cast a look of loathing at Mrs. Bennet and said, “It is not cruel to refuse to wed a besmirched woman, and as for your neighbors, I have no doubt that this unpleasant event will be talked about for weeks if not months. Moreover, Mr. Darcy and his friends are members of the haut ton, and I have no intention of being the laughingstock of Town by marrying a country hoyden!”
Mrs. Bennet promptly fell into full hysterics, and Miss Bennet moved to assist her, along with a plain woman of some thirty years of age.
“Darcy.”
He turned toward his cousin, who said softly, “I think we had best leave.”
“Yes,” Darcy agreed.
***
Drawing Room
Longbourn
Thirty Minutes Later
Mr. Bennet did not usually spend time in his own drawing room, for the very simple reason that it usually contained his wife and at least one of his daughters.
All of the Bennet womenfolk were good for a laugh, some more than others, but of the six of them, only Jane and Lizzie could be relied upon for anything more than that.
Mrs. Bennet and her three younger daughters afforded a great deal of amusement to any person possessed of reasonable wit, but likewise their frivolity and noise could quickly become irritating to a well-ordered mind.
At the moment, however, the ladies were out of the house, and Mr. Bennet was sprawled comfortably in an armchair beside the fire, his feet up on an ottoman, with a book in his hands.
The book, a philosophical treatise, had caught his eye on his last trip into Meryton, and he had perused its pages for a few minutes before deciding to purchase it.
So far it was not particularly interesting, but Mr. Bennet was far too comfortable to even consider getting up and making his way to his library for another selection.
Mr. Bennet glanced up at the clock to judge how long the peace would last before his womenfolk returned.
It was not yet midnight, and Mrs. Bennet and her daughters never came home before the end of the assembly.
Tonight they had extra incentive to stay until the very end, so it would be at least another two hours before they all came tumbling in the front door, burbling out their news and observations and opinions.
Mr. Bennet would end up hearing all about it, whether he wanted to or not.
Tonight, he did not even truly mind; he was idly curious about their new neighbor and might even be able to pick out a few facts from the exaggerations in his wife’s wash of talk.
In any case, Jane and Lizzy could be trusted to speak accurately.
Bennet supposed that sometime soon he might make time to call on Mr. Bingley.
Longbourn was, after all, the closest estate to Netherfield, and it would be odd if Bennet did not call on Bingley, eventually.
Indeed, it was rather odd he had not done so already, but he had simply had too much on his mind recently to be making morning-calls.
If Bingley paid inordinate attention to one of the girls tonight, though, Bennet would make time to visit the man.
Rumor had it that the newcomer was both handsome and rich.
Of course, wealth tended to automatically render the homeliest man handsome.
Mrs. Bennet was already in a flutter of excitement over their new neighbor, and she would definitely be beside herself after meeting him in person.
Give Mrs. Bennet the slightest whiff of a remotely eligible man, and the lady heard wedding bells and started planning her daughters’ trousseaus.
Mr. Bennet had no doubt that she would come back firmly convinced that this Mr. Bingley was more than half in love with one of the girls.
Let her flutter and twitter herself into a frenzy of wishful thinking; it did no one any harm and would make it easy to tease her.
Her famed nerves had at least been soothed by the upcoming nuptials of Elizabeth.
He sighed at the thought; Mrs. Bennet might be pleased by Lizzy’s wedding, but he was not.
He would miss his most intelligent daughter.
Jane was sweet and kindly, but Elizabeth was most like him and shared his sardonic sense of humor. He would feel her loss keenly.
He shook his head mournfully. If only Mr. Stirling had taken a fancy to one of the other girls!
If only there had been another option. But Stirling had been adamant that he would have Elizabeth and no other.
So it fell to the brightest and most vibrant of Bennet’s daughters to be the sacrifice to save the family. There was nothing to be done now.
Bennet marked his place and stood, crossed to the hearth, and lifted the poker to jab at the logs.
The fire leapt up, generating more light and heat for the room.
He stood a moment beside the fire, hands held out toward the flames as the chill that had been creeping into the room was slowly beaten back.
Noise and commotion from outside the room drew his attention, and Mr. Bennet turned his head in surprise.
It was far too early for Mrs. Bennet and the girls to have returned from Meryton, but he distinctly heard familiar feminine voices in the vestibule.
Hysterical feminine voices, no less. The loudest he recognized as his wife, who was yelling at the top of her lungs.
Something catastrophic must have occurred.
He was out of the drawing-room door in a trice, sped along by astonishment and alarm.
Never had he taken so short a time to traverse the corridor from the drawing room to the front vestibule, where he stopped short, unable to go any further.
Crammed into the space were not only his wife and daughters, but the butler, Hill, the housekeeper, Mrs. Hill, and two of the maids.
Mrs. Hill was trying to soothe her mistress, and the maids were trying to soothe the equally agitated Kitty and Lydia, but none of them could be heard over Mrs. Bennet’s continuous wailing.
Mrs. Hill took charge, and in short order all six ladies were peeled out of their pelisses and bonnets, and the maids bundled the garments into the cloakroom.
Jane gestured to the housekeeper, getting on one side of her mother.
Mrs. Hill took Mrs. Bennet’s arm, and together the two women half guided and half carried Mrs. Bennet towards the stairs, her hysterics muffling as they moved away.
Sally and Sarah escorted Kitty and Lydia in their mother’s wake, with Mary trailing behind looking stunned and horrified.
Mr. Bennet watched these proceedings in flat astonishment and distress. Left alone with his second daughter, he turned towards her, taking in her extreme pallor and the way she clutched with both hands at the neck of her dress.
“Lizzy, whatever has happened?”
Elizabeth gulped, steadied herself, and said, “I was compromised at the assembly, Father. Mr. Stirling has ended our engagement.”