2. The Last Man in the World #2
“I barely know Miss Bennet. I met her briefly during my stay in Hertfordshire last autumn. We danced once, and spoke on perhaps three occasions. I would not describe us as acquainted in any meaningful sense.”
“Then tell me what little you know about her,” Lady Sophia said, her smile pleasant, even ruthless. “Is she pretty?”
The candlelight from the chandelier glinted in Lady Sophia’s eyes, reminding Darcy of Elizabeth Bennet’s rather impertinent ones.
“She has fine eyes,” he said, and immediately wished he hadn’t.
“Fine eyes.” Lady Sophia contemplated her Madeira. “You rode forty-eight miles in a single day to tell me my goddaughter has fine eyes. Your diligence is remarkable.”
“You asked me to describe her.”
“I asked what she is like . You mentioned her eyes. There’s a distinction, and it doesn’t suggest you’re unconcerned.
” She raised a hand before he could argue.
“Very well. She has fine eyes. More importantly, does she seem the sort of woman who will be improved or diminished by London? Does she have any idea how to go on in society, or are beginning entirely from scratch? Begin.”
He cleared his throat. “She is not easily managed.”
“Splendid. Managed women are so very dull. Go on.”
He tried again. The difficulty—which he would not have admitted under direct questioning—was that when he attempted to describe Elizabeth Bennet in the analytical terms Lady Sophia required, the description dissolved into something less useful.
The way her chin had tilted while she was grinding through her indictment of his proposal.
The way she had looked at him when he paused in the doorway, before she turned the whole thing into an obligation.
“She is well-read,” he managed. “Quicker than most people she meets. She tends to find the absurdity in a situation before anything else.”
“Does she find the absurdity in you?”
A pause. “Frequently.”
“Better and better.” Lady Sophia sipped her Madeira with the satisfied air of a woman whose investment was paying dividends. “What else?”
“Her opinions are—” He stopped. Forceful was one word. Devastating was another. Much like her evisceration of his botched proposal. “She does not perform deference,” he said finally. “She will tell you exactly what she thinks, and she will do it in terms that are…” Another pause. “Memorable.”
“How delightful. The ton is absolutely drowning in performed deference. A woman who says what she thinks will either be the sensation of the Season or run out of town by May Day.” Lady Sophia did not appear particularly concerned about either outcome. “And her manners? Her address?”
“She moves well.”
“In what way?”
And he couldn’t help remembering the way she danced, questioning him on his silence, her chin lifted, eyes flashing, and the three miles she walked through muddy fields.
Crossing a room with assurance, completely unmindful of whether she was being observed, which made it precisely impossible for him to stop looking.
“Well?” Lady Sophia prompted. “You seem to be lost in thought, or reviewing especially memorable moments?”
Darcy let the remark pass. He knew better than to engage in verbal fencing with Lady Sophia; he had long since accepted that it was a contest he could never hope to win.
“Her manners are easy. Natural, rather than studied. She may find certain aspects of fashionable society…” He searched for the diplomatic phrasing, “somewhat artificial.”
“She will find it insufferably artificial,” Lady Sophia said cheerfully. “So do I, and I have had sixty years to accommodate the feeling. She will manage. What about the family? You mentioned exuberance.”
“Mrs. Bennet,” Darcy said, in the tone of a man selecting his words from a very short list of polite options, “is spirited. She has nerves, and she mentions them frequently.”
“Every woman in our society has nerves.” Lady Sophia waved this aside. “And the sisters?”
“Miss Bennet is lovely and amiable. Miss Mary is serious—she plays and reads, though her taste in both runs to the improving rather than the enjoyable. Miss Catherine is impressionable. Miss Lydia is fifteen years old and constitutes a category of her own. She told me I had a charming jawline.”
Lady Sophia’s Madeira arrested halfway to her lips. “A charming jawline? How terrifyingly observant of the child. I suppose I shall have to hide the silver when she arrives. What else?”
“She insists that I’m handsome, and Lizzy is mad to—” He caught himself. “Something about my scowl.”
“Indeed?” Her expression was a portrait of innocence.
“How perceptive you are, dear, for a woman you barely knew. It is exactly why I entrusted this duty to you.” She drained the last of her Madeira and set the glass aside.
“Very well. Now that I have extracted the relevant information through what amounts to an excavation of your better instincts, we may proceed to the practical matters. I have already written to Mr. Bennet, a formal invitation for the entire family, sent by express this morning.” She looked at the flickering fire in the hearth.
“They should be receiving it about now.”
“Pardon me? I was not aware that the entire family would descend on?—”
“My dear Darcy. Surely you do not imagine her family, especially a mother with considerable ambition, would decline the invitation. If I am to introduce Elizabeth to the ton , she must have her family about her—however colorful they may be. A young woman alone in London is an object of suspicion. A young woman surrounded by her sisters is merely an heiress with relations. The distinction matters. And the dog, naturally, would be included. What is the terrier’s name? ”
“Nettle,” Darcy said, in the tone of a man reporting a casualty.
“Nettle.” Lady Sophia’s smile was small and private and contained, Darcy suspected, at least three layers of meaning. “What a perfectly apt name. Arrangements for Nettle as well, if you please. I will not have my goddaughter arrive and find her dog left behind in Hertfordshire.”
Her goddaughter’s dog. The dog that had planted itself between Elizabeth and the doorway, its hackles raised and its torn ear at attention, was a four-legged declaration that strangers bearing legal documents and complicated histories were not welcome, thank you very much, regardless of their tailoring or credentials.
“You wish me to arrange transport for seven people and a dog. Is that all?”
“I also require ladies’ maids. Engage two, from the agency on Bond Street—competent, discreet, and not easily shocked, as I suspect the younger Bennets will test all three qualities.
Mr. Bennet will require a valet, though I imagine he will resist the imposition.
And the house must be prepared—bedrooms aired, linens changed, fires laid, and the kitchen provisioned for seven additional persons of varying appetites.
I have been feeding one old woman and a cook for the better part of four decades. ”
“You are describing a week’s work.”
“Three days for a man of energy and efficiency, both of which you possess in abundance when properly motivated. You managed my canal shares through the panic of oh-nine. Surely, you can manage linen, a barouche, and a terrier.”
“The terrier,” Darcy said, “bit me.”
“Then you have already been introduced. You will naturally have occasion to call once the family is settled, in your capacity as trustee. To review the financial arrangements and ensure everything is in order.”
The requirement to call on Elizabeth, wrapped so graciously as a professional obligation, landed with the weight of an anvil dropped over his toes.
“Naturally.”
“Good.” She opened the book to the page marked by a ribbon, signaling that she’d drawn the information and blood she required. “This Elizabeth Bennet, the one you barely know, and yet describe with so much liveliness. Your mother would have liked her, I think.”
Darcy stood, his hand gripping the doorframe. His mother had always admired women who spoke their minds and weren’t afraid to be inconvenient, much like her friendship with Lady Sophia.
She would not have liked how her son had proposed to such a woman. That he had upheld the Darcy standards. His reluctant affections for her were, as he’d declared: Against my will, against my reason, against my character.
“Good night, Lady Sophia.”
“Good night, Fitzwilliam. Do try to sleep. You have several days’ work ahead of you. Mrs. Bennet will have questions about the linen cupboards, and Nettle will require a cushion. I suggest something sturdy.”
He walked back to his townhouse—Number Thirty-Four Grosvenor Street, which shared a wall with Number Thirty-Three, which was Lady Sophia’s—correction: which was, as of this afternoon, Elizabeth Bennet’s. Thirty steps exactly, not that he counted, too close or not close enough.
She is not easily managed, he had told Lady Sophia.
This was, he reflected, the single most comprehensive understatement he had produced in twenty-eight years of determined understatement, and he had a great deal of competition for the title.