15. The Art of Social Dodging
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE ART OF SOCIAL DODGING
Hyde Park at the fashionable hour was, Elizabeth decided, a Meryton assembly mounted on the scale of the Roman Colosseum.
The tailoring was finer, the horseflesh pricier, and the promenade filled to the borders with the cream of London society, arranged in a dazzling composition of silk, feathers, and suffocating consequence.
Elizabeth, of course, had mixed feelings about the entire show. She had always been curious about this public exhibition, the art of seeing and being seen, but as with everything in London, the stakes were much higher than mere observation, and the promenade was not a casual stroll.
Allegra and Lady Sophia had absolutely insisted upon the Bennet sisters participating—especially after their triumph at the musicale. To hide away now, Sophia had argued, would look like provincial cowardice.
“I absolutely wish for all the fashionable ladies and gentlemen to behold my fashionable goddaughters,” Lady Sophia had declared from behind her breakfast chocolate. “Miss Courtenay will be your guide and Mr. Darcy your guard.”
The old dear had chuckled, quite amused at the prospect of impending chaos. “I shall be wanting a full accounting upon your return.”
Lady Sophia had promptly buried herself in a novel, abandoning the younger set to their so-called field of battle.
Not that they were truly unsupervised—Darcy had been deputized as guardian of both sisters and terrier.
Nettle, for her part, trotted along the gravel with such reckless joy that Elizabeth half-expected the empire to collapse from sheer embarrassment.
Battle was the right word. One moment, she’d been safe in the parlor; the next, she was shoved onto a stage with no script and far too many spectators. The air reeked of lavender water and road dust, and every glance felt like a calculation.
“Stay close to me.” Allegra tucked Elizabeth’s arm through hers with the grip of a stalwart governess. “Do not stop walking unless I stop. If someone approaches from the left, I shall manage them. If they approach from the right, Mr. Darcy will intercept. From the front, we resort to wit.”
“And if we are surrounded?”
“Then we pray for rain.”
In Meryton, no one ever stared at the Bennet sisters for long—second-hand gowns and clever ribbons did not inspire curiosity. Now, with a modiste’s line of credit, a Mayfair address, and a trustee in a blue coat, Elizabeth found herself learning Allegra’s art of social dodging.
An occupation Darcy was no doubt adept at.
He stalked three paces behind her, silent like a granite wall.
Elizabeth’s mind, traitorous as ever, replayed his unfinished confession—had he truly believed she would one day thank him for his condescension?
That she’d be grateful he’d fallen in love with her despite every sensible objection, including her lack of fortune?
No, Darcy had been reluctantly compelled by his godmother to escort her, playing trustee and deputy for her London Season.
She was under no illusion that he had changed the way he thought about her—other than the fact that she had gone from below notice, an invisible country girl, to heiress with a brand new fortune that made even Pemberley look modest—setting herself up as a primary target in the Mayfair marriage mart.
Jane and Bingley were lost in a bubble of their own, although fragments of the crowd’s gossip floated by like debris on a river: “Fifteen thousand… summered in Hertfordshire… a tradesman’s son… heard he left before the sister inherited. Now look how he stares…”
Jane appeared to bear the scrutiny without a single scratch to her serenity, her beautiful face blooming as she listened to Bingley detail some ridiculous adventure involving a tandem-driving whip.
To Elizabeth’s left, Mary pointed toward the canopy of leaves overhead, tapping Georgiana’s wrist to draw her attention away from a group of staring dandies.
“The elms along the Serpentine are Ulmus procera ,” Mary announced, her voice ringing out with the rigid clarity of a schoolroom primer.
“The common English elm. They can grow to a hundred and thirty feet if the soil is favorable.”
She was in high spirits and good form. Mr. Darcy had pronounced her the most accomplished of the Bennet sisters after her performance, and Mary wore that praise like a coat of mail.
Elizabeth’s heart twisted with a pang of gratitude for that small kindness, even as his nearness made her chest tighten uncomfortably.
“Here comes the first wave,” Allegra warned, tightening her hold on Elizabeth’s arm as three gentlemen in high cravats detached themselves from the railing. “Heads up, Elizabeth. The wolves have sighted the lamb.”
A matron in lemon-colored silk bore down upon them, trailing a young man who looked like he was being led to his own execution. “Miss Bennet! How pleasant to encounter you and your entourage. I am Mrs. Craster, and this is my Arthur. He has the soul of a poet. He weeps at sunsets.”
“Miss Bennet.” A man on horseback maneuvered around Mrs. Craster and her sunset-weeping son. He tipped his hat. “Sir Geoffrey Hale. I believe we have a mutual acquaintance in Mr. Darcy.”
Darcy drew abreast with her, putting himself between Elizabeth and the horse’s head. “Sir Geoffrey. I was not aware you were in London.”
“Just arrived Tuesday. Heard about the musicale. Lady Prideaux told my mother about you, Miss Bennet, and my mother told me, and here I am. I am told you walk with great determination.”
“My reputation precedes me.”
“And may I say—” Mrs. Craster dragged her Arthur around the horse’s flank. “Miss Bennet, that my Arthur has penned a sublime couplet of his view from Scafell, where he has captured the sun setting across the great blue sea.”
Sir Geoffrey moved his horse closer and bent down. “Miss Bennet, I was hoping to ask whether you might be inclined to ride.”
Nettle barked at the horse, whipping herself around the hooves, and Elizabeth feared the horse would trample her puppy.
Darcy moved to intervene. “Miss Bennet was hoping to find a seat along the path before the sun became too warm. Perhaps, we can converse about horses and sunsets in the shade.”
He said it with perfect neutrality, and Elizabeth understood the subtext beneath the civility: I am extracting you, and you will thank me later.
“Forgive me,” Elizabeth said to the assembled company, deploying the warm smile Allegra had taught her. “Mr. Darcy is quite right. The sun is fierce today.”
It was a perfect extraction. Sir Geoffrey was left to address Arthur Craster’s shoulder as Darcy scooped up Nettle, and the horse tossed its head, almost sending the weeping Arthur and his mother into the hedgerows.
“That was very economically done,” Elizabeth murmured.
“I have no idea what you mean,” Darcy retorted.
“You displaced a baronet from a position he had spent five minutes securing, and you did it without raising your voice.”
Darcy’s face twitched into that almost-smile she’d glimpsed at the musicale—closer to a grin than he ever allowed in public. They managed three blissful steps of silence before the next wave of acquaintances breached the seawall.
“Miss Bennet! Have you received Lady Harewood’s invitation?” Mrs. Rolleston drifted into their orbit. “After the musicale, she was most eager to secure the Bennet sisters. Such refinement, such grace—I believe that is what she said.”
“We have indeed,” Elizabeth replied, offering a smile that was practiced and perfectly hollow. “Though for the particulars, you must excuse me. I have surrendered the management of my calendar to Mr. Darcy. He is currently weighing the merits of the Harewood ball against my other engagements.”
Mrs. Rolleston blinked, her fan faltering in mid-air. “How singular. Though I suppose, quite sensible. My Nathaniel is a great enthusiast for the supper dance. He is quite the connoisseur and, I am told, an excellent lead to the supper table. Aren’t you, Nathaniel?”
“Yes, Mamma. My opinion of the soup course is quite lyrical,” Nathaniel said, with the weary patience of a man whose mother had attributed a great many opinions to him during meals he could not recall.
“Lizzy.” Jane had dropped back, slightly flushed. “That woman by the oak just asked Mr. Bingley whether his intentions toward me had been formalized. In those words. In his hearing.”
“What did Bingley say?”
“He turned the color of a radish and said he was honored by my acquaintance. Which satisfied no one.”
“Jane, you must?—”
“I know.” Jane’s composure held, but her fingers pressed against her reticule. “I know, Lizzy.”
Bingley’s enthusiasm was a gift and a danger, because the ton remembered what the ton had witnessed last winter: a tradesman’s son paying court at Netherfield, disappearing without explanation, his sisters calling nowhere near Gracechurch Street despite Jane’s visit, and now this same man reappearing at Jane’s elbow once Elizabeth had been elevated.
The whispers were not kind. They were all about keeping score.
By the time the party reached the elms along the Serpentine, Nettle had discovered a swan and was barking with the enthusiasm of a creature who had never heard of decorum. The promenaders glared, as if dogs and fashionable walks were mutually exclusive.
Mrs. Craster and her Arthur approached, with the son looking even more like he was headed for the gallows.
“Miss Bennet! How soon we meet again,” Mrs. Craster trumpeted. “Did you know my Arthur paints watercolors?”
“How lovely,” Elizabeth replied with a flick of her fan.
“He painted the most exquisite view of the Thames last Sunday. Arthur, describe the painting to Miss Bennet.”
“It was a painting of the Thames, Mother.”
“But the light, Arthur. Tell her about the light. And how you wept at the sunset.”
“The sunset was most affecting.”