15. The Art of Social Dodging #2
“Arthur, you are not selling yourself. Miss Bennet, Arthur’s sensibility is extraordinary. He also weeps at rivers, very large and broad rivers of sentimental tears.”
“Mrs. Craster,” Elizabeth said, “I am sure Mr. Craster’s watercolors are everything they ought to be, and I commend his sensibility, though I confess I prefer oil paints rather than watering with tears. A less damp mode of appreciation, you will agree.”
Allegra deployed a warm smile at Mrs. Craster. “I do believe my aunt requires us for refreshment.”
She spun Elizabeth about and steered them down a new path, retreat executed like a governess redirecting her charge.
“You are magnificent,” Elizabeth told her.
“I have been doing this since I was eighteen. By my third season, invasion becomes instinctive, like breathing or evading one’s great-aunt’s inquiries about marriage prospects.”
“Does your great-aunt enquire often?”
“She has accepted that I am an eccentric spinster by choice and restricts her campaign to biannual sighs.” Allegra’s arm tightened on Elizabeth’s.
“You are doing beautifully. Smile at the woman in blue. No, the other blue. The darker one. She is Lady Jersey, and her opinion circulates through three drawing rooms by teatime.”
Elizabeth flashed a smile at Lady Jersey, earning the sort of nod reserved for those granted a temporary loan of social capital. Behind her, Darcy hovered like a particularly loyal raincloud, while Nettle paraded with her leather ball.
“Mr. Darcy.” Another woman, another son, another elaborate preamble. “Lady Greaves. You know my Arthur, who has recently returned from his grand tour and has the most wonderful things to say about Rome.”
“The Colosseum is very large,” Arthur Greaves offered.
“Arthur, you told me you were profoundly moved.”
“It was August. I was profoundly warm.”
“Miss Bennet, he wept at the Sistine Chapel.”
“What a coincidence,” Elizabeth said. “I have just been informed that weeping is the preferred mode of masculine expression this Season. Mr. Arthur Craster wept at a sunset not twenty minutes ago.”
“Craster?” Lady Greaves snorted dismissively. “Craster has an income of six hundred a year and no living. My Arthur has eight hundred and an estate in Dorset.”
“The estate is a cottage, Mother.”
“It is a charming cottage. With a prospect.”
“The prospect is a sheep paddock.”
Elizabeth caught Darcy’s eye over Lady Greaves’s feathered battlements. His usual glacial composure was slipping—she saw the muscle in his cheek twitch. The urge to shatter that porcelain calm, just to glimpse what hid beneath, was nearly irresistible.
Before she could deploy another barb, Darcy stepped forward, effectively putting his broad shoulder between her and the heir of the Dorset cottage.
“I believe your sister, Miss Mary, requires your attention,” he said.
Elizabeth glanced ahead. Mary was most certainly not asking for her; she was currently thirty paces down the gravel path, deep in an animated discussion with Georgiana that required emphatic hand gestures and appeared to involve the relative merits of the Broadwoods’ pedal technique.
Elizabeth took Darcy’s offered escape with a grateful nod. They slipped out of the parade’s current, side by side, beneath the elms, Allegra and the others drifting ahead and leaving her and Darcy in a rare, quiet pocket.
“The Arthurs of London are waging a systematic campaign,” she said, letting out a long breath as she adjusted her parasol.
“I have met two in the last quarter hour, both offered up to me by their mothers like prime stock at Michaelmas. One weeps at sunsets, and the other at Italian ceilings. I am apparently to choose between their tears.”
“You might prefer a drier suitor,” Darcy murmured. He bent down absently, petting Nettle, who still carried that leather ball, wagging her tail optimistically.
“I should prefer an afternoon without suitors altogether,” she said, her tone losing its sharp, defensive edge and softening into genuine exhaustion. “Give me Lady Sophia, a novel, an armchair, and not a single soul remarking on my complexion or fifteen thousand.”
“Your complexion,” Darcy said, his gaze remaining fixed on the distant line of the Serpentine as if he imagined tossing Nettle’s ball in the middle of a London promenade, “is unremarkable.”
Elizabeth froze in her tracks, her slipper catching on the gravel. She looked up at him, eyes widened, wondering if he had made a jest or an insult.
“Thank you, Mr. Darcy,” she said, her voice dry. “In a town where I have been compared to a duchess, a thoroughbred, and a kid goat, that may well be the kindest thing anyone has said to me today.”
“I did not mean—” He caught himself, his chest rising as he forced the words out. “I meant that remarking upon it is unnecessary. The practice is vulgar. Your features are not… they do not require the endorsement of a Mayfair address to be?—”
“I understood you, Mr. Darcy,” she said, stepping close enough that her skirts brushed his coat. “It was a compliment. Unconventional, yes, but I find I prefer those.”
“You… do?” The hard lines around his mouth relaxed, and he let out a breath. “I find myself often at a loss around you.”
“I am not so difficult to discern.” Elizabeth twirled her parasol, trying to hide a smile.
“I know you wish to lob that leather ball of Nettle’s at Sir Geoffrey Hale and you are just as eager to retire to the library and hide your face behind a large gilt-edged tome—thick and aged—perhaps Homer’s Odyssey or a saga equally long and tedious. ”
“Lady Sophia has decreed that you are to be presented with every last aspect of the London Season, it being your first—” The corner of his lips twisted, a rare, private flash of ironical humor lighting his dark eyes. “And I, as her loyal deputy, am beholden to execute her commands to the letter.”
“A terrifying prospect for us both,” Elizabeth murmured, eyeing the blue cloth of his sleeve. She told herself his devotion to the task was merely the rigid honor of an aristocrat fulfilling a family obligation—the very pride that made him look down on her less orderly relations.
“No, Miss Elizabeth, it is not terrifying, but an honor.” Darcy turned his full stature toward her, stopping in the middle of the pathway, oblivious to the parade of parasols and walking sticks.
Nettle, wagging her stubby tail, dropped the leather ball at his feet, but he was looking only at Elizabeth, his dark eyes arresting hers.
“A lady has only a single first Season, Miss Elizabeth. It can never be repeated. To be permitted to witness yours—to ensure that it is not entirely intolerable to you—is a privilege I do not take lightly. I assure you, obligation has very little to do with it.”
Elizabeth’s breath hitched completely, a sudden, dizzying warmth rushing up to her collarbone.
Privilege? Honor? Was he determined to assist her in finding a match as some kind of penance for the way he had proposed?
To keep his promise never to address her again?
To remain but a guardian, a trustee, and perhaps a friend?
She felt suddenly bare, wit stripped away, panic fluttering as she wondered what he truly meant.
A thin, reedy, frantic cheeping shattered the moment. Elizabeth looked up as a tiny downy fledgling tumbled from a nest and landed on the grass. Above them, its mother circled, calling for him with the frantic energy akin to Mrs. Bennet’s clarion call while in the presence of eligible gentlemen.
Nettle quivered, ears rigid, preparing to pounce.
“Nettle, no!” Elizabeth dropped her parasol, her knees hitting the gravel as she shielded the baby bird.
“Nettle, look!” Darcy snatched the leather ball from the grass and hurled it with a tremendous, low arc straight down Rotten Row, where the highborn ladies promenaded in their open carriages.
Thus distracted, the terrier flew off after the flying leather, her paws throwing up gravel as she forgot the fledgling entirely.
Cradling the baby bird, Elizabeth reached for a low branch, looking up at the nest. She had climbed higher trees than this at Longbourn, having retrieved windblown bonnets as well as the occasional kitten.
“Elizabeth.” Allegra’s hand caught her forearm—gentle, steady, and entirely immovable. “You cannot.”
“It has fallen from the nest.”
“I can see that. And forty of the most malicious tongues in London can see you.”
“It needs to go back home, Allegra, or the cats will have it before nightfall.”
“And your reputation will die in the tree. You are Miss Elizabeth Bennet of Grosvenor Street, not a girl scrambling up oaks in Hertfordshire. Put your hands down.”
Elizabeth obeyed, but the fledgling kept cheeping in her hand, its small, sharp beak gaping wide, as if hungry. Darcy, however, sprang into action, removing his blue coat and handing it to Bingley.
“May I, Miss Elizabeth?” Darcy asked. He bowed to her with perfect, drawing-room formality, extending a single, broad hand for the tiny creature.
Surprised, Elizabeth deposited the fledgling into Darcy’s hand, and the formidable master of Pemberley ascended the elm—in full, unshaded view of the entire Sunday parade.
Bark caught in the fine wool of his waistcoat, and the polished leather of his expensive Hessian boots scuffed against the trunk, but he pulled his massive frame upward.
The fledgling was cupped against his chest, held with the meticulous, exaggerated care one reserved for a thing small, frightened, and easily broken.
Elizabeth’s throat closed up so tightly it ached. His hands were so large, the bird so absurdly small, and yet he placed it back into the nest with the absolute gentleness of a mother.
The sparrow, who did not share Elizabeth’s appreciation for the rescue, shrieked and dived straight at his forehead. Darcy ducked, his shoulder brushing a branch until a shower of dry bark cascaded down onto the path.
On a nearby iron bench, an elegant woman gasped aloud. Somewhere behind them, a severe matron raised her lorgnette, whispering to her companion, “Is that truly Mr. Darcy in a tree?”
“I believe it is,” the other replied, her voice faint with disbelief.
He dropped to the turf with a thud—bark in his linen, an elm leaf tangled in his hair, and a red scratch across his hand courtesy of the ungrateful mother bird.
“Give me your hands,” Elizabeth said. “You’re hurt.”
Before she could censure herself, she removed her gloves and took his bare hands in hers, examining the scratch and the scraped skin from the rough bark.
“I dub thee, Sir Darcy, Knight of Foundling Fledglings,” she said, voice light and arch to disguise her racing heart. She turned his hand, thumb brushing the scratch, and for one wild second nearly pressed her lips to it.
She caught herself just in time. She had caused enough scandal for one Sunday, but as she looked up into his dark, arrested eyes, a strange, liberating clarity washed over her.
“I suppose the entire ton is planning our social execution,” she whispered, her fingers lingering against his skin for one rebellious heartbeat longer. “But I find I do not much care what those forty pairs of eyes think, Mr. Darcy… so long as the one pair that matters approves.”
Darcy’s breath caught, a fierce light flaring in his eyes that made her knees weaker than any tree-climbing ever had.
“I believe,” Darcy murmured, his voice a low, rough vibration that seemed to reach down into her very soul, “this is the part where the knight assures the lady that he requires no other approval in this kingdom. But as for the rest of our company…”
Nettle’s leather ball dropped between them, and the terrier barked, tongue lolling in triumph. Elizabeth burst out laughing, tension dissolving into delight, and beside her, Darcy actually chuckled.
“Yes,” Darcy said, looking from the muddy toy up to Elizabeth’s blooming face, the corner of his lips twisting with that rare, ironical humor. “I believe Nettle approves eminently.”