CHAPTER TWELVE #2
"I will make no such promise."
"Then you admit it!"
"I admit only that Mr Darcy is free to choose and so am I."
"You will be censured. His family will reject you. Society will say you pursued him because a royal grant taught your family ambition."
"Society has said stranger things and survived."
Lady Catherine's voice lowered. "He will regret you."
The cruelty of it reached an old fear. Elizabeth did not answer immediately.
Then she remembered Darcy at the toll house lowering his fist because Georgiana asked, Darcy in the bookshop mud, Darcy refusing to treat the Gardiners as a test.
"That would be his judgment to make," she said. "Not yours."
They returned toward the house.
Darcy waited on the terrace with Sir Thomas. Lady Bennet stood visibly behind the drawing-room window, a curtain held aside in one hand.
Lady Catherine addressed her nephew. "You will return to Rosings with me."
"No."
"You permit this girl to speak to me with insolence?"
Darcy turned to Elizabeth. "Miss Elizabeth does not require my permission to speak."
The answer warmed her more than defense would have.
"Your mother expected you to marry Anne."
Pain crossed Darcy's face at the invocation, but he did not yield. "My mother hoped we might. She did not command it. Anne does not wish it. Neither do I."
"You would abandon your family for people such as these?"
Sir Thomas stiffened. Lady Bennet came through the terrace doors.
"People such as what?" she demanded. "My husband saved your king. My daughters have behaved with greater manners than you since you arrived, and breakfast is cold because you insist upon shouting in the garden."
"My dear," Sir Thomas murmured.
"I am not vulgar, Mr Bennet. I have not mentioned her hat."
Elizabeth covered her mouth. Darcy looked abruptly toward the lawn.
Lady Catherine appeared unable to decide which insult had been offered.
Sir Thomas stepped forward. "Lady Catherine, you are welcome at Netherfield when you can treat its inhabitants with courtesy. Today you cannot. Your carriage is ready."
"You dismiss me?"
"I rescue the remainder of our breakfast."
Lady Catherine looked from Sir Thomas to Darcy and finally to Elizabeth.
"This is not ended."
"It may continue wherever you like," Elizabeth said, "provided I am not required to attend."
The carriage departed with even greater violence than it arrived.
For several seconds no one spoke.
Lady Bennet adjusted her cap. "Her hat was dreadful."
Darcy laughed.
Not a polite breath or hidden smile. He laughed until Sir Thomas joined him and Elizabeth's anger dissolved.
Lady Bennet looked pleased. "Now, if everyone has finished allowing titled women to ruin the morning, there are eggs in the warming dish."
Darcy offered Elizabeth his arm.
"Will you return to breakfast?"
She placed her hand upon his sleeve. "I find I have an appetite."
* * *
Lady Catherine's visit postponed Darcy's proposal by one day and Longbourn's roof postponed it by another.
A storm tore tiles from the western slope during the night. Bingley arrived at Netherfield before breakfast ended, wet at the shoulders and carrying a fragment of slate as evidence.
"The bedrooms are dry, but water reached the old schoolroom. Morris says the roof beneath was sound when the lease began. I will pay for the repair, naturally, but the carpenter believes the entire west side should be replaced."
Sir Thomas examined the slate. "The lease divides structural repairs according to cause, which is an excellent method of employing solicitors and a poor method of keeping out rain. We shall inspect it together."
Darcy rose. "May I come?"
She recognized the intention he had twice gathered courage to express, only to be interrupted first by Lady Bennet's demand concerning breakfast orders and now by weather.
"Of course," Sir Thomas said. "You may prevent Bingley from purchasing gold tiles."
"I suggested copper," Bingley protested.
Jane put a hand over her eyes.
The gentlemen spent the morning at Longbourn. Elizabeth and Jane followed later with Lady Bennet, who refused to trust three men with a house and a hole in the same roof.
Rain had stained one wall of the old schoolroom. The pencil marks recording the girls' heights remained untouched beside the door.
Jane ran her fingers over them. "I had forgotten Kitty was taller than Lydia until Lydia was six."
"Lydia has not," Elizabeth said. "She calls those two years the Great Injustice."
Bingley entered with Darcy. Dust marked his coat, and his hair had lost its fashionable arrangement.
"The beams are sound," he reported. "Sir Thomas says the slate failed because someone used poor nails twenty years ago."
Lady Bennet looked offended. "Mr Hill's cousin repaired that roof. I always said he drank."
"Then history has identified its villain," Darcy said.
While the others inspected the damage, Bingley drew Jane toward the window.
"I have been thinking about Longbourn."
"That is wise in the present room."
"Not the roof. Our future."
Jane's expression softened.