Chapter Seventeen
Meryton was busy in the late morning, carts edging past one another in the narrow street, voices overlapping in the practiced disorder of a market day.
Darcy crossed it with purpose, coat buttoned, hat low, Brutus pacing at his side with unaccustomed restraint.
The dog drew glances, but Darcy pretended to ignore them.
The clerk looked up as Darcy entered, surprise flickering into recognition and then sharpening into something closer to uncertainty.
“Mr Darcy. Good morning.” He glanced instinctively toward the door, as though expecting explanation to follow.
“Good morning.” Darcy removed his gloves with unhurried precision. “I was told the parish records are kept here.”
The clerk blinked. “They are, yes—but—” He broke off, clearly recalibrating. “May I ask, sir, the nature of your request? You do not reside in Meryton.”
“No.” Darcy folded the gloves and set them aside. “But I am conducting inquiries relating to land use and boundary history in the neighbourhood.”
That earned him a longer look. “I see,” the clerk said, though it was clear he did not. “Most gentlemen apply through the steward at Netherfield, or else consult their own family papers.”
“I have done so. I was advised there may be older references here.”
“Well.” The clerk hesitated, then nodded, already half overmatched by Darcy’s manner. “Yes. Quite possibly. The earlier books are not often requested.”
At that moment, Brutus stepped forward, intending to follow.
“Stay,” Darcy said quietly, without turning.
The dog halted at once, then sat just inside the threshold.
The clerk glanced at him, then back at Darcy. “Is—will he—?”
“He will not interfere,” Darcy said. “Nor move.”
Brutus did neither.
After a moment, the clerk cleared his throat and gestured toward the back room. “If you will follow me, sir. The records are… thorough.”
“I prefer it so.”
The room beyond was a collection of clutter and piles of books, folios, and papers—a mountain of accumulation rather than neglect.
Shelves lined the walls in uneven ranks, ledgers thick with age and habit, some spines cracked, others stiff with long disuse.
Darcy removed his coat and laid it carefully over the back of a chair.
“Where would you wish to begin?” the clerk asked.
Darcy did not answer at once. His gaze had already settled on a particular shelf.
“Enclosure records. Agricultural surveys. Land grants, perambulation records, removed markers, or quitclaims and fines. The older the better. Have you anything copied in the Tudor period or earlier?”
“Tudor! Indeed, Mr Darcy, you are something of an historian.” The clerk paused, then nodded slowly. “That would be… here. And here. Manorial court rolls, certain marginalia. Even some Jacobean era scribblings.” He pulled out one volume, then another. “You may find some duplication.”
“I will manage.” He took the first ledger, opened it, and began.
He worked methodically. Rental agreements. Old surveys. Boundary disputes long settled and never revisited. Names repeated. Names vanished. Notations grew sparse the farther back he pressed, as though the land itself had grown less talkative with time.
Brutus settled near the doorway, watchful.
Darcy traced a finger along a margin, pausing at a note half-crossed out—old stone removed during replanting—with no date and no explanation attached. He turned the page. The next entry referred to a hedge realigned “for convenience.”
He made a note. Then another. He did not allow himself to connect them until he had time to look over them all.
A burst of laughter from the street cut across his concentration. Boots passed the window—heavy, careless, unmistakably martial. The militia, then. He had heard they were to be quartered nearby; Bingley had spoken of little else since it had been announced.
Darcy did not look up at once. When he did, it was only because Brutus had risen.
The dog’s attention fixed on the glass, posture alert but contained. He emitted a small “whuff,” and the hair at his scruff lifted slightly.
Darcy followed the line of his gaze. A man stood across the way, half-turned, speaking to one of the shopkeepers. Darcy saw only his back, the careless angle of his shoulders, the easy confidence with which he occupied the space. He laughed again—an unremarkable sound, indistinct through the pane.
Darcy’s hand stilled on the page. Was that…?
No. That was absurd.
The coat was wrong. The height uncertain. Any number of men walked with that loose assurance. Memory was not proof, and he would not be led by it.
The man followed his fellows, stepped out of view. Brutus remained where he was, but there was the faintest rumble in his deep chest.
Darcy closed the ledger and drew the next one toward him. His attention returned to ink and margin, to lines that could be measured and verified.
By the time he finished, the clerk hovered with polite unease.
“Find what you were seeking, sir?”
Darcy considered the question. “For now.” He gathered his notes, replaced the ledgers precisely where he had found them, and reached for his coat. “Thank you for your time.”
The decanter made a soft, decisive sound as Bingley set it down.
“Now then,” he said brightly, rubbing his hands, “we are agreed that the pheasants cannot possibly have all fled the county at once. I refuse to believe it. Darcy, you will back me up—won’t you?”
Darcy looked up a moment too late. “I beg your pardon?”
Bingley laughed. “There! You see? Proof already. You were not listening.”
“I was listening,” Darcy said. “I was not, however, listening to the pheasants.”
Miss Bingley closed her book with a snap that suggested she had never been reading in the first place. “He has been like this all evening. Present in body, absent in spirit. One would think he had left something unfinished.”
Darcy reached for his glass. “I assure you, Miss Bingley, nothing of consequence has been neglected.”
“Nothing you consider of consequence,” she said sweetly. “Which is an entirely different standard.”
Mrs Hurst reclined a little more deeply on the sofa. “Charles, you were saying something about a ball? I do hope it shall not be too tiresome.”
Bingley seized upon the rescue with enthusiasm. “Ah, yes! A ball. I am convinced it is precisely what the neighbourhood requires. The weather is bound to keep us all indoors soon, and one cannot hunt forever.”
“One can try,” Darcy said.
Miss Bingley laughed. “Oh, Mr Darcy, you are a marvel of encouragement.”
“I was not aware encouragement was my assigned role.”
Bingley waved that away. “We should host it here, of course. Netherfield has not been properly animated in years—that is what the steward said. A fortnight from now, perhaps? Long enough to spread the word, not so long that everyone grows anxious.”
Mrs Hurst nodded, already imagining it. “With proper music.”
“And the very latest dances,” Bingley added. “I shall have the most fashionable musicians brought from Town to ensure it.”
Miss Bingley’s gaze slid back to Darcy. “You are remarkably silent on the subject. Are you not in raptures at the notion, sir?”
“I see no objection,” he said. “If you wish to host a ball, you certainly may.”
“That is not an opinion,” she said. “That is permission.”
He inclined his head. “Then you have it.”
She smiled thinly. “How generous.”
Bingley leaned forward. “Darcy, you must agree it would be pleasant. New friends, good food for the season, a little gaiety—”
“A great deal of observation,” Miss Bingley put in lightly. “We shall all be quite the spectacle, I daresay.”
Darcy met her look. “If one attends a ball, one expects to be observed.”
“Ah,” she said. “But you were observing rather keenly two evenings ago, were you not?”
Bingley blinked. “Was he?”
Darcy set his glass down. “I have no idea what you are referring to.”
Miss Bingley’s smile widened by a fraction. “Miss Elizabeth Bennet’s recovery was quite the evening’s entertainment. One could hardly miss it.”
“I fail to see how concern for a guest’s health constitutes entertainment.”
“Oh, concern,” she echoed. “Yes. Of course.”
Bingley laughed again, a little awkwardly this time. “Caroline—”
“I only mean,” she continued, “that you seemed unusually attentive. Brutus too. One might almost think the household had adopted her.”
Darcy’s expression did not change. “My dog behaves as he sees fit. He is a dog.”
“And yet,” she said, tapping her book against her palm, “he does not follow everyone about the house.”
Darcy’s jaw tightened. “Nor did he follow Miss Elizabeth.”
“No,” Miss Bingley agreed. “He merely escorted her like a knight errant.”
Bingley poked the fire with a stick. “Dogs are excellent judges of character. That is what they always say, is it not?”
Darcy’s gaze lifted. “Dogs are creatures of habit who know which persons are likely to pet them or feed them.”
Bingley cleared his throat. “Well! In any case, she did look improved. Quite herself again.”
Darcy stood abruptly. He moved away from the hearth, crossing to the window as though the darkened grounds might offer something the room did not.
The conversation resumed behind him at once—arrangements, invitations, the certainty that Mrs Bennet would be delighted, the question of whether the militia ought to be included.
Darcy did not turn.
“You will attend, of course,” Bingley said.
“I attend events I am invited to,” Darcy replied.
“That is a yes,” Bingley declared. “Now, then, what of the guest list? Caroline, I trust you are keeping note of everything?”
Miss Bingley was watching Darcy in the glass. “Indeed. Mr Darcy, I cannot help but notice that you are rather restless.”
He turned back at last. “If we are done speculating upon my disposition, I would be grateful to return to matters of substance.”
“Oh, but that is the matter of substance,” she said lightly. “You are rarely so… elsewhere. Meditating on.. What was it? I declare I recall some mention of ‘fine eyes…’”