33. Exit the Dragon
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
EXIT THE DRAGON
Elizabeth seized Charlotte’s arm and drew her from the lane as a sleek, black barouche raced around the final curve with four powerful greys straining at their traces and the coachman’s whip urging them faster, the two footmen barely hanging on as they perched on the footboards.
“Some people,” Elizabeth muttered, watching the mud spray across the frozen ruts, “ought to be restricted to private roads or very large ballrooms where the collateral damage is limited to broken china.”
“Good heavens,” Charlotte blew out a breath, her hand flying to her bonnet. “Is that the de Bourgh crest?”
“If it is,” Elizabeth said, her eyes narrowing as the carriage hurtled toward Longbourn, “it can only mean that Rosings Park has run out of targets for her ladyship’s unsolicited condescension, and she has migrated north to inspect our chimneys.”
“I have never met her ladyship,” Charlotte’s expression tightened. “As to why she is throwing her weight of consequence here in Hertfordshire, I have no idea.”
“Oh, that is easily solved,” Elizabeth retorted with an arch lift of her brow.
“She is either hunting stray nephews to interrogate, or she requires someone immediately to squash. My mother’s drawing room is currently the most heavily stocked aviary of unsuspecting victims in three counties; she will feel right at home. ”
“Heaven help us,” Charlotte murmured, her steps faltering as she considered the domestic battlefield ahead.
“Mamma and Maria are already inside calling on your mother. I can only imagine how ill-prepared Mamma is to encounter a magnate of Lady Catherine’s magnitude without at least twenty minutes’ warning to adjust her cap and her opinions. ”
“Do not worry,” Elizabeth replied dryly.
“Lady Catherine will undoubtedly inform your mother within two sentences precisely how her caps are deficient and her opinions superfluous.” She frowned slightly, a sudden thought checking her stride.
“Though if her ladyship is scouring the county, could she have come to fetch stray nieces, too? Georgiana is currently shut in the parlor with Lydia and Kitty. I trust she will be warned by my mother’s loud proclamations for the good tea—the very best tea of the Empire. ”
Elizabeth glanced at the lane and saw movement, Charlotte’s father standing by the hedge, ostensibly examining a rosebush with tremendous interest. Mrs. Long’s chaise had turned in the lane, its occupant craning her neck toward the house.
The Phillips’s gig was visible further back, and Elizabeth suspected that by sunset, every household in the county would know that Lady Catherine de Bourgh had descended upon Longbourn quite unexpectedly.
The two friends continued their walk at a pace that was neither hurried nor leisurely. Elizabeth would not run from Lady Catherine, but neither would she rush to meet her. Let the woman wait in the drawing room and wonder why her arrival had not produced the immediate genuflection she expected.
By the time Elizabeth and Charlotte reached the house, half of Meryton hovered in the vicinity of Longbourn’s gates.
Sir William Lucas had hurried his steps and was already on the drive, smoothing his waistcoat and clearing his throat.
Mrs. Long was stepping from her chaise, and Aunt and Uncle Philips were halting their horse.
“They must have followed the grand equipage like the Pied Piper leading a trail of gossip-starved rats,” Elizabeth observed, eyeing the growing assembly with a dry smile. “One more spectator and we shall need to charge for admission.”
She and Charlotte entered the drawing room through the side door while Lady Catherine’s footmen were still struggling with the folding steps that came down from the carriage.
Lady Lucas was already inside, taking tea and gossip, and Mrs. Bennet stood, mid-flutter, holding a tea towel and a spray of winter jasmine, unable to decide where to place either to advantage.
Jane, of course, sat at her window seat, dreamily embroidering, entirely unconcerned while Kitty and Lydia had retreated to the doorway, where they hovered like spectators at a public hanging.
Mary, meanwhile, marched self-importantly into the drawing room with a stack of sheet music, preparing to provide accompanying music for whatever drama was about to unfold.
“Good heavens,” said Lady Lucas. “Whose carriage is that?”
“It is Lady Catherine de Bourgh,” Elizabeth said, tossing her pelisse over a chair. “She drives at a speed that nearly reduced poor Charlotte to an ornament upon the carriage wheels before she even reached the front step.”
The front door opened, and Hill’s deferential voice was overshadowed by an imperious one, accustomed to universal obedience.
Elizabeth had never met the lady herself, but she had heard enough from the voluble Mr. Collins when he spent all of two days courting her with disastrous results; may his departed soul find peace.
She was, to the letter, as Mr. Collins had described: tall, angular, sharp of feature, and arrayed in a traveling pelisse of dark green whose price would have funded the Longbourn chimneypiece and perhaps a new grate besides.
Her eyes, cold and unblinking, swept the room with undisguised contempt, surveying the furnishings, the company, and the general insufficiency of all that dared not aspire to Rosings Park.
“Miss Elizabeth Bennet.” Lady Catherine’s voice was a cannon shot with the emphasis on Elizabeth’s Christian name. “I am here on a matter of urgent importance.”
“So I gathered,” Elizabeth replied, entering with Charlotte securely at her side and removing her gloves with a studied leisure.
“Your arrival has set Meryton in a positive ferment, Lady Catherine. In fact, you very nearly hastened my companion, Mrs. Collins—Mr. Collins’s widow, as you may recall—into the next world before she had the pleasure of your acquaintance. ”
“Mrs. Collins,” Lady Catherine repeated, her thin lips thinning further as she cast a dismissive glance at Charlotte. “Ah. The unfortunate young woman who buried my late parson so prematurely. One would have thought she might remain quietly in her widowhood rather than loiter on public highways.”
“The lane, madam, belongs to Longbourn,” Charlotte replied with a serene, unbothered curtsy that visibly infuriated the visitor.
Before Lady Catherine could formulate a suitable snub, Mrs. Bennet fluttered forward, desperate to seize control of the hospitality.
“Your ladyship is most welcome! Though we are quite crowded today, with Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy—well, not Mr. Darcy at present, of course, but our dearest Jane and Elizabeth so soon to be settled. Sir William, do step back a trifle; you are eclipsing the winter jasmine!”
Sir William Lucas, however, was not a man to be eclipsed by anyone short of royalty.
He bowed low, a magnificent sweep of his hand indicating the room at large.
“A red-letter day for Longbourn, Lady Catherine de Bourgh! To be graced by Rosings Park is an honor we shall long commemorate. Allow me to present my good wife, Lady Lucas, and our younger daughter, Maria—though she is quite grown now, and almost ready for court, or at least a very good assembly.”
Lady Catherine merely inclined her chin by a fraction of a degree, as though acknowledging a particularly bothersome spaniel.
Jane rose from the window seat and was introduced next, receiving nothing more than a glacial stare that implied her beauty was an impertinence.
Mary took this as her cue to step forward, clutching her sheet music.
“Perhaps your ladyship is fond of sacred motets? I have been practicing a particularly rigorous translation of—”
“I am partial to silence, young lady,” Lady Catherine snapped, cutting Mary off mid-cadence.
At the back of the room, Kitty and Lydia began a violent contest of suppressed giggles, their shoulders shaking until Mrs. Bennet threw a look of such absolute terror their way that both girls abruptly stiffened into statues of mock solemnity.
“Miss Elizabeth Bennet.” Lady Catherine’s gaze snapped back to Elizabeth, ignoring the rest of the assembly entirely. “I require a private word with you.”
Elizabeth felt a persistent pulse in her chest—not anger, exactly, but the thrill that preceded the most considered of her responses. She met Lady Catherine’s gaze and did not rise.
“Your ladyship is welcome to speak freely. Whatever concerns you may address them before my family and our friends. We have very few secrets here, and even fewer privacy screens.”
“I do not consider this a matter for general consumption.”
“Then I am sorry to disappoint you, but I do not conduct private interrogations at the command of visitors who arrive unannounced.”
Lady Catherine’s nostrils flared. “You will not address me in that impertinent manner, Miss Bennet. I am not accustomed to being addressed with such—”
“Wit?” Elizabeth suggested, tilting her head with an air of earnest helpfulness. “Directness? A failure to grovel appropriately? My deepest apologies. Longbourn has been somewhat deficient in its genuflections lately. We have had more pressing concerns.”
“Elizabeth,” Mrs. Bennet whispered, her face ashen while Lydia and Kitty predictably giggled with great delight and were immediately shooed to the staircase.
“It is quite all right, Mamma. Her ladyship has plainly come all this way to deliver a thunderbolt, and it would be cruel to deny her an audience.”
“Then hear me,” Lady Catherine pronounced, her face mottled with imperial fury. “What I have to communicate will bring you to your senses, provided you possess any.”
“And I shall hang upon every word, if only to secure sufficient material to entertain the parish for a fortnight.” Elizabeth languidly reclined against the settee, while Lady Catherine advanced to the chair nearest the fire, arranging her heavy silks with the majestic air of a monarch bestowing a rare favor upon the upholstery.