Chapter 3
At a quarter past seven on Monday evening, Darcy descended for dinner.
His mother was standing beside the table in the dining room, perfectly attired and engaged in moving a chair to the right of his by a distance so small it could not possibly matter.
Presumably this was the chair Miss Amelia Macomber was to occupy.
“Good evening, Mother.”
“Fitzwilliam.” She touched one of the napkins. “You will try tonight, will you not?”
“I will be a gentleman.”
His mother shook her head at him. “That is not what I asked.”
“I am aware.” Darcy bowed to her and entered the drawing room.
Georgiana was already waiting, no doubt hurried there by her mother. She rose at her brother’s entrance and offered him a weak smile.
“Good evening, Brother.”
“Georgiana.” He took her hand a moment and bowed over it. “You look lovely.”
“Thank you. Mamma had the gown made especially for dinner parties. I do like it.” A small smile escaped her, and their mother, who was now entering the room, gave a soft satisfied sound.
“It looks even better in the candlelight,” she said approvingly.
His uncle Lord Matlock arrived first, his sons behind him. Richard came in laughing and clapped Darcy on the shoulder by way of greeting while the others exclaimed over Georgiana.
“You are looking rather funereal,” Richard said in a low tone.
“Do not laugh. It may very well be my funeral, for my mother is determined.”
“Your mother is always determined.”
“She is especially so tonight. Which means she has expectations for this dinner and when those expectations are not met, she will be unhappy. Which means—”
“We will all be unhappy.” Richard considered him with a soldier’s appraisal. “How thorough was the briefing?”
“Twenty-five thousand pounds. Two elder sisters married well. Plays the harp tolerably. Reads the right things. Says the right things.”
“And?”
“She is, by all accounts, a pretty and sensible young woman.”
“Bloody hell.”
“Richard,” his father interrupted, his voice mild but firm. “Georgiana can hear you.”
Richard lowered his voice even further. “Sensible is a poor harbinger, Cousin. Ladies who are called sensible are invariably as dry as dust.”
Darcy sighed.
“Richard, you will sit between Georgiana and Mrs. Hurst, where you can do the least harm.” Darcy’s mother, behind them, had of course heard everything.
The Hursts had been invited, Darcy knew, so that they could witness his mother pairing him with Miss Macomber. They would presumably relay to Miss Bingley, privately and thus without any loss to her dignity, that she was no longer being considered as a match for him.
Of course, neither was Miss Macomber, for no matter how sensible she might be, she was not Miss Elizabeth Bennet. Darcy closed his eyes for a moment.
“You look unwell,” Richard murmured. “Shall I overturn a candelabrum? A modest fire would certainly clear the dining room.”
Darcy opened his eyes and stared at him.
Richard held up his hands. “I am only attempting to help.”
“Milton,” Darcy’s mother said, “you will be seated by Sir Geoffrey. Fitzwilliam, I do not have to tell you where to sit. And gentlemen, you shall all behave.”
“What have I done?” his uncle asked.
His mother was unable to hide her exasperation. “You brought your younger son.”
Before Richard could protest, the Macombers were announced. The Hursts arrived a moment after.
Sir Geoffrey Macomber was a stout gentleman of fifty with a pleasant, unremarkable face.
His wife was perhaps ten years his junior and still in good looks.
Miss Amelia Macomber, who came in just behind them, was fair, slight, neatly turned out in a suitable gown, a complex coiffure, and a small, polished smile.
Darcy bowed over her hand. “Miss Macomber.”
She dipped into a curtsy. “Mr. Darcy.”
He offered Miss Macomber his arm, and his mother moved them all towards the dining room.
The soup was a clear consommé. Lady Macomber pronounced it excellent. Miss Macomber glanced at her mother before she agreed.
“I have always thought,” Lady Macomber said, “that the true test of a London dinner is how one prepares the soup. Anything may be made of a roast. Soup is an art.”
“Indeed,” said Sir Geoffrey, who was already halfway through his.
“Amelia,” her mother inquired, “what is your opinion?”
Miss Macomber lifted her spoon, which she had set down because her mother had been speaking. “I think it is very well done, Mamma.”
Across the table, Lord Matlock caught Darcy’s eye. The look from his uncle was brief but kind, the commiseration of a man who had sat through many such dinners himself, though he had been fortunate enough to marry before his youngest sister had begun to make matches.
Darcy applied himself to the soup and waited until the root vegetables were being served to try again. “Miss Macomber, I understand that you have been in the country until quite recently.”
“Yes.”
“And how did you find it?”
“Very well.” Miss Macomber appeared to consider her answer complete.
“In what particular?” he prodded. He had offered her the simplest opportunity to reveal something of herself.
A woman who intended to spend her life with a man might reasonably wish him to know a few of her opinions, the things she liked or disliked.
Miss Macomber appeared determined that no such danger should arise.
“I enjoyed some things and enjoyed other things less.”
Darcy kept his expression under good regulation. “You are very moderate.”
“I have always thought it best to be so.”
Darcy lifted his glass of wine and took a sip. This was going to be a long evening.
“Amelia is the most moderate of my daughters,” Lady Macomber said warmly from across the table. “She is never carried away.”
Darcy could not help thinking that there would be, perhaps, particular moments in married life when a degree of enthusiasm might be preferable.
“I fear I cannot agree,” Richard said in a jovial voice from his place down the table. “I am carried away by nearly everything. Last Thursday I was carried away by a ham pie and nearly proposed marriage to the cook.”
A faint look of alarm crossed Miss Macomber’s face, as though she feared this might be the sort of conversation the Darcys often had at their dinner table.
Darcy’s mother looked disapproving, but Richard continued undeterred. “Alas, the cook refused me. She said my income was inadequate.”
His cousin’s jest was met with a small ripple of polite laughter. Lady Macomber first studied Richard, seemed to decide he had intended to be agreeable, and laughed along with the others.
Miss Macomber followed her.
Darcy had known all along, but was certain now: Miss Amelia Macomber would never do.
It was not that Miss Macomber lacked intelligence. As dinner progressed, he could discern she was perfectly capable of understanding most of the opinions in the room.
Unfortunately, she appeared equally determined to agree with them all.
The thought arrived from somewhere—unbidden and unwelcome—that he had once made an uncivil remark in a country assembly room, and the lady so addressed had laughed at him.
She had not winced, not coloured, not appealed to her mother for her view on the subject.
Laughed at him. It was that show of spirit, he realised, that had first intrigued him.
He set his knife down.
“Mr. Darcy?”
He returned his attention to Miss Macomber. “I beg your pardon. You were saying?”
“Only that the meal is very well prepared.”
“It is.”
“My mother asked me to mention, sir, that she had heard your sister plays.”
“She does.” He did not say, And do you play also, Miss Macomber, or are you waiting for your mother’s permission to decide?
He did not say it because he had been raised by Lady Anne Darcy, who had impressed upon him from earliest childhood that certain thoughts must never be spoken aloud if one wished to continue dining inside the house with respectable people.
It was too bad she had not been with him in Meryton.
The thought remained with him through the fish course, through the entrée, and well into the second remove, where it was joined by an increasing suspicion that Miss Macomber might require her mother’s guidance before expressing a preference regarding her opinion of potatoes.
“Do you care for potatoes, Miss Macomber?” Richard asked.
Darcy’s head came up sharply.
Miss Macomber looked towards Lady Macomber.
“I believe Amelia prefers them prepared with cream,” her mother supplied.
“Yes,” Miss Macomber said. “With cream.”
Darcy sipped his wine.
Richard gave Darcy the smallest possible nod, as though he had confirmed some essential piece of intelligence.
Milton coughed into his napkin.
The earl tapped his glass to have it refilled.
Mrs. Hurst, sitting between Richard and Sir Geoffrey, took this moment to begin a long story about Bath, in which her sister figured prominently and her husband not at all. Hurst attended to his food.
Milton smoothly drew Lady Macomber out on the subject of her two grandchildren. Her face softened, and for several minutes she forgot to supervise her youngest daughter.
Miss Macomber ate three bites of potato without seeking approval.
Georgiana glanced at him down the length of the table. The look was fleeting, but perfectly intelligible. His sister, who spoke little herself, nevertheless appreciated people who possessed thoughts of their own.
Darcy answered with a slight movement of the eyes that told her he was doing his best under difficult circumstances.
When he looked away from Georgiana, his mother was watching him.
She generally reserved this cool, evaluative gaze for questionable fashions, inferior physicians, and family members who failed to cooperate with her perfectly reasonable plans.
He sat back feeling like a schoolboy whose examinations had been delayed but not dismissed.
The ladies withdrew and the gentlemen took their port. His mother’s small dinners ran to a strict schedule, so they would be allowed thirty minutes at most. When the end of that time approached, Sir Geoffrey left the room to join his wife and daughter.