Chapter 2 #3
When at last the sound of their horses drew the attention of the group, the young woman looked up. Her expression did not alter with any visible haste. There was a brief moment in which her gaze rested upon them, measuring rather than welcoming, and then she waited.
Darcy cleared his throat. “You are engaged in some business here,” he said. “Pray, what is the nature of it?”
The form of the question, though not openly discourteous, carried an assumption he did not pause to examine until some time later.
The young woman’s brows lifted very slightly, not in offence, but in surprise at being so addressed. “We are determining how best to prepare the soil for next year’s crops,” she replied.
There was no hesitation in her answer, nor any attempt to soften it. She spoke as one accustomed to being understood, rather than questioned.
Darcy regarded her more closely.
The simplicity of her words did not disguise the steadiness of her tone, nor the clarity with which she expressed herself.
It was not the voice of a person unacquainted with careful thought, nor one likely to repeat what she did not comprehend.
Then, too, her voice was even and precise, what he would have thought the voice of an educated person.
For a moment, he found himself uncertain how to reconcile what he observed with what he had supposed.
Bingley, who felt no such hesitation, spoke with easy good humour. “Surely such concerns might be left to the men. It cannot be necessary for young ladies to trouble themselves with the labour of the fields.”
The man beside her laughed readily, with the sort of agreement that requires no consideration. “Aye, sir, that it might. But Miss Elizabeth has her way of seeing things.”
The name fixed Darcy’s attention, though he did not betray it.
The young woman did not laugh. She neither rebuked the remark nor encouraged it, but allowed it to pass with a composure that suggested she found little in it worth answering. Her gaze returned to Darcy, steady and unembarrassed.
It was curious indeed for a tenant’s daughter to be consulting on such work with the menfolk to whom it more properly belonged, but all the same, the steadiness of that look made Darcy abruptly embarrassed to have interfered.
Without remarking upon it, he reached into his pocket and drew out a coin, which he tossed lightly toward her.
“You have been detained from your work,” he said, intending the gesture as a form of recompense rather than dismissal.
“Pray, do not let us interrupt you further.”
The coin fell into her hand.
For a brief instant, she did not move. Her gaze dropped to it, then lifted again to meet his.
For a moment she looked all astonishment.
Were the landholders of the neighbourhood so closed-fisted that they never practiced such small generosities?
At least, Miss Elizabeth certainly had not been expecting it.
The expression she gave him was not one he could readily interpret.
It was not gratitude, nor resentment, but something more deliberate.
Almost as if she considered not the act itself, but something beyond it.
As it was impossible to imagine what might lie behind that consideration, he did not pursue the thought further. “Come, Bingley,” he said, turning his horse without waiting for a reply.
Bingley followed, though not without a backward glance, as his curiosity was not so easily satisfied.
“You have made a conquest already,” he said lightly once they were beyond easy hearing.
“The young women of Hertfordshire appear to be very handsome, even when employed in such unexpected situations.”
Darcy kept his gaze ahead. “You would do well to forget it. Such attentions are seldom without consequence.”
“You see consequences where I see only a pleasant face.”
“You would be wise to distinguish between the two.”
Bingley laughed, untroubled by his caution. “You are determined to find fault with everything.”
“Not with everything,” Darcy replied. “Only with what invites it.”
“You must take care, then, not to be invited too often,” Bingley returned.
“That would require a degree of restraint you are unlikely to exercise.”
The exchange passed between them with the ease of long familiarity, and Bingley’s spirits were soon restored to their usual lightness.
He resumed speaking of the neighbourhood, the assembly, and the various expectations he had already formed, while Darcy answered as required, though his attention was not wholly engaged.
The road curved gradually away from the fields, and the figures they had left behind were soon lost to view. The country resumed its quiet aspect, and there was nothing in the scene before him that should have distinguished it from any other.
Yet the impression of the encounter did not immediately fade.
He had formed his judgement, and yet it no longer felt entirely secure.
There had been nothing remarkable in the situation.
A young woman had spoken with unusual composure; that ought not to have justified any particular attention.
Still, something in her manner, in the steadiness of her voice, and most particularly in the expression of her eyes made her impossible to forget.