Chapter 6 #2
“Our spaniel was born at Christmas. Miss Darcy is very attached to him. We call him Pudding.”
Elizabeth laughed to cover the embarrassment of her inattention. “What a wonderful name.”
“Oh, he was not christened so. He earned the name by stealing one of Cook’s Christmas puddings.”
“Ah. A name won by merit.”
Miss Pelham giggled. “Or appetite. My father says one must not reward vice, but the name had taken hold before justice could be done.”
“And is Pudding fond of everyone?”
“Not like this. With Miss Darcy he is quite overcome. Last Tuesday he laid his head upon her shoe during tea and heaved a heartbroken sigh.”
“And Miss Darcy?”
“She looked steadily at the teapot and pretended nothing was happening.”
Elizabeth chuckled. “I confess, I can imagine it very well.”
Miss Pelham leaned in. “But when she left, there was a biscuit missing from her plate that I had not seen her eat, and Pudding was discovered beneath the settee, entirely restored.”
“A very satisfactory conclusion,” Elizabeth said.
Miss Bingley dropped her handkerchief a second time, and Mr. Darcy bent to retrieve it.
Of course he did. He was a gentleman. When a lady dropped a handkerchief, a gentleman retrieved it.
Elizabeth knew perfectly well there was nothing in it and was therefore irritated that she had noticed it at all.
Miss Pelham was still speaking. “Georgiana pretends not to like him, but she always brings him a crust.”
“Mr. Darcy?” Elizabeth asked, before she could stop herself.
Miss Pelham blinked, then laughed. “Pudding.”
Elizabeth laughed along. “Very wise of Miss Darcy. Gentlemen are less easily tempted into better behaviour with crusts. They must at least be offered cake.”
At that moment Miss Bingley accepted her handkerchief back with a smile of exquisite gratitude, as though Mr. Darcy had not merely rescued it from the grass but preserved her from ruin. Elizabeth returned her attention to Miss Pelham and applied herself to the strawberries.
Miss Bingley was still standing next to Mr. Darcy—a little closer now.
Miss Pelham, unaware that Elizabeth’s attention was divided between the marquee and the lemonade table, continued cheerfully.
Elizabeth caught “Mrs. Reynolds,” “orchard,” and “apricots,” and supplied what answers she could while observing that Mr. Darcy did not appear to be encouraging Miss Bingley.
He was polite. He was attentive enough to satisfy civility and no more.
He held his hands behind his back. His gaze had gone to his sister and then the river, but not once, Elizabeth was sure, had they sought out Miss Bingley.
Then Miss Bingley took his arm.
It was done lightly, naturally, ostensibly to draw his attention towards some prospect across the lawn. Nothing could be objected to. Nothing untoward had occurred.
Elizabeth’s fork stopped above her plate.
Miss Pelham, still speaking, did not notice. “And so Elinor said the gardener might have the rest of Derbyshire, but not the strawberry bed.”
“That seems fair,” said Elizabeth.
Miss Bingley was smiling up at Mr. Darcy. Mr. Darcy regarded her, grave and civil, and Elizabeth discovered, to her great annoyance, that she was no longer amused. She had been willing to admire the campaign when it was only strategy. She liked it less now that it had reached its object.
The feeling was unmistakeable. But it was also absurd.
Elizabeth Bennet, who had immediately and harshly rejected Mr. Darcy’s proposal of marriage, was jealous of Miss Bingley, who had her hand on his arm.
She took a strawberry but found it sour. She grimaced.
Across the rugs, Mr. Darcy gently disengaged his arm to hand a plate to little Miss Atherton, who had appeared silently and expectantly beside him. Miss Bingley’s smile faltered for no more than half a second.
The next strawberry was excellent.
Miss Pelham followed her glance, then looked back at her with the beginning of a smile. “Miss Darcy says the strawberries are best when very dark.”
“So I find,” said Elizabeth, and forced herself to attend to the conversation.
Miss Pelham required very little encouragement to continue.
She returned to the strawberry bed and their gardener’s long war against it.
“He says the ground is wasted, and Elinor says it is not, and they have not been on speaking terms since Lady Day”—and Elizabeth nodded in the right places, ate the dark berries one after another and did not look at Mr. Darcy, or at Miss Bingley, or at the three feet of lawn the two of them happened to occupy.
She had not known a person could be kept so busy declining to see a single thing.
Between all the food and now the strawberries, Elizabeth was beginning to feel full and was forced to admit that Miss Bingley was not the problem. Miss Bingley was only doing what Miss Bingley did. A fortnight ago, Elizabeth might have watched the entire gambit with only a little twinge of regret.
Now she minded. But she could not deny that she had already declined Mr. Darcy’s offer, and he was unlikely to renew it. Especially not when she had refused with such zeal.
There. She had arrived, by way of a twice-dropped handkerchief and a sour strawberry, at a position of perfect absurdity, wanting the one thing she had taught him, most emphatically, never to offer her again.
Papa would have found this diverting. Elizabeth could discover nothing diverting in it at all.
She took her eyes from the centre of the lawn down to the water. She would not give Miss Bingley the chance to glance over and see that she was attending.
Ever since luncheon the wind had been blowing under the canvas, which was why the footman had been set to watch the pegs.
He had just crossed to the far corner and got both hands to the rope on that side, hauling it down to hold the corner against the breeze, when an enormous gust lifted the whole canopy like a sail.
The peg pulled clean out of the turf. The rope that held the canopy tore through the footman’s hands as it went, the sudden loss of tension throwing him off balance, and with that corner no longer secure, the canvas heaved up and dragged the tall centre pole off its footing.
Elizabeth saw, in the same instant, what no one else had—little Henry Atherton, still playing fisherman, directly beneath it. A pole of that height and weight could pose a danger for a grown man, let alone a boy of four.
She was on her feet with no memory of rising. Her plate went into the grass and the strawberries with it, red scattering over the linen and into the green. Miss Pelham’s sentence broke off behind her.
“Henry!” she shouted, already running.
Henry turned his head at the sound but not his body, his arm still over the bowl, the strawberries still uncaught.
The distance between the rugs and the marquee seemed to lengthen cruelly beneath her feet. Her half-boot caught in the grass, and she stumbled, recovered, did not slow.
And she was not the only one.
Mr. Darcy had remained by the lemonade table, Miss Bingley beside him, while Henry fished for strawberries.
But now she could see from the corner of her eye that he was running in her direction.
He had farther to come, but was quicker than Elizabeth, and his attention was fixed where hers was, upon the child.
For one instant Elizabeth saw not the proud man she had refused, nor the grave host of Pemberley, nor the gentleman Miss Bingley had been so determined to claim. She saw only the man who had heard her cry out. Who had moved when she moved.
Then the pole began to tip over.