Chapter One — An Invitation Too Well Arranged #4
Every sentence was faultless. The invitation was warm without intimacy, gracious without excess, particular without impropriety.
Lady Ashbourne expressed admiration for Mrs Gardiner, respect for the Miss Bennets, pleasure in the possibility of Mr Darcy’s and Mr Bingley’s attendance, and a hope that Silvermere might offer a few days of quiet after “the recent strain upon sensibility which Bath, in its eagerness to be informed, has perhaps not always handled with sufficient gentleness.”
Elizabeth paused over that phrase.
It was beautifully done. It acknowledged the Ravenscroft affair without naming it, criticised Bath without offending it, and placed Lady Ashbourne on the side of gentleness without requiring her to state what she thought had been ungentle.
The sentence was almost too accomplished.
It was the sort of sentence that made one admire the writer even while distrusting the need for such precision.
“Very clever,” Elizabeth murmured.
The door opened.
She looked up, expecting Mrs Gardiner, and found Mr Darcy.
He had been announced, she realised, though she had been too absorbed in the letter to hear it.
He stood just within the room, grave and composed, his hat in his hand, his gaze resting upon her with that attentive stillness which had once irritated her beyond measure and now did something far less manageable.
“Miss Bennet,” he said, bowing.
“Mr Darcy.” She rose. “You arrive with admirable timing.”
“I hope that is not a reproach.”
“No. Merely an observation. Though I admit observations may become reproaches if given sufficient encouragement.”
His mouth almost smiled. “Then I shall endeavour not to encourage it.”
“That would be unlike you.”
“Would it?”
“You have often encouraged my observations.”
“I was not aware I had that honour.”
“You may call it an honour if you wish. I have sometimes called it provocation.”
This time the smile was clearer, though brief.
It altered his face in a manner Elizabeth found increasingly inconvenient.
There had been a period when she believed she understood Mr Darcy best by opposing him.
Then had come a longer period in which she understood him by correcting herself.
Now, more dangerous than either, she had begun to understand him without requiring opposition or correction.
His silences no longer seemed empty places in conversation, but rooms whose doors she had learned, by patience and perhaps by inclination, to open.
Mrs Gardiner returned at that moment and greeted Darcy warmly.
Jane followed soon after, and the room settled into an arrangement which might have satisfied even Bath: Mrs Gardiner near the tea table, Jane by the window, Elizabeth with Lady Ashbourne’s letter still in hand, and Darcy seated with the gravity of a man prepared to receive every social question as though it might conceal a legal argument.
After the first civilities, Mrs Gardiner said, “We have been speaking of Silvermere House.”
Darcy’s attention sharpened. It was slight, but Elizabeth saw it.
“Lady Ashbourne has written to my aunt,” she said. “We are invited.”
“So I understand.”
“You knew?”
“I had a letter from her yesterday.”
Elizabeth lifted her brows. “Then Mr Bingley’s intelligence was, for once, accurate.”
“Bingley’s intelligence is often accurate when it concerns his own hopes.”
Jane bent her head over her work. Elizabeth, not above mercy when Jane was concerned, did not look at her.
“And what does your intelligence tell us of Lady Ashbourne?” she asked.
Darcy considered before answering, which was one of the things Elizabeth liked best and least in him. He never spent words merely to occupy the interval before truth could be avoided.
“She is a woman of consequence,” he said at last. “Not of the loudest kind, but perhaps the more effective for that. Her judgement is generally respected.”
“Generally?”
“I do not know her well enough to say universally.”
“That is a very careful distinction.”
“It is a necessary one.”
“And Silvermere?”
“A handsome house. Old, but well maintained. The estate is not among the largest, though it is managed with unusual order. Lady Ashbourne has lived there chiefly since her husband’s death. She is admired in the county.”
“For charity, taste and discretion,” Elizabeth said.
Darcy looked at her. “You have been informed.”
“I have been warned by compliments.”
Mrs Gardiner smiled. “Lizzy distrusts discretion.”
“I distrust only those virtues which are too useful to the people praised for possessing them.”
Darcy’s gaze did not leave her face. “Discretion may be honourable.”
“Certainly. It may also be convenient.”
“Yes,” he said. “It may.”
The agreement, quietly given, pleased her more than contradiction would once have done. It was a dangerous development, to find oneself pleased not by victory but by being understood.
Mrs Gardiner handed him the invitation. Darcy read it in silence.
Elizabeth watched him without quite appearing to do so.
His expression remained controlled, yet she saw the faint narrowing of attention at the same phrase which had caught her own eye: “Bath, in its eagerness to be informed.” He read the letter once, then returned it.
“It is well written,” he said.
Elizabeth laughed softly. “That sounds very much like suspicion.”
“It is admiration.”
“In your manner, Mr Darcy, the two are often nearly indistinguishable.”
Mrs Gardiner looked amused, but Darcy answered gravely. “A well-written letter may be admired. It need not therefore be trusted.”
Elizabeth felt the familiar quickening of shared thought. “Exactly.”
Jane looked between them. “You both think the invitation unusual.”
“I think,” Darcy said, with care, “that Lady Ashbourne rarely acts without purpose.”
“And do you know the purpose?” Mrs Gardiner asked.
“No.”
“Then perhaps it is merely hospitality,” Jane suggested.
Elizabeth turned to her sister. “You see, Mr Darcy, why Jane must always be invited into society. Without her, none of us would remember that people occasionally act from pleasant motives.”
Jane smiled. “And without you, Lizzy, none of us would remember to ask whether they have chosen the pleasant motive because it hides a useful one.”
Darcy’s eyes warmed with something like approval. “Both reminders may be necessary.”
Elizabeth looked down at the letter, unexpectedly affected.
There was no compliment in the ordinary sense, yet she felt one.
Darcy had once dismissed her playfulness as impertinence and her judgement as prejudice.
Now he received her suspicion not as a fault to be corrected but as a faculty to be considered.
She had not known how much such recognition mattered until it began to be given.
“What do you know,” Mrs Gardiner asked, “of the other guests?”
Darcy named them with more accuracy than Bingley had managed. Mr Felix Vale, Lady Ashbourne’s nephew, he described as agreeable, capable, and much valued by his aunt in the management of social and charitable matters. Elizabeth heard the caution beneath the praise.
“You do not like him,” she said.
“I did not say so.”
“No. That is why I concluded it.”
Darcy’s mouth moved slightly. “I have met him only twice. He is gentlemanlike.”
“Another flexible virtue,” Elizabeth murmured.
“Perhaps. He is attentive to those from whom attention may benefit him.”
“That is less flexible.”
Mrs Gardiner gave Elizabeth a look which combined warning and amusement. Darcy continued, as though he had expected no less.
“Mrs Celia Harrow I know only by sight. She is a widow. Her name has been connected, I believe, with some old difficulty in the Vale family, though I never heard the particulars from a source I trusted.”
Elizabeth’s interest quickened. “And from sources you did not trust?”
Darcy hesitated. “That she was once a friend to a young woman whose reputation suffered. That she knew more than she spoke. That her silence benefited her.”
Jane’s work stilled. “That is a cruel thing to say if untrue.”
“And a cruel thing to repeat if uncertain,” Elizabeth added.
Darcy inclined his head. “Yes.”
There was a small silence.
Elizabeth thought of the woman at Ravenscroft, made into a ghost because a living woman was inconvenient.
She thought of verses in Bath that had exposed feeling without consent; of jewels that had vanished to reveal arrangements beneath rank; of stories repeated until their repetition became proof.
Now there was Mrs Harrow, a widow whose name produced hesitation before anyone could say why.
“What happened to the young woman?” Jane asked.
“I do not know.”
Jane looked troubled. “Then perhaps Mrs Harrow has been judged by a story with no ending.”
“Or,” Elizabeth said, “by a story whose ending was supplied by those most eager to stop the enquiry.”
Darcy looked at her, and there passed between them a recognition so swift that no one else could have named it. They had both seen too much of that particular social art.
Darcy went on. Miss Amelia Trent, he knew only as a companion in Mrs Lyndhurst’s household.
Mrs Lyndhurst he described with perfect civility and no enthusiasm.
Colonel Avery was blunt, honourable in the old style, and sometimes careless in speech because he had never been obliged to depend upon pleasing everyone.
Miss Portia Vale was, he believed, a cousin of Mr Felix Vale and not much favoured by the more polished members of the family.
“Not favoured?” Elizabeth asked.
“She speaks plainly.”
“Then I shall like her.”
“That does not always follow.”
“No, but it gives her a promising beginning.”