Chapter 6
Mr. Darcy
Mrs. Bennet arrived with two daughters, a hamper, and enough concern to fill the entrance hall twice over.
"My poor Jane," she said before she had even got her bonnet off. "I knew this would happen when she rode in the rain, though naturally she had no choice in the matter. Mr. Bingley's invitation was most particular."
Bingley received this with visible pleasure, colouring at the compliment. Darcy noticed Elizabeth close her eyes for just a moment, as though gathering strength for what was to come.
Sarah stood behind her, holding the blue shawl.
McKeever waited near the library door with Darcy's morning letters.
The two servants exchanged no glance whatsoever.
Their obedience had become, Darcy thought, almost theatrical in its carefulness.
Two conspirators determined to be caught doing nothing at all.
Kitty coughed because her mother had mentioned illness. Lydia laughed because Kitty coughed. Caroline offered them a civility so faultless it curdled into something very like contempt.
"You must come upstairs at once. Jane is sitting up, but she tires quickly."
"Certainly, certainly. Lydia, do not touch that vase. Kitty, stand straight. Mr. Bingley, you have been an angel to my girl, a positive angel."
Mrs. Bennet took Bingley's arm as though claiming a prize.
He looked delighted. Helplessly delighted, the way he looked at most things.
They went upstairs in a body, Mrs. Bennet's voice leading the charge.
Lydia looked back at Darcy on the landing and whispered to Kitty without lowering her voice in the slightest.
"He is very handsome when he is not speaking."
"Lydia."
Darcy looked at the ceiling with great interest. Bingley made a noise that might charitably have been called a cough.
When the party had vanished upstairs, Caroline turned to Darcy. "Charming."
"They are distressed for Miss Bennet."
"Distress does not excuse vulgarity."
"No. Nor does elegance excuse malice." He said it evenly, but he meant every word of it.
Her mouth thinned to nothing. He left before she could find an answer.
In the library, McKeever placed the morning post on the table with his usual precision. "Sarah says Miss Elizabeth has slept six hours in two nights."
"You are still discussing her."
"Her mother's visit may prove difficult, sir."
"That is not your concern."
"No, sir." McKeever did not look remotely chastened.
Darcy broke the seal on his steward's letter and read the first line twice without absorbing a word of it.
"Did Sarah ask you to tell me this?"
"She said Miss Elizabeth would receive no rest today. I concluded the rest myself, sir."
"And what precisely do you expect me to do about it?"
McKeever looked towards the ceiling, where Mrs. Bennet's voice carried undiminished through a floor and two closed doors. "Nothing improper, sir."
It was a careful answer. Darcy had, if he was honest, asked for exactly that kind of carefulness.
"Mention to Bingley that the apothecary may approve Miss Bennet's return tomorrow. He may wish to have the closed carriage ready. And tell him Miss Elizabeth has had no rest; half an hour of company is enough for any invalid today."
McKeever went out, unhurried as ever. Darcy tried the letter again. Above him, Lydia exclaimed over the prospect of officers in Meryton at a volume that suggested she wished the officers to hear her from there. Mrs. Bennet responded at greater volume still. Bingley laughed. Elizabeth did not.
At the end of half an hour, Mrs. Nicholls appeared upstairs at Bingley's request and enforced his household limit with a housekeeper's flat refusal to be argued with. The visitors descended to the drawing room. Jane remained above with Sarah and a tray of broth.
Mrs. Bennet settled herself beside Bingley like a hen upon a favoured egg. "You see how delicate Jane is, Mr. Bingley. She has always been too sweet for this world. Such beauty often carries a tender constitution, you know."
"Mamma," Elizabeth said.
"What? I am praising your sister."
"Her constitution will recover perfectly well without a public description of it."
Lydia had found the pianoforte. She played the opening bars of a country dance with tremendous vigour and no continuation at all. She abandoned it the moment the difficult part arrived.
Caroline entered on the tail end of the noise. "How lively."
Mrs. Bennet drew Lydia forward by the shoulder. "Lydia is thought to have excellent taste in music."
"By whom?" Darcy asked, before judgement could intervene and stop him.
Elizabeth looked at him sharply. Then, against every expectation he might have formed of her, she laughed. A real laugh, quick and startled out of her.
Mrs. Bennet did not hear the question at all. Lydia did.
"By everyone in Meryton, Mr. Darcy. I dance rather better than I play, but there are no officers here to prove it."
"That is fortunate for the carpet."
Kitty laughed outright. Lydia, undeterred, began another tune.
Mrs. Bennet turned back to Bingley. "You must give a ball when Jane is recovered. She dances beautifully, though I daresay you know that already."
"I should be very glad to give one," Bingley said, with the particular warmth he reserved for anything touching Jane. "As soon as Miss Bennet is well enough to attend."
"There, Lizzy. Did you hear that?"
"The county heard it."
Darcy saw the colour rise along Elizabeth's neck.
She stood with perfect composure, one hand resting on the back of a chair.
But her thumb moved, small and unconscious, rubbing the worn edge of the wood over and over.
Her embarrassment was not a rejection of her family.
It was the cost of loving them out loud, in front of company, where every word could be turned over and examined.
She would defend every one of them against the world and still wish, just this once, that the floor might open beneath her mother's chair.
He had once called that family an objection, and never once considered who was left to pay for it.
Caroline crossed to the pianoforte with the air of a woman restoring order. "A ball will require a guest list, Charles. We cannot invite every officer and tradesman's nephew in Meryton."
Mrs. Bennet drew a breath that promised a considerable reply.
Darcy moved first. "Bingley knows his neighbours. He requires no instruction from either of us."
"I meant only to assist."
"Then wait until he asks."
Bingley looked grateful. Mrs. Bennet looked triumphant.
Elizabeth looked, for a moment, uncertain — as though she could not quite tell what to make of him.
Darcy had defended fairness, and in doing so had made the room a little more difficult for her.
It was possible, he was learning, to be entirely right and still be unhelpful. The lesson sat uncomfortably.
"Mrs. Bennet," he said, "the west windows give an excellent view of the gardens. Miss Elizabeth tells me you know every notable walk in the neighbourhood. I should value your opinion of Bingley's grounds."
Elizabeth's brows rose. She had told him no such thing, not in those words, and they both knew it. Her mother turned at once, entirely won.
"Oh, Netherfield is very fine. Longbourn has prettier views in summer, but the prospect here is grander, I will grant you that. Lizzy walks everywhere, you know, even when she really ought to take the carriage."
The conversation moved to lanes and distances and which tenant had let his hedge grow shamefully high.
Mrs. Bennet possessed firm opinions on all three, and delivered them at length.
Darcy listened. She grew less shrill the moment somebody treated her local knowledge as knowledge worth having.
Elizabeth watched him across the room, something working behind her eyes.
He had wanted her gratitude. Now, he found, he wanted her ease. The distinction between the two struck him as unpleasantly instructive.
After luncheon, the visit prepared to depart. Servants fetched wraps. Sarah came downstairs with Elizabeth's blue shawl folded over one arm, though Elizabeth was not, in fact, leaving.
"Mrs. Bennet spoke of the repair, miss," Sarah said. "I thought she might wish to inspect it."
McKeever stood near the hall table with an expression of profound innocence. "At my suggestion, miss."
Darcy looked from the shawl to Sarah. "Then the work is hers and the display yours."
Mrs. Bennet examined the repair with a housewife's practised eye. "That is neat work. Our Hill never knots fringe so evenly, and she has been at it thirty years."
"Sarah repaired it."
"Then Mr. Bingley keeps useful servants. That is always a good sign in a house."
Bingley accepted this praise of his establishment with the delight of a man complimented on something he had never once thought about.
Sarah coloured. McKeever passed the shawl back to her and settled Lydia's red cloak over its owner's shoulders, all without the smallest change of expression.
The small display had accomplished one thing, at least. Mrs. Bennet had praised Sarah before the whole household, and the maid's face showed plainly that such praise did not come her way often.
Darcy looked at McKeever. His valet adjusted the red cloak's collar and remained the very picture of a man who had never arranged anything in his life.
When the Bennets had gone, the hall considerably quieter for it, Elizabeth followed Darcy into the library. The door remained open.
"You treated my mother with consideration."
"I asked about hedges."
"You asked about a subject she could discuss without injuring anyone. That was kind of you."
"I meant only to divert her."
"She was easier for it, whatever you meant."
"I have not always understood that — how to do that."
She studied him for a moment. The fatigue beneath her eyes had deepened over the course of the visit, but her gaze stayed steady.
"You also stopped Miss Bingley."
"Bingley can choose his own guests."
"You did not pretend my family was faultless."
"They are not."