Chapter 11
Elizabeth
The Bennet carriage reached Netherfield behind Sir William Lucas's and just ahead of Mrs. Long's.
The order of it mattered enormously to Mrs. Bennet, who had spent the entire journey predicting a dreadful crush at the entrance.
She now descended the steps as though the absence of one were her own doing.
Sarah met the ladies in the retiring room. Her cap had been starched to a stiff, gleaming white. Her expression had not been starched at all. It looked, if anything, rather the worse for wear.
"I will place your wraps in the inner press, miss," she said. "Mrs. Nicholls has ordered me to remain here the whole evening."
Elizabeth handed her the blue shawl. Sarah folded it with a care that seemed, somehow, rather more than the garment required.
"Has something happened?"
Sarah's glance flicked towards Kitty and Lydia, who were locked in a quiet, furious dispute over a ribbon. "Mrs. Nicholls will speak with you before supper, miss, if it is needed."
"That was not my question."
The maid's fingers tightened on the wool until her knuckles paled. "I cannot explain it here, miss. Your shawl will stay in this press until you ask for it yourself."
Elizabeth studied her a moment. The answer was incomplete. But it was not a lie, either, and that distinction mattered. "Very well."
Caroline swept in before Sarah had even shut the press.
"Miss Eliza. How sensible of you, to bring the blue. I have always thought it your most becoming colour." Her fingers found the repaired fringe and lingered there.
Sarah drew the shawl gently but firmly beyond her reach. "May I take your wrap, madam?"
Caroline's eyes settled on the maid with a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. "You might remember whom you serve."
"Yes, madam."
Mrs. Nicholls appeared in the doorway just then, as though summoned by the temperature of the room. "Sarah serves this household by attending its guests, Miss Bingley. Your brother asks for you in the ballroom."
Caroline released the fringe at last. "My brother can wait."
"Mr. Bingley said the musicians require your decision directly."
That, of all things, proved effective. Caroline left in a rustle of silver silk.
Elizabeth looked from the housekeeper to Sarah and back again. "What is wrong?"
Mrs. Nicholls answered before Sarah could. "A small private household matter, miss, that may come to nothing at all. If it touches you, I will tell you myself, and at once. You will not be left in the dark."
The assurance was careful and deliberate, the kind of thing a woman says when she has chosen every word in advance. Elizabeth accepted it, mostly because other ladies were waiting behind her to enter, and partly because Sarah looked close to saying something she had been told not to.
"At once," Elizabeth repeated, holding the housekeeper's eye.
"At once, miss."
She walked with Jane towards the ballroom. It opened up before them bright enough, for one whole blessed moment, to erase the uneasy little scene.
Then Elizabeth saw Darcy, and forgot the retiring room altogether.
Darcy wore an embroidered cravat.
Elizabeth noticed this before the musicians had even lifted their bows, which suggested some serious defect in her priorities that she chose not to examine.
She had seen him only in plain linen at every previous meeting.
The narrow white pattern softened nothing about him.
Darcy was not, and never would be, a man softened by needlework.
But it made the care he had taken with his dress visible at last, and something about that small vanity undid her rather more than she cared to admit.
"You approve," he said.
"Of the music? It has not begun."
"Of something."
"Your confidence is improving faster than your modesty, sir."
"I have a very severe instructor."
The first notes struck up just in time to spare her an answer, for which she was, on balance, grateful.
They joined the set. The ballroom held, by Elizabeth's rough estimate, half of Hertfordshire and the whole of her mother's hopes for the future. Jane stood nearby with Bingley, her colour high and lovely, and this time it owed nothing to fever.
Darcy bowed. Elizabeth curtsied. The figures of the dance drew them apart and brought them back together again, as dances do.
"You came," he said, the first moment the steps allowed him to speak.
"My mother began preparing before she had even received the invitation. Resistance was never a possibility."
"That is not the real reason."
"You have become demanding, Mr. Darcy."
"Only of accuracy."
Elizabeth crossed to the next place in the line and, on returning, said simply, "I wished to dance with you."
His step missed by less than an inch, a fraction nobody else in the room would have caught. Elizabeth caught it. He is not half so composed as he looks. Neither, come to think of it, am I.
"Thank you," he said.
The plainness of it pleased her far more than any grand speech could have done.
The two dances ended far too soon. Darcy returned her to Jane's side. Her sister glanced between the two of them and raised her brows in a way that asked a great many questions at once. Elizabeth refused to answer any of them with Bingley standing right there.
Mrs. Bennet answered for everyone instead, at considerable volume.
"You and Mr. Darcy made a very handsome pair, Lizzy! Ten thousand a year, and perhaps more, I hear!"
"Mamma."
"I am speaking only to Jane, my love."
So, Elizabeth thought, was a town crier, and with roughly the same regard for who else might be listening.
Darcy had not yet moved out of hearing. His face stayed composed, but Bingley studied the floor with sudden fascination. Jane took her mother's arm and asked whether she would like to inspect the supper arrangements.
"Not yet. Mr. Bingley has promised me the next two dances."
Bingley had promised no such thing, but he agreed at once and with real gallantry, bless him.
Elizabeth looked at Darcy, cheeks warm. "I am sorry."
"You did not say it."
"You heard it because of me."
"I heard your mother. Those are two separate facts, Miss Elizabeth."
It was exactly what she had needed to hear. He did not pretend the remark harmless, and he did not make it hers to carry, either. Something in her chest loosened at that, a small unclenching she had not known she needed.
Caroline drifted over in her silver silk. "Mr. Darcy, Mrs. Long was wondering whether you mean to dance the evening through, or merely astonish us all once and retire."
"Mrs. Long asked nothing of the kind," Elizabeth said.
Caroline smiled. That smile again, the one that started at her mouth and got no further. "Perhaps I misunderstood."
"You often do, when the misunderstanding proves useful," Darcy said.
He bowed to Elizabeth and moved off, leaving Caroline to watch him go with an expression she did not manage to smooth over in time.
"You have encouraged a dangerous degree of candour in him," she said.
"Mr. Darcy had opinions before he ever met me, Miss Bingley."
"His opinions are not promises."
Elizabeth felt the warning underneath it and declined it anyway. "Nor are dances."
Caroline's gaze dropped, deliberately, to Elizabeth's bare shoulders. "Where is your blue shawl this evening?"
"In the retiring room."
"A pity. The colour suits you so well." And with that she left, well before the next set began, in a manner Elizabeth could not account for.
Elizabeth watched her cross the ballroom with a growing sense of unease she could not quite name. Caroline spoke to Louisa. Then to her own maid, stationed near the door. Nothing about the exchange was improper, precisely. Nothing about it looked natural, either.
Sarah stood beyond the doorway, helping an elderly lady settle her wrap about her shoulders. She caught Elizabeth's eye and glanced pointedly towards the retiring room. There was real fear on her face. Not the ordinary anxiety of a servant with too much to do, but something closer to dread.
Elizabeth excused herself from Jane and slipped away. Sarah followed a moment later, keeping up the appearance of ordinary service the whole way.
The retiring room held cloaks and shawls and gloves in disorderly heaps, two matrons resting their feet between dances, and Kitty hunting through the pile for a ribbon she swore she had left there. Elizabeth waited, with what patience she could muster, until Kitty gave up and left.
Sarah opened the press where the Bennet wraps had been placed.
The blue shawl was gone.
"Who took it?" Elizabeth asked, though some part of her had already guessed.
"I believe it was Miss Bingley, miss."
"Why?"
Sarah glanced at the two matrons still resting nearby. "Not here, miss."
They stepped out into the lit passage, leaving the door open behind them.
"Miss Bingley meant to use it in the east saloon, miss — to make Mr. Darcy and her brother believe you had arranged a private meeting. Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley know."
Elizabeth stared at her, the words taking a moment to land.
"When did you hear this?"
"This morning, miss. They hoped Miss Bingley might abandon it on her own."
"Nobody told me."
Sarah's face drained of all its colour at once. "I asked that they wait, miss, unless she actually took the shawl. I thought — I thought you might stay home rather than spoil Mr. Bingley's ball for him. That was not mine to decide. I am sorry. I am truly sorry, miss."
Elizabeth's face went hot with something that was not entirely anger.
Her eyes stung. Her hands stilled at her sides.
Not fists, quite, but close enough that she noticed the difference.
Sarah had protected her by deciding for her, the exact same fault Darcy had confessed to after the pavilion, and for one furious moment Elizabeth wanted to say something she would regret.