“Oh!” Elizabeth squealed with honest delight looking at the desk. There was a modest pile of books there. All in three volumes, the original editions — each one penned by A Gentlewoman. She had vacillated for two days between that and A Lady, but she had respected the late Miss Austen too much to choose her nom de plume in the end. “I can see,” Elizabeth said smiling at Papa, “that they have been read through — has Mama perused them?”
“A little, only — she disapproves rather of your writing habit. The same sort of thing, etcetera, etcetera. She has no desire for others to know that you do something so unconventional as to write novels.”
“Ah!” Elizabeth placed a hand against her cheek. “Am I then to understand that I am not known far and wide, and of more importance, near and close as an author of great repute for the writing of many trifling tales with which one might trifle their idle days away with?”
“I fear not — I thought of making a rumpus upon it, just to oppose Mrs. Bennet’s insistence that I say nothing, but—” Mr. Bennet wryly held his hands apart. “Eh, too much of an effort. It’s not so much fun as it used to be to tease her. Her nerves bother her less these days.”
Elizabeth could not help but make a face. But she loved both her parents, and if she accepted Mama’s faults for what they were, she ought to as well accept Papa for his flaws. “Vanity demands the question — is A Gentlewoman of any popularity or notoriety in Meryton?”
“Amongst silly girls? I believe so. I was once caught by Maria Lucas — now Smith, you know. But she still lives in Meryton, and—”
“Goodness.” Elizabeth waved a discouraging finger at Papa. “No, no. Not like that. You sound half like a letter from Mama when you speak that way! As if the key fact of importance in the tale is that I know who has married and who has not. When the only matter that has any significance to me is if Maria liked the book — Charlotte knows of course, but I enjoined her to not tell the rest.”
“She did. But your fame under the name of Bennet in the neighborhood is still principally established by that silliness with that officer.” Mr. Bennet grimaced. “Nothing to be done about that — I only assume it is yet talked about. No one says anything to me. But what do we live for but to make sport of our neighbors and in our turn be made sport of by them? You may depend upon it, now that you are returned, that rendezvous in the hunting lodge shall be the chiefest matter of conversation for a fortnight at the least.”
“Shall I be scorned yet by all and sundry for my youthful misdeeds, and will they lock up the young girls, lest I ruin their morals, and shall every married matron stab dagger eyes towards me out of frightened fear I will take their faithless husbands astray?”
Our heroine had determined that she would rise to every challenge with a laugh and a bright smile.
“Lizzy, I have hopes that you are now such an old maid that any worries of that sort will be gone.”
“Ah! No, alas, I fear from my acquaintance with the female of our species, which is greater than yours, that my age will simply mark me as having greater appetites and more conspicuous concupiscence.”
Mr. Bennet giggled, and then tried to make his face stay straight in response to the unmanly sound of amusement.
“What?” She smiled unrepentantly at her father.
“A horrid alliteration. I raised you better than that!”
But rather than the proper laughter of two persons dear to one another conversing once more in familiar environs, Papa’s comment made Elizabeth remember.
What a fool she had been. She had been so disappointed with her father. She had felt for a long time that he had thrown her off, tossing her to London, because it was easier than fighting the neighborhood on her behalf.
Of course Papa could not have done more. What after all could a mere father do against the vicious, violent delight of delicious gossip?
“Such horrid jokes,” Elizabeth said, at last wryly having shaken off that memory of anger at Papa, “are considered quite the height of fashion amongst the poets of town. Literary circles — if one cannot turn every phrase into an abominable pun, then one will be quite despised by the more sophisticated set. So you see, my authorship ought to destroy my reputation were it known. Far more than that silliness with Wilted Wicky — I promise to make a pretense of being a rural country girl having no knowledge of how to rub two words together.”
Mr. Bennet laughed, though he watched her carefully. He knew her well enough to detect the note of falseness in her smile. “Glad you are home. Glad. Lizzy, home, back where you belong.”
“Do I? — with such alliterations, witticisms, and clevernesses as I compulsively make now, I suspect I would feel more at home in London once more. I promised I shall make a decent go of it here, and I shall. Papa, we really have spent little time together these last years.”
Chapter Two
The afternoon before the assembly ball that he was obligated to attend as Mr. Bingley’s resident friend, Fitzwilliam Darcy watched Bingley play with his young son, waving a toy around the nine month old’s head that made the baby give a delighted squeal and reach up to bat at the rattler. This little creature’s birth had ended the life of Mr. Bingley’s beloved wife, but Bingley showed no resentment towards little Charlie for that.
Watching the domestic happiness of his friend had begun to kindle in Darcy himself over the past years his own desire for a wife and children to play with and dangle from his knee, and help to learn to ride and fight.
Darcy liked to watch Bingley with his child; most men were quite distant from their children, at least until they were old enough to speak and walk.
From the way the Bingleys’ other child, Harriet, held herself back from playing with her tiny brother, Darcy suspected she did blame him a little for her mother’s death.
Mr. Bingley’s sister, Louisa Hurst, preferred to play with the niece to the nephew, claiming an abhorrence of infants — a matter that Darcy knew was not her native habit, as she had been a devoted mother to both of her children when they were infants. Both had been killed by the fevers particularly common before the first year of age, as many children did.
It was often viewed as unwise to care much for a child until they had reached at least their first year, and perhaps not until they had reached their fifth year, at which time the odds of their death — according to the insurance tables — began to be similar to those of an adult in the prime of life.
Death was part of life, present everywhere. A man could only control himself, and his own behavior, not the future. And Fitzwilliam Darcy always controlled himself.
As Mrs. and Mr. Hurst had a comparatively modest income and no estate, they attached themselves to Mr. Bingley’s establishment whenever possible. Darcy knew that though his sister sometimes annoyed him, Bingley liked having members of his family generally near and around.
Bingley’s other sister had at last married three years before — Caroline Bingley had made herself decidedly tiresome in Darcy’s eyes with her constant attempts to attract his interest through extravagantly agreeing with everything he said, and wearing clothes whose expense he knew ran past her fortune.
Miss Bingley, though a fine woman, and one whose marriage Darcy was glad to see, would not have been suitable as the wife of a man such as Fitzwilliam Darcy, and he lost nothing because she had married some six months before Darcy determined that he would marry himself and set upon the task of finding a suitable wife.
When Mr. Darcy made that momentous determination — one which seemed less and less momentous, and more mocking, as months — now years — passed without success in the matter of finding an appropriate woman — Darcy gave careful and extensive thought to the serious concern of what sort of woman he ought choose to serve as the companion of his future life, the mother of his children, and most significantly, the Mrs. Darcy of Pemberley.
Caroline Bingley would have been rejected simply because she spent too much, neither read nor thought much, and lacked a certain firmness of character
. Also, she was a little lighter in the dowry and substantially less respectable in the breeding, despite Darcy’s deep affection for Mr. Bingley, than ideal.
An exceptional man such as himself ought to marry an exceptional wife.
Darcy had always held himself chaste and behaved in all matters as a gentleman of probity, character and religious seriousness should. And in like serious manner Darcy dutifully embarked upon the task of finding a woman to marry. That first season after this determination he attended a dance every night for the first half of the sitting of parliament, and every second or third night for the second half, when he had gotten worn down and tired of the whole matter.
He went often to soirees and dinners with those of his acquaintance who had unmarried daughters or sisters. And then, after he had found all of their relations unsuitable in some respect, he had attended dinners and house parties, and gone on picnics, and done all matter of disagreeable socialization with the acquaintances of his acquaintances and friends.
His friends and family had put the news about town that the great fortune of Fitzwilliam Darcy was at last in want of a wife, and he endured the introductions to one pretty, accomplished, quick speaking and young debutante after another. Each woman Mr. Darcy met, he analyzed with serious care and serious concern. He inspected and questioned each to determine from their behavior during the dance and their answers to his questions if she was the one who was worthy to become his wife.
Darcy demanded the best from himself in all matters.
Darcy demanded honesty in his business dealings. He demanded himself to be a skilled sportsman. He demanded himself to be an astute scholar whilst in university. He demanded of himself to be the best of landlords. He demanded of himself to always face any task set before him and to excel.
He would acquire the perfect wife.
Darcy wrote down a list of traits that were generally admired in a wife, and he would find a woman who met all of them: His wife was to be of exceptional beauty; kind; of religious disposition; demure when appropriate. A confident and capable hostess, capable of making a witty splash in society. His wife would embrace the duties of being a Lady Beneficent to his tenants, and she would happily retire to the countryside when it was Darcy’s preference to avoid London. Yet she also would be a helpmeet who would encourage him to go out amongst his acquaintances, building valuable connections and desire him to spend that time in society which was proper for a man of his position.
She would be a woman who was widely read, and who thought deeply about both matters in the feminine sphere and those which were of great importance that many thought were the sole province of men. She would have the full measure of accomplishments that a well-bred woman would have, and she would have something beyond that — an independence and individuality of mind that showed she was not merely a slave of fashion. She would be healthy, and she would be still young enough when they married to be considered fully in bloom.
Beyond all of these considerations, the wife of Fitzwilliam Darcy must have an irreproachable pedigree, the best of connections, and a large dowry.
Mr. Darcy was not actually a fool.
He would settle for less than all of this in a woman, but he was determined to find a woman who was better than the average his friends had found for themselves. Such was his duty to himself, to achieve all he could and to fulfill the potential and promise of his fine person, his fine mind, and his fine estate. Darcy had in fact met many young women who had many of the features and attributes he looked for. Enough that he certainly thought he should see them as accomplished, connected, clever, beautiful and dowered enough for a man such as himself to marry.
In those cases he had spent a decent amount of time — but not so much as to arouse premature expectations, merely expectations of expectations — around such women in conversation. And in every case, pursuing this particular woman did not… feel quite right. Each woman he’d met in the past three years of far too, too many balls had lacked in some respect.
Some essential respect.
On rare occasions Darcy thought that the essential matter missing might be in himself, not in the women he met. Perhaps he had a disinclination to be pleased.
However, upon sober and unbiased reflection, Darcy knew that he was not the problem. A perfect woman existed. A completely perfect girl, who met every requirement that actually mattered to him — i.e. connections, beauty, being well read, well spoken, and… all of them. And this girl, which he simply needed to continue to hunt for, she would also have that je ne sais quoi lacking in the women whose superficial features had been good enough for him to marry.
As he searched for his belle dame, as a true chevalier would, unceasing in the pursuit of his lady’s hand, Darcy ought have been quite willing to go to any ball where there would be young ladies, not yet of his acquaintance, who might be the one.
However, Mr. Darcy was not eager to go to the crowded assembly rooms of a minor market town thirty miles from London, to be fawned over by every unwanted Miss and her mother as soon as they learned that the great Fitzwilliam Darcy, with his income of ten thousand a year, and very likely more — it was, indeed, more — had arrived.
They had been informed of the situation and prospects and connections of the principal families of the neighborhood prior to Bingley taking the estate, and no woman at the assembly ball would meet one of Darcy’s primary requirements in a wife, that she be well connected, of impeccable breeding.
What chance was there to find a woman with excellent accomplishments or a first rate brain in such a locale? None at all! — both required a first rate education, paid for by the resources only available to the best families.
No, no. The best Darcy could hope to find in this assembly was a particularly pretty girl — the most beautiful of roses could blossom in the least prepossessing of neighborhoods. But what matter that to him?
Fitzwilliam Darcy was no shallow man, to only care about the appearance of a woman! Not he!
Darcy still went to the assembly ball, grumbling the whole way to amuse Bingley, who liked to imagine Darcy was even more asocial than he actually was.
In contrast to Darcy’s half faux and half genuine distaste for the dancing that he looked forward to, Bingley looked more cheerful than Darcy had seen him since the death of Mrs. Bingley. He lolled back with his hands behind his head, taking up an entire corner of the large carriage, whistling the tune to a jig that had been popular seven years before.
The melancholy was still there. Whether Bingley was consciously aware of it or not, Darcy recognized that as the tune he’d been told many times was the music that the band had played the first time Mr. Bingley danced with Isabella.
Louisa Hurst said after they had sat in quiet for a minute. “I do not know what to expect — this shall be… quite a rustic assembly?”
“Oh, I dare say.” Bingley straightened and he smirked at his sister. “I dare say it shall be. Filled with barbarians — Mr. Morris informed me when I took the place that they wear naught but the blue paint and loincloths with which their ancestors faced Caesar’s legions. Eh — what think you, Darcy?”
“For my part,” Darcy replied, “I believe the populace here was entirely replaced by the Anglo Saxons — so they do not descend from those ancient Britons who faced Caesar and his legions. However, whilst they likely are so modern as to wear untanned deer skin and wolf furs, they are not like to have learned any tongue any of us have hope to understand.”
Mrs. Hurst huffed. “Both of you of a type. You know what I mean — they are not society.”
“Hear. Hear,” Mr. Hurst said in his rolling voice. “Never any good wine at a public ball.”
The good gentleman’s wife rather annoyedly looked at her husband as she absently pulled her sparkling grotesquely bejeweled bracelet up and down her arm. “The women will all toss their bonnets at you; you must be on your guard.”
“I do not expect to meet anyone who could meet my standards here,” Darcy said, imagining t
hat she must be speaking to him. “But I thank you for the warning.”
“No, not you,” Mrs. Hurst said annoyedly — she had been considerably less polite to Darcy since Caroline nee Bingley had finally given up on her designs on Darcy and married a man of middling fortune, middling looks, middling height and less than middling sense. Darcy preferred the change. “I spoke to Charles. Mr. Darcy, everyone knows you will never marry, for no woman could ever meet your ‘standards.’”
“I assure you I shall one day find the right woman.”
“And then she shall not wish to marry you.”
“Becalm yourselves, why do I need to be on my guard?” Bingley asked grinning. “Bonnets being thrown at me, you say? Sounds a terrible fate. Might lose an eye.”
“You know what I mean — you must marry again for little Harriet and Charles’s sake. But the women here shall not do. They are outside of society. You can’t make a good match here.”
“That is poor reasoning,” Darcy said. “In general it is considered that a man with children should not expect to find so good of a wife for his second as he did for his first, as the resources of his estate shall in the larger part go to support the offspring of the first marriage.”
Bingley rolled his eyes. “Darcy, you need to fall in love. Properly and deeply.”
Louisa huffed. “Zounds, I do not wish to see my brother make a brilliant match — someone so well connected as Isabella cannot be expected—”
“That was not why I married her. I would have married her had she not a farthing.”
“For Heaven’s sake, I hope not!” was his sister’s instant reply. “I only want you to marry someone from good society.”
“Here and arrived!” Bingley exclaimed as the carriage slowed to a stop. “Now to see what the women of this barbaric outpost from antediluvian times look like.” He whistled. “Well, they do not lack for looks.”
A pale short woman with brown hair who was yet young, though Darcy judged her with his well-studied eye for assessing potential wives to be likely past twenty and five, and thus too old to meet his requirements, walked past the carriage and into the assembly hall. She had a tasteful though slightly too low-cut dress that was somewhat out of the mode — another mark against her. Darcy did not care for himself: she looked absolutely lovely in the dress and it clung close and nice to her curves. But the wife of Darcy must provide no opportunity for the censure of others.
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