Elizabeth laughed in turn as the dance started up. “You mean she is embarrassing, but not to you, since she is not your mother.”
“Or… it is refreshing. I have been quite used to those in society who whisper such things behind their hands, rather than in the open where I might hear them — enough of that: I was informed by my sister that your dress is quite out of the mode. Did you have no consideration for my credit with her, for you must have known that a single look at you would require me to ask you to dance.”
Elizabeth raised her eyebrow skeptically.
Bingley grinned. “Ah, it seems I have lost the practice of exaggerated flattery. You see, this is not only the first dance of the night, but the first dance for me since my dear wife died. So forgive me.”
“Oh, for certainty… I am touched you have chosen me for such a momentous occasion.”
“Not so momentous.”
“You nearly carried it off — you ought know that a gentleman should never suggest a lady appears out of the mode.”
“Ah! My mistake. I knew I would make one!”
“So little confidence in yourself?”
“I fear so.” Bingley grinned disarmingly. “I have improved of late, but the deuce of it is, I never had the highest opinion of my own judgement.”
“I fear we shall not get on well, for I do have the highest opinion of mine own.”
“Not at all.” Bingley laughed. “Not at all. My friend Darcy has the highest opinion of his own judgement, and he is dear to me. I can happily admire such overly confident persons as yourself.”
“Oh, you can admire me.”
“Certainly — is that not the place of a gentleman, to admire such women as he has opportunity to dance with?” Then upon saying that Mr. Bingley suddenly and rather unexpectedly frowned.
In response to this expression Elizabeth said nothing for the next several turns through the dance. At last Mr. Bingley sighed and said, “I am not yet fit for company — I confess: I miss my wife, and something you said reminded me of her. She was diffident, and quite unsure of her judgement, like me, but always kind and concerned for those around her.”
“My sister was like that, but she was too influenceable — I do not approve of too much easiness of character—” Elizabeth then frowned. “I must apologize, I do not mean to… insult either you or…”
“Or my late dearly departed? No — that is what reminded me of her. We made a joke of pushing women towards Mr. Darcy, and after what you said, we would have talked him up to you, and encouraged him to dance with you. You are much more to his taste than mine.”
Elizabeth laughed, trying to lighten the mood. “My goodness: the greatest revenge you might have inflicted upon me — to declare me not to your taste.”
“Oh no, do not make me such a monster: ‘Twas not what I said.”
“‘Twas, certainly ‘twas.”
Bingley smiled easily back to her. “I did ask you to dance the first with me.”
“Ah, but that was before I had spoken a word to you. Alas, my mother’s fear that I shall drive off every eligible gentleman merely by speaking proved true.”
“I might still introduce you to Mr. Darcy. He is even more eligible.”
“Alas, I have been given to understand that I am not suitable for a wife to a man such as him.”
Bingley blushed, laughed and shook his head as he twirled Elizabeth around in the dance. “You did hear that! Do not take him to heart, for he—”
“I assure you that I do not. He does not know me, and I am quite sure I would not be a suitable wife for him.”
“I am hardly so certain.” Bingley shook his head. “You see, Mr. Darcy insists he hunts for a wife…”
“But?” Elizabeth could not help but smile, and at the same time be very curious to hear about Mr. Darcy’s romantic inclinations. Simply being in this room again made her as silly and romantic as a twenty year old.
“My friend has a list. A detailed and well thought out list.”
“A list?”
“Yes, of every attribute that a woman must have to be worthy of — do not laugh.”
“I fear I cannot help it. But a most rational man. One sensible and certain of what he wants. I ought applaud and admire him.”
“You might, until you learn how many particulars there are to his list. This is why I said Mr. Darcy insists he looks for a wife.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Poor man, to have his honesty questioned by his dearest friends — from how you speak I perceive you are dear friends.”
“Since university.”
During the remainder of her dance with Mr. Bingley, Elizabeth somehow found them talking about Mr. Darcy. Bingley appeared inclined to speak about his friend, and Elizabeth certainly had the inclination to hear about that handsome and strange man.
Following the dance with Mr. Bingley, the next part of her evening went by well. Mrs. Bennet immediately approached Elizabeth to inquire about all the particulars of their dance — which led to her despairing groans when Elizabeth insisted that they were not at all to each other’s taste.
Then Mr. Lucas, Charlotte’s brother, asked her to dance, and another gentleman who had been a friend of hers after, and then for the fifth set Mr. Kelton who had rented from Mr. Long, though Elizabeth noted that Mrs. Bennet was not satisfied, as all of those persons were entirely ineligible, being married.
During the course of the night she could not help but keep her eye on Mr. Darcy. And thus she saw that he often glanced in her direction, and then he would, despite her encouraging smile that she could not help but offer him, look away.
She thought him from his behavior rather shy — he tended not to speak with any who were not of his own party, and he was quite stiff when he did so. But perhaps he was simply haughty and arrogant.
The truth was, Elizabeth became convinced over the course of watching him, as he accidentally managed to offend the bulk of the room’s inhabitants, that he was both abominably arrogant and quite shy. It was possible for a man to be both. He possessed a definite sensibility towards her that he did not want to admit to either of them.
That was quite flattering.
Mr. Darcy was everything a woman might fancy: tall, with exceptionally fine looks and a noble mien, the lean physique of regular rider, and in the one dance he partook with his host’s sister, he displayed a perfect command of the rhythm. To all those perfections he added great wealth and an ancient name, both of which a handsome gentleman ought to have if he could at all manage it.
However, Elizabeth’s contemplation of Mr. Darcy studiously not contemplating her through the means of his contemplating a portrait of the late king, was interrupted when for the second time that night a man without a wife asked her to dance.
It was Mr. Reed, the man who had made the sally about her many years before when she tried, in this room, to convince her friends that she was innocent.She recalled this villain’s sneer, his mocking face, and his ugly appearance, with a too large Adam’s apple, and the way his head jutted forward unpleasantly.
He looked rather better today, at thirty, than he had then at twenty and three. It was unfair that men tended to ripen like fine wines, only turning to vinegar when they were quite old, while women were like flowers who blossomed into a rosy bloom, when they were excessively young and stupid, and then spent the rest of their lives faded and fading.
She’d written that as a line attributed to one of her heroines in her last book.
“Damned long time since I’ve seen you,” Mr. Reed said when he came up to her with a mocking sneer on his face, mixed with desire. “By God! A damned long time. You still look as fetching as ever.” He leered at her. “Miss Elizabeth, would you dance with me for the next, as you do not have a partner yet.”
Elizabeth ground her teeth and looked aside, not answering him. “Miss Elizabeth, a dance.”
She wanted to cut him. Like she had been cut.
“Miss Elizabeth, do speak to me — you must recall
our old friendship.”
She yet ventured not reply.
Our heroine could see his face reddening, and becoming as ugly as she remembered it. Though she told herself, firmly, that nothing he could say mattered to her in the slightest, somehow she felt queer and scared.
“Miss Bennet. I am a respectable man, unlike some here, I’ll not permit you to treat me in such a manner — you can hear me. You shall dance with me now.”
“No. By no means, never. I remember — it is not all bygones for me. I would beg you, never, never, never speak to me. Never.”
There was an ugly snarl on Mr. Reed’s face. Elizabeth walked away from him.
She would not dance with such a man. Everything felt a little unreal. Was Hertfordshire a real place, or was she still happy in her tiny room in London and dreaming this place?
It seemed again as though the walls closed in upon her, making the room smaller, and smaller, and yet tinier. The roof would collapse on her and bury everything and everyone. The candlelight blared brightly, painfully, boring through her eyeballs into the putty brain behind.
Her throat clenched. She could no longer breathe quite right. She felt as though she were suffocating. Her chest was tight. Her hands distant and far away, far below. Unconnected to her, as though they belonged to another.
What was happening to her?
Elizabeth needed to escape. Be elsewhere. Somewhere. A place where no one stared at her.
Someone laughed, high pitched and screechy.
Almost running Elizabeth fled to a balcony and stepped into the cold night air. She leaned with her elbows on the cold iron railing. She gasped. Her feet felt odd, as though they did not belong to her body. That crushing sensation stayed in her throat, as though she might be about to die.
Was she?
It would be ironic if she were killed by attending a ball.
Elizabeth gripped the railing. She waited for the painful sensation’s passage.
She had felt such before, a few times. When Jane abandoned her, and after she had first ventured into company in London under the aegis of her aunt and uncle. But never so severe as she did now, back at the sight of her humiliation.
She forced herself to smile as her stomach clenched. It really was all quite ridiculous, and she would laugh at herself in another half hour.
Chapter Four
Mr. Bingley was informed during the course of his second dance of the night about the sordid history of his first partner, and given ample garbled details of Miss Bennet’s misadventure with Mr. Wickham seven years the prior.
Of course at the time of Miss Bennet’s disgrace, the girl Bingley danced with had yet been in the schoolroom — a place she remained for a further five years. This did not prevent the jealous Miss Peake from posing as an expert upon the topic of Elizabeth’s disgraceful disgrace — an expert, that is, to the extent any maiden who had no real notion what was so disgraceful about time spent close with men could be.
Miss Peake claimed ignorance of all such topics.
Mr. Bingley cared not as he was not in the buying way for a new wife, whether she was Elizabeth Bennet or Petunia Peake. He shrugged, smiled, made silly witticisms, insisted that he liked Miss Bennet all the same and that she was perfectly respectable in his eyes. He also thought internally that he would for all that still push Darcy towards the young woman — it would do no good, of course — when she was already “unsuitable”, what was an additional cause for unsuitability?
And Bingley thought no more upon the matter.
He never doubted that the essential detail of the story, viz that Miss Elizabeth Bennet had in fact acted in such a way as to entirely compromise her honor, dignity, and status as a “maiden” with that ensign whose name Miss Peake could not recall. Charles Bingley was not the sort of man to doubt that which he was told, and the whole matter seemed entirely plausible to him. After all, he had been induced into dalliances by pretty girls whilst sowing his youthful oats more than once, and that had been great fun to him.
Charles Bingley was also not the sort of man who hypocritically judged others for sins he himself participated in. Nor was he a man who excessively judged others for faults which were entirely foreign to himself.
Fitzwilliam Darcy, on the contrary, was both the sort of man who naturally doubted what he was told, and who had a strong inclination to excessively judge others for those faults which they had. He was even less likely though to be hypocritical than Charles Bingley, as he either entirely lacked those faults he condemned in others, or viewed the slight shadows they cast on his own character more harshly by far than a scurrilous scribbler could.
However he too upon learning of Miss Elizabeth Bennet’s dalliance with Mr. Wickham entirely believed the story, without it even occurring to him to question its veracity.
After Mr. Bingley’s second dance, that gentleman had approached Darcy, and suggested that his friend seek an introduction to Miss Bennet — though Miss Peake had been entirely too young for any sensible gentleman, his first partner had been a delight. Bingley promised he would make the introduction himself. “With great joy I will — a delightful creation, but she has too much… cleverness for a man such as myself. No, no, I think Miss Bennet shall be far more to your taste than my own, and she is by far the most interesting woman of those I have yet seen tonight.”
“No. No — she is unsuitable for me,” Darcy replied quickly, after overcoming that moment of unusual temptation he felt. “That is no dishonor to her. It is my grave duty to find a woman worthy of the Darcy name.”
“Grave duty!” Bingley laughed. “Finding a wife? No wonder you have failed. Be friends! You need not contemplate marriage to every woman you dance with. Miss Bennet sounds quite bored with the general conversation of the neighborhood — she’s spent the last seven years in London, almost since Izzie and I married — a very literary mind. She sounded me out if I could talk about books! Which you know I cannot, poor girl. You would be a much better companion for Miss Bennet. I insist, as a matter of charity, make an effort to be her friend.”
“I cannot…” Darcy was not sure what he could not do. Except that this “cannot” said he absolutely must not seek an introduction to Miss Bennet. It was like something scared in his stomach. He looked towards Miss Bennet, for rather too long. The neat, pretty girl, with her hair in lovely curls noticed his gaze, again, and she flashed a brilliant smile in his direction.
Darcy blushed and looked away.
“Come on, man. Upon my honor, I swear, she would like an introduction — no worries about forming expectations in her — I told her you have a list.”
Darcy felt ridiculously embarrassed, and somehow as though he were a schoolboy in Eton yard once more. He realized what frightened him too — there was something animal in his attraction to Miss Bennet. Something… different. He did not trust himself.
And he was terrified of showing any interest.
Which was ridiculous.
“No, no. No. Bingley, enjoy your dances, and your partners — I shall find no woman here suitable to be a companion, in any capacity. You waste your time with me.”
Bingley exclaimed, for the second time this night, and with more feeling than the first time, that he would not be so fastidious as his friend for a kingdom — and Bingley was quite serious upon that point. Had he been offered a kingdom in exchange for behaving with the gentler sex as Mr. Darcy did, he would have, upon serious and sober consideration, refused it.
Some time later in the evening, Mr. Darcy found himself next to a black-edged portrait of the late king, who had died, after many years of madness, only this January, thus ending the long period of the regency. The painting was an ill executed copy, the nose too long, and many blotches of paint badly out of place. Across on the other wall, sunnily staring at his father, was the fat portrait of their new king.
Miss Bennet had noticed how he kept glancing her way, and he knew that he ought to, by now as a matter of politeness, seek the introduction. But something
made it seem really too frightening for him to do so after so long when she had noticed him noticing her so many times.
So Darcy looked at a portrait of his former king. George III had been much the sort of man who ought to be king, decent, high minded, and above all respectable.
Until he went mad, of course.
Mr. Darcy was among the better part of the community of Britain which considered itself to rather disapprove of George IV. Fitzwilliam Darcy was, despite that disapproval, his Majesty’s most loyal subject. Of course.
Darcy lost the battle with himself and looked around to where he thought Elizabeth Bennet was. But he could not see her there, and he almost panicked. Had she left the room for some reason, and he would never see her again?
As Darcy looked about he heard her name pronounced sharply: “Miss Bennet.”
Two gentlemen who stood close enough to Darcy that he could hear them easily spoke. One of the gentlemen was deeply inebriated and thus spoke louder than anyone talking upon a private matter ought. The other was Mr. Lucas, the son of the genial knight who greeted everyone when they entered.
“I bet she had a child after, when they said she was in London.”
“Reed!”
“Miss Bennet is still a fine piece of muslin—”
“Do not speak of her so. She is my sister’s dearest friend.”
“I bet Miss Bennet had a child after, but they abandoned that scoundrel’s get on a roadside.”
“Mrs. Bennet is a kind woman who would not allow anything like that. And Mr. Bennet—”
“He’d do it. Mr. Bennet, he’s cold. He’d do it. He doesn’t care about anyone, no morals. Reads too much. Such men are dangerous.”
For a moment Darcy was distracted from his hands clenching into tight fists, though he did not know the facts of this story about Miss Bennet, nor did he have any right to defend her honor from this Mr. Reed. However, Mr. Reed’s accidental echo of Shakespeare almost amused him.
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