by J. L. Ashton
“Mourning appears to be observed quite differently among the ton,” the society expert lectured her listeners. “Here, when Mrs. Miller passed, the family wore black for a year. No assemblies for them, and young James had to put off his courtship of that girl in Barnet.”
“Proper though James was, the girl off and married another, did she not?” voiced another matron of Meryton. “Tragedy and heartbreak. He lost his mother and the girl he loved.”
Heads bobbed and eyes narrowed. Darcy turned away, displeased by the ladies’ disapprobation. His musings were interrupted by the arrival of Sir William Lucas, which only compounded his displeasure. Aggravated as he was by the sympathetic sighs he received as a grieving cousin, and now by the offended glances of Meryton’s matchmaking mamas, he had to admit that he also was guilty of exaggerating his mourning to avoid certain social obligations. His brief encounter with the knight and a few other townsmen had tapped his reserves of patience and good will.
Beyond Hurst and Bingley, he had found only the company of Mr. Bennet and his chessboard to be of any comfort and interest. They played a day ago in a spirited match that ended in a draw. Miss Elizabeth sat at her father’s desk watching the men, and with a quick inhale or exhale of breath, she judged their moves. Her father questioned her loyalties only once, when Darcy’s bishop threatened his king and Elizabeth had hidden a smirk. “Et tu, Lizzy?” her father had cried.
***
The traitor herself now watched Marc Antony don that imperious mask she had seen at Longbourn; it was the face he wore whenever Mr. Collins came near. She certainly did not blame Mr. Darcy for evading her cousin, for the vicar was far too proud of himself and his oft-discussed list of talents. He spoke of his beekeeping and gardening, his raptures in observing the heavens, and his skills in discerning spices. Elizabeth thought his greatest talent was speaking of himself and his patroness. On this night, he was a most proficient gossip. She did not wonder at his lack of good manners, but she did marvel at his lack of sense
Although Mr. Darcy’s aloofness had stilled Mr. Collins’s tongue while at Longbourn, when the town’s other families played host, the chattering cleric appeared freer to share his sad and terrible tale of heartbreaking loss. It was perverse yet expected that the mothers of Meryton appeared to enjoy his company.
During the weeks of his stay at Longbourn, Mr. Collins’s recitation of his tale ensured the master of Pemberley received his due as the Grieving Groom, and that the majesties of Rosings, the tragic beauty of Miss de Bourgh, and the brilliant courage of her beloved mother were well known throughout the county. Mr. Collins appreciated the meals served and the sympathies expressed for the loss he had experienced. Mourning was sad, but his pain was assuaged by custards and spice cakes.
During their dance, Elizabeth wished that Mr. Collins were focused on counting his steps rather than expressing his shock and amazement at the events of the evening. He seemed to be so busy pondering the wisdom of Mr. Darcy’s presence at the ball and his shocking lack of propriety in dancing, that Elizabeth surmised it likely her awkward cousin would require her mother’s salts.
But Sir William was a sweet man, pleased with himself and nearly everything and everyone around him. Elizabeth thought it enviable to find joy in the simplest of things and serenity in the worst of times. Maria Lucas and her brothers were much like their father, but Charlotte’s practical contentment was a rare quality, one she finally appeared to accept. She was prepared now to settle for any happiness, but no man seemed prepared to settle on her. Elizabeth felt a twinge of melancholy for her dear friend. Aside from this ball and perhaps an assembly or two come autumn, at seven and twenty, Charlotte had few opportunities left and no family to visit in London—family who would show her the delights and promise of life outside of Meryton.
Elizabeth shook off her malaise and looked around the room. For all of her hostility to the idea of hosting the town’s families, Miss Bingley did know how to throw a ball. She tapped Charlotte’s arm and gestured to the flower boughs over the windows. Then her eyes drifted back to the pair across the floor. Mr. Darcy was raising his eyebrows and nodding his head at whatever Sir William was saying. He appeared to be tolerant of—if a bit bemused by—the older man’s effusive speech and gestures.
“Lizzy,” said Charlotte, “my father seems to be enjoying Mr. Darcy’s company, much as your father has.”
“He does, indeed.”
“In spite of his tragic loss, Mr. Darcy seems much improved in mood. He danced with Miss Bingley.”
“Charlotte, she is acting as host, and he is a guest in her home. It was expected. It is unlikely we shall see him dance again tonight.”
“Is it? He stares at you quite often.”
Charlotte had more than five years of ballroom seasoning over Elizabeth, but the younger woman could not mistake the meaning behind her friend’s words. Eager to change the conversation, Elizabeth weighed her response.
“He knows few people here, Charlotte. We have discussed books.” She gave an arch smile. “To hear you speak, all it takes is an evening with stars overhead and punch overserved for Miss Bingley, or any lady, to mistake something that did not belong to her as a promise to be claimed.”
“Or not take notice of what could be hers, Lizzy.”
Elizabeth blinked and pulled her eyes away from Charlotte. She was startled to find the two gentlemen approaching.
***
“Good evening, Miss Elizabeth, Miss Lucas.”
Sir William beamed at the ladies. “Mr. Darcy and I have just had an enlightening conversation about the Prince Regent and the coming Season. You are for London soon, Lizzy?”
“In three days, sir.”
“We shall miss you, my Charlotte especially.” He turned to Darcy and chuckled. “I used to find these two perched in the trees, reading their books and hiding from their mothers.”
“Father!”
“Ah, Charlotte. I suppose it was mostly Lizzy, our princess of the trees.” He beamed at Miss Elizabeth and nodded to Darcy. “Jewel of the county, this one. We all shall be sorry to lose her.” He turned to his daughter. “Your mother has requested your help, my dear. Maria’s slipper has had a bad turn and is in need of your deft helping hands.”
The Lucases wandered off. Darcy turned to see Miss Elizabeth biting back a smile. She glanced at him and shrugged. “Charlotte is a dutiful sister.”
“Yes, I…Miss Elizabeth, I hope I am not…” he faltered, trapped by her laughing eyes. “May I say you look quite handsome tonight? You and all your sisters, of course.”
“You may say as many pretty things as you like, Mr. Darcy, though I warn you, I practise discernment in my acceptance of such compliments.”
“Oh.” Darcy paused. She left him tongue-tied and confused—again. “In the same manner as you judge a chess match, I assume?”
Her eyes met his, sparkling and full of laughter, and he felt dizzy. This mere slip of a girl with flowers in her hair and a yellow gown that seemed to highlight her dark eyes was captivating. Lord, I will miss our conversations.
“Why, yes. Exactly the same manner.” She tilted her head and stared at him. “Mr. Darcy, I believe conversation is far easier if one breathes in and out.”
He pulled his eyes away from hers and turned to watch the movement on the floor. “Have your toes not recovered from your last dance, or do you choose to sit out this one?”
She was caught between a smirk and a blush. “My toes will be well enough. Two days ago, after Mr. Collins secured my hand for the first set, my sisters and I devised a use for our old handkerchiefs. They make for wonderful protection when stuffed into one’s dancing slippers.”
Darcy coughed back a laugh. “You are indeed a chess player, Miss Elizabeth. Pray, will you require the stuffing for your future partners?”
“I think not. I am famil
iar with the dancing skills of my other partners, and none frighten me.”
“Ah.” He looked at her from the corner of his eye. “So, all your sets save this one are taken?”
“No, I have the supper dance open.”
She blushed. It was charming.
“Might I secure your hand for that set?”
“I find I have no reason to say no.”
“I thank you, Miss Elizabeth. Until then…” He gave her a small smile, and eyeing the approach of Miss Lydia and two young men towards them, he moved away. He was aware that the supper dance was “La Boulangere,” and he looked forward to watching her step to and remark on that joyful music.
He was leaving tomorrow. She would be gone two days after that. They would begin new lives: she, soon to be a bride, and he, to find one. One dance seemed a fair way to say farewell.
***
Elizabeth was faring less well two days later.
“I did not realise the militia was to be at my aunt’s card party,” she murmured to Charlotte and Jane. She was tired from a sleepless night and keenly feeling the absence of a good conversationalist. She was annoyed with her sisters, her cousin, her mother, and her Aunt Phillips. If only she had stayed home with her father and his chessboard. If only it had not rained much of the past two days, keeping her inside and away from her walk and her solitude. If only Mr. Darcy had not left Netherfield. If only that last thought did not plague her.
“I believe they leave within the week,” her friend said quietly.
“Ah, well. At least they provide new ears for Mr. Collins’s many exciting tales and proverbs.”
Charlotte gave her a sharp look. “Not everyone finds him so tiresome, Lizzy. He would make a suitable husband to some in spite of his tendency to talk overmuch and expound on the savoury goodness of every meal.”
“I am not certain he is wife hunting with his own parish currently in flux,” Elizabeth said slowly as understanding flared. Charlotte sees him as desirable in whatever desperate sense that makes. She should not fear Jane or me standing in her path to such happiness.
“He is a good man,” Jane said in her ever-agreeable way. “And this is a fine night.”
“It does provide a last hope for certain ladies to secure themselves a redcoat.”
“Oh, Lizzy, be good.” Jane glanced worriedly at her sister, who now wore an impish grin.
“No one can be as good or as happy as you, Jane. I am sorry Mr. Bingley is not here this evening.”
“As am I, but there will be much to occupy us.”
The threesome listened as Mr. Collins completed his compliments of the room and said that it favourably recalled to him a similar yet much larger and grander room at Rosings. After a rather upset Aunt Phillips deserted his side, he began a perambulation, strolling slowly and introducing himself to those he deemed most presentable.
Elizabeth noted that he had stopped by Lydia and Mr. Wickham—a man they had met the day before in Meryton and now wearing regimentals as he had joined the militia. Feeling unselfish, Elizabeth tugged on Jane’s hand and led her, followed by Charlotte, to the group. Mr. Wickham welcomed them with a broad grin, but his greeting was interrupted by his admirer’s oration.
“The nephew of my generous benefactor, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, has been in the area of late, sir.” Collins folded his hands across his expansive chest. “We have spent some time in conversation, and I have offered him my pastoral counsel.”
Wickham’s eyes had narrowed on hearing the word nephew and now widened as his face paled. “Her nephew? Colonel Fitzwilliam…?”
Met with blank stares from his audience, realisation dawned. “Do you mean Darcy? You have made the acquaintance of my old friend?”
Jane’s attention was sought eagerly by her mother, and she drifted away. The other women remained, keen to forward the conversation.
“Yes, we have, Mr. Wickham,” Elizabeth said. “He was visiting a friend.”
“And mourning his beloved,” Mr. Collins asserted.
“Darcy? Mourning his beloved?” Mr. Wickham repeated slowly.
The reverend nodded gravely. “His betrothed, Miss de Bourgh, has gone to her maker.”
“She is dead,” Lydia assured him.
Mr. Wickham nodded and looked away for a moment before adopting a concerned expression. “He is mourning the woman he threw over?”
Elizabeth stared at him. “Pardon me?”
He laughed softly before giving voice to bitter-sounding sentiments. “I grew up with Darcy at his family’s estate. My boyhood chum was indeed betrothed to Miss de Bourgh. They were promised to each other from the cradle, but he was less than inclined to actually wed her. The lure of joining the estates was great at one time, but I believe he met another beauty whose charm and fortune equals his own, and he ended the engagement mere weeks ago.”
When gasps erupted, Mr. Wickham leaned closer, his blue eyes moist. “And now you tell me Miss de Bourgh is dead? Dear lord. She was a delicate flower on the cusp of her bloom. That man has no right to mourn. He broke her heart.”
“Oh, this cannot be, yet it explains it all!” Mr. Collins cried. His face was pale, and his hands shook as he brought them to his chest. “Poor Lady Catherine!”
“Truly tragic. Lady Catherine should rely on your wise counsel,” Charlotte said quietly to Mr. Collins. She placed her hand on his arm.
“Mr. Darcy is a monster,” Lydia voiced, her jaw slack.
“Unbelievable,” Elizabeth whispered. “Mendacity and mourning…”
She stepped away, stunned by what she had just learned and appalled at the man who freely defamed another man she thought she had admired. One man was a dissembler, the other a scoundrel. Or was one man both of these things? Was it the man she had known for mere weeks and with whom she had conversed and laughed, or was it the man she had just met? Did it matter? The former was gone, off to meet other ladies at other estates. Or was it to rendezvous with the “beauty whose charm and fortune equals his own?”
None of it made sense—not the accusation made by Mr. Wickham nor the feelings she had been quashing since meeting Mr. Darcy. She had held his hand and matched his steps, met his eyes, and it felt, at times, met his mind during their dance two nights earlier. He had enquired about which books she and Charlotte had read up in the tree branches. “Were they stolen from your father’s shelf or were they deemed appropriate for curious young girls?”
He had been flirting with me right in the middle of the ballroom floor! It had not felt that way at the time; it had been a spirited discussion of books, music, and the ruins in Rome they both wished to see. But he had charmed her. Was this behaviour common to men of his station at small country balls? Was it common to him? Was Mr. Darcy a rake and a scoundrel?
Her head ached; her eyes stung. She was as stupid and silly as her younger sisters. She spoke of clouds and wishes and books with a man doing nothing more than whiling away his time with a country girl. All of those important nothings about which we had conversed.
She had allowed Mr. Darcy into her heart a little, knowing nothing would come of it. He was a flirt at best, a cad at worst. There was nothing in between.
What a joke she was.
Chapter Seven
It took but a day with the Hadleys in Kenilworth for Darcy to relax and push away any lingering regrets about his time in Hertfordshire. The shooting was good, the conversation lively, the sprawling estate rife with good trails and rides.
As much as he had enjoyed his time at Netherfield, achieving as always a comfortable amity with Bingley and Hurst, he felt a sense of himself return whenever he was with the companions of his youth. John Hadley had been with him at Eton and then at Cambridge. He was familiar with more than the outlines of Darcy’s life; like Richard, he had helped sketch and colour them in.
&n
bsp; Hadley knew the loss Darcy had suffered with his mother’s death and the struggles he had faced when suddenly becoming the master of Pemberley and parent to his sister. He understood the complicated relationship Darcy had with his aunt and the frustration he had felt—and family battles he had fought—when he had denied any intention to marry Anne.
Tall, broad, and ruddy-faced, Hadley lived the life Darcy imagined for himself. He had taken the grand tour while Darcy was burying his father and consoling his sister. Upon his return, Hadley met a pretty young lady from one of London’s best families and married her while Darcy lurked near the walls of the few ballrooms he had ever entered. Now, Hadley and his wife lived happily with their two young sons on a fine, well-situated estate not far from his parents’ land and the dower house where his mother resided. Hadley had everything that could make a lesser man jealous. While Darcy could admit to a few moments of envy, he mostly felt admiration for the way his friend had managed his life, and he hoped his own would follow a due course. Soon.
It was apparent Cecilia Hadley had the same hopes for her husband’s quiet friend. Three days after Darcy’s arrival, her two younger sisters and their friends descended upon the estate and destroyed his equanimity. It was as Miss Bingley had feared: he was surrounded by pretty young ladies, each of whom thought Darcy was all that was handsome, intelligent, manly, and perfectly suited for only her.
Cecilia’s sisters were pleasant, lively, and rarely stopped talking, though mostly to each other. Their friends were not dissimilar. Miss Copley had blonde hair and blinked her eyes more than seemed normal. Miss Eakin had large teeth and a sceptical demeanour. Miss Upton tittered or gasped at everything he said, and the Misses Edwards enjoyed Shakespeare and pantomime. It was…exhausting. Miss Bingley had nothing to fear, but he might. He told his man, Smith, that he would be locking the door to his rooms. And perhaps wedging a chair or two against it.