“Will you then enter the den of iniquity our angelic Jane has transformed Longbourn into?” Elizabeth grinned.
“You seriously wish our presence?” Felicia asked.
“I do — I confirm Jane’s report — no one ever trustsherwhen she describes a person as good, because sheisJane — nothing except sweetness and excess of shyness in Miss Darcy. The opposite of her brother; though the family connection can be traced.”
“Is this to flirt with Mr. Darcy?” Lucas replied quickly, smirking.
He laughed at the way Elizabeth’s mouth fell open. “Ha! Our Lizzy, at last. You want to impress him! Grown so desperate in your spinsterish years as to—”
“Mr. Lucas, to claim a woman — a spinster—”
“Darcy claimed you were a spinster.”
“To claim arespectableold maid would actively seek to impress a gentleman.”
“Fie! I saw how taken you were with him. I see through you!”
“Never.”
“Oh yes! You were taken by him. Deuced tall fellow.” Lucas held his hand up high above his head to demonstrate.
“I did not denythat— just your ability to see through me. I hide depths.”
Felicia inserted, “She does.”
All of them laughed. Lucas and Felicia looked at each other, and she nodded. Lucas said, “Lizzy, I dare say we’ll be attending your dinner.”
“Oh! I wish I could meet Miss Darcy,” Maria exclaimed.
Mr. Lucas elbowed his sister. “Running to perdition with Lydia? Not today.”
Chapter Ten
When Elizabeth returned home from her visit with the Lucases, she softly walked around the garden to the back entrance so that she might avoid her mother’s questions about the meeting. Elizabeth was in a fine mood, and she had no desire to hear Mrs. Bennet’s pique about Lady Lucas once more. She entered through the unlatched heavy green back door that led to Papa’s study room.
A bluster of cold air came with her, rattling Papa’s sheets of paper, and making him draw his unfashionable, but comfortable, brown woolen dressing gown tightly about himself.
“Fine walk?” Papa asked such a question most times too.
“Success!” Elizabeth almost bounced as she pulled off her lambskin gloves and coat and hung them on the rack next to the door. Papa would prefer if Elizabeth always used the front entrance, to avoid adding the cold to his room, but he did not begrudge her the opportunity to avoid questioning by Mama.
Elizabeth walked to the piped stove to stir up the fire and add a few new coals, letting her nose and cheeks warm from the cold. The weather had turned poor enough that Papa had begun having a fire always lit in his favorite room.
Papa picked his book up again and said as he thumbed through the pages, “John Lucas allows his bride to meet such a scandalous woman as Georgiana Darcy? I hope he knows what he is about.”
“They have been married near four years now. Hardly newlyweds.” Elizabeth enjoyed the flurry of sparks that flew towards her face like fireflies after she put the new coals onto the fire. She closed the door and held her hands close to the hot metal.
“Ahhh. Married long enough that hehopesshe will be corrupted.”
“By mine and Jane’s Georgie?” Elizabeth laughed. “Disappointment waits him.”
Elizabeth went to her chair and pulled her stationery out to place on the worn surface of her father’s walnut desk. She had several letters to compose for her circle of friends. Most significantly she owed Charlotte and her Aunt Gardiner reports upon Mr. and Miss Darcy.
Elizabeth first scratched out a few paragraphs to Charlotte. Shehadmet Lady Catherine’s nephew who broke Anne’s tender heart, Mr. Darcy, and his sister whoneverwas spoken of, except in hushed tones (for Lady Catherine). Elizabeth added her impressions of Georgiana, and then a laughing sketch of the first night at the assembly when she met Mr. Darcy.
Halfway through the letter Elizabeth laid down her pen and nibbled on the back of her spiky feather. The memories were vivid. Arguing with Darcy, his handsome smile, the amusement that he managed to turn into anger, and then back into amusement. The sense she’d beaten himthat timein their little verbal combat. Then other meetings.
He made her angry — actually angry.
