There was a shriek from upstairs—Kitty’s voice, pitched somewhere between delight and outrage. Footsteps followed, thundering down the stairs, and Lydia appeared a moment later in her corset and stockings, waving a gown above her head.
“It does not fit!” she bellowed. “It fit two months ago and now it is shrunk!”
Elizabeth raised her head. “Blame the syllabub, not the garment.”
“I shall have to wear Jane’s!” Lydia wailed, vanishing again in a flurry of underskirts.
Elizabeth’s mouth dropped open, just in time to hear a cry of dismay from Jane. “No, Lydia, you took my last gown. I have just made over another, and—”
But Mrs. Bennet’s voice echoed up the stairs. “Well! It is not her fault she is blooming like a prize rose! Jane’s gown will do perfectly—if we let it out a bit—and it will only prove how very womanly our Lydia is becoming!”
Elizabeth sank her teeth into her lower lip and turned back to her journal.
There is to be a ball. There is always a ball. But now it is his ball. Or at least, hosted by his friend.
Mr. Darcy has begun making social calls. I saw him leaving Mrs. Goulding’s house this morning—walking as though he had endured a personal tragedy and no one had yet offered him a drink.
The Hartfield nieces—Miss Eugenie and Miss Lavinia—are very nearly passable. Eugenie has a dowry, at least. And teeth. I think.
I should congratulate him. They are a fine match. Twice my dowry and half my sense. If he survives two visits, he may even earn a medal.
She added a small, ungenerous sketch of Darcy frowning over a tea tray. One eyebrow nearly reached his hairline.
I shall ask him about it, if I get the chance. Though he looked today as if he were riding directly into a thunderstorm.
She hesitated. Her pencil slowed.
He has been different, lately. Still proud, still intolerable, still too tall for any room he enters. But less certain. More—
The pencil stopped.
—sensible. Or perhaps I am.
I do not like this. I prefer it when my opponents stay perfectly ridiculous.
It was a sortof penance.
That was how he justified it.
He had made two calls already today, and was preparing for a third. He had smiled, complimented, endured, and—in one case—survived a plate of undercooked pheasant and an argument about musical theory between three sisters with identical hair.
The Lucases had been first.
Charlotte Lucas was not unappealing. Her face was rather plain, but she was sensible, direct, and only rarely gave the impression of calculating futures during a conversation. Darcy had asked about her reading. She had mentioned a passing interest in cookery receipts. He had fought the urge to reach for the window latch.
Her parents, however, had been another matter. Sir William’s enthusiasm hovered somewhere between embarrassing and contagious. Lady Lucas had spoken of potential matches in a tone that suggested the drawing room was a livestock pen.
Miss Lucas had not seemed particularly impressed with him. That, at least, had been refreshing. He would save his trouble for somewhere else.
His second visit had been worse.
The Wheatons were well-meaning and entirely exhausting. Mr. Wheaton spoke in long, circular monologues about regional land management. Mrs. Wheaton had taken to rearranging the seating until he was precisely next to her sister, Miss Mary King.
Mary King had thin, damp hair, freckles so numerous that he could not decide where they ended and her blush began, and an uncertain smile. She blinked frequently. She also—he could not explain this—had brought him a rose.
“A late bloom from Uncle’s hothouse,” she said. “They are but small this time of year.”
He had thanked her.
