I think my favorite way of meditating on Elizabeth’s face is with that quirk to her brow—playful and clever or thoughtful and cool, that same look can convey a thousand moods. She favored me with it again, and that was the first time I felt my grip on my heart slipping.
“And what have you set your mind to at the moment, if I may ask?”
“I was thinking of asking one of them to play a game of chess.”
“Chess? Now there is a fine picture!” Miss Bingley snorted.
Dash it all, I had nearly forgot she was listening, and she looked none too pleased about my continued presence at the chess table while she waited on the sofa.
“Miss Kitty, or Miss Lydia, trying to hold two thoughts in their heads is quite outlandish enough, but to try to match you! Oh, no, Mr. Darcy, it would be humiliating to yourself, even if they do not share the capacity for shame.”
For the first time, I noticed that Elizabeth’s cheek was flinching. Her jaw was tight, her eyes hard, and her nostrils fluttering with anger. But she refused to allow Miss Bingley to goad her. I understood then that this must have been a regular thing between them, and to my dismay, Bingley scarcely noticed.
There was nothing to be done by me, however, save to play along with the innocent party. I folded my arms and returned a sage look for Miss Bingley’s acerbity.
“As a matter of fact, I do have my opponent chosen, and I have no doubt it will prove interesting. I believe I will challenge Mr. Bennet.”
Elizabeth rewarded me with a grateful smile. I remember that most of all, above anything else that happened all that week. I had come to the house as a near stranger to her, and now, I had won a friend.
I had few true friends in life. Perhaps it was because I was so cautious in the choosing of my inner circles, and the loss of Andrew had been a devastating blow that Charles could never make up. His widow, however, was beginning to step slowly and inexorably into that wounded hole.
It was a pity I had to beat her at chess.
Five
Iknow by nowwhen and where Fitzwilliam is penning his portion of our memoirs because I caught him acting very suspiciously when I awoke this morning. He was speaking hurriedly, asking if I would not like to call my maid and trying to divert my gaze out the opposite window to admire the rain. As rain is no novelty this time of year, I was naturally on the alert.
When his valet invited him away for his shave, I took the liberty of peeking under the bed. Lo and behold, I found his journal. It is now my privilege to set the record straight on one or two things that he has misrepresented.
I won that game of chess.
And the one after that.
He did claim a victory over me later in the week, but I blame that on the fact that my father had sharpened his skills before our rematch. Even now, I win more often than not, and I wonder how on earth Fitzwilliam gained his reputation for being a formidable player.
Oh, and I never meant to flirt with him. It does sound like that from the way he has set it down, but I speak the truth. I had hadquite enough of marriage and felt no desire to put myself in that way again, though I was perfectly content to lead others down the primrose path.
But I digress.
Fitzwilliam proved to be a willing lamb to the slaughter for all the preening mamas in Meryton. I believe that I alone appreciated the sacrifice it must have been for him, because Charles did not yet know him well enough, and neither he nor Caroline could conceive of a differing perspective to their own. I am naturally a garrulous person, but Jane once told me that a retiring character—Mary was her example, but Fitzwilliam fits the illustration perfectly—when forced into much company, would feel just as miserable as I would if locked away for days with no company at all.
And so, when Mr. Darcy would retreat to some sanctum at Netherfield for an hour or two, I made certain that the servants did not betray his whereabouts to my brother or sister-in-law. For one thing, I liked Charles far too well to permit his boisterous personality to drive away a friend of such material usefulness. Charles had steadied remarkably in the year since I had known him, and to some degree, Fitzwilliam was responsible for it.
But watching Fitzwilliam at the Assembly later that week, gamely taking to the floor for set after set, gave me a new appreciation for him. Perhaps I was the only one by the time the dust had all settled on the dance floor, and even my approval was tested afterward.
He did escort the proper number of ladies, but he seemed little charmed. The silly dolt spoke tersely to most of them, a thing for which he was judged prideful and above his company by the Meryton Mamas, as I had taken to calling them. They did not notice how his complexion was slightly paler with each new ladyhe met. I think the man went half an hour at one stretch without taking a proper breath.
By the time we rode home that evening, he had run out of words entirely. Even now, comfortably married for two decades and still firmly affixed in my own mind as the giddiest fool who ever draped herself on her husband’s arm, I hold to the belief that he is allotted a limited number of utterances per day. Someday, I imagine I will be bored enough to count them and settle the matter. When the quota is reached, there is nothing left but sarcasm.
So it was on the way home that night.
“I declare, I have never seen prettier girls in my life! Some of them uncommonly agreeable,” Charles bubbled. “Breeding, elegance, beauty—why, Meryton is abounding in fine ladies! Do you not agree, Darcy?”
“Bingley, you continue to astonish me. I saw little beauty and no breeding at all,” Fitzwilliam snapped.
I flashed him an indignant look, and he grudgingly added, “Present company excluded.”
“Quite right, Mr. Darcy,” Caroline purred. I absolutely hated it when she did that, and she knew it, so I tried to look the other way. “We were certainly a long way from Grosvenor Square, were we not?”
