Jane smiled, a faint colour rising in her cheeks at the colonel’s apparent compliment.
Elizabeth, who had risen as well, met Darcy’s gaze—and a brief twinkle of amusement lit her eyes before she turned back to the room. She addressed Richard with easy cordiality, but there was no softening in her manner beyond what civility required.
“The colonel has been entertaining us with accounts of his travels,” she said lightly. “Jane has been plying him with questions in a manner I would more readily have expected of her younger sisters than of herself.”
Jane laughed softly. “Only because he has answered them so very obligingly. Even you must acknowledge that his stories are very diverting.”
“Yes, and I am not altogether certain how much of his stories are to be believed, but I will acknowledge they are entertaining,” Elizabeth replied, resuming her seat with unaffected composure, her tone light but entirely unembarrassed.
Darcy inclined his head, the tension he had scarcely acknowledged easing despite himself.
Whatever he had imagined, Elizabeth’s look told him plainly enough that nothing here was amiss—indeed, that she regarded the colonel’s attentions with mild amusement rather than interest.
A quiet relief stole over him, unwelcome in its intensity, and he was obliged to school his expression lest it betray too much.
He took a seat near to the lady, his earlier irritation dulled, and found himself observing—not for the first time—that Elizabeth Bennet missed very little.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Two days after Jane and Mary’s first call, Elizabeth and Georgiana returned the visit to Longbourn. Darcy had not spared Elizabeth the particulars of the gossip being circulated about her, and Charlotte had called at Millwood Cottage the very next day.
“They do not really believe Miss Bingley,” Charlotte had said with a small shrug, “but they wonder where you might have gone. Jane mentioned that your grandfather had returned, and that alleviated some of the concern, but with Miss Bingley spreading her tale and no one knowing where you had gone, many began to be worried for you.”
Elizabeth smiled, not without irony. “Then I suppose I must reappear in Meryton and assure everyone that I am well. It has been several years since anyone saw my grandfather, and I suspect many have forgotten that he purchased Millwood Cottage as a place to stay in the area.”
“Yes, I had not remembered either, but once Mr Darcy told me, I recalled how little he liked staying at Longbourn,” Charlotte said with a laugh.
After some discussion with her grandfather regarding this news, Elizabeth was convinced that paying a round of long-overdue visits—to the Bennets, the Lucases, and a few others—would be the surest way of putting such nonsense to rest.
“Gossip seldom survives when daylight shines on it,” her grandfather observed. “A few well-chosen appearances will do more than any denial. I will show myself at Longbourn as well and speak to your uncle. He knew where you were, but I suppose he could not trouble himself to make it known.”
Her grandfather, Mr Darcy, and Colonel Fitzwilliam were to accompany the ladies on their calls for only a brief time. The visits—which Elizabeth argued ought to have taken place the day after Jane and Mary’s return—were delayed while the earl waited for several men known to him and to Colonel Fitzwilliam to arrive. These men, all former officers who had served alongside the colonel and were personally known to the earl, would act as footmen; their true charge, however, was to watch over Elizabeth and Georgiana wherever they went.
Elizabeth understood that the gentlemen would accompany her and Georgiana only as far as the Bennets and would not join them in the subsequent calls. Instead, they would endeavour to learn what they could of Mr Bingley. Should he still be at Netherfield, Lord Granfield intended to call upon him with Colonel Fitzwilliam in attendance.
As for Mr Darcy, it was evident that his willingness to go to Netherfield would be determined solely by whether Caroline Bingley continued to reside there—a circumstance Elizabeth understood perfectly well. She had been surprised by how candid he had been the night before when he explained his abrupt departure from Netherfield to them all.
Elizabeth had long been aware of that lady’s interest in him, but had not expected her to be so brazen as to attempt to force a connexion. The notion that any woman would deliberately attempt to compromise a gentleman struck her as foolish; even if he were honourable enough to offer her marriage as a result, she could not imagine that such a lady would afterward be treated with any real kindness.
Shaking off these thoughts, she returned to the matter at hand. Elizabeth knew she had been remiss in not writing to Jane sooner, but she had been so occupied in preparing Millwood Cottage for guests that it had simply slipped her mind. That Jane seemed to hold the matter against her had seemed evident on her visit to Millwood, and Elizabeth wondered slightly at its cause.
“You might have written sooner,” Jane had said. There was little doubt her words were kindly meant, but they still evoked a measure of guilt in Elizabeth. “Truly, I did not know where to send a note, and I have been at a loss to know how to find you. Papa would not tell us anything.”
For the briefest of moments, she considered that Jane might have heard Miss Bingley’s claims that Elizabeth had behaved scandalously, but surely her cousin would not believe her capable of acting in such a way.
At Longbourn, they were greeted with great warmth; Mrs Bennet, in particular, was delighted to host Mr Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam with effusive praises, but she met Mr Grant more cooly. Likewise, Kitty and Lydia were ecstatic to have an officer of the Regulars to speak with and upon whom to practise their flirtations. Despite Lydia proclaiming him “not as handsome as Sanderson or Wickham,” he had far better stories, she decided by the end of the visit.
None of the guests reacted at the mention of Wickham, but Elizabeth exchanged a glance with Jane and Mary and thought she read their looks correctly. It did not surprise her that their father had said nothing of Wickham to his family, yet she could not help but wonder whether the account Mr Darcy, the colonel, and her grandfather had shared with a select few had begun to circulate in Meryton. She suspected that Mrs Philips, at least, would be quick to make known that militia officers were not to be so readily trusted, given what Mr Darcy had confided to her husband; however, as that information had been shared only two days earlier, and Elizabeth could not be certain what her youngest cousins had heard.
Rather than wait and speculate, she spoke. “But ought you not to be wary of such men?” she asked. “What do you truly know of them? From what my grandfather has said of his dealings with the Regulars on the Continent, not all officers—despite their claims to gentility—are as diligent as they ought to be.”
She paused, then turned towards the colonel. “Surely, Colonel Fitzwilliam, you can attest to that. Militia commissions do not always attract the most scrupulous gentlemen. Some leave substantial debts in their wake. Others can scarcely afford their uniforms, much less the obligations they contrive to accumulate.”
“La, Lizzy, you are so very dull,” Lydia proclaimed. “I have every intention to marry an officer, and we shall go to balls and parties every night. We shall be quite happy indeed.”
Elizabeth had barely suppressed a grimace at her young cousin’s foolishness when the colonel intervened, his tone amiable and unruffled.
“Hardly, Miss Lydia. Even though I am a colonel in the Regulars—which, I assure you, pays rather better than the militia—I cannot contemplate marriage without first considering whether a lady possesses a dowry, and a substantial one at that. I should be most reluctant to ask a wife to follow the drum, and most ladies, particularly those of your class, would scarcely relish relying upon my modest income for their support.”
