Elizabeth’s jaw dropped. The pieces of the puzzle slammed together in her mind with dizzying force.
“A viscount?” Mrs Bennet gasped, her voice reaching a pitch that threatened to shatter the windowpanes. “Oh, my poor nerves! A viscount at Netherfield! Do you know his name, Sister? What is his name?”
“Viscount Keathley!” Mrs Phillips announced proudly, as if she were his godmother. “He hails from a grand family in London!”
Jane let out a small, strangled sound that she disguised as a cough. She pressed her hand over her mouth, her shoulders beginning to shake.
“Viscount Keathley!” Mrs Bennet repeated the name as if it were a sacred chant. “Oh, what a magnificent day! A viscount! Mr Bennet must call on him immediately! Is he coming alone?”
“No, no! He is bringing a household!” Mrs Phillips leaned closer, dropping her voice into a conspiratorial whisper. “Mr Morris says the viscount is bringing his brother, a military man, and a female cousin who will serve as the hostess of the estate! And Sister, you will not believe the preparations!”
“Preparations?” Mrs Bennet asked greedily.
“Mrs Nicholls went to the butcher this morning and ordered fifty pounds of mutton! Fifty pounds! You do not order that much meat unless you intend to host a ball, or feed a regiment!”
Elizabeth could no longer contain it.
Jane had abandoned all attempts at serene neutrality. She was laughing, her hands covering her face, her whole body shaking.
Robert Fitzwilliam, a man who loathed the countryside, who did not visit his own seat in Cornwall, who detested early mornings and considered mud a personal insult, had just leased a country estate in Hertfordshire. He had bypassed the conventional rules of courtship and had simply acquired the neighbouring property, dragging Richard and Anne along to serve as his chaperones.
It was a siege. A romantic, ridiculous, mutton-fuelled siege.
“Why are you laughing?” Mrs Bennet demanded, glancing between her two eldest daughters with confusion. “Jane! Lizzy! Stop laughing! This is serious business! We must plan our wardrobes! We have an unmarried viscount moving in three miles away! We must strategise!”
“There is no need to strategise, Mamma,” Elizabeth managed to say. “I suspect the viscount has his own plans firmly in place.”
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Gouty Cherub and the Dappled Grey
THE AIR IN THE NETHERFIELDparlour tasted primarily of pulverised gypsum and the lingering ghost of Miss Caroline Bingley’s aesthetic choices.
Robert Fitzwilliam, Viscount Keathley, was dangling from a ladder, a chisel clutched in his right hand, staring at a particularly egregious plaster cherub that adorned the cornice. It was fat, it was smug, and it was holding a harp at an angle that defied both anatomy and good taste.
“If you do not remove that winged monstrosity,” Anne stated from the safety of the sofa—a sofa which, regrettably, still bore the faint, musky imprint of Miss Bingley’s perfume—“I shall be forced to set fire to the wing. It is an affront to the eye. It looks as though it is suffering from a very severe case of gout.”
Robert wiped a smudge of white dust from his forehead, leaving a streak of plaster across his skin. “I am getting to it, Anne. Rome was not built in a day, and unfortunately, this monstrosity appears to be reinforced with iron rods.”
“Bingley’s taste was not merely bad,” Anne continued, her voice sharp enough to carve glass. “It was an act of aggression. Who hangs a portrait of a pheasant in a dining room? It is practically a threat to the appetite.”
“A pheasant is festive,” Richard called out from the doorway. He was deep in a heated debate with Mrs Nicholls, the Netherfield housekeeper, regarding the precise boiling point of leg of lamb the cook must achieve. “Mutton must be braised, not boiled. Boiling meat is a culinary atrocity, Mrs Nicholls. I was in the Peninsula. I have seen things. Do not make me see a boiled roast.”
Robert grunted, applying more pressure to the chisel. “Richard, if you frighten the staff into a mutiny, we shall be forced to eat nothing but raw turnips. Leave the woman to her devices.”
“I am merely preserving our standards, Brother!”
Darcy entered the room with Georgiana trailing in his wake. They were the only two people in the house who did not appear like they had just crawled out of a sweep’s soot-bag. Darcy was impeccable in navy, his cravat tied with such precision that it seemed to mock Robert’s state of disarray.
“You are being punished by the masonry, Robert,” Darcy observed, his voice holding that infuriating, contented lilt he had adopted since his engagement.
“I am fighting a war on two fronts,” Robert panted. “The cherub is winning and Anne is threatening to burn the house down.”
“Georgiana and I are off to Longbourn. The banns were read on Sunday, and we thought we might stop by to see if Elizabeth needs anything from the village,” Darcy said, while Georgiana beamed.
“Give her my regards,” Robert said, his voice tight. “And tell her that if she requires to move any more heavy furniture, she needs only ask. I have had a great deal of practice.”
“I shall tell her you are busy being a martyr,” Darcy chuckled. He leaned in, his voice dropping. “It has been one week, Robert, and you are still sweating through your shirt. Do you intend to call on her, or are you just going to redecorate the entire county of Hertfordshire?”
“I am building a foundation,” Robert muttered. “Literally.”
