Not all foolish, perhaps. The good things were still true. A man could be honorable in one part of his life and proud in another. He could be generous to tenants and cold to strangers. He could sacrifice for his family and yet look at a young woman in an assembly room and decide she was not handsome enough, not rich enough, not… enough.
The thought stung more deeply than she wished to admit.
It was one thing to be slighted by some ordinary gentleman, some foolish young man who had never meant anything to her. It was quite another to be found wanting by the handsomest man she had ever seen, a man whose character she had admired before she even understood how much his opinion mattered to her.
Sorrow sat heavily upon her for a time.
Then, with the natural perversity of her spirits, sorrow began to warm into anger.
For what had he judged? A plain gown? A quiet seat by the wall? The absence of lace? The dowry he supposed she lacked? He had known nothing of her. Nothing of Netherfield, not that she wished him to know it. Nothing of the economiesshe practiced by choice, the tenants whose cottages had been mended before drawing-room ornaments were purchased, the accounts she reviewed with Mr. Philips, the Gardiner children whose futures had been protected because she refused to treat fortune as a toy.
But even without Netherfield, even without ten thousand pounds, she was more than the contents of a marriage settlement. She was more than just the figure of her body and the figure in her bank account.
She worked hard. She tried to be kind, though she would never claim Jane’s angelic patience. She took care where she could. She listened to tenants. She stretched funds until they produced usefulness instead of vanity. She loved her sisters, even when Lydia made it difficult, and she had learned, perhaps too young, that a woman must be clever with very little if she wished the people she loved to be safe.
She stabbed her needle down into the cloth with force. If Mr. Darcy would not see my worth beyond a dowry, then the loss is his, not mine.
“Eliza?”
Elizabeth started. Her needle slipped, pricking the tip of her finger. “Oh!”
Charlotte was watching her from the chair opposite, concern softening the usual dry intelligence of her expression. Jane, beside her, looked equally anxious.
“Are you well?” Charlotte asked. “You look as though you slept poorly.”
Jane leaned nearer. “Has your headache returned?”
Elizabeth looked down at her sewing and discovered she had stitched the same fold of fabric to itself. “No, no. Forgive me. I am quite well, only a little stupid from yesterday’s headache, I suppose.”
“It was severe enough to send you home,” Jane said gently.
“Yes.” Elizabeth smiled with more effort than she liked. “Though I am persuaded the cure was chiefly escaping Mama’s delight over Mr. Bingley’s fortune.”
Charlotte’s mouth curved. “Then you must be entirely restored, for you can still tease.”
“I should be very ill indeed before losing that faculty.”
Across the room, Mrs. Bennet was telling Lady Lucas that Mr. Bingley had looked at Jane at least six times during their second dance, and that she had counted not from vulgar curiosity but from maternal discernment. Lady Lucas replied that it was only natural, for Jane had looked very well, though Maria thought Miss Bingley’s orange gown had been the finest in the room. Lydia declared orange hideous unless worn with green ribbons, at which Mary murmured something about vanity in dress being a snare to the understanding.
Charlotte lowered her voice. “I only wondered whether you had formed an opinion of our newcomers before your retreat.”
Elizabeth set aside her sewing, glad to abandon the mangled work. “Mr. Bingley seems very pleasing.”
“Pleasing?” Charlotte repeated. “That is mild praise for a man who made half the room fall in love with his good humor.”
“He is eager to be pleased, which is no small recommendation in a stranger. He seems ready to like Hertfordshire, and that may make Hertfordshire very ready to like him.”
Jane’s blush returned, delicate and betraying. “He was very amiable.”
“So I observed.”
Charlotte glanced toward Jane with affectionate amusement, then back to Elizabeth. “And his sisters?”
Elizabeth’s brows lifted. “They seemed to consider themselves superior to the company, the room, the music, the neighborhood, and possibly the county.”
Jane looked distressed. “Lizzy.”
“I did not say they were unkind. Only elevated. Very elevated. One fears for them should the air grow thin at such heights.”
