“I was not aware my aunt was expected in London,” he said.
“Lady Catherine did not send word in advance, sir,” the butler stated without inflection.
“Then we shall see her, since she has already been admitted.” Lady Sophia said with an air of resignation but not without a barb of interest. “Come, Darcy, I suppose she either has news or has heard the news.”
Darcy held her arm as she tapped her way to her own drawing room, where his aunt and cousin sat, one in regal splendor and the other shrunken into the settee. They did not rise when Lady Sophia entered, although Lady Catherine’s voice rose quite precipitously.
“Darcy! Why was I not informed that you had opened the house? I arrive in London to find the knocker up, the fireslit, and my nephew next door conducting domestic business as though he were preparing for a siege. Anne, do sit closer to the fire, your constitution will not survive a draught.”
“Aunt Catherine.” He bowed. “I trust your journey was comfortable.”
“The roads were appalling, and the posting inn at Bromley has gone entirely to ruin. Anne, I said by the fire.” Lady Catherine’s inspection swept the room and landed upon Lady Sophia with all the warmth of a drafty ice house. “Lady Sophia. I did not expect to find you here.”
“Lady Catherine.” Lady Sophia inclined her head. “How well you look inmydrawing room.”
Lady Catherine lifted her chin, already settled in the largest chair. “Fitzwilliam, I have come to London on a matter of dire urgency. Anne and I shall dine with you this evening.”
This was not a request. Darcy recognized the tone; any objection would be met with the same interest she gave the opinions of servants.
“Assuredly, Aunt. Lady Sophia, will you join us?”
Lady Catherine’s face performed a rapid series of calculations—social obligation, tactical disadvantage, the impossibility of refusing without appearing petty—and arrived at a grimace masquerading as a smile. “How delightful.”
“I should be honored to invade your dining room, Darcy dear.” Lady Sophia’s eyes crinkled with the pleasure of a woman who had won the opening exchange and was content to wait for the rest.
Dinner was served at seven in the dining room overlooking the garden, whose rear gate opened onto the passage to Number Thirty-Three, a distance of thirty steps.
Lady Catherine had spent the afternoon inspecting Darcy House, issuing opinions on curtains, carpets, Georgiana’s posture, and the dining chairs. Anne trailed behind in patient silence, pausing now and then to study a painting or a book with the air of someone more interested in exits than upholstery.
The soup had barely touched the table before Lady Catherine launched into the subject Darcy had dreaded since her carriage appeared.
“I must say, Fitzwilliam, I am relieved to see you so well. After that dreadful business at Rosings in February, your cousin and I were quite concerned.” Lady Catherine applied herself to the soup with the air of a woman ingesting medicine. “The weather was appalling—grey skies, slush on every path, and you traipsing about as though determined to contract an inflammation of the lungs. I told Richard, I said, ‘What possesses the boy to walk in such conditions?’ And Richard, I must say, was most unhelpful.”
Darcy kept his expression neutral. “My cousin has many talents. Helpfulness is not chief among them.”
“He was evasive. Positively evasive. I asked him directly whether something had occurred to distress you, and he changed the subject with all the subtlety of a man hiding a stolen horse. And then that Bennet creature—the one Mr. Collins’s wife befriended, the pert one with the opinions—departed Kent so abruptly, without so much as a proper farewell to Anne or me, and you left the very next morning looking like a man who had lost his best horse rather than merely endured a disagreeable fortnight.”
She was not by any stretch a creature, and Darcy bristled behind his composed demeanor.
“I was unwell,” he said, which was true if one counted drowning as a mild indisposition.
“You were soaked to the skin when you returned from your walk. Your greatcoat was ruined. Mrs. Jenkinson found mud on the stairs.” Lady Catherine fixed him with the gaze she reserved for extracting confessions—a technique she had perfected on servants, tenants, and archbishops with equal success. “I do not ask what happened because I have formed my own conclusions, and I am satisfied that whatever foolishness presented itself has been overcome. You are a man of sense and family, and I trust that you will not allow yourself to be ensnared by creatures who mistake impertinence for wit and forward behavior for charm.”
Darcy kept his face still above his soup spoon. Lady Catherine had not heard the whole of it. She did not know about the letter he had thrust at Elizabeth on that rain-soaked path. A proper lady, confronted with an improper letter from a man whose addresses she had refused, would have discarded it unread.
But Elizabeth Bennet was unpredictable, and so, he carefully guarded the hope that her curiosity would overwhelm propriety.
“I came to assure myself that you had recovered,” Lady Catherine continued, “and to remind you of certain arrangements that were discussed when you came of age. Arrangements that your mother and I established, and which I believe you have allowed to lapse with the distraction of recent months.”
She gestured toward her daughter with the soup spoon.
“As I was saying to Anne only this morning, I see no reason to delay the matter further. Anne is in excellent health.”
Anne, who had been dismantling a bread roll with the concentration of a woman who had learned to occupy her hands when her mother was disposing of her future, looked up. She was small, pale, sharp-featured like her mother but withoutthe volume, and her dark eyes held an expression that Darcy recognized over years of shared family dinners as exhaustion polished to a high gloss.
“I am in tolerable health, Mamma. Which is not the same thing as excellent.”
“Nonsense. Dr. Morrison says your constitution is much improved.”
