"I was curtsying. Also customary. Perhaps we can just declare ourselves the victims of good manners and say no more about it?"
"Fresh tea," said Mrs Makepeace, standing, "will certainly be required." She went to fetch it.
Mrs Bennet had retreated to the window. She stood with her back to the room, apparently absorbed in the street below.Miss Darcy had lowered her hands from her face and looked as though she would very much rather be anywhere else.
Jane smoothed her skirts. Mr Darcy straightened his coat. Elizabeth straightened her spine.
"Miss Darcy," Mrs Bennet said, turning from the window as though nothing whatsoever had occurred, "I am so very glad you have come. Do sit here, the light is much kinder on this side." She took her hands and drew her to the sofa. "Now. Tell me, wherever did you get the beautiful gown?"
Georgiana sat tentatively, but Elizabeth noticed that some of the tension went out of her shoulders under her mother’s warm smile.
Darcy stood by the mantelpiece and glowered at the surviving shepherdess on the other side of the room.
Mrs Makepeace returned with the pot. "I find that tea is always better when taken in good company. Mr Makepeace, God rest him, said that a well-made cup of tea and a room full of the right people was worth more than any amount of grand dining, and I have found no cause to disagree with him in the twenty years since he said it, though I have tried one or two grand dinners in the interim, purely for purposes of comparison."
"That is," Darcy said carefully, "a very reasonable position, madam."
"I think so," said Mrs Makepeace, inclining her head to the gentleman and pouring.
Across the room Mrs Bennet was listening to Georgiana while Elizabeth stole occasional glances at the clumsy and infuriating man whose shoulders remained absurdly distracting.
???
Darcy stood before the looking glass and examined his forehead with greater attention than the injury warranted. There was nothing to be seen. No mark remained of the collision, though he could still feel the echo of it distinctly enough. It was a ridiculous circumstance. Indeed, the more he reflected upon it, the more ridiculous it became. A gentleman did not go about knocking heads with an unknown lady in a lodging-house parlour. It was the stuff of farce, and certainly not how Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley behaved in society.
He turned away from the mirror with a degree of impatience. His thoughts ought, by every reasonable measure, to have been occupied elsewhere. Georgiana had enjoyed herself, even if it was just a little. That fact alone should have been sufficient to satisfy him. The improvement in her spirits following the events of the previous summer had been evident throughout the afternoon. Mrs Bennet had drawn her into conversation with anease, and Georgiana had spoken more freely than she had in weeks. Such progress was exactly what he had hoped for when he brought her to Lyme.
It was therefore particularly unfortunate that every attempt to dwell upon these encouraging circumstances led him, by some irritating path, directly back to Miss Elizabeth Bennet.
He could not account for the strength of the impression she had made upon him. Her family were evidently respectable. They belonged to that broad and comfortable section of society occupied by the lesser landed gentry, well-bred and agreeable, though not moving in the circles to which he was most accustomed. Ordinarily he should have thought no more about them than he thought about any of the dozens of families he encountered in the course of a season.
Instead he found himself recalling details with a vividness that bordered upon the absurd.
The brightness of her eyes. The animation of her countenance. The arch expression with which she appeared to regard the world, as though she were perpetually in possession of some observation that would be very amusing if only she chose to share it. She was handsome, certainly, but beauty alone would not have lingered in his mind in this manner. He had known many beautiful women. Beauty was common enough. What wasuncommon was the impression of intelligence so alive that it seemed impossible to look away from.
Even her mortification had possessed an energy that made it difficult to forget. Most ladies, having fallen across a sofa in front of a room full of strangers, would have wished the floor to open and swallow them whole. Miss Bennet had scarcely regained her feet before she was arguing with him about the proper allocation of blame.
The recollection drew the ghost of a smile to his mouth before he could prevent it. Darcy frowned at himself immediately. This would never do.
Chapter Five
Bingley arrived on a Tuesday, slightly windswept and grinning broadly at the world in general. He was in extremely good spirits for someone who had been on the road for two days and, although he had not been specifically invited, he felt no awkwardness about the fact.
There had been a carefulness to the last letter from his friend that he disliked. Darcy was never a particularly expansive correspondent, but when he took unusual pains to sound contented it generally meant that something was occupying his mind. Bingley had therefore packed a bag and set off for Lyme, feeling that a friend might be required, though for what purpose he could not have said.
Mrs Makepeace received him in the street outside Darcy's lodgings and introductions were swiftly made.
"Mr Bingley," she said. "Very good. You will want to wash after that road. Supper is at seven, and if Mr Darcy has made other arrangements I would be very surprised, as he is a man of excellent sense in most respects, and in the matter of regular meals I have found even the most irregular of men generallycome round to my view in the end. Mr Makepeace, God rest him, was very irregular about mealtimes when I married him and perfectly regular about them within the year. It is simply a question of making the alternative seem less appealing." She nodded. "Seven o'clock, then."
Bingley blinked. Then he smiled, and bowed. "Marvellous," he said.
???
Elizabeth heard about it the following morning over tea, when Jane and her mother were upstairs and attending to their toilette.
"He shook Mr Darcy's hand with both of his," Mrs Makepeace said, pouring. "Directly. No fussing about. Did not ask questions when questions were not wanted." She set down the pot. "Now, I have known a great many people in my life, Miss Elizabeth, and I have found that the ones who do not ask questions at the wrong moment are generally the ones worth keeping. Mr Makepeace, God rest him, had that quality in abundance. His friend Mr Alcott, on the other hand, could not be in a room with another person for five minutes without requiring a full account of everything that had ever happened to them, which becamevery wearing, as I told him on several occasions, though not in so many words, as I am not a blunt woman."
She picked up her own cup. "I have always found," Mrs Makepeace said, "that Lyme attracts exactly the people it ought to, at exactly the moment it ought to."
