Page 8 of Faceless

“The ruts alone are a hazard to any carriage. I have said so to Mr Collins, I have said so to the churchwarden, I have said so to anyone with the power to act.” She set her fork down with the authority of strong opinions about cutlery as punctuation. “Nothing has been done.”

“The parish has neglected it shamefully,” Darcy said — true, requiring no thought, which suited the evening admirably.

“You passed along it today, did you not, when you called at the parsonage?”

“We did.” Fitzwilliam reached for his wine. “The ruts are considerable.” He set the glass down and added, in the same easy register and without glancing at Darcy, “It was a pleasant call. The household were all in fine spirits this afternoon.”

Darcy swallowed once. He turned his glass on the cloth and kept his eyes on it and did not move.

Lady Catherine took the remark as her own and ran on with it — Mrs Collins a sensible woman who kept her house well and did not impose, the south beds that Grover had moved to good effect, the friend who had been walking in the park again. Darcy gave her the portion of his mind he kept available for Rosings and gave the rest to the memory of Elizabeth Bennet that afternoon, stopped on the path with her head tipped back, laughing at something Fitzwilliam had said, her whole face open with it — and the way she had looked when she recovered and caught Darcy watching, and the laughter did not quite leave her eyes.

He had been carrying that look since it happened. He would be carrying it for considerably longer.

In the drawing room afterward, Lady Catherine settled herself and cast a look towards the instrument in the corner.

“It is a great pity Anne’s constitution never permitted her to learn. She would have been remarkable. The masters I would have engaged for her—” She gave a small sigh, as though the scale of what the world had been denied had only just struck her afresh. “But there it is.”

From her chair, Anne made no remark.

“We ought to have had the parsonage party to dine,” Fitzwilliam said, his eye going round the room with the mild dissatisfaction of an honest assessment. “Mrs Collins’ friend has a most lively voice. I find the evenings rather better for it.” He said it to Lady Catherine. He did not look at Darcy. He did not need to look at Darcy.

Darcy’s collar was attempting to kill him.

“Miss Bennet sings tolerably,” Lady Catherine said. “She would benefit from more practice and a better master, but she is not without feeling for it. I told her so. I do not hold with the sort who laughs at the world as though it were a good joke, and turns aside a set-down with no thought given to its merit. I find very little quality in her character, and she is not what one would call truly accomplished. But she converses well enough.”

Converses well enough. Darcy’s eye went to the fire. He thought of Elizabeth at the pianoforte three evenings ago, stopping mid-piece to say something about the composer so unexpected and so exactly right that he had laughed before he could stop himself.

He kept his eyes on the fire and his face still, and the tightness in his jaw his own private business.

Lady Catherine crossed to the far end of the room and settled herself beside Anne, full of things to say and her audience already chosen. Their voices were low and continuous — the comfortable monologue of twenty years’ talking at her daughter.

Fitzwilliam appeared at Darcy’s elbow with two glasses of port.

“We must press her to have the party from the parsonage tomorrow. They are good company,” he said, very quietly.

“Mrs Collins is a woman of sense.”

“Mm.” He offered a glass. “You did not mislead. And despite our aunt’s views, her friend does play with a great deal of feeling. For someone who claims she does not play well.”

“She plays Clementi’s Sonatina with more feeling than most who merely intend to show off their technique.”

“Does she?” He sipped his port. “You were at Netherfield in the autumn, I believe, when she played there.”

“I was.”

“And quite pleasing to look upon as she plays, I daresay.”

Darcy slid a narrow gaze to his cousin. “Fair. As any lady of regular features and a good-tempered countenance would be.”

“And yet back in London, when I asked whether she was pretty, you said she was ‘good company.’ I remember that distinctly. Clever, I think, was the other word you used.”

The fire crackled. Across the room, Lady Catherine’s monologue continued, unhurried and self-contained.

Darcy’s heart was doing something unacceptable. He could feel it in his throat. He was seven-and-twenty years old and master of Pemberley, while his cousin sat beside him looking at the fire with an air of perfect innocence. Darcy had never in his life wanted to be somewhere else quite so much and quite so little at once.

“I stand by both descriptions,” he said.

A sound escaped Fitzwilliam that in a less disciplined man would have been a laugh. He drank his port and held his peace. Tomorrow morning, she would walk out early, as she always did, and Darcy had perhaps said more than he intended — and he found, with a clarity that startled him, that he did not mind at all.