Page 89 of A November to Remember

“My happiness is my own affair.” Jane’s smile turned knowing. “Just enjoy your evening. Dance with him, smile at him. Judging by the way he looks at you, I think he will not prolong the courtship.”

The image of Fitzwilliam Darcy, standing in the Longbourn drawing-room and holding her gaze amidst the mayhem of both their families, rushed into Elizabeth’s mind. She pressed her hands to her warming cheeks, abandoning her cynical shield.

“Oh, I hope he does not!”

Jane laughed and Elizabeth joined her, their shared amusement drowning out the ongoing disputes over ribbons in the passage. The ball would begin in a few hours, but as they stood in the centre of their childhood room, the future seemed wonderfully inevitable.

If a man could be hanged for hosting a ball, Charles Bingley would have preferred it. Hanging was quick; a receiving line went on for an hour.

He stood at the head of the Netherfield staircase in his best coat, clutching his hands behind his back to prevent himself from adjusting his cravat for the fortieth consecutive time. Caroline was at his right, clad in burnt orange silk, her smile affixed to her face with the permanence of a painted portrait. To his left was Hurst. His brother-in-law was technically awake, but his eyelids drooped to a dangerous altitude, his posture suggesting he merely endured the vertical position until he could locate a chair and a bottle of claret. Occasionally he shifted his weight and emitted a low rumble that might have been a greeting to a guest or a private complaint of his stomach.

Louisa was absent. She had declared at five o’clock that if she was obliged to stand in a draught and curtsy to Sir William Lucas, she would be sick on his shoes, and no one had felt able to argue with so precise a threat.

Charles missed Darcy and Keathley. Those men understood how to command a room and how to repel an advancing matron with a single freezing glance. He braced his shoulders as though facing a pack of wolves armed with silk fans.

One evening, he told himself. Be civil. Be cheerful. Dance the obligatory sets. And tomorrow, London.

The plan was Caroline’s, and Charles had agreed to it as usual: gradually, wearily, and with the vague sense of having lost a game whose rules no one had explained to him. But it was a sound plan. Distance, society, and a winter to clear his head of a smile that, Caroline assured him, had been bestowed with identical warmth on every gentleman in the county.

Sir William Lucas bounded up the stairs, his wife and two daughters in his wake.

“A capital evening, Mr Bingley!” He puffed out his chest and executed a bow so deep his chin nearly brushed his kneecaps. “A triumph of festive elegance! St James’s itself could not boast a finer assembly—where I was presented, you know, in the year ninety-eight—”

“You are too kind, Sir William.” Charles returned the bow, matching the knight’s depth out of sheer panic. “Lady Lucas. Miss Lucas. Miss Maria. You all look splendid. Please, do partake of the punch. It is... very buoyant.”

Miss Maria curtsied so deeply she nearly sat down. Miss Lucas offered a brief inclination of her head, navigating her family past Caroline’s chilled smile and moving safely into the warmth of the ballroom.

Charles let out a short breath and rolled his shoulders. He would conquer this. He simply needed to remain cheerful, direct the guests to the refreshments, and not think about the only arrival that mattered.

Then the stairs filled with mallow.

Mrs Long ascended in mallow silk, a mallow turban with a mallow plume, the whole wrapped in Brussels lace and preceded by a wave of floral perfume that arrived a full three seconds before she did. Behind her, in matching lilac and silence, came her two nieces, girls of eighteen or nineteen, who stared at Charles with unblinking intensity.

“Mr Bingley!” Mrs Long seized his hand in both of hers and squeezed his knuckles with astonishing force. “What a magnificent occasion! I was just telling my nieces, Miss Harriet and Miss Susan, that Netherfield has never looked so grand. The lighting! The music! We are entirely overcome!”

“Welcome, Mrs Long.” Charles attempted to extract his fingers, but the grip was forged of solid iron. “Miss Harriet. Miss Susan. Welcome to Netherfield.”

The nieces curtsied simultaneously without speaking. In nearly two months in Hertfordshire Charles had never heard either of them utter a word, and he was beginning to suspect they could not.

Mrs Long drew him a fraction closer and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper that carried to the chandeliers. “My nieces are so exceptionally fond of dancing, Mr Bingley. You surely remember dancing with Susan at the assembly, do you not? Harriet has been practising her steps all morning in our parlour.”

Charles opened his mouth to offer a generic compliment regarding Miss Harriet’s devotion to the arts of Terpsichore, but he never delivered it.

At the edge of his vision, below the mallow plume, the Bennet party had reached the foot of the stairs, and Charles lost his grip on the English language. Jane Bennet stepped into the bright light of the vestibule, wearing a gown of pale blue silk. Her golden hair was pinned in an elegant knot, a few soft curls framing a face of such angelic perfection that Charles whimpered. She was not a country gentleman’s daughter; she was a celestial being who had temporarily deigned to grace Hertfordshire with her presence.

“...and so few gentlemen in the county possess your lightness of foot, Mr Bingley,” Mrs Long was saying, her voice a distant, buzzing annoyance in Charles’s ear. “I am certain you must be searching for suitable partners for the opening sets. Is that not so?”

Charles stared at Miss Bennet. She was looking at the ballroom, her blue eyes wide, her gentle smile illuminating the shadows of the hall. He remembered Lord Keathley’s fierce reprimand in the dining room. If you cannot see the preference in her eyes when you walk into the room, you do not deserve the eyesight God gave you.

He had to secure her hand. He had to bow before her, and claim the first two dances before another man swept her away. He had to be bold. He had to act.

“Yes,” Charles breathed, his eyes fixed on the blue silk of Jane’s gown. “Yes, absolutely. An honour. A great honour.”

“Oh, you are too generous!” Mrs Long released his hand, her plume trembling with triumph. “The first with Harriet, the second with Susan, and I shall claim the supper set myself! I have not stood up at a ball since the King was well, but one must make an effort. Come, girls! We must secure our places!”

She dragged her nieces into the ballroom, leaving a vacuum of air and lavender in her wake.

Caroline leaned sharply into his shoulder. “Charles. You have just engaged yourself to dance with the entire Long dynasty. You will be partnered with those mallow atrocities for the better part of two hours.”