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But Jane did not let go of her hands. “Will it be hard for you, Lizzy? Seeing Mr Darcy again?” And Lizzy saw that her sister had understood much more than she had ever said about her time away with him.
“Yes,” she answered simply. There did not seem to be much else she could add.
“I am sorry, then, that we invited him. I thought that perhaps…but I should have consulted you. Mr Bingley is searching for an estate for us, something much further away from Longbourn. He was considering land close to Pemberley, Mr Darcy’s estate. But we will look elsewhere, Lizzy. I promise you, we will find a place where we can all start afresh and be happy.”
Lizzy closed her eyes and, for the first time in months, felt—truly felt—Jane’s acceptance and sympathy and love. “Thank you,” she whispered, finding it an effort to project her voice around the lump in her throat. “And, Janey, whilst we remain at Netherfield, I will not provoke my father. I am more than happy to forego the dinner altogether and come down only for the ball.”
“No!” Jane cried with such vehemence that Lizzy was startled.
She tried to make Jane see reason. “You planned a dinner for our family and closest neighbours at eight o’clock. It means that for two hours, our father will be forced to endure my presence under his very nose. This is your first entertainment as Mrs Bingley, Janey. I want it to go perfectly, and it seems foolish to annoy him with so much at stake. At ten o’clock, another seventy or eighty people will arrive to dilute his temper and my presence.”
“Lizzy, no! That is not acceptable! We shall not hide you nor make silly excuses for your absence. You are an honoured part of my family!”
Even though Jane’s protest warmed her heart, Lizzy felt to disagree. “I must try to show our father that I have no intention of presenting public defiance. If he is at all sensible, he will come off his high ropes and realise that the prudent course is to return to our strategy of ignoring each other.”
“No, my dear sister. It seems to me that we have all spent our lives trying to placate him. I, for one, am done with it. I find him barely tolerable, but I love you. You have made me see how insufficient were all my pretensions of upholding a sister worthy of being upheld. I have vowed to do better, and Mr Bingley agrees.”
“Oh, Janey,” Lizzy said, words failing her.
With her husband to champion her, Jane had finally found her spine.
* * *
Lizzy sat with her sister for another half an hour before she decided they would both be late for dinner unless they began their ablutions. But she had no sooner departed the bedchamber when she nearly walked into Mr Bingley pacing Jane’s sitting room.
“Oh! Mr Bingley, I beg your pardon.”
“I have been waiting for you,” he said, a seriousness unusual to him in his air. “I will keep you but a moment. I only wish to apologise that you were required to speak to your father on the matter of our youngest sister, whilst I remained unaware. I hope you will call upon me as your brother in any circumstance you find yourself in and for any reason. If I may ever be of service, you may always depend upon my discretion and loyalty to Jane and to yourself.”
Touched again, she thanked him warmly.
His expression lightened. “If it eases your mind to know it, I have an aunt in Scarborough, my mother’s elder sister, who—who runs a tight ship, so to speak. She is a high stickler, and yet, she does have a sense of humour. I shall strongly suggest to Mr Bennet that Miss Lydia be sent to her for a time. I believe I can impress upon him the necessity, and since it can all be accomplished at very little trouble to himself, I do not foresee any difficulty.”
It sounded almost too good to be true—surely the aunt would run out of patience before Lydia ran out of misbehaviours. “Would your aunt agree to such a task?”
“I would not have mentioned it if I had the slightest doubt.”
A great weight upon Lizzy’s soul lifted at his words. “Are we speaking of the aunt named Cora, or is it Dora?” she asked with a twinkle in her eye.
“Oh, neither of those two fussy old hens,” Bingley replied, grinning. “It shall be Mrs Nora Pringle. Her patience is endless, I can testify, for she had most of the job of raising me. I have often believed that Caroline and Louisa would be better company now, had they stayed more often with Aunt Pringle. But Cora and Dora were wealthier, you see, and Father allowed my sisters the choice.”
* * *
At just before eight o’clock, Lizzy gave one last look in her mirror. She suffered a moment’s temptation to change her dress into the dull gown she had worn so often, designed not only for its drabness but to blend into obscurity. The new dress, although simple in design, showed her figure more than any she had ever worn—or at least, showed that she had one. Sally had styled her hair into luxuriant curls, and somehow, the blue of her dress set off the red of her hair so that she looked a rather…gleaming picture. But not an ugly or vulgar one, she reminded herself. Whilst she did not wish to provoke Mr Bennet, neither was she the dull creature he had expelled from Longbourn. She had, in fact, taken great care with her appearance, for although her prospects with Mr Darcy were hopeless, pride demanded she look her best. With a quick prayer for courage, she left the safety of her chamber.
“Lizzy, you look beautiful!” Georgiana said, poking her head out of her door.
“Thank you, dear. I hope your wait is not too much longer.”
The younger girl was keeping vigil at her window, waiting and watching for her brother’s arrival. At least the delay to the Gardiners also meant a delay in greeting Mr Darcy.
“Oh, me as well!” the other girl cried. “Back to my post! I am determined to be the first to welcome him.”
Smiling at Georgiana’s eagerness, Lizzy made her way to the grand dining parlour, where the six-and-twenty select guests would be dining before the ball. As she could not talk Jane into excusing her from the dinner, she had taken some liberties with the seating, placing herself in relative obscurity at the very end of the table between Mr Harrington and the vicar. Since she had also arranged the seating so that she was as far from Mr Darcy as was possible, perhaps there would be time to accustom herself to his presence before anything so difficult as polite conversation became necessary.
She had waited to go downstairs until the last conceivable moment and now listened from just beyond the pantry-side entrance of the dining room until she heard murmurs and laughter and the slide of chairs, the sounds of guests finding their places. Carefully, she nudged the door open, meaning to quietly seat herself. But she had only taken a step into the room when she saw that Mrs Long was in the chair she had designated for herself. She glanced around in some confusion.
“Ah, there you are, Elizabeth,” Mr Bingley hailed. “I was about to send Mrs Nicholls to find you! We have just been explaining to our guests why the unusual seating arrangements. As I was saying, we missed Miss Bennet’s twentieth birthday whilst she visited her uncle in London, and thus her sisters wished to include its celebration in tonight’s festivities. Come, my dear.”
