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“Perhaps.”
I followed my sisters inside, wondering if I even wanted to get to know Mr. Darcy. He seemed a grumpy sort of man—though that could be the fault of frequent headaches—and he certainly did not like to converse. Mr. Darcy gave the impression of refined gruffness, if such a thing were possible, and a sly sense of humor beneath his haughty expression. A man who raced strange women through a field and bought them cakes afterward. I could not make him out, but perhaps Mary was right and he was worth the trouble.
10
Elizabeth
Janewasfallinginlove. She spoke of Charles Bingley in nearly every conversation, and she did not even realize she was doing it, which I think may be a stronger sign than if she had done so intentionally.
The gentleman seemed enamored of my sister as well, but was it love, or was he blinded by her beauty? After two Seasons in Town with Great Aunt Ida, I knew what an infatuated man looked like. If one wished to see such a specimen, one need only stand near Jane at a ball or a soiree or while walking through Hyde Park. Gentlemen nearly fell over themselves asking if they might call on her, and wondering who her father was, and how long she would be in Town. They got a glazed look in their eyes and it was clear their minds were no longer functioning optimally.
Aunt Ida thought it all terribly amusing and Jane was flattered, but I was worried.
Jane was beautiful, but she was also good. Would these men know that about her, or would they merely view her as an ornament on their arm? A decoration to add to their possessions. I had heard enough from my aunts in Town. Marriage was a tricky business, and one must choose very carefully if one did not wish to end up miserable.
My mother was a prime example of this. She had married the largest landowner near her home. She, an attorney’s daughter! It was an excellent match for her, everyone said so. She had done quite well for herself. She had elevated her entire family. How clever she must have been!
It made me sick.
Jane Gardiner had been a lovely young woman. Thick golden hair, creamy skin with just a touch of pink over her rounded cheeks, bright blue eyes with long, dark lashes. A rosebud mouth. An enviable figure. A laugh that lit up a room and a tendency towards flirtation. Jane Gardiner had known how to wield her beauty in a world where it was a woman’s most valuable asset.
That was how she caught my father. He was so smitten with her that he had commissioned a painting to commemorate the wedding. The image of my father, young and tall and handsome, proudly presenting his beautiful bride, hung over the mantle in his study. I often looked at it and wondered what my parents had been like before they had become parents.
The artist had captured my father’s intelligent eyes and sardonic smirk, but there was something else there that I had never seen in my father’s expression. Adoration. He looked at my mother like she was Aphrodite herself. The embodiment of all his dreams and the author of his future hopes. She looked at him with a softness in her expression I vaguely remembered from my early childhood, but that I had not seen often since.
They had been in love.
The artist had made a miniature of each of them. My father used to keep my mother’s likeness in the back of his pocket watch, but last year, I found it in a drawer in his desk. She had kept his on a small table in her bedchamber, next to her favorite chair. Somewhere she would see it often. But that too had been moved, though I had no idea where it was now.
If men only married women because they were pretty, but the prettiest girl in Meryton could not keep a man’s interest after twenty years of marriage, what hope was there for women?
My mother had done everything she was supposed to do. She ran the house well, treated my father with affection and respect, and had given him nine children. Nine! What more could he possibly ask of her?
I knew my father was disappointed in her lack of intellectual pursuits, but surely that was not the most important quality in a wife? She could be uncouth sometimes, and she occasionally said the wrong thing in public, but she did not mean anything by it. She was not cruel. Mrs. March had taught the entire family better manners and I liked to think the Bennets as a whole were greatly improved by our governess’s tutelage.
Yet my father was no longer enamored of my mother, and I wondered if that was simply the way of it in a long marriage. After all, they were not so very different from other couples I knew. The Lucases were friendly and kind to one another, but there was no great passion between them. It was the same with my aunt and uncle Phillips, and my aunts in Town certainly seemed happier in widowhood than in marriage. The Gardiners were the exception to the rule, but they had only been married a little over ten years. Perhaps the next ten would tell.
Darcy
Bingley was smitten. I had seen him thus before, but Jane Bennet was different from his usual lady du jour. She was sweet and genuine and kind. She possessed none of the artificial charm on display in Town.
It was not truly Bingley’s fault he liked all the wrong women. His sister introduced him to what seemed to be normal, upstanding ladies with pleasant personalities and pretty faces. But of course that was the problem: Caroline Bingley was the one who chose them.
She only introduced her brother to ladies who would advance her social rank or personal friends of hers, which meant the ladies were just as horrid as she was. Bingley, being the trusting man he was, did not think his sister would introduce him to anyone who was not a good choice, and befriended the ladies. Then he found himself in love (or enamored with her decolletage) and was heartbroken when he realized his charming angel was a harridan.
Thus went his usual pattern, but this time, things were different. For one, Jane Bennet was nothing like the ladies he normally liked. Oh, she was fair and fine featured and had the right curves in all the correct places, but she was not a friend of his sister’s. In fact, Miss Bingley could hardly stand the poor girl!
In addition to all of that, Miss Bennet was not another lady in Town with a large dowry and an impressive pedigree. Her father was a gentleman and I had heard some talk of his extended family being of decent quality, but her mother... Mrs. Bennet was an attractive woman, and one could certainly see why Mr. Bennet had lost his head over her two decades before, but she had not been a prudent match for the largest landholder in the area. It would be akin to me marrying the curate’s daughter! It was simply not done.
Miss Bennet would do well enough for Bingley if he really cared for her. She was kind and pretty, quite beautiful really, and her family was gentry of many generations. Miss Bingley told me it was rumored the ladies only had dowries of three-thousand pounds, but it was better than nothing and Bingley was only one generation away from trade. Not even fully that, for he still owned a few mills and had yet to purchase an estate or a home in Town. Mrs. Hurst had married fashionably, but Hurst was no higher than the Bennets. He dressed as if he was, but his father’s estate in Norfolk was no larger than Longbourn. A family like the Bennets could be seen as a step up for the Bingleys, or at least on the same level.
I stared into the fire in my room and swirled the brandy around my glass. Why was I spending so much energy worrying about Bingley?
You know why. You think of Bingley so you will not think of her.
I told the voice in my head to be quiet. Elizabeth Bennet was not for me. She might be pretty and engaging and surprisingly intriguing, but she was not high enough for a Darcy of Pemberley and we both knew it. Perhaps that was why she was not pursuing me.
I had seen her several times since we had raced through the field. She was at a musical evening at Haye Park where she sang with her sisters. Her voice was not the strongest I had heard, but her pitch was perfect and she was quite lovely when she sang. There was another dinner at Lucas Lodge where she wore an enchanting pink gown that made her cheeks glow. Her mother hosted a dinner at Longbourn that had some of the best food I had ever eaten away from Pemberley (and I told Mrs. Bennet so; she seemed quite pleased with the compliment). Elizabeth poured coffee for the guests after dinner and her yellow gown shone in the firelight, making her look like an angel.
