Elizabeth looked at Georgiana. “Inside, Georgie. Too cold forus,the wiser sex, to stand round whilst the men hunt and freeze.”
“Oh no! It gets far colder in Derbyshire. You shall become used tothat! I am almost comfortable at present.”
She looked at Elizabeth, as though she wished to say something, but then Georgiana bit her lip and shook her head and walked inside. They greeted and talked to the other women. Mrs. Goulding was there, and she had a kind word for Georgiana.
The women clumped themselves in the breakfast room to get rolls and coffee before retiring to the drawing room to wait out the exciting day of dangerous leaps that the men would enjoy. Elizabeth believed in Darcy’s caution and skill with a horse, but in the course of her girlhood, in just the narrow confines of her part of Hertfordshire, a half dozen men had killed themselves or been permanently injured during the hunt.
In London she had once listened to a strange philanthropist who railed against the barbarism of how the hunt cruelly hounded the poor foxes. He had been a ridiculous man who believed all ailments could be cured if men adopted a diet with no animal matter, not even milk or cheese. He had learned of such ideas when he met mystics who lived hundreds of years in India. Or so he claimed.
Elizabeth strongly doubted both the salutary effects of removing meat — everyone knewthatled to weakness and a loss of strength as sure as too much meat led to fatness and gout — and she even more doubted that the mystics lived longer than the normal course allotted to a man.
Perhaps it was notniceto hunt foxes. Foxes were not nice animals. Elizabeth had seen what happened when one of the sly creatures gained entry to a henhouse. The true barbarism of the hunt was how it led foolhardy young men to take foolish risks to impress each other. Darcy was past thirty though, too old and too proud to play such games.
The conversation of the women moved to the drawing room and became excruciatingly dull. More women arrived, and Georgiana was kept in conversation by Jane and Mrs. Lucas, so Elizabeth had no need to keep an eye on her soon sister’s pleasure.
Every gathering of women turned into people obsessed with servant troubles, the incomes of their husbands, fashion and fripperies. Only smallish doses of such discussion could be enjoyed! Today Elizabeth could not entertain herself with them. Darcy was everywhere in her mind. His lips. Everywhere. His touch on her forearm, the way he stroked his hand softly over the little hairs of her forearm, bare from where the gloves bunched up fashionably around her wrists. Their hands fit perfectly. Him sitting high and proud on his great horse — the tallest man in the group. Picking up his niece and holding her aloft, swinging around the giggling happy little girl.
Elizabeth imagined him holding his son, her son,their son. A little boy with his eyes.
She was going distracted.
With a laugh Elizabeth realized she’d sat for the past fifteen minutes without saying a word, and a doubtless absurd lovesick face. She made an excuse to leave the room and wander to the library. With her mind so full of Darcy, it would be impossible to actuallyreada book, but Elizabeth was confident she could readat leasttwo whole paragraphs before her mind drifted off to obsess in peace.
Bingley’s library had scanty pickings, though not nearly so bad as it had been in the months when he and Jane courted. Elizabeth had still read everything in the library, except Debrett’sBaronetage. A wedding gift from the baronet Bingley had purchased Netherfield from, with his own entry bookmarked. Not even boredom would drive Elizabeth tothatlevel of desperation.
Elizabeth studied the gold embossed leather backs of the books. The editions were expensive and fresh. A proper library had books with a beaten, read, appearance. Jane was no great reader either. Once Bennet grew a little older, it would fall to Elizabeth to make a determined effort to entice him to emulate hisgrandfather. Else Bennet would grow to be one of those hail and well met country squires who only had hunts and entertainments on his mind.
If Bennet combined the good looks and good manners of his parents, he would do far better as such a country squire than as a scholar. Some men were called to great deeds of the intellect, while others preferred feasting their fellows. Bingley hadnotmissed his calling. Though her brother-in-law held a clever mind beneath his easy charm.
Aha!
Elizabeth’s hand darted forth to grab a slightly used copy ofMidsummer’s Night Dream. She had read it in part several times while at Netherfield. Along withOthello,it was the only Shakespeare in Bingley’s possession. The jealous Moor and Iago did not fit Elizabeth’s current mood at all. Buthehad referred toMidsummer’s Night, which made it precious.
With a laugh at that conceit, Elizabeth settled next to the frosty window. Despite no one being in the library at present the stove glowed to keep the room warm so that it would be comfortable later in the day when larger crowds of guests arrived. Before Elizabeth began to read, Georgiana entered the room. She hung near the door, not quite looking at Elizabeth.
“Enter, enter, dear. Bored as well?”
“No! Everyone is so easy and so kind.”
“They are Jane’s friends.”
“Unkind” — Georgiana looked at Elizabeth and gave her a little adorable smirk that Georgiana wore when she decided to be brave and tease Elizabeth back — “to say they were boring.”
“I claimed to be bored — which is a fault of mine, not the conversation.”
“You are so like Fitzwilliam. He would notsaysuch a thing to me, but he thinks it often” — Georgiana walked across the room and brushed her fingers over the spines of the books — “he said as much to me as you did about his behavior;myloss of reputation was an excuse to spend less time amongst others.”
“He only needs a person to push him to join, and then keep an eye on him so that he can be sent to bed when he gets tetchy. Bingley only managed half the task, but I am quite prepared to order him to his room.”
“I am yet astonished you can easily say such a thing about Fitzwilliam — or to him direct. He is so grand.”
“Donottease him in quite my manner. There is a great deal of difference between how such a liberty will be perceived from a wife and how taken from a girl twelve years his junior — but you ought tease Fitzwilliam alittle.”
“I will!” Georgiana replied with a smile.
The girl frowned and looked around. She had perched lightly on a floral pattern armchair next to Elizabeth’s. But Georgiana didn’t relax into the cushions, as though she half planned to leap up and flee the room. Without looking at Elizabeth, Georgiana said, “Midsummer’s Night Dream?”
“My dearsister, you sought me for a reason. It wasnotto comment upon my choice of reading.”
