When Darcy returned to the house he found the conversation in full swing. People talked, talked, talked. Mr. Gould explained to a new victim how much thicker his hair was now that he’d begun to use bear grease. Girls and young men loudly ran about. A pinch-faced girl, who Darcy believed was one of Miss Bennet’s sisters, sat at the piano playing an Irish jig while four couples — including Bingley and one of the local girls — crowded the side of the drawing room. They danced round and round, making a happy, noisy crowd. Rather vulgar.
The raucous noise was rather unpleasant to Darcy’s ear, even though his unwillingness to constantly silence Emily had forced him to become more tolerant of happy noise than he once would have been. Still, he’d rather if calm conversation had been the order of the evening. Darcy drifted to the side of the room, where no one else sat.
He settled himself on the couch, and Emily squirmed so that she sat next to him, on the edge of the couch.
She smiled to sit like a full grown adult and swung her legs happily.
Bingley’s sister approached once more and said, “I can very well imagine your thoughts.”
“I should imagine not.”
“You are thinking how intolerable it would be to spend any great number of evenings in this manner. I am quite of your opinion. I was never more annoyed! What I would give to hear your strictures on them!”
Darcy pondered. “Chiefly my mind was occupied more pleasantly. I was contemplating my daughter’s simple delight at being settled on a divan.”
Emily climbed on Darcy and grabbed at his hair while giggling.
This answer did not seem to satisfy Miss Bingley. It did not satisfy Darcy either.
He thought for a minute, he was oddly cheerful. That was not what he expected from himself. Especially not following the argument with Mrs. Bennet earlier in the evening.
In his mind he saw a pair of eyes framed by lovely dark hair, looking at him seriously.
He was thinking about Elizabeth.
Chapter Four
“How could Mama say such a thing!” Elizabeth groaned. “Poor Mr. Darcy. Poor man. I never was so shamed!”
“It shocked me as well, but you must understand—”
“I do not wish to understand!”
“Your mother has a particular way of seeing the world, and she believed, rather with reason, that Mr. Darcy admires you.”
Elizabeth groaned. “If he ever did, which I doubt very much, he certainly does no longer.”
“Was he not polite when you went outside to speak with him?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “He is all politeness. But he must despise us all.”
“I would not think so.”
“If he does not despise us after what Mama said, he is bereft of sense.”
“You think a man cannot take such things in stride? — or consider the daughter separately from the mother?”
“He is a proud man. Oh! — I am determined to think nothing more about the events of that horrid evening.”
“I think Mr. Darcy admires you, and a man in his position, whatever he says, must be in want of a suitable wife.”
Elizabeth laughed. “No matter what he says? —younow speak as my mother does. You are the female variant of those gentlemen who are convinced that when a girl refuses their suit, it is merely for the sake of increasing their affection by suspense. Whether it be a mistake or not, I shall do Mr. Darcy the honour of treating him as a fellow rational creature, even though he is a man, and believing him when he says that he has no interest in marrying again.”
“You like him as well.”
“That has no bearing on the matter — he does not mean to marry again.”
“Butyoumust marry. You hardly can like the precarious situation you all live in, and when your sister has children, the resources available for your already reduced support will become yet more sharply constrained. Until you marry you can never be the mistress of your own home.”
