“I do not know if—” Darcy sighed. “It touches on some key point of my integrity. I did not ask her to marry me when her circumstances were such as to make it an extraordinarily bad match. I ought to then allow her to marry a man who would choose to marry her for himself. I no longer deserve such a reward.”
“What hasyourdesserts to do with anything.” Hartley grinned at him, with a tipsy air. “Youoperate under a misapprehension. This conversation is not foryoursake. I do not know Lizzy nearly so well as you, but I can see that she is a girl very much in love, and who barely makes an effort to hide it.”
That made Darcy flush. He suspected it. But he did not know. He still did not know. But he liked very much the idea that Elizabeth loved him.
“Any case, ifthatis your chief impediment,” Lord Hartley grandly waved his arms about, “Nothing simpler to solve:Youput your case to Lizzy. You are eloquent. No doubt, despite the services that you have rendered to her, you can convince her of your unworthiness. She is a lady; they are the experts upon such points. And you as well. I would never permit myself to judge in her place in such a case as this. She’d probably shoot me if I was so presumptuous.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Elizabeth woke up the next morning in a cheerful mood. Another lovely day had dawned! Oh, there were matters to settle, to worry upon, and to frown about.
But when the day was lovely, it was lovely.
Poor Mary!
She would be missing her promised guest, and quite likely in being put to a great deal of stress and bother by Lady Catherine who might throw her disappointments over how that evening had ended upon the hosts of the runaway daughter, and also upon Mr. Bennet’s daughter, since they must blame Mr. Bennet in part for her having been raised to be the sort of person who would try to shoot an earl instead of being delighted to be his daughter.
Elizabeth failed, however, to make her worry on Mary’s account cloud her sunny mood. She was home, and she felt free.
Home however was not the same as it once was!
Nearly as soon as Elizabeth rose and began to dress herself, Mrs. Bennet’s lady’s maid knocked on the door, and suggested that if her Ladyship wished, she might use Mrs. Bennet’s own dressing room.
This lady’s maid had a high enough position in the family that she had always adopted the attitudes of Mrs. Bennet towards the unwanted ward, and she tended to treat Elizabeth at times as though she were a lower servant liable to be ordered about by one of the great upper servants such as herself.
Elizabeth rolled her eyes at the offer. “Martha, did Mrs. Bennet order you to refer to me as ‘her Ladyship?’”
“Yes, ma’am. My mistress is quite serious that you shall be treated with proper respect.”
The situation was ridiculous.
It, however, would also be ridiculous tonottake advantage of the offer. “That is very kind of Mrs. Bennet,” Elizabeth replied, finding herself slipping into a new role. She would act the grand lady. She would be kind and gracious but also be a person who never forgot her own greater consequence in the world. After all, that is what happened as soon as a person had money.
Wasn’t it?
“You will not mind if I ask for your assistance with my hair, and I hope it will not displease Mrs. Bennet.”
“No, not at all. It will be a pleasure to work with your hair. I have always thought you had very good hair.”
“No! Not my hair. Not with all of the effort that I would put into it.”
“I understood and admired the artistry with which you worked,” the woman replied. Then she flushed. “For my part I also apologize for not having seen before that you were worthy of respect.”
“Much like Mrs. Bennet—but let us not think of such things.”
Elizabeth went to the dressing room. The room itself was familiar as Elizabeth was often sent to fetch things from it. But it was a strange experience to be allowed to sit in front of Mrs. Bennet’s large gilt-edged dressing mirror, with the whole panoply of rouges, oils, nets, ironing rolls, two jewelry boxes, brushes, scissors, and pomade pots.
Mrs. Bennet stood next to the chair and made excellent suggestions and offered that Elizabeth might have free use of anything she wished.
She did not wish to change her room.
Something in her rebelled at the idea of sleeping in a much bigger room while at Longbourn. This had been her room for fifteen years, and she would keep it.
However, three minutes of sitting at Mrs. Bennet’s dressing table convinced her to ask to use Jane’s old room as a dressing chamber. That would be even more elegant, and show her high habits, to insist on having a larger room than her own sleeping chamber to dress in and store her clothes in. Mrs. Bennet would be very impressed, and no doubt tell Lady Lucas about it in scandalized tones.
Her sleeping room simply wasn’t large enough for a large dressing table to be placed in it.
Robert would happily give her the money to equip the room with a better dressing table than Mrs. Bennet’s, and she would give it to Lydia and Kitty for their free use if she ever married and left the house. Thus, completing a petty revenge, one of such subtlety that Mrs. Bennet might think a favor was done to her.
