“I should prefer a better view, if there is space nearer the front,” said Mr Darcy.
“By all means, sir, take my seat!” Mr Bennet replied. Bending down to one of his nephews, he said in a grandfatherly tone that he did not often employ and which Elizabeth suspected bespoke the amount of punch he had consumed, “I shall happily sit farther away where there is less chance of being roasted like Cook’s goose.”
“We are not using real candles this year, Uncle Bennet,” Matthew replied, wide-eyed.
“Best not, lad, though I should like to see Mr Collins’s face if we did manage to burn the place down.”
Elizabeth took her seat, and Mr Darcy took her father’s, next to it. She was not sorry to be seated by him, for she found herself intrigued by his enthusiasm. Nay, enthusiasm was the wrong word, but he was certainly interested, as though he was discovering something that he had not expected to enjoy. She watched him, as slyly as she was able, whilst he watched her cousins begin their very sweet, very stilted version of the Nativity story.
In her opinion, it was impossible that anybody shouldnotenjoy the sight of Joseph—played by dear little Matthew—struggling to haul the old rocking horse to the centre of the room with his brother, Edward, applying the only true forward momentum to the creature’s hindquarters with his shoulder. Mary—her youngest cousin, Lucy, wearing a cushion tied haphazardly about her midriff with a cord—clung desperately to the horse’s neck the entire way, only to slide off upon arriving centre stage.
They all laughed at little Emily who, sporting one of Mrs Bennet’s hair pieces as a beard, repeatedly misspoke the solitary line, “There is no room at the inn,” which gave her innkeeper all the appearance of being foxed on his own ale. Edward’s attempt to simultaneously portray a shepherd and a wise man resulted in a calamitous costume mishap that reduced Emily to insensible giggles. Whatever message her Angel Gabriel had been meant to impart was abridged to several minutes of uncontrollable laughter. By the time Mr Gardiner burst into their midst dressed all in black with a bronze cooking pot for a crown, bellowing for the heads of every baby in the kingdom, Elizabeth was holding her side from laughing overmuch.
The end of the performance was met with hearty applause, at which point it dawned on her that she had entirely forgotten her object of studying Mr Darcy. Elizabeth glanced at him, then looked away again hastily.Shemay have been too engrossed in the play to attend to anything else, but it seemed he had not been similarly affected. She wondered that she had not noticed him looking, for his gaze was singularly intent. Part of her wished to know what his slight smile signified. A greater part of her was certain she would not like the answer. It was that part which propelled her from her chair to congratulate her cousins.
“Very good, children,” Mr Bennet agreed. “I am heartily diverted—and relieved, for there were no injuries but to Edward’s pride. And you, Miss de Bourgh? Were you amused by the children’s efforts?”
Elizabeth felt a flash of shame, for it was obvious to her if to no one else that her father’s purpose was to ridicule his guest. Miss de Bourgh wore a pinched, unhappy expression and did not appear at all diverted. Indeed, she looked almost bewildered, as though she wished to partake in the fun but knew not why everybody was laughing. This sort of silliness evidently did not appeal to her sensibilities. There was no reason it should, for she had no children of her own and passed her time surrounded by people who had made it the study of their lives to take themselves far too seriously. It was very wrong of Mr Bennet to make sport of her discomfort.
“They did well, did they not?” Elizabeth said, enabling Miss de Bourgh to escape the matter with but a nod of her head and a vague smile.
“Did you em-joy the per-lay, sir?”
Such a darling enquiry could only have come from little Emily. Elizabeth looked around and smiled to see her cousin standing at Mr Darcy’s feet, her neck craned so far back as she peered up at him that it seemed she might topple over. There was no reason to expect him to be unkind in his response, but neither could Elizabeth have anticipated what he did, which was to crouch down and very formally kiss the back of Emily’s hand.
“I thought it a better production than any I have seen in London, Miss Gardiner. It was an honour to be in the audience.”
Emily beamed, curtseyed, then abruptly reverted to being terrified and looked to Elizabeth in silent entreaty.
“Run along, precious,” she told her. “Auntie Bennet will be wanting her beard back.”
Mr Darcy stood up, his curious little smile still in situ.
“That was very kind of you,” Elizabeth remarked.
“Extending kindness to cousins seemed to be the order of the day. Besides, it was true. I enjoyed it very much. Both Miss Gardiners remind me of my sister at that age.”
“Of course! I forget that your sister is so much younger than you.”
His expression altered to a more wistful one. “She has just turned sixteen. This is the first Christmas we have ever spent apart.”
Elizabeth saw him waver towards melancholy and resolved not to allow it on Christmas Day. She smiled broadly instead.
“There is your tradition, sir. And a very fine one it is, too.”
10
Darcy was in agonies—some sublime, some infernal, all of them insufferable. Elizabeth’s relations embodied almost every trait he had been taught to despise, yet the longer he was amongst them, the more he envied their contentment, the more he resented Anne’s paltry meanness, the unhappier he was not to be with his sister, the more he missed his father and, for the first time in many years, his mother.
And the more drawn he felt to Elizabeth.
It was a confounding and unpleasant state in which to find himself, and it diminished his appetite to the point that eating became a struggle. That was a shame, for the dinner Mrs Bennet served was astonishingly good. Her table and the dining room itself were handsomely decorated with red ribbons and boughs of fir and holly, giving a remarkably festive air to the occasion, but he was too uncomfortable to truly enjoy it.
Further detracting from his pleasure were the seating arrangements that placed him at the opposite end of the table to Elizabeth but next to her mother, from whom he received an excruciating barrage of poorly veiled allusions to Bingley’s departure. By the time he forced down the large glass of mediocre port with which Mr Bennet furnished him after dinner, he was exhausted—and, annoyingly, hungry. Only the thought of his revolting bed at the inn prevented him from announcing his early departure. That, and his unwillingness to part ways with Elizabeth for what would likely be the last time.
It was with no little alarm that he discovered her absent when the gentlemen joined the ladies in the drawing room. The possibility that she had retired, denying him his last goodbye, struck a deep, hollow note in his stomach that would not fade no matter how much coffee he drank to drown it. When the door opened and she returned, when she came into the room looking for someone and stopped searching once her eyes met his, when all the air flowed out of his lungs in one, uneven breath, and the hairs on his arms stood on end, he understood how far beyonddangerhe had strayed. He knew he ought not to engage with her anymore, but he knew he could no more prevent himself than he could prevent the moon from orbiting the earth.
She collected a cup of coffee and came to sit down next to him. “I have something for you.”
