“I can credit him with knowing every rumour there is to be known.”
“What that man imagines he knows and what the rest of the world believes are highly unlikely ever to coincide. I have not been in Hertfordshire for many months. Why should this particular rumour be circulating now?”
“Do not be obtuse. Miss Bennet clearly set her cap at you after her time in Kent and has begun the rumour herself in an attempt to entrap you from afar.”
Darcy almost laughed. Little did his aunt know how willingly he would submit to any such entrapment. “I assure you, there isnopossibility Miss Bennet might invent such a tale. This report is nothing more than fanciful conjecture, likely spurred by my friend’s return to the area.”
She peered at him for a moment, as though deciding whether to believe him, then sighed overly loudly. “Thank heavens! Such an alliance would have been a disgrace! But then I knew it could not be true. You would never connect yourself to a woman of such inferior birth, of no importance in the world. You know your place.”
Darcy clenched his teeth against rising indignation. “I am very sensible of my place. Do you know yours, though, I wonder?” Her eyes widened in outrage, but he pressed his point. “Do not presume to instruct me on whom I may or may not wed.”
She seemed torn between fury and alarm. “Surely, you cannot mean to tell me youdohave intentions towards this girl?”
“You are mistaken if you believe you are in any way entitled to know my private concerns.”
“But she is nobody! She has nothing to recommend her! She is a tradesman’s niece, a parson’s cousin?—”
“Lady Catherine, I have said nothing of my intentions, but whatever they may be, Miss Bennet is a gentleman’s daughter and an exceptional woman whom I hold in very high esteem. I will not hear you disparage her.”
She looked at him aghast. “Have you lost the use of your reason?”
“Quite the contrary, I am more master of myself than I have ever been.”
“Her arts and allurements have drawn you in!”
“I believe I made clear my wish for you not to speak ill of her. She is quite without art and deserves no censure of yours.”
“You cannot be serious!”
He only glowered silently at her.
“You are infatuated then.”
When still he gave no answer, she threw a hand in the air and cried, “Heaven and earth, can you not find a half-decent incognita to relieve you of your fascination?”
“You forget yourself, madam!”
“No, Nephew, it isyouwho forgets yourself!” she cried, slapping the arm of the chair. “Need I remind you that you are engaged to mydaughter?”
A vein pulsed in Darcy’s temple. “I am bound to your daughter by neither honour nor inclination.”
“You deny the arrangement? You refuse to obey the claims of duty, honour and?—”
“A tacit agreement made between four parties, three of whom are now dead, eight-and-twenty years ago can have no possible claim uponme. No principles of duty or honour would be violated should I not marry your daughter.”
“Not marry…?” Her ladyship clutched at her chest, air wheezing in and out as she rasped breath after furious breath. “This is not to be borne! I am not used to brooking disappointment!”
“Then I suggest you adjust your hopes accordingly.”
She let out an inarticulate cry and heaved herself to her feet. “You are then resolved to have this…this Bennet creature?”
“Regardless of your determination to know them, my private affairswillremain so.”
“What of your family and what you owe all of us?”
“Your performance today has quite convinced me of the limits of my obligations there.”
“You would then see us all ridiculed for a whim to marry a buxom pauper?”
