“I noticed a resemblance, I’ll grant you,” answered Mr Bingley’s manservant from behind his newspaper.
“The master’s noticed it, too.”
“How do you know that then?” jeered Mrs Arbuthnot, “Tell you himself, did he?”
Peabody smirked and tapped his ash on the flagstones. “He caught her scrubbing the grate in the library. Near buttered his breeches when he saw that face. I tell you, he’s noticed the replica,just as he’s noticed the original.”
Banbury lowered his paper. “Indeed?”
“Aye,” Peabody assured him with a sage nod. “And no person can look so much like another without being from the same seed. If Amelia’s not old man Bennet’s by-blow, I’ll eat my hat.”
“I care not who her father is,” groused Mrs Arbuthnot, “so long as she keeps the brass shiny. If it keeps the master happy to have her looking like his fancy woman, then more’s the better. Might be as he don’t forget my tip this quarter.”
“The resemblance is not so very marked,” Banbury opined. “Miss Eliza has a smaller nose and less pointy chin. And much prettier eyes.”
Peabody did not reply. His attention was now on the glass of Mr Bingley’s best port in his hand.
Thursday 4 June 1812, Hertfordshire
Elizabeth peered longingly into the garden. In spite of her aching head, she longed for air and exercise that she might banish her confusion, but persistent rain kept her indoors. Denied any such relief, she sat in the window seat in the parlour, paying scant attention to her mother, sisters or book, tracing raindrops as they slithered down the glass and thinking about Mr Darcy.
As recently as last week,he had convinced his aunt of his enduringregard. The possibility of his loving her still was more gratifying than she could have imagined possible a few short weeks ago, yet it was scarcely to be believed. Indeed, it wasimpossibleto believe. Lady Catherine could not know of her nephew’s previous offer or indeed how very much he must now be repulsed by the notion of a second. She must be mistaken.
A flash of movement drew Elizabeth’s eye to the paddock; a rider was coming towards the house. For one horrid moment, she thought it might be Mr Greyson. Mr Greyson who had pressed his thigh against hers throughout last night’s dinner and afterwards insisted she play the pianoforte, only to repeatedly brush his hand the length of her arm as he turned the pages for her. Mr Greyson, who mistook her mother’s encouragement for permission and with whom she had no desire whatever to be in company.
The dread of that encounter was soon replaced with a greater terror as she caught sight of the rider’s red coat. She quite unintentionally cried out.
“What is it, Lizzy?” Jane enquired, all concern.
Lydia and Kitty rushed to the window, leaning over her in their rage to see. “La, ’tis only Colonel Forster!” cried Kitty, laughing.
“I thought the pigs had got out,” Elizabeth said feebly, too shocked to admit how much the sight of a red coat had frightened her.
Colonel Forster presently arrived at the house and expressed his dismay at finding Mr Bennet from home, for he had important news.
“There is nothing you can have to say that we cannot hear, sir,” Mrs Bennet assured him. “We have grown quite accustomed to being astonished these past weeks.”
She proved quite insistent, and Colonel Forster eventually relented, conveying the news that Mr Wickham had been apprehended. Elizabeth could not comprehend why that intelligence should make her hands shake.
“My dear Colonel Forster, what wonderful news!” her mother exclaimed. “We shall be able to sleep peacefully in our beds at last. How shall we ever thank you?”
“I cannot justly accept your thanks, madam. Though my men did assist in the search, it was Mr Darcy who had him found and arrested.”
Despite her mother’s assurances, Elizabeth was not prepared to be quite that astonished. “MrDarcy?”
“Yes, it was rather a strange turn of events,” the colonel agreed. “He had written to warn me about Wickham. Unfortunately, his letter arrived too late; thus, I was obliged to reply not with thanks but with an account of Wickham’s violence and desertion. Thereafter, nothing was to be done in the search that he did not arrange himself.”
This prompted Mrs Bennet to declare him a fine young man, adding, “I knew nobody could really be that disagreeable! Would that half the young men these days were as good!”
“He trulyisgood,” Colonel Forster replied, “for he has also settled the majority of Wickham’s debts in Meryton—more than a thousand pounds.”
“A thousand pounds!”Mrs Bennet screeched. “Heaven and earth, his fortune must be vast to afford such a sum!”
Elizabeth shared a glance with Jane, and together they redirected their mother’s raptures from Mr Darcy’s wealth to the somewhat less vulgar subject of his generosity with it.
Elizabeth hardly dared suppose the wish of protectingherhad added force to whatever other inducements led Mr Darcy to take so much trouble. She could not even be sure whether he knew it was she whom Wickham had injured. Shedidthink it possible that his decision to write to Colonel Forster might be a result of her reproofs, and she respected him all the more for the graciousness and humility he had shown in doing so. It was yet another thing to admire. Indeed, there was nothing she had learnt about him in the weeks since his proposal that had not deepened her regard. She would not say she loved him, but never had she felt so certain she could.
Nevertheless, the greater swelled her affection, the heavier grew her heart, for naught spoke more eloquently of the improbability of his renewing his addresses than his continued absence. His aunt’s claims notwithstanding, he stayed away, and whatever he might feel was moot.
