“If the Darcys wish to intrigue people, let them hold their own ball for the purpose!”
“I doubt they have time to arrange one this late in the Season. Oh, but I should like to go to a ball at Pemberley. Do you think they will hold one there before next spring?”
Jane listened in silence as the ladies’ curiosity flowed long—as did Lady Ashby, who stared vindictively in Elizabeth’s direction.
“See how brazenly she makes love to them all!” her ladyship muttered to no one in particular.
Jane looked and saw, with no great surprise, that Bingley had been waylaid amongst the throng of gentlemen surrounding Elizabeth. His desertion prompted a painful surge of resentment. “My sister wields her charms liberally and indiscriminately.”
Lady Ashby looked at her sharply. “Well, would that she not wield them at myball!”
Elizabeth and Bingley both laughed loudly at some shared joke.
“She is well versed in stealing thunder,” Jane mumbled.
“I pity you, Mrs Bingley. I have been her cousin for less than a week, and already I am grown weary of her brilliancy. You have borne being shone down by her for a lifetime.” With a disdainful snort, she turned her back on both Elizabeth and the gaggle of women yet engrossed in discussing her. “Fie! Let us cheer ourselves by examining those parts of her that do not shine so brightly.”
Overcome with a violent sense of vindication, Jane did naught todiscourage Lady Ashby from cataloguing Elizabeth’s faults. Her form lacked symmetry. Her smile revealed too many teeth. Her voice was too deep, her wit too keen, and in her manner was such shameful coquetry as would surely invite disaster.
“Her manners have already invited disaster,” Jane admitted. “Only a few days ago, Mr Darcy was obliged to rescue her from the clutches of a man who claimed she had willingly received his addresses.”
“Is that so? Was it anyone I know?”
“Oh, um…I do not know, your ladyship. His name is Mr Greyson.”
Lady Ashby beamed. Encouraged to have finally pleased somebody this evening, Jane continued, “And earlier this year she was knocked insensible by an officer with whom she had previously been on very friendly terms after they quarrelled in the street.”
“How delicious!” her ladyship replied. “I am, indeed, vastly cheered.” She peered closely at Jane for a moment, apparently deep in thought, then abruptly delivered a most welcome elixir to her bedevilled spirits. “You must call me Philippa, Jane. I should dearly like us to be friends.”
Matlock took one look at his supper companions and sent a man to fetch him another glass of punch, of a mind that his fortitude required fortifying. He was imprisoned between his sister on his right, her ever-loyal playfellow Lady Metcalfe on his left, and opposite him, Mr and Mrs Darcy and his own omnipresent demon Mrs Sinclair. There passed some minutes of barely-civil conversation, seasoned with enough sour glares to curdle every reserve of the cook’s white soup—and then proceedings took a turn for the worse.
“I must say, Mrs Darcy,” said Lady Metcalfe, “I was excessively diverted to hear you never had a governess.”
Matlock glared at his sister, whence that nugget had undoubtedly sprung.
“I am very happy for you,” Mrs Darcy answered, seeming not in the least perturbed. “I, too, dearly love a laugh.”
Mrs Sinclair cackled gleefully into her soup. Catherine harrumphed into hers.
Lady Metcalfe sallied forth more determinedly. “And now, Iunderstand, you have taken to schooling tenants on your father’s estate. You feel an affinity for them, I suppose?”
Matlock winced at his nephew’s flare of anger but was intrigued to observe how easily his new niece quelled her husband’s rage with a discreet touch of her hand to what he hoped was only Darcy’s leg.
“It is quite an absurd notion,” Lady Metcalfe continued, oblivious. “People of that class have not the wit to be properly schooled. You must not expect to have any success in the scheme.”
“Entrenched ignorance will always be exceedingly difficult to overcome,” Mrs Darcy replied.
Her ladyship gave a firm nod. “Quite so. Good breeding is essential if one is to achieve true erudition.”
“You were not so resolute in your opinion on the matter though, were you, Lady Catherine?”
Matlock raised his eyebrows. She meant to draw his sister into the fray as her advocate? Interesting.
“Of what are you speaking?” Catherine demanded.
“Why, when you and I spoke on the matter, you conceded that a person’s intellect might not be dictated by their descent.”
“I acknowledged your success in teaching a boy to read. Nothing more.”
