Bingley blinked, looking up at the towering figure of the Viscount. "I beg your pardon?"
"You are distressing a lady I am accompanying," Robert's voice was smooth like velvet and sharp like a blade. "And you are touching her without permission. Remove your hand, sir. Before I remove it for you. From you, entirely."
Bingley snatched his hand back as if he had touched a hot stove. He stumbled back a step, colliding with his sister.
"Lord Keathley!" Miss Bingley gasped, trying to salvage the situation by pivoting to flattery. "Surely there is no need for... Charles was merely renewing an acquaintance with an old neighbour. We are all friends here, are we not? Although one wonders at the company one keeps in such public places..." She cast a sneering look at the Gardiners.
Robert turned his gaze on her. It was a look of such haughty, aristocratic disdain that Darcy almost felt sorry for her. Almost.
"Miss Bingley," Robert drawled. "You wonder at the company? I confess, I am wondering the same. I am currently seated with the daughters of a gentleman, the granddaughter of a solicitor who served my family, and my own cousin. You, however, appear to be obstructing the waiters."
Caroline's mouth opened and closed like a fish.
"You will excuse us," Robert continued, his voice leaving no room for argument. "We are enjoying a private family celebration. And we do not wish to be disturbed by acquaintances."
He turned his back on them. He sat down and took Jane's hand—the one Bingley had touched—and raised it to his lips, kissing the glove with a reverence that was a deliberate,public claim.
"Are you well, my dear?" he asked Jane, loud enough for the Bingleys to hear.
"I am perfectly well, my Lord," Jane smiled at him, ignoring the existence of Charles Bingley entirely.
Behind them, Darcy watched Bingley's face crumble. He watched Caroline flush a deep, mottled red.
"Come, Charles," Caroline hissed. "We are leaving."
They fled. There was no other word for it. They retreated from the tea shop like beaten curs.
Darcy let out a breath. He looked at Elizabeth. She was watching Robert with an expression of profound approval.
"Remind me," Elizabeth whispered to Darcy, "never to cross your cousin when he is defending his territory."
"He is a Fitzwilliam," Darcy said with a hint of pride. "We are slow to anger, but we are thorough when we arrive."
"I think," Mrs Gardiner noted, calmly stirring her tea, "that the Viscount has just earned himself an extra slice of cake."
"He has earned," Elizabeth agreed, looking at her sister's shining eyes, "a great deal more than that."
The thirtieth of December was a day of domestic absurdity. The weather had turned foul again, confining the party to the Gardiner drawing room.
Robert, however, was undeterred by rain. He had decided that Jane's artistic talents—she had mentioned a fondness for sketching,ONCE—needed a muse.
"I shall pose," Robert announced, stripping off his coat and loosening his cravat. "I have excellent bone structure. It is often remarked upon."
"By whom?" Richard asked from the armchair, where he was reading a newspaper. "Our mother?"
"By artists. Sculptors. The general public." Robert grabbed a tablecloth from the side table and draped it over his shoulder. "I shall be Julius Caesar. Crossing the Rubicon. Miss Bennet, capture my resolve."
Jane, who was seated with her sketchbook, was trying very hard not to giggle. "I shall do my best, my Lord. But Caesar was bald."
"Artistic license," Robert declared. He struck a pose—one foot on a footstool, hand thrust into his waistcoat (the tablecloth), chin lifted to a heroic angle. "There. The conqueror."
"You look like you have a stomach ache," Henry Gardiner observed from the floor, where he was building a tower of blocks.
"It is the burden of leadership, Master Henry," Robert said without breaking character. "Uneasy lies the head that wears the laurel."
"You are wearing a tablecloth," Alice pointed out.
"It is a toga of the mind, Miss Alice. Use your imagination."
