He did not even attempt to mouth the answer and instead committed it to paper where it would be better understood.
Le Château de Versailles.
Elizabeth’s eyes widened, and she looked up from the page with an expression of ingenuous wonder that rendered her even more handsome than usual. “Truly? That is enough to make me envious in earnest. Would that youcouldspeak, for I should dearly love to hear you describe it.”
I should dearly love to take you there, Darcy thought, though more things than Napoleon’s army stood in the way of such a wish.
“All this you have seen, and still your favourite place in all the world is Pemberley?”
“It is.”
“It must be quite a house.”
“It is my home,” he mouthed.
She regarded him intently, and disliking not knowing what she thought, he took up the pen and wrote,
Have you been to many places? You cannot have always been at Longbourn.
She did not reply directly upon reading this. First, she tore off a small piece of bread roll and ate it, all the while peering at him dubiously. “I am not sure I wish to know why that is your opinion,” she said presently. “I am certain it is your design to be severe onsomebody.”
He regretted making such an inelegant compliment, for he ought to have known Elizabeth would see directly past it to his slight upon her family.
“But you are right,” she continued. “My mother’s father had a house in Hampshire, and I visited him there often before he passed away. He was a dear, gentle man—calmer and, dare I say, more sensible than his wife or daughters. Much like his son, my Uncle Gardiner, with whom Jane and I spent a good deal of our childhoods. He and his wife have a house in London. I am due to travel with them this summer, as it happens. To the Lakes. I have never been before. I am excessively impatient to see it.”
Darcy felt an irrational resentment for these relations with the privilege of seeing Elizabeth’s face as she beheld that sight for the first time. Like as not they knew none of the best places to show her, or any of the finest establishments in which to stay. He briefly wondered whether, if he could discover when they meant to go, he might engineer a chanceencounter—until he recalled that his present predicament was the result of a similar scheme and chided himself for his foolishness.
“If you object so violently to my connexions, I wonder that you troubled yourself to enquire about them,” Elizabeth said tersely, dropping what was left of her roll into her empty bowl.
“Pardon?”
“You cannot deny your disdain, sir. You frowned at the mere mention of my visiting my uncle in Cheapside.”
I was not frowning, and you made no mention of their living in Cheapside—only London.
Darcy surprised himself with the latter, for it was less than completely honest. Though Elizabeth had not mentioned it, he knew full well her relations lived in that part of town, for the information had been passed on with great relish by Miss Bingley when they were at Netherfield.
Still, it gave Elizabeth pause. She opened her mouth to object, closed it again, nodded to herself, and said instead, “Very well. But, pray tell me—intruth—now that you know they live in the City, will you still credit them with having had such a favourable influence on me?”
If they are the relations from whom you learnt your sense and disposition, then I credit them with a great deal.
“And their condition in life does not diminish your opinion of them?”
The ink ran from the pen to blot the page where Darcy pressed it as he thought overlong on how to answer. The situationof Elizabeth’s relations was one of the paramount objections to his marrying her. It would be a falsehood to claim otherwise. Yet, he could have no objection to the individuals, having never met them, and, judging by this conversation, possibly ought even to admire them. This, he supposed, was Elizabeth’s meaning.
A sudden flush assailed him as he wondered at her deeper purpose. He felt compelled to remind her that even were her relations the best people in the world, they would never behisrelations.
The condition in life of anyone so wholly unconnected to me is immaterial.
After reading this, Elizabeth fixed her eyes on him and tipped her head sideways, as a hawk does when judging the distance to its prey. “The sense and worth of anybody outside of your circle is not important then?”
Not particularly,he thought, surprising himself again. Rattled and a little ashamed, he deflected the conversation back to her by writing,
You take great delight in questioning my judgment. Are you confident your own is always sound?
The parade of expressions that crossed Elizabeth’s countenance suggested it was not a matter she had ever before considered. He was unsurprised that the sentiment upon which she settled last was amusement.
“As certain as anyone ever is, I suppose. I take your point.”
