CHAPTER ONE
The first time that I made Miss Elizabeth Bennet’s acquaintance, she hardly made an impression upon me. I was introduced to a sea of women at the dreadful ball at Meryton that my friend Mr. Charles Bingley dragged me to. She was only one of them.
Perhaps I should put some caveat on the word friend, for Bingley often seemed to operate as if he were of the opinion I must be in want of alteration. I suppose it only made sense to him. He had pursued friendship with me because he wanted alteration himself. He wished to be considered more respectable than he had hitherto been considered. He wanted the acceptance of the sorts of people that I had access to. So, perhaps, to Bingley, it wasn’t a friendship so much as it was a transaction. I would provide introductions to him, I would accept him and make it look to others as if they should accept him. So, then, he must provide something to me in return.
He was constantly trying to provide something for me in return, I think.
Sometimes, I think he must have thought that I wanted liveliness or excitement. This was why he dragged me to that ball, and this was why he spent most of it pestering me to dance when I didn’t wish to do so at all. If he could get me to be lively, if he could make sure I had a good time, he would have provided his portion of the transaction.
This was what he was engaged in when I made the second interaction with Elizabeth, though her name wasn’t mentioned at the time, and though I didn’t know what her name was at the time.
“We must have you dance,” he was saying.
“I have told you before, I do not enjoy dancing with people to whom I am not acquainted,” I said. “I’ve already danced with both of your sisters, and there’s no one else in the room with whom it wouldn’t be a punishment.”
“A punishment? When there are so many uncommonly pretty ladies in attendance?” He was entirely shocked.
“You only think that because you have managed to find the only pretty girl in the entire county, I warrant, andyouare dancing with her.”
“She has sisters,” said Bingley, and he gestured, and I caught sight of Elizabeth.
But I did not know she was called Elizabeth at that point. I knew that I was looking at a woman who was young and had a pleasing figure, who also did not have anything about her that seemed distinguishable from any other young woman with a pleasing figure and brown curls and dark eyes.
Bingley was talking. “That one, there, just sitting down behind you, she is quite agreeable, I think. You might dance with her.”
“Tolerable,” I said, looking her over, “but not handsome enough to temptme.”
“Oho!” said Bingley with a smirk.
“No one else is dancing with her either,” I said. “I’m in no humor to go out and give charity dances to women who are being slighted by other men. Off with you, Bingley. Enjoy your dances with the only pretty girl in the room.”
“She is the most beautiful creature I ever laid eyes on,” he said, practically swooning.
And then he did go off on his own and chase after his dance partner, Elizabeth’s sister Jane. But I didn’t know her name at the time either.
I did not dance. I retreated to find somewhere to sit and I passed the rest of the dance in what I can only term discomfort.
I could not quite tell you why I was even there, and I don’t only mean the ball itself, I mean in the country with Bingley.
Bingley and I had met over the summer, and I found him agreeable enough, but I had not thought I would find myself traveling with him and his sisters, spending a great deal of time with them in the fashion that I was doing.
For one thing, he wasn’t entirely the sort that I should be associating so closely with. My family would not entirely approve, I did not think. For another, he was a bit younger than me, and he and I had rather different dispositions. For a third, I wasn’t even certain, sometimes, if I liked him.
But I’d been a bit numb lately.
The business with Wickham and my sister had transpired in the summer. I had handled it as best as I could, and then I had taken my sister away from that man. My intention had been for us to go back to the country, to Pemberley, but my sister, Georgiana is her name, had begged me to be allowed to be in London, citing the desire for operas and plays and the continued company of others.
I told her that it was the summer, and no one was in London, no one who mattered anyway, and that there certainly wasn’t a robust spate of plays and operas to see, but she cried and she pleaded, and I acquiesced.
And who was in London?
The Bingleys.
So, then it was sort of a matter of the fact that beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose. The Bingley sisters were kind to Georgiana, and she needed someone to be kind to her in thewake of all of it. We fell in with them, and soon we were spending a great deal of time with them.
I could have brought Georgiana on this trip to the country, but she had refused, saying she wanted to stay in London.
I arranged for her to stay with our aunt, the Lady Matlock, and her husband the Earl of Matlock. They were back in London—it was October now, after all, no longer summer—it was an odd time to be quitting London for the country.
