Why, this was the girl, the one I had said, at that dreadful ball, was not handsome enough to tempt me. I was certain, when I had seen her then that she had not been.
Something had changed.
If it hadn’t been her, perhaps it had been me.
CHAPTER TWO
But then she stayed. Elizabeth, that is.
She was there at dinner, though the other sister was too ill, and had to stay abed. I said little; she said little. The conversation was carried almost entirely by Bingley, who has the ability, and I will say this for him, to speak about nearly nothing in an amiable way for a long period of time, and to do it in such a way where it is quite engaging, not boring at all. He is very good at making uninteresting things seem interesting, and not because he is, in fact, interested in them, for—near as I can tell—Bingley is interested in absolutely nothing, but because he is simply an amiable sort of fellow who one finds enjoyable.
After dinner, Elizabeth got up immediately—and I was already calling her Elizabeth in my head, not Miss Bennet or even Miss Elizabeth, just Elizabeth, which was improper, and I didn’t care—and said she must go and see to her sister, and she left the table, leaving the rest of us there.
“I cannot believe we have been obliged to house that one,” said Caroline Bingley. “She is abominable, a mixture of pride and impertinence. No skill at conversation has she. No style, either in dress or in manner or in… her hair?” She gestured at her own head and shuddered. Caroline was the younger of the Bingley sisters, the unmarried one. Of all the people in the family, I tended to like her the best, I have to say. She and I wereperhaps the most alike. This was maybe the first time she’d said something I disagreed with.
Truth was, I spent most of my time in the presence of the Bingleys poking fun at them in my head and ascribing various levels of censure to all of their behaviors, and Caroline said all of these things aloud. She was rather severe on both her brother and her sister, and most especially her sister’s husband, and she had a shrewd sort of biting wit that might have been a bit mean-spirited on occasion, but which I found genuinely funny.
But this was all likely just another point on a list of things that would prove that I was not behaving at all like myself and that it was quite strange for me to be in the country with these people, anyway.
But Mrs. Hurst, her sister, was laughing in agreement. “Oh, yes, just as you say. She has nothing to recommend her, nothing at all.” A pause. “Oh, except that she is an excellent walker, that is.”
Both sisters burst into laughter together, thinking this a very witty joke.
Caroline turned to me, expecting me to be laughing. I laughed at her jokes often, and they were often at the expense of others. I was not laughing; she noticed.
Something passed between us.
She sniffed, looking down at her empty plate. “She is indeed that, Louisa, an excellent walker. But she is nothing else. And I do not pretend to even understand why she is here. She need not be scampering all over God’s creation simply because her sister has a cold. There is no reason for her to have walked, what was it? Five miles or something?”
“I don’t think it’s that many miles,” broke in her brother.
“But her hair, so blowsy!” said Caroline.
“Yes, and her petticoat, the mud,” said Louisa. “Sixinchesof mud.”
It had not been six inches. Why are women always so bad at estimating measurement?
“She may not have looked presentable when she arrived this morning,” said Bingley, “but she looked remarkably well, I thought. One thing I was not looking at was her dirty petticoats.”
Ah, he’d seen it too. Had it been the light, then? Or the way the color had risen against her cheeks?
“Remarkably well, yes,” I agreed, my voice gruff.
Caroline turned to me in something like horror. “Oh, but Mr. Darcy, what if that had been your sister, walking all alone, through the countryside, with her hair like that?”
I grimaced. She didn’t know about Georgiana and Wickham, of course. No one knew. “Insupportable,” I bit out, wanting to get the conversation as far away from my sister’s impropriety as possible. But it should be known that Georgiana had a chaperone, had a lady with her, and that lady had simply failed us all. That was why the lady had been let go without a reference.
“At any rate, what could she have meant by it?” said Caroline. “Walking alone, in the dirt, for however many miles it is? It’s some kind of conceited independence.”
“It’s the sort of thing one does in the country, I warrant,” said Bingley.
“Well, yes, there you are. She is that. A country miss, backwoods, indifferent to decorum, whatever you will,” said Caroline.
“She cares about her sister,” said Bingley. “I think that is very pleasing.”
“I am afraid, Mr. Darcy,” observed Caroline in a half whisper, “that this adventure has rather affected your admiration of her fine eyes.”
And this moment was when I remembered I had even said that to Caroline about Elizabeth. I had not given the exchange any merit or mind, but the fact that she remembered it, and thatshe was bringing it up made a dull bit of an alarm come to the forefront of my mind. That did not bode well.
