Mrs Bennet was not at all convinced, but she had rather run out of things to do, the curtains having been re-hung, the silver polished, and every dress in the house examined and found wanting. She subsided into a state of anxious anticipation, which was at least quieter than a state of anxious preparation.Fortunately, Mrs Phillips and Lady Lucas arrived, enabling her to shut herself in the parlour with them and hold forth at great length on the state of her nerves without further inflicting them on her daughters.
Lydia heard the news of the Matlocks’ early arrival and went upstairs to sit by her window for a little while. She had the countess’s letter, which she had been reading and re-reading until she knew it by heart, and she held it in her lap without opening it, looking out at the bright sunny garden.
Richard’s parents, she thought. The earl and countess of Matlock, who had written to her with warmth and what seemed like genuine pleasure, and who were now three miles away at Netherfield. In two days she would be their daughter.
She had meant what she told Kitty; she was not afraid, not exactly. But she was keenly aware of the distance between Miss Lydia Bennet and Mrs Richard Fitzwilliam, and she was not at all sure she knew how to bridge it.
Squaring her shoulders, she reminded herself that she had faced Lady Catherine de Bourgh, by Richard’s admission by far the most formidable of his relatives, and had not disgraced herself in the encounter. She would not disgrace herself tomorrow either.
Hold your head up, she heard General Lewes say in her memory, with his dry blue-eyed smile.You are every bit as good as anyone in that room, my girl.
She folded the letter carefully and went to ask Elizabeth’s opinion on whether the pale yellow muslin or the white would be better for tomorrow.
“The white,” Elizabeth said, without hesitation. “You always look your best in white.”
The dining room at Netherfield was significantly larger than Longbourn’s, and considerably more elegant, which did nothing to soothe Mrs Bennet’s nerves as they arrived, and quite a good deal for Lydia’s. Large and elegant rooms, she had discovered, required a certain kind of composure which she seemed to produce naturally, once her initial apprehension was past. It was cosier rooms that caught her out sometimes, rooms which invited intimacy she did not know how to perform without drawing too much attention on her inadequacies.
The earl was a tall man, silver-haired, with his son’s frank blue eyes and his son’s ability to look at a room and take its measure without appearing to. He greeted the Bennets with a warmth that managed to be both elegant and genuine; Mr Bennet, who was rarely caught off-guard in social situations, looked faintly surprised by it.
The countess was small and dark and said very little, but her eyes missed nothing. She took Lydia’s hands as they were introduced and looked at her steadily for a moment with the expression of someone setting aside any account they have been given in order to form their own judgment.
“My dear,” she said, and smiled, and the smile was so much like Richard’s that Lydia had to work to keep her own composure.
“My lady,” Lydia said, in the most respectful tone she could muster up.
“So pretty.” Lady Matlock startled her by letting go of her hands, and reaching up to pat Lydia’s cheek. Her eyes were misty, making Lydia feel better about the dampness about her own. “Richard, you have chosen so well!”
Colonel Fitzwilliam approached, his expression warm as he took Lydia’s hand and kissed it, then placed his arm about his mother’s shoulders in a surprisingly affectionate gesture for such a public setting.
“She is much more than just a pretty face, Mama. You’ll see.”
Caroline Bingley had arranged herself at the far end of the room with the elegance of a woman who had spent considerable effort making it appear effortless. She was dressed beautifully, as always, and the slight tightness at the corners of her mouth was visible only to anyone who was specifically looking for it.
Elizabeth was specifically looking for it.
She caught Lydia’s eye across the room, and Lydia, who had also noticed, pressed her lips together in a very small, very private smile. Elizabeth answered it with the merest lift of her brows.
The earl, it turned out, had a quality Elizabeth had not anticipated; he was funny. Not in the obvious way, not the genial hearty humour of a man who enjoys the sound of his own laughter, but in a quiet, dry manner which reminded her rather forcefully of Mr Bennet, and she caught her father noticing it too, with a surprised appreciation. Before the first course had been removed, the two men had discovered a shared passion for Roman history and were deep in argument about Julius Caesar’s Gallic campaigns, which was probably not what Mrs Bennet had imagined when she pictured dining with an earl.
Lydia sat beside the countess, who had engineered this arrangement with a skill that owed nothing to accident. Elizabeth watched them from across the table with a divided attention; Caroline Bingley, on her left, was maintaining a flawless performance of gracious social ease which must have been costing her a great deal, and Lydia and the countess were talking quietly in a way that seemed, after the first ten careful minutes, to have relaxed somewhat.
“You seem very pleased,” Jane observed softly, beside Elizabeth.
“I am watching several things at once,” Elizabeth murmured, “and all of them are very interesting.”
Jane followed her gaze from Caroline to Lydia to the two fathers at the end of the table and said, with great charity, “How lovely that Papa and the earl are getting on so well.”
“Perfectly lovely,” Elizabeth agreed.
“And it is very pleasant to see Lydia so at ease with the countess.”
“Very pleasant indeed.”
Jane hesitated. “And Miss Bingley looks well this evening.”
Elizabeth smiled. “You are a much better person than I am,” she said, which made Jane look alarmed, which made Elizabeth smile wider.
Mr Darcy was watching her down the table, Elizabeth saw. He was sitting on the other side of the countess, listening to her conversation with Lydia, but his eyes rarely left Elizabeth. She smiled at him warmly, and the light which came to his normally serious face made her feel quite disconcerted. She almost knocked over her wine glass and had to look away to focus. She would not shame Lydia with poor manners at this most crucial meeting with her future parents-in-law!
