“I suspected as much. She is very invested in your happiness, I think, and she showed a clear partiality for me.”
Darcy, helpless to prevent it, smiled. Elizabeth thought, not for the first time, that he ought to do it considerably more often.
They walked on to find Jane and Bingley, and Elizabeth reflected that she had come quite a long way from the sitting room at Hunsford, and felt, all things considered, that the journey had been worthwhile.
Mrs Bennet required several minutes to fully absorb the intelligence.
This was not because she was slow on the uptake, but because her expectations required considerable reorganisation. Jane and Lydia had been anticipated, in their various forms, all summer. Elizabeth and Darcy fell outside the scope of her prepared positions.
“But,” Mrs Bennet said, and then stopped.
“Mama.”
“Ten thousand a year,” Mrs Bennet said, as though locating a fixed point from which to triangulate. “And Pemberley.”
“Yes.”
A silence of some duration. Then, abruptly, the full force of the thing arrived. “Oh, my dearest Lizzy! How rich and great you will be! What pin-money, what jewels, what carriages!” She seized Elizabeth’s hands. “And when Lady Lucas hears of this she will positively expire with envy, for you know Charlotte will never…”
“There is Lydia’s wedding first, Mama,” Elizabeth said. “We shall have time enough to think of everything else after.”
This was a temporary measure, and she knew it. But for now her mother subsided into a pleasurable contemplation that left Elizabeth in sufficient peace to catch Jane’s eye across the room. Jane’s expression was all warm congratulation and gentle, private amusement, and it did more to settle Elizabeth’s spirits than anything else could have done.
She found her father in his library.
He looked up when she came in, and then looked at her again more carefully, with the precise attention he gave her when he suspected she had something of consequence to say.
“Sit down, Lizzy.”
She sat.
“He has spoken to me,” her father said. “This afternoon, after you came back from your walk. He is not the kind of man it would be easy to refuse, but for your sake, Lizzy…” He studied her face. “But I see that will not be necessary.”
Elizabeth met his gaze. “Have I told you enough?”
“Your face has.” He was quiet for a moment, looking down at his book without reading it. “You told me in Brighton that he was not the man we thought him. Less proud, you said. Kinder. I believed you, because I had seen a little of it myself.” He paused. “But I understand a good deal more of what you meant, having spoken with him today. He talks about you in a way that I had not anticipated.” A further pause. “As though he is paying attention.”
“He always pays attention,” Elizabeth said. “It took me longer than it should have to see it.”
“Mm.” Her father was quiet again. Then he picked up his pen, which she knew to mean he was approaching the end of what he wished to say aloud. “I shall tell him yes, Lizzy. And I will say to you what I said to him; that I hope with all my heart he makesyou happy. You are the one daughter I could least bear to see in an unhappy marriage.”
Elizabeth, finding she had nothing adequate to say in return, crossed the room and kissed his cheek. He patted her hand a little awkwardly, as a man does when he is more moved than he would prefer anyone to see.
“Off you go,” he said, and she went.
Netherfield had never been so full.
The earl and countess appeared comfortable in any room they entered. Lady Catherine had the superior air of a woman who considered every house she visited inferior to Rosings and was prepared to tolerate it charitably. Caroline moved through the drawing room with the precision of someone who had spent the day planning her path through it, greeting each guest with a warmth so carefully calibrated to their consequence that it functioned, if you were watching closely, as a nearly perfect map of how she had assessed the room.
Elizabeth was watching closely.
So was Lydia, she noticed; standing beside her, her attention moving about the room with the same quiet assessment. Though her conclusions, Elizabeth suspected, were arrived at by rather different means.
Caroline reached them last, which told its own story.
“Miss Elizabeth.” The warmth was genuine enough in volume. “And Miss Lydia, how very well you look this evening. That colour is most becoming.”
“Thank you, Miss Bingley,” Lydia said pleasantly. “Your gown is beautiful. I have been admiring it since you came in.”
