“Yes,” Elizabeth agreed, the realization settling like lead within her. “Lady Matlock is Mamma with a coronet and thirty years of practice.”
Allegra helped her out of the morning dress and into the ivory silk once more for the final pinning. “She is quite formidable, your Lady Matlock. She has been managing Fitzwilliam’s social prospects since he came down from Cambridge. Every ball, every dinner, every country house party—Lady Matlock has a candidate prepared. He endures it with the patience of a man who knows resistance is futile, but compliance is not agreement.”
“Does she succeed?”
“Never.” Allegra smoothed the fabric at Elizabeth’s shoulder and stepped back to assess the drape. “That is what makes her persistence so remarkable. Eleven years of candidates presented, and Fitzwilliam has not given expectations to a single one. Not a glance, not a second dance, not a morning call that extended beyond the minimum required by civility.”
“Why is that so? Does he not wish to marry?”
“Oh, I suppose he knows he needs to marry.” Allegra picked up a length of ribbon, measured it against Elizabeth’s waist, and set it down again. “Pemberley is entailed, and Georgiana cannot inherit, so Darcy will need a son to provide for his sister in case she does not make a match. However, for the Darcys, an old family from the Norman conquest, with very large holdings, but still a commoner, they require alliances with peers.”
“Why is that?” Elizabeth asked. She had some inkling of the ranks and such, but she could not imagine why fusty old titles should matter to a man who owned half of Derbyshire.
“Because land and wealth are merely muscle, Elizabeth, but a title is the crown,” Allegra explained, her voice dropping into that smooth, matter-of-fact tone common to those born to the geography of Mayfair. “The Darcys have ancient blood and staggering accounts, yes, but the Darcy name is not in Debrett’s. To the true peerage, a commoner with ten thousand a year is still just a very wealthy neighbor unless he locks his ledger to a coronet. His late father was obsessed with that missing piece. Old Mr. Darcy believed the family name imposed obligations on every choice Fitzwilliam made, and marriage carried the most weight. The grandson of an earl, master of Pemberley, old Mr. Darcy expected a match that reflected the family’s position. Ducal, ideally, although very rare and hard to obtain. Daughters of Marquises and Earls, at the very least. Character and standing are both required. He was raised to it from boyhood, Elizabeth.Every family measured, every connection weighed, every alliance surveyed against a standard so elevated that virtually no woman in England qualifies.”
“Not even you?” Elizabeth asked, gesturing to the refinement of her bearing. “You are the granddaughter of a duke.”
Allegra smiled without bitterness, though there was a weary clarity in her eyes. “My father is a baronet. Baronets rank below barons, who rank below viscounts, who rank below earls. By old Mr. Darcy’s reckoning, I am at least three rungs short, and my mother’s bloodline—though grand—cannot compensate for the fact that my name bears no coronet. Even Anne de Bourgh is only the daughter of a baronet. Lady Catherine may trumpet the connection to the heavens, but old Mr. Darcy never truly sanctioned it, and Fitzwilliam has never entertained it.”
“So Lady Sophia considers him the perfect vetter of my suitors,” Elizabeth said, and the sentence emerged with the false lightness of a woman who was keeping something very still inside herself, “because he is above being affected by the outcome.”
“Precisely. He evaluates with the detached precision of a man who will never be personally invested.” Allegra met her eyes in the glass, and her expression was kind and frank, entirely unaware of the detonation she had just produced. “The woman he vets could never be a woman he would court. It simply is not in him. His father made certain of that. Taught him, from a young age, not to set expectations. Not to dance like other men, but to stand aloof.”
“But how will he meet the daughters of dukes if he does not dance?”
Allegra let out a tiny laugh. “The peerage likely sees him as below them, and only a family deep in debt might deign to present their daughter to him. Now you see the conundrum? Our Darcy hates debtors.”
Elizabeth stood motionless while pins jabbed her calves, but the sharper sting was hypocrisy. Lord Coke, with his title, wanted her for her properties. Her country origins were a smudge easily wiped away by her account book. She was good enough to buy her way into the house of Coke, at least.
For Darcy, it was the opposite. No title, just a mountain of expectations and a family name to elevate. Elizabeth and her muddy petticoats had never been within his sights. The impossibility was as plain as the pins in her hem.
He had danced with her at Netherfield, had proposed to her at Hunsford, and he had done it against his will, against his reason, conscience, and his very character.
She had heard the insult and missed the miracle, because what Allegra had just shown her was that Fitzwilliam Darcy had never, in his entire adult life, broken a single rule his father had set for him.
Except once. For a country girl with no fortune, a vulgar family, and mud on her petticoats. He had been willing to forfeit the very elevation his family name demanded, simply to offer his life to her.
And she had told him he was the last man in the world.
But he had recovered. From the madness of the proposal. The ill humor of his objections, and he could now smile and joke and jest while organizing her dance card with the calm efficiency of a man reviewing investments. He would grant the supper dance to Lord Coke, having only scribbled his name in as a placeholder, and he had smiled at her while doing it.
Yes, he would keep his promise not to address her, because she was a temporary aberration. A madness that had overcome him like the plague, and now, he was amused to shepherd her Season, guide her the way an older brother would, and yes, protect her from rogues because Lady Sophia asked him to.
“You have gone very quiet,” Allegra said.
“The pins require concentration.”
“You are a terrible liar, Elizabeth.”
“So I have been told. Twice this week, in fact.”
“Are you worried about Lady Matlock and Lord Coke?” Allegra asked. “Surely, Darcy would not cut out his own cousin for another gentleman.”
“He hasn’t asked me who I prefer.” Elizabeth lowered her face while the shop assistant made the chalk marks and removed the pins. “He simply assigned the slots.”
“And held the supper dance with his name as a placeholder. It is a waltz—very scandalous.” Allegra’s eyes widened as a sudden, breathless realization caught her. “Elizabeth… are you?”
She waved Allegra off, lips pressed into a line that felt nothing like her usual bravado. “I am only a country girl hopelessly out of her depth. Let us talk of pistachio ice instead.”
