Page 21 of A Most Unwelcome Acquaintance

“If you will allow it, I will see you soon,” he said.

Lydia said, “You had better.”

Wickham nodded, caught Elizabeth’s eye for the second time, then joined his fellows on the flagstone.

Elizabeth turned her attention to Sarah, who sat at heel, her gaze on the retreating column.

Lydia, still glowing from the exchange, said, “He is the best-looking man in the regiment.”

Kitty giggled, but her voice was thin with envy. “He spoke more to you than to me.”

“He spoke to all of us,” Lydia said, but the victory was hers and she would not share it.

Elizabeth let the matter go. She was more interested in Sarah’s reaction, neither wary nor welcoming. The animal treated Wickham as she did a fox at the edge of a field, curious and attentive.

The girls made their way back up the street, Lydia narrating the events as they passed, Kitty following in her wake, and Sarah trotting at Elizabeth’s side.

Meryton had already forgotten the officers. The drayman rolled another barrel, the fishmonger haggled with a housemaid, and the draper’s apprentice swept lint from the doorstep as if nothing had happened.

Elizabeth paused at the corner to look back. Wickham was there, talking to the senior officer, his cap tipped forward as if to shield his face from the sun. He caught her glance, smiled once, then returned to his conversation.

She resumed walking, her step unhurried, the air of the parade still drifting behind her.

Sarah trotted ahead, tail high.

Chapter 9

THE DRAWING ROOM AT the Phillips house was too warm for the fire, though the damp afternoon gave Mrs. Phillips an excuse for keeping it. Wickham stood near the mantel with his teacup in one hand, watching the company dispose itself according to rank and confidence. The militia officers occupied the best chairs, local mothers claimed the settee, and their daughters crowded the window seats or found places on footstools.

A young woman at the pianoforte played a Handel air with more force than the room required. The officers nearest her nodded at suitable intervals without interrupting their conversations, while Wickham noted who received attention, who pursued it, and who had already surrendered the effort.

Kitty sat on the footstool beside Captain Carter’s chair. With her back to the wall and her chin lifted, she spoke above the music with the bright insistence of someone convinced her story deserved attention. Wickham knew the manner: the hurried speech of a young woman unaccustomed to holding an audience and afraid of losing it.

He moved to the sideboard and refilled his cup, angling himself to catch her words.

“and there was Elizabeth in the field with Sarah,” Kitty said, her hands in motion, the teacup abandoned on the floor beside her slipper, “and the sheep had gotten through the hedge because Papa has never had it mended as he should, and Lizzy had mud from her hem to her elbows, and Sarah, that is the dog, was running the whole flock back toward the gap while Lizzy stood there giving directions without raising her voice, not once.”

Wickham took a slow sip. The tea was strong and bitter, brewed too long on the sideboard’s warmer, but it gave him reason to stand there.

“Where did the sheep wander?” he asked, turning the cup between his fingers.

Kitty turned toward him, pleased by the interruption. “Onto Netherfield’s western pasture. The boundary runs along the ditch there, and the hedge is old and full of gaps the sheep find before we do.”

Wickham nodded, as if the geography of local pastures was a subject of genuine interest. “And was anyone from Netherfield about?”

Kitty’s face lit at the opportunity to carry the story further. “Mr. Bingley was there later, but the first time it was only Mr. Darcy on his dark horse. He sat there without offering to help, and Lizzy says he looked as though she were something the dog dragged in.”

Wickham set his cup on the sideboard. “Mr. Darcy is at Netherfield?”

“Yes. He is staying with Mr. Bingley.”

Wickham leaned one shoulder against the mantel. “And he saw your sister with the sheep and the dog before the assembly?”

“Two days,” Kitty said. She leaned forward, her voice dropping to what she seemed to believe was discretion. “He was riding the boundary, and there was Lizzy in her muddy half-boots, directing Sarah and mending the fence with a fallen rail. She says he watched her the whole time and never spoke a word. At the assembly he refused to dance with anyone, and half the room heard him say that he was not about to dance with a woman who spent her mornings in a field.”

She delivered the last line with a flourish, as if she had rehearsed it, though her stumble over consequence and the hurried ending told Wickham otherwise. The story had currency in the neighborhood. He had heard pieces from two other sources, but Kitty’s version made the gossip harder to dismiss because she spoke as a sister.

“He formed his opinion of her there,” Wickham said. It was not a question.