Page 22 of A Most Unwelcome Acquaintance

Kitty nodded, eager. “Lizzy says so. She says he decided what she was before he knew her name, and the assembly only confirmed it.”

Wickham picked up his cup again. The porcelain was warm against his palm. “And the dog, Sarah. She is a working animal, not a pet?”

“Sarah manages the sheep. She spends most of her time with Lizzy and knows what to do. Papa says she is worth three hired men for keeping the flock in order.” Kitty’s pride in the dog was evident in the lift of her chin. “Mr. Darcy admired her, though. Lizzy says he watched Sarah work and commented on her excellent training.

Wickham absorbed this. The Handel air ended with three emphatic chords, followed by a scattering of applause. In the brief quiet that followed, Wickham heard Mrs. Phillips calling to the kitchen for more cake and Captain Carter clearing his throat to redirect the conversation to the regiment’s next review.

Kitty, sensing the room’s attention shifting, gathered her skirts and rose from the footstool. She retrieved her abandoned teacup, found it empty, and carried it toward the sideboard where Wickham stood. Her cheeks were flushed from the fire and from having held the floor for three uninterrupted minutes. She smiled at him as she reached for the pot.

“You are a good listener, Mr. Wickham.”

He returned the smile. “You tell a good story, Miss Kitty.”

She poured the tea, her fingers trembling at the pot’s handle. Wickham recognized the tremor for what it was: not nerves, but the aftermath of being heard. He had seen it before. Young women accustomed to being talked over often shook when someone let them finish a thought. Their voices grew steadier with practice, but the trembling took longer to leave.

He turned away and, taking his place by the window, traced the rim of his cup with a finger. The street lay quiet in the gray afternoon, the shop signs hanging still and a single cart moving toward the inn at the far end.

Darcy formed his opinion of Elizabeth Bennet when he saw her in a field with a working dog and a stray flock, before the assembly and the insult half the county now knew by heart. He saw her direct the dog, mend the fence, and kneel in the mud, and Wickham could imagine the judgment that followed. A gentleman’s daughter who worked like a tenant’s child offended Darcy’s every notion of order, and the assembly gave him the opportunity to say what he had decided.

His finger stilled on the cup’s rim. The truth, arranged with care, would do the work without invention. He needed only to connect what Darcy saw with what he said and let the neighborhood draw its conclusion.

Behind him, the conversation turned to the weather, the prospects of an early summer, and the merits of local cider against London porter. Kitty joined the young woman at the pianoforte, her voice lighter now, less urgent. She had given him what he needed and moved on, unaware of its importance.

Wickham finished his tea and set the cup on the windowsill. He would speak with Elizabeth Bennet before the gathering ended, once the conversation loosened and fewer ears stood between them.

He turned back to the company, where Captain Carter was describing the regiment’s new uniforms with more enthusiasm than the subject warranted. Wickham nodded at the appropriate intervals, asked the expected questions, and kept his thoughts to himself.

Elizabeth stood by the window with her cup balanced on the sill, tracing the condensation on the glass. The light outside was gray and diffuse, and behind her the room had settled into the particular noise of a gathering that had exhausted its topics and was working its way toward departure. Wickham watched her from the sideboard, pretended interest in the remains of a seed cake, calculating the distance between them, the number of bodies in the way, and the likelihood of someone overhearing.

Mrs. Phillips had moved to the pianoforte to adjust the girl’s fingering, and two militia officers were arguing over the merits of a bay mare they had seen at the inn stable. Kitty had abandoned her footstool for a chair nearer the fire, where she sat with her ankles crossed and her attention fixed on nothing. Everyone had turned to someone nearby, and no one was watching the window.

Wickham carried his cup across the carpet and stopped beside Elizabeth, leaving a courteous distance between them as he looked out at the same gray view.

“Meryton is kinder to the regiment than I expected,” he said. “I heard country towns could be wary of unfamiliar faces, but your neighbors have made us welcome.”

Elizabeth smiled, her attention still on the window. “Meryton is not large enough to sustain wariness. We run out of unfamiliar faces before we have time to hold a grudge.”

“A kind philosophy.”

“It is arithmetic, not philosophy.”

The dry edge of the remark interested him. A woman who made jokes was easier to read than one who made speeches, for her humor showed what she noticed and dismissed.

He sipped his tea and let the silence hold for a count of three. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped, not to a whisper but to the lower register he used for confidences.

“I hesitate to mention this, Miss Elizabeth, and you must forgive me if it is out of place.” He paused, as if the words cost him something. “But I have been turning a thought over in my mind, and I cannot quite dismiss it.”

Elizabeth turned her head, her expression open and curious. “What thought?”

Wickham studied the surface of his tea. “Miss Kitty told me that Mr. Darcy saw you with the sheep and your dog. I wonder whether his refusal to dance the night of the assembly had anything to do with that first impression.”

Her fingers tightened on the windowsill, a change Wickham noted without appearing to.

“Mr. Darcy is quick to judge,” he continued. “I have known him long enough to observe the pattern. He decides what a person is worth at the first meeting and seldom revises the assessment, no matter what evidence follows.” He looked at her, his expression regretful. “When he saw a gentleman’s daughter managing sheep and a working dog in a field, he found something contrary to his notions of order. However unfair his judgment, I fear your standing never recovered.”

Elizabeth’s chin lifted, and her fingers curled against the wood. When she spoke, she chose each word with care.

“Then you believe Mr. Darcy had formed his opinion before coming to the assembly? That the insult did not arise from the evening but revealed a judgment formed days before?”