Page 53 of The Marriage Articles

He looked, for the first time that day, uncertain. “I must say I do not know. My betrothed prefers town, though I was very fond of the place and of the neighbourhood.”

“When you do not mean to reside,” Elizabeth said gently, “it is kinder to give the place up entirely. A house kept half empty does no good for the neighbourhood, whereas a new family settling in can bring life and employment back to the parish.”

Miss Bingley turned her attention to the wall above the mantel, where an Italian landscape hung in a gilt frame. “I have always admired Mr Darcy’s collection,” she said. “The Claude in particular. I know it so well that I could find it with my eyes shut. Mr Darcy has such unerring taste in pictures. One can tell a great deal about a man from the pictures he chooses to live with.” She looked to Darcy as she finished, inviting the compliment to be returned.

“You are very kind,” Darcy said. He did not look at the Claude.

“It is no Claude at all, Miss Bingleby,” Lady Catherine announced from across the room, her tone ringing with absolute authority. “My poor sister sold the real Claude to Lord Malvern ten years ago, and that wretched thing was picked up at a second-rate sale in Brighton by my nephew’s former steward. Anyone with half an eye for art would see it is a wretched copy.”

Miss Bingley blinked, her mouth remaining slightly open for a moment before she forced a thin, trembling smile. “Indeed. I meant to say it possessed a certain... school of Claude.”

Georgiana, who sat nearest the wall, coloured faintly and said, “It is a very fine painting.”

“It is,” Elizabeth agreed. She set down the teapot and looked around the room with a bright, welcoming composure. “Now that you are all arrived, let me tell you what we mean to do with you. There is shooting for the gentlemen whenever they wish it, and my husband tells me the covers are in good order. We shall have a musical evening, if Miss Bingley can be persuaded to play, for we all know how very skilled she is. There is to be a picnic by the water if the weather holds, walks for whoever likes them.” She smiled. “You are our guests for a fortnight, and I intend you to be sorry when it ends.”

Mr Bingley laughed and declared the plan capital, every item of it, and Miss Bingley said softly that she would be happy to play.

Dinner that evening was soup, a fish, and a roast. Soup came up clear and hot. Fish followed whole, served without mishap. The roast was set before them with its proper vegetables while the candles burned steadily in their sticks, and the talk went where country talk goes, to the weather and the shooting promised for the morning.

Mr Bingley praised the covers and asked Darcy after a particular coppice he remembered from years before. Mr Hurst ate. He ate the soup with attention, the fish with respect, and the roast with something approaching warmth, and contributed to the conversation one opinion, which was that rain before morning would spoil nothing a man of sense cared about.

“It is a charming dinner,” Miss Bingley said, when the roast was being carved. “So very simple. There is a real art in simplicity, is there not. In London one grows so tired of elaboration that a plain table is quite a relief.” She let the compliment rest a moment, then turned down the table. “Your ladyship must find it so. After Rosings, the simplicity here must strike you as it strikes me, though I am sure it is all perfectly suited to the country.”

“A very proper dinner,” Mrs Hurst said. “Quite simple, as Caroline says.”

Lady Catherine did not look up. She attended to her plate and when she spoke it was without lifting her eyes. “A light table is vastly superior to those heavy French sauces that ruin a stomach, Miss Bingleby. There is no fault to be found here.” She returned to her fish.

Nobody corrected her on the name. Miss Bingley opened her mouth and shut it again, and colour came into her face in a way no compliment had ever put it there. She tried a smile at no one in particular, found no one receiving it, and applied herself to her plate.

Elizabeth kept her own countenance with an effort she hoped looked like appetite. High praise, delivered as fact, from a quarter she had least expected. Her ladyship had been in the house a week, inspecting every shelf and servant, and the audit had come out in print at last, in a form she would never have dared to anticipate.

Mr Bingley, who had missed nothing and understood perhaps half of it, filled the pause by asking Darcy whether the coppice still held pheasants as it used to. Darcy said it did, and the table resumed. Miss de Bourgh watched her mother with the stillness of long practice, and Georgiana, catching Elizabeth’s eye, looked quickly down at her plate with an amusement she did not quite succeed in hiding. Jane went on being serene, which was Jane’s way of enjoying a thing without taking sides in it.

Miss Bingley recovered enough to remark that the candles were very well placed. Mrs Hurst agreed with her. Elizabeth accepted both compliments as though the evening had contained nothing else, and reflected that there was no defence against indifference, since indifference did not know it was fighting.

Darcy looked at her the way he had looked at her over the Claude, which was answer enough, and then there were footsteps in the passage. He was gone back to the drawing room door before they rounded the corner, and she followed a breath later, mistress of the house, on time.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Darcy set out the cartridges in rows of ten on the gun room table while his mind, less biddable than his hands, went back to yesterday’s picnic on the south paddock. There had been cold chicken under a grey lid of sky, a great deal of laughter, and Miss Bingley wondering aloud that Mrs Darcy should be so fond of dining on the grass, as though it were quite the fashion. His wife had smiled and passed the chicken.

It was a pleasant memory to begin a morning on. The sky was grey still, the ground dark with damp, and this was the third day of the Bingleys’ fortnight visit. The table by the window had been laid with eggs, toast, and coffee. Hurst was doing it justice. He had not spoken since sitting down, which in Hurst was appetite rather than sullenness, and Darcy, who had known the man above ten years, expected nothing of him before noon. Outside, the keepers were assembling the beaters, a dozen men and boys of the estate with flags and sticks, the dogs quartering the yard in a fever of expectation. Bingley came in rubbing his hands and was talking before he was through the door.

“A capital morning for it,” Bingley said. “Grey enough to keep the birds low, wet enough to hold the scent, and Hurst agrees with me, I am sure, though he is too deep in his breakfast to say so. I shot tolerably at Sir Adam’s in the spring, tolerably well indeed, and I mean to shoot better today. Where do you put me, Darcy?”

“The far peg, by the copse,” Darcy said. “Where the birds come over highest.”

“Then I shall astonish you,” Bingley said, and meant it. Enthusiasm was Bingley’s portion in all weathers, and it cost a man nothing to be warmed by it. Darcy checked the charge in his own gun and returned his friend’s grin with something quieter.

Elizabeth came in as the guns were being cased, her shawl loose over her shoulders, and the room was the better for her standing in it. She had come to wish the party good sport before they set out, a small courtesy from the mistress of the house to her husband’s guests, and Darcy’s pleasure in it was larger than the courtesy warranted. He set down the cartridge box and went to her.

“You are come to wish us sport, Mrs Darcy,” Bingley said, bowing. “Then you must promise to look in on Caroline and Louisa. Caroline was a little the worse for the rain yesterday, though she will never own it.”

“You may set your mind at rest, Mr Bingley,” Elizabeth said. “I have laid my plans to keep all the ladies usefully employed within doors today, and I flatter myself I know my business. Not one of them shall be permitted to be cold, bored, or at liberty. You need not give the matter another thought.”

Her eyes went to Darcy as she spoke, and the arch of her brow did the rest. He knew precisely what she was thinking. Yesterday Miss Bingley, resolved to show that she knew Pemberley better than its mistress, had carried Mrs Hurst off to admire the shrubbery gate, chosen the wrong path in the wet, and come home quite bedraggled and in high displeasure.

That brow undid him. It always had. If Elizabeth knew what a single raised eyebrow cost him in composure, she would raise it more often, and he would be lost.