Page 21 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

F. D.

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Longbourn. 6th December

My dear thief,

I wondered where that glove had gone. I accused Kitty. She has not forgiven me.

The weather in Hertfordshire is cold and bright, with a hard frost every morning that turns the whole garden white and makes the gravel sing under your boots. I walked to Oakham Mount yesterday and sat on the fallen oak for half an hour and was very foolish. There. Now I have told you the weather, and a confession of shocking sentimentality, and we are even.

My mother has discovered wedding clothes. You cannot conceive what this means. I have been measured four times, twice for the same pelisse. She is torn between white satin and white sarsenet and consults me hourly, and when I say I do not mind, she tells me I have no proper feeling. Jane is to be married on the same day, you know, and Mama says it is a pity we cannot have a double wedding with three brides, so that she need only order one breakfast. Kitty and Lydia have offered to marry any two officers she likes.

I tell you all this so that you will know what you are marrying into, and cannot say later you were not warned.

Mary has played the Handel you gave her every evening this week. She has almost stopped playing it loudly. Last night, when she finished, my father put down his book and said "that was very well done", and she went quite pink and went to bed early and I think cried a little, happily. You did that, you know. I do not think anybody else in the world would have thought of it.

Please tell your sister that my eyes are dark and quite ordinary, whatever you may have said. And tell her that I do not need to wait to meet her to be sure I shall love her. She has you for a brother. That is recommendation enough.

I miss you. I did not know it was possible to miss someone this much after knowing them for seven weeks. It is very inconvenient. I keep turning round to say things to you and finding only Mrs Hill.

Yours, whenever you want me,

E.

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Folded inside his next letter, in a round, careful schoolgirl hand, was a single sheet.

Dear Miss Elizabeth,

My brother says I may write to you, and so I shall, though I am very bad at letters. I only wanted to say thank you. He told me what you said to him on the hill. He did not tell me why you were on a hill, or what he had told you, but I think I can guess, and I am not sorry. He told me you said that he came to save me and not to scold me. I did not know how much I needed someone to say that, until he told me you had.

I hope you will not think me silly. I have been so frightened of meeting you. I thought you would know, and think less of me. And now I think perhaps you know, and do not think less of me at all, and I cannot tell you how that feels.

I am learning a new sonata to play for you when you come. It is very difficult. My brother says you will tell me honestly whether it is any good, and that I should prepare myself. I am preparing.

Your sister, very soon, I hope,

Georgiana Darcy

Elizabeth read it three times, sitting on the stairs at Longbourn with her shawl round her. Then she went up to her room and cried, for no reason she could have given, and then sat down at once and wrote back four pages.

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Longbourn. Thursday, 19th December

The carriage that swept up Longbourn's drive a week before Christmas had four horses, two outriders, a coat of arms on the door, and a footman on the back so tall that Kitty, at the window, thought at first he was standing on a box.

The lady who got out of it was taller still, in the way that some people are tall without any help from their height. She was perhaps sixty, in black silk and sables, with a nose like the prow of a ship. She walked into the hall without waiting to be announced, looked round it once as though it were a stable, and said, in a voice that carried to the attics:

"Which of you is Miss Elizabeth Bennet?"

Mrs Bennet, who had been counting napkins, dropped all of them.

Elizabeth stood up. She had known, from the moment she saw the coat of arms, who this must be. Darcy had described his aunt Catherine in one of his letters. She will almost certainly come, he had written. She has never in her life allowed a thing to happen without trying to prevent it. If she does, do not be frightened. She is all thunder. There is not much lightning in it.

"I am Elizabeth Bennet, ma'am. And you must be Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Will you sit down? My mother will ring for tea."