Page 48 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

"Three."

"To whom?"

"Richard. A man at Bow Street. And my aunt." He sat down on the edge of the bed. "No secrets. I told you. I will show you copies, if you like."

She smiled, slow and sleepy, and held out her hand, and he took it.

"I do not need copies," she said. "I trust you." She tugged his hand, and he came down beside her again, and she tucked her head under his chin with a small contented sigh. Then, very softly, against his throat, she said the word.

"Good-morrow."

He held her so tightly that she squeaked.

At nine o'clock, while they were at breakfast and Georgiana was carefully not reading the newspapers, Pearce came in with a letter that had come express from Kent. It was in a large, black, furious hand that Darcy knew at once, and it said, in its entirety:

I have seen the Post. I shall be with you on Thursday. Have the blue bedroom made ready. I do not care for the green. — C. de B.

Chapter 14: Lady Catherine Arrives

Darcy House. Thursday, 2nd April 1812

Lady Catherine de Bourgh arrived in Grosvenor Square at a quarter past two on Thursday afternoon, in the same carriage with the same four horses and the same enormous footman, and the whole square knew it before she had set foot on the pavement.

Elizabeth was waiting in the hall. She had thought about waiting in the drawing room, to be found sitting gracefully with a piece of embroidery, the way The Mirror of Graces recommended. She had decided that Lady Catherine would see through it in an instant and despise her for it. So she stood at the foot of the stairs in her plainest morning gown, with her hands folded and her husband at her side, and watched the blue door open.

Lady Catherine came through it like a ship under full sail. She was in black again, with a great deal of sable, and she stopped in the middle of the marble floor and looked round the hall, and then up the staircase, and then at Elizabeth, with those cold grey eyes.

"So," she said. "This is where the builders were."

"Upstairs, ma'am," said Elizabeth. "On the second floor. Would you like to see?"

There was a pause, in which Pearce, holding the door, appeared to stop breathing.

"I would not," said Lady Catherine. "I have no wish to inspect my nephew's plasterwork, and I cannot conceive why he should wish the whole of London to inspect it either." She turned the grey eyes on Darcy. "A door, Fitzwilliam. A door. In the Morning Post. Between the Duchess of Rutland's barouche and some ridiculous notice about Sally Jersey. Your grandfather sat in the Lords for forty years and was never once mentioned in the Post except in connection with the Corn Laws."

"I did not put it in the Post, aunt."

"I know you did not. I am not a fool. Somebody put it there for you. That is the whole point." She stripped off her gloves, one finger at a time, with great violence. "I told this young woman in her own garden that she would be censured and slighted and despised. I did not say she would be mocked. I did not say that the name of Darcy would be made a jest of by persons who print on paper fit to wrap fish. That, I will not have."

Elizabeth blinked.

"I have been reading that paragraph for four days," said Lady Catherine, "and I have been growing angrier with every reading. It was written by somebody who knows nothing whatever about this family, and who thinks, because my nephew has married beneath him, that he may be laughed at with impunity. I intend to teach them otherwise." She turned to Elizabeth. "You. Miss Bennet. Mrs Darcy."

"Ma'am?"

"When I came to Longbourn, you told me you were resolved to make him happy for as long as you lived."

"I did."

"Is he happy?"

Elizabeth looked at her husband. He was looking at her, as he so often did, as though there were nobody else in the hall.

"Yes," she said. "I believe he is."

"Hm," said Lady Catherine. She looked at her nephew's face for a long moment, and whatever she saw there seemed to settle something. "Then you will do. I said at Longbourn that I was most seriously displeased. I am still displeased. But not with you." She thrust her gloves at Pearce without looking at him. "The blue bedroom, I believe. And my daughter will want the room next to mine, and a fire, and something hot to drink. She is in the carriage. She has been asleep since Bromley. Do not wake her abruptly; she dislikes it."

She sailed up the staircase without another word.