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“I see no indication that Mr. Darcy wishes to marry me,” Elizabeth interjected. “He came to Longbourn, delivered a speech about fortune hunters, and departed without proposing anything at all.”
Both parents turned to look at her with expressions that suggested she had missed something painfully obvious.
“Lizzy,” her father said, with the exaggerated patience of a man explaining arithmetic to a particularly slow child, “Mr. Darcy rode through ice and mud to present himself at our door within hours of learning about the will. He did not refuse you. He did not accept you. He left the door open and told you where to find him.”
“That is not a proposal!”
“It is an invitation to make one!” Mrs. Bennet had reached the pitch of maternal desperation that preceded either tears or violence. “He wants you to ask him, Lizzy. He cannot ask you without looking like a fortune hunter, so he waits at Netherfield for you to swallow your pride and do what must be done!”
“And if I do not wish to swallow my pride?”
“Then you may choke on it in a hedgerow!”
Thus, after a dismal luncheon without tea—the good tea reserved for gentlemen of fortune who might be lured into matrimony—Elizabeth was compelled to don her best black muslin.
“Because the rector knows we are in mourning,” Mrs. Bennet declared, yanking at Elizabeth’s stays with more force than strictly necessary. “And he will think it strange if you arrive dressed for a ball when your uncle is not yet cold in his grave.”
“Uncle Henry has been dead nearly a month, Mamma. He is quite cold by now.”
Mrs. Bennet’s fingers paused in their assault. “If you smart-mouth Reverend Pennyfeather the way you smart-mouth me, Elizabeth Bennet, I shall strangle you in the shrubbery and tell everyone you died of wit. Jane! Come pin your sister’s hair. The most modest arrangement you can manage. She is to look demure if it kills her.”
Jane appeared with hairpins and an expression of sisterly sympathy that made everything worse. She worked in silence, coiling Elizabeth’s hair into a style so severe it might have suited a nun, while Mrs. Bennet paced the room and rehearsed the speech she intended to deliver to the rector.
The procession to the parsonage had all the solemnity of a wake: Mr. Bennet on Elizabeth’s left, arm in arm, Mrs. Bennet on her right, clutching her hand. They passed the milliner’s, where Mrs. Long pressed her nose to the glass; the apothecary’s, where Mr. Jones emerged to stare openly; the butcher, the baker, and finally the solicitor’s, where Uncle Philips stood agape in the doorway.
“Mrs. Bennet!” he called. “Is everything quite—”
“No time, brother! Banns to post! Heiresses to marry off! You may congratulate us on Sunday!”
The parsonage was shut tight and quiet, and Elizabeth half-hoped Reverend Pennyfeather had abandoned his post, but it was not to be as the heavy door opened a crack.
“Mr. Pennyfeather,” Mrs. Bennet said before the man could adjust his glasses to peer at the unlikely trio knocking at his door—a knocking they had kept up for a quarter hour. “We require banns, right away. For Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy of Pemberley. The first reading must happen Sunday.”
“I beg your pardon?” The rector adjusted his spectacles and craned his neck toward the hedgerows. “Where is this Mr. Darcy? Is the gentleman too bashful?”
“He is an extremely busy gentleman,” Mrs. Bennet said. “Estate business, correspondence, and a full social calendar, but you must have heard, Reverend, that he has been named in my brother-in-law’s will.”
“Ah yes, I see.” He stepped aside to admit them, though his expression suggested he was not at all certain he wished to. “And has Mr. Darcy agreed to this marriage?”
“He most certainly agrees to eighty thousand pounds.” Mrs. Bennet huffed with all the appearance of an indignant goose. “We require you to prepare the banns so they may be read Sunday, and the two subsequent Sundays so that the happy couple will be married before Lady Day!”
“I am quite aware of the rules regarding banns.” The rector settled himself behind his desk and regarded Elizabeth with the weary patience of a man who had seen many strange things in his years of parish service. “Miss Elizabeth, do you consent to this match?”
Elizabeth glanced at her mother, whose expression promised violence if she said anything clever. She glanced at her father, who offered only a small, apologetic shrug.
“I am willing to ask Mr. Darcy if he will have me,” she said carefully. “That is all I can promise.”
“Very well, then.” The rector drew a sheet of paper toward him and dipped his quill. “The groom’s full name? County and parish?”
Elizabeth gaped at her mother, who shrugged and tapped her father, who only turned his palms up and shook his head. “His Christian name is Fitzwilliam of Pemberley, in Derbyshire, though at present he resides at Netherfield.”
“Netherfield lies within this parish, so that will serve. I shall prepare the banns. But I must have confirmation of the gentleman’s consent before Sunday. A letter from Mr. Darcy, or his presence in person, or—” he glanced at Elizabeth—“the word of the bride that the match is agreed upon.”
“You will have your confirmation,” Mrs. Bennet said, her grip still tight on Elizabeth’s forearm. “Elizabeth will see to it this afternoon.”
Elizabeth did not share her mother’s confidence, nor, judging by her father’s subdued air, did he. Yet the carriage awaited at Longbourn, and she changed for the third time that day—into Jane’s pale-green dress, new gloves, and spotless petticoats.
The carriage ride to Netherfield offered no sanctuary. Elizabeth had hoped for silence, a moment to gather her wits and consider what to say to a man she scarcely knew and liked even less, but her parents were determined to fill the air.
