Page 14 of Old Boots (Pride and Prejudice Variations #3)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

M y day of reckoning had come. I had been too careless in my attentions, and as my heart pounded in dread, I marvelled at how fate had announced itself—a thunderclap of doom that was both foreordained and entirely unexpected.

Why was it that retrospection is so damnably clear? I should have seen this coming.

I tasted ashes in my mouth and felt the colour drain from my face. “Excuse me, Bingley,” I said, putting my napkin down and pushing away from the breakfast table. “I have some business to attend to.”

I saddled my own horse out of the need to be alone, and in a sober state, I rode to Longbourn.

Miss Bennet welcomed me with an open smile. She sat with Miss Mary, but Miss Elizabeth was not in the room. After the ritual of greetings, I excused myself and went to Mr Bennet’s library.

“I am afraid I have done your family harm, sir,” I said almost immediately.

“Oh? How so?” he asked in surprise. “Will you not sit? Shut the door, and tell me what is amiss.”

“I have raised the expectations of the neighbourhood that I will offer for your eldest daughter.”

Mr Bennet looked placidly at me. Some spark of his erstwhile cynicism shone out in that look, and he said, “I have never cared one whit for the opinion of my neighbours. You need not do anything honourable if you are on the verge of doing so.”

“But—”

“I would not grant my consent in any case.” As I stared at him in disbelief, he shrugged. “My daughter holds you in esteem, but she does not love you, sir. And—correct me if I am mistaken—I do not detect in you anything warmer than respect for her.”

“I admire Miss Bennet greatly.”

“A tepid reason to marry if I may say so. In my youth, I would have considered that sufficient, but I have come to regard the married state as a challenge that requires a great deal more substantive cause to justify entering it. My answer is simply no.”

“Perhaps I did not make myself clear, Mr Bennet. The matter is already a subject of gossip?— ”

He waved his hand, dismissing my explanation before I had even finished stating it.

“You must submit yourself to the humiliation of being considered a scrub, Mr Darcy. The phenomenon should last somewhere around forty days, and then it shall be forgotten. In the meantime, I hope you continue to visit us, secure in the knowledge you will leave here without a wife. My daughter will not be injured, and in the wake of your so-called desertion when you do leave here, we shall enjoy a better-behaved dog.”

“I have not been entirely successful with him, sir,” I said to no purpose, perhaps because I was stunned into stupidity by both my situation and Mr Bennet’s response to it.

“You are young yet. You will one day realise that you will never be entirely successful in anything you do. But you need not take my word for it, for I am speaking from the lowly position of having made many mistakes.”

“But what of Miss Bennet?” I asked, unwilling to accept his judgment. “Are you certain I will not injure her? At the very least, I will have damaged my own reputation, not to mention hers.”

“You will both survive,” he concluded drily. Clearly, his mind was made up.

“Should I not at least speak to her? Apologise…or prepare her for the hints and teasing she will li kely suffer?”

“By all means speak to her. If anyone can put you at ease, my Jane can.”

Of course, Jane Bennet did exactly that. Miss Mary went ahead of us with Bandit, and we fell behind, since I had begun to walk slowly—the universal sign between perambulators that something private must be said.

“I am afraid I have set the neighbourhood to talking of you,” I said.

“Oh?”

“There is a general expectation?—”

“Oh, that. I do not know why it is, Mr Darcy, but my marital expectations are always a subject of interest when any man bespeaks a set with me. Do not regard it, I beg you, for I certainly do not.”

“I would not injure you for the world.”

“And you have not! You are my father’s friend, and we rejoice to see him recover some of his former—well, I do not know how to classify his style.”

“If you mean his mind is sharp, and his manner of address is perhaps too piquant to be comfortable, then perhaps I know what you mean. He showed me a little of that this morning.”

“Did he? But how wonderful!”

We began to walk at a normal pace to relieve Miss Mary of Bandit’s lead. The dog had the attention span of a fly and required too much concentration to be a comfortable walking companion.

But before we reached her sister, I asked, “Is there aught I could do to relieve you of any discomfort my friendship might have caused you?”

One thing I admired about the ladies of Longbourn was that they were never coy and freely spoke of what they wanted.

Miss Bennet quickly confided that she thought her father could use a holiday, particularly as it was at this time last year that her mother died.

She did not say so, but I inferred he found the place too full of memories of his wife, and he was fairly haunted by his recollections.

She applied to me for an idea as to how he could be induced to leave home, even for a few days, and I produced one on the spot.

We went back to the house, and I lingered for some time, though Miss Elizabeth never did appear. She had gone walking, I discovered, after resorting to a blunt inquiry of Mrs Hill. And though I scanned the road and adjacent paths as my horse cantered back to Netherfield Park, I did not see her.

The following morning, I was eager to return to Longbourn and did so on the flimsy excuse that I would rather ride for exercise than shoot on the very last day of the sanctioned ptarmigan hunt.

I was gratified to find the entire family in the parlour without visitors for once and particularly satisfied to look at Miss Elizabeth’s face and form.

There was something so nearly transcendental about her.

She glowed as though from an ethereal source and never quite seemed made of clay to me, particularly when surrounded by those of us who clearly were.

Even Miss Bennet was a mere earthenware angel in comparison.

Perhaps it was the quality of fire, or of light, or of some combination of the two elements she expressed even while doing something as mundane as writing a letter. Miss Elizabeth was both hot and brilliant, and not for the first time did I think of her as a bolt of lightning.

I strove mightily to catch her eye, but she was not amenable to my game. I ploughed ahead regardless, for I had a plan, and with it, a full expectation that as I unravelled it before the Bennet family, she would be forced to look at me at least in wonder, if not gratitude.

“I must return to London for a small errand,” I said.

The statement was perfectly true. Hoby had accelerated the construction of my new boots and required a final fitting before he began to stitch them together.

“I wonder, sir, whether you would like to join me?” I spoke to Mr Bennet, of course, but caught the attention of his daughters.

Three pairs of eyes flew to the gentleman to search out his reaction. Miss Elizabeth sat at a little escritoire in the corner of the room, and though she instantly turned back to her letter and continued to pretend to be fascinated with what she was writing, I saw her brow twitch upward as I spoke.

I did not wait for him to answer and began to embellish my invitation.

“I shall return in two or three days, and I thought perhaps you might like to browse my library much as I have browsed yours? My business will not take me any time at all, and should you care to go with me, we can scour the bookshops for rarities and new printings.”

Hoping for a reaction from Miss Elizabeth, I began to ramble on expansively and with the intention to demonstrate my open-mindedness to the principal sceptic in the room.

“I understand your brother-in-law lives in London,” I said with satisfaction.

“If he is a reading man, perhaps he would join us.”

This did earn me a look, but it was of scorching incredulity and immediately retracted. The lady went back to scratching, now furiously, with her quill.

“Mr Gardiner is no stranger to a bookshop, but he is a man who prefers lectures,” Mr Bennet said.

“Then we should see whether there is anything interesting on offer. I am always agreeable to listening to a learned man in a lecture hall.”

Miss Elizabeth’s chair scraped the floor as she stood and left the room abruptly, leaving me momentarily confused. Was she angry? I could not come to any conclusions, however, because the matter was still being actively discussed and required my attention.

“But shall you go, Papa?” Miss Bennet asked, glancing once at me, before turning her full attention to her father. “You would enjoy a visit to London, would you not?”

“I should not leave you, Jane.”

“But we are perfectly comfortable here, and we would not begrudge you a reprieve from watching over us. Should it make you easier, we might ask Uncle Philips to stay with us while you are gone.”

Mr Bennet turned to me. “I admit your scheme is tempting. When do you plan to leave?”

We spoke for a few minutes more, and between Miss Bennet’s gentle urgings and my casually dropped inducements, such as a passing mention of Ptolemy’s Geographia Cosmographia which awaited him in my library, he agreed to go.

It was a strange victory. Certainly, I looked forward to Mr Bennet’s company.

And I experienced a natural sense of gratification when I perceived the relief and happiness on the faces of Miss Mary and Miss Bennet.

My success was duly rewarded with warm regard on that front, but the absence of what I really wanted, which was to dazzle and perhaps solicit an equally admiring look from Miss Elizabeth, left me flat.

I could hardly wander about the house, corner her in some room or other, and demand to know why she was not flattered on her father’s behalf by my invitation.

At the height of my discomposure, its source and origin came back in the room and sat opposite me. The air about her was brisk as she looked over at her father.

“Well, Papa? Are you going to London for a little town bronze?”

“I believe I am, Lizzy. Is there aught I can bring you?”

“Perhaps just a diamond tiara for our next assembly,” she said lightly.

“I had in mind something of an improving nature, such as a book on humility.”

“That would be a complete waste of your means, sir. But you could bring Jane something from the drapers and not go amiss. And Mary is in need of a new pelisse. Aunt Gardiner could be applied to for assistance should you agree to ferry a parcel or two home when you return from your exploits.”

This exchange continued for a few moments and eventually the conversation shifted. Ultimately, we fell into a space in which no one felt compelled to speak solely for the sake of making noise.

I scoured Miss Elizabeth’s face, allowing my confusion to show.

She raised her chin, and then with great deliberation, her eyes followed, and she looked at me with an expression of such weariness, of such blasé disbelief, that her feelings were plain to see.

She was disgusted. Nay, perhaps not disgusted—she was disappointed in me!

My eyes widened into an irate question. Had I been speaking aloud, I would have demanded, “What have I done now?”

She shrugged and went back to her sewing.

I opened a periodical and stared at the print while thinking, righteously, of what I had said and how I said it. How dare she be disappointed!

I had conquered my prejudicial feelings against consorting with a member the tradesmen class and should be congratulated. I refrained from sniffing, which I abhor as an expression of injury, and instead rattled my periodical as I turned the page.

No more than two minutes later, I began to suffer that sinking, oppressive sensation that comes with having been a gross idiot.

The invitation to her father was not what irritated Miss Elizabeth Bennet.

It was the smacking dose of condescension applied to her relation in trade that she did not like.

Had I indeed spoken as though I were willing to pat the unfortunate man on the head as I offered up the rare treat of my company?

Singed again, and acutely aware of having flown too close to the sun, I limped back to Netherfield.