Page 42 of The Briar Bargain (The Rom Com Collection #3)

D arcy considered himself a man largely indifferent to table arrangements.

Seating, in his estimation, served only to ensure an orderly meal with guests fed in proper sequence, conversation flowing along predictable channels, and his own person safely positioned where he might easily participate in a conversation that would be polite if not engaging.

Yet when the footman, a rather youthful fellow with a forehead already glistening under the strain of the evening's formalities, directed Miss Elizabeth Bennet to the chair beside his own, Darcy’s heart gave a leap in his chest. He decided that he would send Harrison below stairs this evening with a hefty vail for the man’s troubles.

For he had no doubt that Miss Bingley would cause the young man a great deal of trouble.

He cast a glance at Miss Bingley, who took her seat at the end of the table and offered Mrs. Hurst a composed smile. Her fingers adjusted her napkin with a light touch.

Her acceptance of the seating arrangements seemed unusual, but he did not think on it overmuch .

Bingley, prompted by a question from Miss Bennet, launched into a story with the easy familiarity of someone who had never met an anecdote he could not improve in the retelling.

"Darcy once attempted to bake a treacle tart," he said cheerfully, his eyes twinkling with the particular mischief that suggested the tale had been polished through multiple renditions.

“It was a wager at the club,” Darcy replied, shaking his head. He addressed Miss Elizabeth. “My cousin, who is a colonel in the army, is forever baiting me.”

“And you always take him up on it?”

Darcy’s soft snort seemed to surprise Miss Elizabeth. “He is very persuasive,” he replied, by way of explanation.

“And he persuaded you to bake?” she asked.

“We were all reminiscing one evening about the food at Eton. It was inedible.”

“So his cousin wagered that he could not cook anything better,” Bingley added.

Miss Elizabeth turned to Darcy with one slender brow arched. “And did you?”

He smiled at her incredulity. “I did.”

"Ha!” Bingley cried. He addressed the entire table. “They rounded up several men from the club who had attended Eton to settle the matter. Paid them each a sovereign. Darcy neglected the sugar entirely. Confused it with salt, if memory serves.”

Darcy set down his spoon with deliberate care and addressed the table at large. "And yet, it was not entirely inedible. Therefore, my efforts were better than Eton’s, and I won the wager."

"It was inedible. It was hard as a brick," Bingley replied with undiminished cheer. "It nearly cracked my teeth. ”

“Then you were one of the men who volunteered?” Miss Bennet inquired.

“A sovereign is a sovereign,” Bingley said cheerfully. Then he turned back to Darcy. “The poor cook wept when he saw what you had done to his kitchen. There were flour handprints on every surface, and something that might have been treacle coating the ceiling."

“I had to spend hours cleaning it,” Darcy said, shaking his head. “I could not pay the servants at the club enough to do it for me. But it was worth it to defeat my cousin.”

Everyone laughed, but it was Miss Elizabeth's laughter—warm, genuine, entirely without affectation—that drew Darcy's eyes before he thought to resist the impulse.

She did not laugh delicately, as so many young ladies had been taught to do, with false, carefully modulated tones designed to showcase their refinement.

She laughed with her whole face, her eyes bright with mirth, and something in her expression told him she found the idea of Darcy wrestling with pastry dough thoroughly diverting.

"I once made a plum pudding so firm," she admitted to everyone at the table, "that my youngest sister used it to chase the cat from the parlour."

"I trust the cat survived?" Bingley asked.

"Physically, yes. But I do not believe she ever forgave us.”

“And my mother used this failure to impress upon Elizabeth that gentlewomen did not cook,” Jane added. “I think we were all afraid to try after that.”

“I only wished to be helpful,” Miss Elizabeth said with a laugh. “But I fear our cook informed me that if I wished to be helpful, I would remain far away from her kitchen.”

“And how old were you?” Darcy asked.

“Oh, eight or nine. I still required a stool to stand on. ”

An image rose unbidden of a determined little girl with dark eyes dragging a wooden stool across the kitchen with single-minded purpose, her small chin set with the same stubborn resolve he was coming to know so well.

How earnestly she must have climbed up to reach the worktable, how certain she must have been that she would create something wonderful.

Even as a child, Miss Elizabeth had evidently possessed an irrepressible desire to be useful, to contribute.

"What a remarkable woman your mother must be, Miss Elizabeth!”

Darcy turned his head in the direction of Miss Bingley’s voice.

Miss Bingley picked up her wineglass. “To have produced five such accomplished daughters. I was under the impression that painting was preferable to pastry. How delightful to be proven wrong." She took a sip.

The silence that followed was immediate and uncomfortable. Miss Bennet's cheeks flushed pink, while Miss Elizabeth grew very still.

Hurst, who had been beginning his second bowl of soup while the conversation flowed around him, suddenly leaned forward in his chair to reach for the bread. His elbow caught the edge of his wine glass, sending it toppling directly into Miss Bingley's lap.

"Mr. Hurst!" Miss Bingley shrieked, leaping to her feet. "You absolute—"

"Terribly sorry," Hurst interrupted to apologise, though in Darcy’s estimation it did not sound sincere. "Did not see it there."

Mrs. Hurst immediately rang for the servants while Miss Bingley stood to dab at her gown, her face flushed with mortification.

Darcy found himself rising instinctively with his hostess, though there was little he could do to assist. Bingley was a single beat behind him. Hurst looked at them both, then grudgingly hauled himself up.

The wine had sprinkled the top of her gown, and she held up her napkin over the spots before regaining her temper.

“I shall return as soon as may be,” she told them all.

“Please, gentlemen, be seated.” Darcy met Bingley’s gaze, and his friend merely lifted his shoulders.

They sat as Miss Bingley strode from the room.

“Ought to be more careful, I suppose,” Hurst grunted, before dropping three more pieces of bread on his plate.

Darcy was not sure to whom Hurst referred, himself or Miss Bingley. He studied Hurst with interest. The man had already returned his attention to his soup.

In Miss Bingley’s absence, the meat course arrived. The roast itself was admirably prepared, though Darcy found his attention somewhat divided between the proper appreciation of Cook's efforts and the curious way Miss Elizabeth approached her meal.

She wielded her knife and fork with a fluidity that verged on artistry, every movement swift, deliberate, and economical.

It was neither hurried nor coarse, but rather the manner of someone who had mastered the rhythm of a task and no longer had to think about it.

He laughed at himself. His attraction to this woman was bordering on the ridiculous—he was noticing the way in which she conveyed her meal to her mouth and finding it almost lyrical.

If Fitzwilliam ever learned of this, he would never hear the end of it.

Which was why Darcy would never, ever confess that he had done such a thing. He returned to his own meal and stopped watching Miss Elizabeth consume hers.

The subject of masters had somehow arisen, and Miss Elizabeth had just finished describing her youngest sister’s intentional habit of misquoting Virgil. Bingley, already halfway through his second glass of claret, leaned back in his chair and grinned.

“Oh, you must ask Darcy about how we first properly met,” he said, with the careless delight of a man about to reveal something not to his friend’s benefit.

“It was when I was still at Eton. I was just fourteen, and he—well, he was nineteen and already nearly finished at Cambridge. You only had the Lent term remaining, I think, Darcy?”

“I completed my Tripos in Lent Term.” He hoped Bingley would finish this story and move on.

“So young?” Miss Elizabeth asked.

“He has always been a rather clever chap,” Bingley replied.

Darcy, fork poised halfway to his mouth, fixed Bingley with a look. But Bingley only smiled in a way that Darcy knew from experience meant he would be ignored.

Bingley turned to the ladies. “He had been invited back by the masters as ‘a credit to the school,’ to show the rest of us what attention to our studies might do for us. I daresay half of Eton loathed him on sight.”

“I was one of them,” Hurst muttered around a mouthful of partridge. “Darcy was a year above me, and the way he used to walk across the quad, all tall and superior—”

“I was shorter then,” Darcy said mildly.

“Not by much,” Bingley replied.

“And shy,” Hurst said at the same time. “Could not get a word out of you.”

“Mr. Darcy? Shy?” Elizabeth’s brow lifted in disbelief, but her eyes sparkled with interest.

“No,” Darcy replied. “I was quiet, but never shy.”

“Indeed,” said Bingley. “I believe it was because he had so many thoughts that would not be polite to express.”

“I beg your pardon?” Bingley would make Miss Elizabeth think that he walked about thinking ill of everyone, precisely the image he was working to dispel.

“But as discerning as he was, he only corrected a master’s Latin once. In public, at least. ”

“I never heard that story,” Hurst said, putting his cutlery down for the first time since they had been served.

“You were at university by then, I expect.”

Darcy knew exactly the day to which Bingley referred. Not his finest. He set down his knife and folded his arms. “Bingley, must you?”