Page 24

24. Breakfast of Suitors

“Ah, Darcy, good to see you. If you have not broken your fast, we will sit down in a half hour.”

“I would be very pleased to join you, Gardiner. I apologise for appearing so early without notice.”

“Do not trouble yourself, you are always welcome. There are ladies visiting in the parlour, so what say you to joining me in my study until breakfast?”

“It would be my pleasure.”

The gentlemen retired to the study where a coffee service was already waiting and spent a few minutes with the social niceties.

Gardiner finally asked, “Have you a particular reason to visit? Anything related to last night’s excitement perchance? Mrs Black gave me the particulars, and you can be assured my man in the Navy will be having words about the security of their prisoners.”

“It is about last night, but not necessarily about Wickham. I am assured his next assignment will be far more secure, and noticeably less pleasant than the Navy would have been. The fool never knew when to leave well enough alone.”

“I understand he came close to compromising that poor girl.”

“He did. I am extraordinarily happy Mrs Duff was there.”

“I suppose it ended well enough, so I thank you for appraising me, and even having the kindness to do so before breakfast,” Gardiner replied with a twinkle in his eye.

“I actually have another topic to discuss, if you do not mind.”

“Pray, proceed.”

Darcy paused. “I wish to inform you that I have asked Miss Elizabeth for the privilege of courting her. She promises an answer today, which I hope will be positive.”

“Hope or expect?”

“If she planned to reject me out of hand, she probably would have done so last night when I asked her, but I would consider it presumptuous to say I expect it.”

“Hmmm… What do you seek from me? Consent? Blessing?”

“I hope for both. I suspect Miss Elizabeth makes her own decisions for the most part, so I do not presume I need either from you, but you are effectively her father, so I wish to pay you the respect you have earned.”

Gardiner chuckled heartily. “You will let me know if such an approach works when it is your sister’s turn.”

Darcy joined him in laughter. “You shall be the first to know.”

“Well, you are correct in your assumptions. I would be as likely to direct the wind as Lizzy, so she will do as she chooses. I will take whatever credit is due to me for her upbringing, but she has mostly driven her own fate these five years. That said, you have my blessing, and should you come to an understanding before her majority, I will help you beat some sense into her father.”

“I suspect she has had a club ready for her father for some time, so I am not worried. Her majority is only a few months away.”

Gardiner glanced at the clock. “It is time for breakfast. Pray, join us.”

The men left to join the family, but just before they reached the parlour, Gardiner pulled him aside. “Wait here about two minutes if you will so I can ensure the ladies are ready for company. They were deep in discussion when I made my escape. I shall call for you in a moment.”

Darcy wondered why he did not have his servants do that, but just suspected old habits died hard.

A minute or two later, Gardiner called him into the parlour, where he found Elizabeth alone.

~~~~~

“I thought my uncle was acting peculiar,” she said with a laugh. “Good morning, Mr Darcy.”

“Good morning, Miss Elizabeth. I admit your presence is unexpected, but most welcome.”

“I suppose you came here to tell him about your request?” she asked somewhat sharply.

“Yes, but not necessarily for consent or blessings. I owe him the respect and courtesy of knowing what I am about. I would expect the same from any man who wanted to court Georgiana, and I would look with suspicion upon anyone who did not.”

She chuckled, “By that standard, you are either early or late… but be easy. I have given your request a good deal of consideration. If you are truly interested, I am willing to proceed. I admit that I find you intriguing, though I am unprepared to call it love, or even affection. I am curious to see where it goes, but I should like to be very quiet until we know what we are about.”

Darcy closed the gap, took her hands, and kissed the back of each knuckle. He made no effort to do anything more intimate (as was wise with any woman who could thrash you). They had no gloves, so it was slightly more intimate than the contact between friends, but not likely to make their passion burst into flames.

She gave a winsome smile. “I know I can appear fearsome, but I have never allowed any man even this close. I would hope we can—”

“We shall proceed as slowly as we are comfortable with. This is as new for me as it is for you.”

“Yes, it has always been clear you are not another Mr Bingley. I suppose we have both been, by necessity, concerned with the worst of the opposite sex. Shall we join the family?”

When they entered, they nodded to the parents and greeted the children who were old enough to join for meals. Miss Gardiner’s thirteenth birthday was coming up in a week, so that became the primary topic for the rest of the meal.

~~~~~

After breakfast, Mrs Gardiner went with the children to the nursery while Mr Gardiner went to his office, leaving Elizabeth and Darcy alone with a maid doing some mending to chaperone.

Darcy asked, “I am happy to see you here, but slightly surprised. What is happening with your students?”

“You know that my father has required my presence at Longbourn for half of the year, though I have been dragging my feet enough to cut it down to about four months. I am not the only instructor. Mrs Rose is managing the class today. You will eventually meet Mrs Scarlet, Auburn, and Jade.”

“Do they all employ similar disguises?”

“They all use aliases, but most are married or widowed, so less concerned with their reputations. The evolving clothing through the course is part of the curriculum, so they do the same but not the makeup.”

“Would it be impertinent to ask what they are doing?”

“Ordinarily, I would not allow it, but if we are courting, we must learn to trust each other to have any hope of success.”

“I agree. I have always wanted a love match, which most of my contemporaries believe is somewhere between absurd and unlikely.”

“I have never been partial to pessimism. More often than not, it is self-sabotage. I have as well hoped for a love match, but was—”

When she ran out of words, Darcy quietly suggested, “Sceptical, perhaps?”

“That works well enough, I suppose.”

“Can you guess the first adjective I heard to describe you?” he asked with a smirk.

“It is hard to say. Since you got it from my uncle, it could easily have been impertinent, brave, foolhardy, stubborn—”

He laughed lightly. “Not even close. He asked me to attend dinner and engage in polite conversation with a niece who was a bit too cynical for her own good.”

“That turned out well,” she said with a grimace.

“I hear your scepticism, but I believe it did turn out well. I doubt I could have achieved even the most tepid sort of affection if I had not reformed myself a bit with your uncle’s help.”

“It is hard to say, but I cannot disagree.”

“With your coin analogy, I want to get to the guinea of love/hate, but I doubt I would have managed to even get onto the farthing without improving my manners. When I said I might have ignored you that first month without your uncle’s intervention, I was serious.”

They laughed together, and Darcy rather thought he had moved an inch from a farthing to pence, and optimistically hoped he might even have a shilling in sight.

She sighed. “I think my uncle feels responsible or guilty for my cynicism, as he calls it. I like to think of it more as pragmatism or scepticism, but he could be right. He just wants me to be happy and fears my exposure to the worst of men might hamper it.”

“What do you believe?”

“I try to teach my girls to have balance in all things.”

“I remember you lecturing Bingley and me about unbalanced risks at Netherfield.”

“I imagine you now comprehend how difficult it was for me to maintain my composure in that meeting.”

“I never apologised for that.”

“Why? You never trapped me in a library.”

“I was too disbelieving.”

She shrugged. “I met a lady once who said to think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure. I thought it an admirable sentiment at the time, but now I find it slightly na?ve. I have to be cautious that my profession does not make me think only of the past as its remembrance annoys me beyond measure. That leads to bitterness and regret, but one needs to balance the good with the bad. You must strive to overcome the blinders of your upbringing, just as we all do.”

“I hope I have made an adequate start.”

“I can assure you that not every man would stand there and listen to what I had to say at Netherfield as gracefully as you did. I walked into that room half-expecting to walk to Longbourn at five, an activity I was not looking forward to.”

“I could have done better.”

“Your presence in this parlour, right here and now, indicates you did well enough. We shall both have to overcome certain elements of the past.”

“I believe that is true, which brings us back to trust, as you alluded to earlier. I do not believe there can be love without trust.”

“I agree. Love requires trust… kindness… strength… character… patience… courage. It is a difficult road we travel.”

Darcy chuckled. “You shall have to review your advice to Miss Kitty. Most worthwhile things in life are hard. ”

“That they are, but I think we have made a good enough beginning for one day. We have beat the rules of propriety nearly to death, but I think they are mostly counterproductive at this stage. Honest conversation, as difficult or supposedly improper as it might be, seems the only path to success.”

“You never answered the question about what your girls are doing today. Was that deliberate?”

“No, I just got distracted. Believe it or not, after last night’s demonstration, the girls asked for another Brutality Day.”

“Not my business, then?”

She paused a moment. “I very strongly recommended to the girls to never tell any man about that except their future husbands.”

“You make exceptions for husbands that do not apply to guardians?”

“Of course. Every secret between husbands and wives is a crack that can grow into a fissure. I will not assert that there can be no secrets, but there should be few.”

“Well, I am not your husband yet…” he said, then glanced to see if she was frowning or not. “…so I shall not ask to know.”

She was pensive for a moment. “Actually, you should eventually know all about the course, and you will never have an easier class to observe.”

He very much liked the fact that she was thinking as if they would be a couple. He could not say whether their mutual affections were climbing, or if she was simply acting on her prohibition against pessimism. He knew the easiest way to make any endeavour fail was to assume it was likely to do so, and the converse was probably true. If they wanted to become a couple, they should just act as if they would eventually be one.

She stood up abruptly. “Enough courting for one day! Time for some brutality.”

Elizabeth asked the maid to call for Darcy’s carriage, and they were off.

~~~~~

The ladies of the class were most disconcerted by the appearance of a gentleman. Darcy was uncertain if they were most worried about their unladylike behaviour, or that they were wearing the ugliest gowns ever made. Their consternation was not helped overly much by Elizabeth telling them to quit whining in Mrs Black’s voice.

Jasmine softened it by observing that they had been training with the two ogres for two days, and one man was pretty much the same as another, which softened their discomfort a bit.

Muted grumbling continued until Georgiana enthusiastically showed off her ability to smash the second hardest of the chalk boxes with a single blow. Darcy was entirely appreciative and enthusiastic in his approbation, which naturally made the rest of the ladies anxious to earn their share of the accolades.

Elizabeth explained that she had boxes of different strengths, and Georgiana had worked her way up. She allowed him to smash a couple of them just for fun, and the ladies got some real pleasure from that—especially the part where he failed on the first punch with the box that she said was a match for his size and physique.

That was nothing though, compared to the ultimate pleasure derived from watching plain old Lizzy Bennet, dressed in a pretty blue muslim day dress, toss him over her shoulder and drop him onto a mat like a sack of potatoes.

He laughed his head off, though it took some time to get enough breath to do so.