Page 25

25. Desolate Times

“Mr Darcy, where have you been keeping yourself these many weeks since we left that wretched backwater? We have been desolate without your company,” Miss Bingley said with far too much enthusiasm.

“Yes, most desolate indeed,” her faithful shadow Mrs Hurst echoed, while Mr Hurst punctuated the statement with a grunt.

Darcy tried his best not to flinch at the vulgarity of the sentiment and the tone used to speak it. He wondered if that was what young ladies were taught in seminary, and if so, why? What instructor thought that was the way to attract a man?

He was not enjoying the evening, and it had barely begun. He had, of course, not expected to, but he had accepted the invitation a week earlier, and did not have enough sense to defer it.

He thus found his mind struggling with the incongruity of spending a good part of the day with a group of ladies being trained to injure or kill men with their bare hands, then moving to an elegant Park Lane drawing room, and feeling like his danger had increased! At least his hearing had been safe back in the good old days where the women were at least honest about the damage they planned to inflict.

“It has hardly been so long as all that, Caroline,” Bingley answered placatingly, which annoyed Darcy almost as much as his sister. He was beginning to wonder if Bingley would ever grow up.

Naturally, he had no intention of informing his friend that he had spent half the day covered in chalk dust, and he most certainly had no plans to share that Miss Jane Bennet had thoroughly bested him in a target smashing contest. No, he had no intentions of discussing the various Bennet sisters at all.

“Oh, you are so droll, Charles,” Miss Bingley replied with a snap of her fan and something like fluttering of her eyelashes.

Darcy chuckled softly as he was reminded of earlier in the day, when his almost entirely recovered sister spoke on that exact subject. Georgiana had asked if something Mrs Black said was correct—namely, did men assume a woman fluttering her eyelashes had a bug in her eye?

Naturally, she asked the question when they were all standing around a barrel eating with their fingers like field hands, and she just had to ask right when he was drinking some ale—accidentally, of course.

He began to wonder how the barely fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Bennet had learnt to be such a keen observer. She was still tight lipped about how it all started, but it seemed logical to assume she must have learnt fast, given the danger of her chosen profession. That left him to wonder if Mr Gardiner had any idea what those first months were like, or if Elizabeth hid that from him, just like she hid it from her father.

He assumed he might know eventually—or not.

Darcy ignored the byplay and answered the original question.

“I have had several matters of business to attend, and as your brother correctly mentioned, it has been but a fortnight.”

“It has seemed far longer! ”

He debated the response a second, and finally said, “I suppose you should have stayed at Netherfield. The country is much more pleasant this time of year, and you would not have been dreary at all.”

He quite enjoyed watching her face bristle like a cat momentarily before she got her expression under control while Bingley just laughed. He idly wondered if Miss Bingley was aware of how transparent she was, or if she thought she had her mask firmly under control. Naturally, that led him to wonder if his own expression all these years had been less inscrutable than he always believed, and nobody ever told him. After all, who would?

“Now you are being so droll, sir. I could not wait to leave.”

Darcy gave his response a moment of thought.

“It is auspicious then, that you have given up your ambition to marry a landed gentleman. If Netherfield is insufficient for your needs, I should say the estate of any gentleman you might marry would be torture. It is fortuitous that you managed to learn that with only a month in the country, and you should thank your brother for his forethought in exposing you to the life of a country gentleman before you were committed. I applaud your decision to search in town. I understand bankers are particularly good targets these days.”

That one left her gasping like a beached fish and Darcy wondering what in the world had gotten into him. He had been ignoring the annoying woman for years with nary a word of rebuke, and all of her pretensions were about to be thwarted.

What made him say those particular words at that particular time?

For a moment, he wondered if it was because of the ongoing twinge in his right shoulder caused by either his paramour’s elder sister besting him at boxing, or perhaps it was being tossed to the floor like a sack of rocks, apparently for the sole purpose of showing off. Naturally, like most men, he had no objection to showing off in principle—he just preferred the role of victor to that of vanquished.

It eventually came down to something Elizabeth said in a conversation about philosophy they engaged in during the afternoon while Mrs Rose was putting the other girls through a few drills.

Elizabeth asserted, “I do not always succeed, but I try to understand what those about me are doing, and when I can do so without extraordinary effort or risk, I try to improve their lives, even if just a tiny bit. It often takes very little.”

That stuck with him, and he eventually realised he was doing Miss Bingley a disservice by remaining quiet. As long as he tolerated her blatant flirting, he was implying he was not bothered by it. For an ambitious woman, that was tantamount to encouragement.

Her brother was also complicit, and even more so when she abused guests in his house, but that was a discussion for another day (or never).

For his part, it seemed his duty to dissuade her ambitions definitively, though ideally without being cruel. Perhaps this salvo would do the job, or more likely it would make her redouble her efforts. Regardless, he planned on spending very little time around the Bingleys before his courtship resolved itself.

~~~~~

Dinner turned out as tedious as he expected. He tried several times to redirect conversation away from Miss Bingley’s topics, but she could not be dissuaded for long. He tried to encourage Bingley to take a crack at it, but that had just as little success.

They spent the evening in the same old tedious conversations about the same old things, and he wondered how the ladies did so without running mad. Of course, that led him to wonder if they actually had gone mad , which might explain a great deal.

The separation eventually came after at least two courses too many, and he found himself with Bingley and Hurst, much like that last night in Netherfield… aside from being free of the disagreeable presence of the viscount, of course.

Bingley said, “I have been thinking of returning to Netherfield. Would you care to join me?”

Darcy studied his brandy snifter for a moment, and finally asked, “What compels you to return?”

His friend sighed. “I just want to know .”

“Know what? Whether you are cut out for the life of a landowner, or about Miss Bennet?”

Bingley thought about it long enough for Hurst to fall asleep, which was probably for the best.

“Both, I suppose. I am still very interested in Miss Bennet but distressed by her relatives.”

There was not the slightest chance Darcy would inform his friend he had sparred with those relatives a few hours earlier, nor would he tell him that he would find them entirely reformed (or at least mostly).

He most certainly would not inform his friend he was sceptical that Miss Jane Bennet would accept him. She was no longer the desperate woman with a mother pressing her at any reasonably solvent man. Even putting aside the fact, that she could hold her own in a fight, and disregarding the fact that her sister was actually wealthy enough that none of the girls needed to marry—Darcy was not at all certain Miss Bennet would accept a man weak-willed enough to allow his sister to run roughshod over him. She might have before her sister’s training, but that ship had sailed.

He could not say any of that, of course, so he tried the next best thing.

“What about your relatives?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean your sister’s manners are not noticeably better than Miss Lydia’s, when you get right down to it. She certainly cannot compete with Miss Bennet, Miss Elizabeth, or even Miss Mary.”

Bingley was astonished that Darcy had just named four of the five Bennet sisters without batting an eye, and he would have wondered about it for some time, if he did not believe Darcy probably found the family as distressing as he did.

“Do you think Miss Bennet would reject me over my sisters?”

“I have no idea. I am just saying that if you go to her on bended knee saying you will take her over your objections about the people that she loves having inadequate manners, having done nothing to secure your own family’s behaviour—well, I doubt much good could come of it. Hypocrisy is hardly a good basis for romance.”

“You think she might reject me?” Bingley asked with a squeak.

“I say nothing of the sort. She may well accept you just to get security. She may reject you out of hand. She may ask for a courtship, or some evidence that you can act like the head of a family. There are a dozen ways it could end, but unless you speak a bit more openly and humbly , you will never know.”

“It sounds very hard.”

“I was recently advised by someone very wise and trustworthy that everything worthwhile in life is hard. Are you prepared to do the work? If not, you might be better angling for an easier target.”

Bingley looked thoughtful, so Darcy decided to let him stew on it. He doubted his friend really had what it took to win a Jane Bennet who was no longer desperate, and probably not cut out for the life of a landowner either—but then again, neither were his problems to solve.

He wanted to get the evening over with, and the sooner they joined the ladies, the sooner he could leave.

He briefly considered trying to speak to Miss Bingley with even less subtlety, but ultimately decided it was a waste of time. Hopefully, he would soon be publicly courting Miss Elizabeth, and that would drive the last nail in the coffin of Miss Bingley’s ambitions. He seriously doubted that anything he said would get the job done.