Page 28

28. Slow, Steady, and Quiet

“Aside from being a propriety violation, was that kiss a sign or a portent,” Mary asked impertinently.

“Either one, I suppose,” Elizabeth replied with a smile. “I think it is a sign that my class schedule needs to be torn up.”

“What are you thinking?” Darcy asked curiously.

“We have told a dozen people of our courtship, but they are all trustworthy, so it is still quiet to the world at large. We need to work out how to get my father to allow my sisters to reside here a while longer.”

“I would just mention the wealth of suitors available to Mrs Bennet and let her carry the torch,” Darcy suggested.

Lydia found that idea hilarious, and the rest joined in her laughter.

“That has one problem… she would want to join us.”

“I assume…” he began, but she cut him off abruptly, even though he was probably about to agree with her sentiments. “Absolutely not! Not now! Not ever!”

“That seems harsh, Lizzy,” Jane said.

“It is what she deserves. She has never shown me any particular consideration, and I feel no need to show her anything. I did not hie off to London to make my living protecting spoilt rich girls by choice! ”

Jane looked stunned, while Elizabeth hoped Mr Bingley disappeared entirely and the next suitor was delayed, because Jane really needed to grow up a bit more before marriage.

“Considering that and what happened at the ball, I concede your point,” Jane replied morosely.

“That is good, because I will not be moved. For five years she has complained about my presence when I was at Longbourn and about my absence when I was not.”

“That leaves the problem of what to do with your father,” Darcy suggested.

“If we stay a month, or even another fortnight, we will miss Christmas and New Year at Longbourn,” Lydia pointed out.

“Will you rue missing it?” Darcy asked.

“Not really. We can do much better here on our own, I think.”

“So back to Mr Bennet.”

Elizabeth thought about it a bit. She had forgotten Christmas entirely.

She was still thinking about her father when Darcy had a suggestion.

“A lot depends on how our courtship proceeds.”

“How so?” Jane asked curiously.

“Most of the girls are underage and will be for years. Elizabeth, you have suggested your father is characterized by indolence and cruelty.”

“Not necessarily motivated by the latter, but it certainly can play a part in his actions.”

“It would be a shame for someone to go through a courtship, only to have it thwarted at the last moment by her father.”

“What do you suggest?”

“After we are married, I should be able to convince him to make Gardiner and myself their guardians… at least in certain matters. If nothing else, I can always bribe him.”

“No bribery necessary,” Lydia said. “Threatening him with telling our mother he is preventing courtships should do the trick.”

Everyone chuckled, and Elizabeth said, “It is nice to know your streak of cruelty is not entirely beat out of you Lydia.”

“It just needs to be directed properly, like you did with that deserter.”

“What you do with your father depends on whether we marry or not, and it is too soon to tell. Could we put it off?” Darcy asked.

“That should be easy,” Jane replied. “I will write slightly different letters to each of my parents. My father will ignore his, and my mother’s will keep her off our backs. I think I can easily arrange for a month or six weeks without upsetting anyone too awfully much.”

“That should be long enough,” Elizabeth said.

“Papa will be dancing in the streets,” Kitty said, and nobody chastised or disagreed with her. “I think Mama will be relieved to skip the Christmas celebrations, and the servants certainly will.

Elizabeth was happy to see one of the younger sisters thinking about the servants. Perhaps, they would be fine in the end, but she shuddered to think of what a near run thing it had been.

Alicia Weatherby asked rather timidly if they were also welcome to stay, and with the appropriate response, they set out to write to their own parents at the same time. The Weatherbys were kind, sensible, and not wealthy enough to sponsor the girls for a season, so no objection was expected.

Jane set about writing her letters, so Elizabeth and Darcy told the other girls to find something else to do. There was mending from the orphanage to be done, lessons to be learnt, lunch to be ordered, and Elizabeth even had a few old bonnets that Lydia and Kitty could use to teach Georgiana how to refresh them.

~~~~~

The couple decided a walk in Hyde Park was just the thing. It was about a mile and a half from Elizabeth’s home in Gower Street, so they decided to just walk. Elizabeth brought one of her famous ogres for propriety, even though she had often walked in far worse places by herself. She felt perfectly safe with Darcy for superfluous protection, but she wanted to avoid any whiff of scandal if they were observed.

They spent the first part of the walk marvelling over their unusual history. They’d never had a real conversation before the Netherfield ball and had not had an ordinary one, ever. Darcy advanced the theory that it was probably for the best, as any path that did not result in his reformation would have been doomed to failure. Elizabeth did not dispute that, and while she wanted to dig into his history with her uncle, she was in no hurry to do so. Conversely, Darcy very much wanted to know more about her years in the Runners, but once again, did not want to corrupt their walk with that discussion.

They spent the rest of the walk speaking about ordinary things, if only to prove they could if nothing else. They canvassed what they liked to do, how much and which subjects they liked to read, the obvious superiority of a plain dish over a ragout, their favourite sweet and tea shops. Elizabeth encouraged a rather long and rich description of Pemberley, and it struck her as a not too terrible sounding place to live. Darcy asked how she became a card sharper and laughed over some of the antics. He was slightly less sanguine to learn she had been taught by an unrepentant gamester but laughed at her stories anyway. He avoided his history with Wickham but told what he remembered about his mother.

In the end, walking four or five miles was not really a challenge for either and Elizabeth even dragged Nathaniel in to agree with her on a dispute over Shakespeare, since it was obvious she was right, and Darcy was wrong.

All in all, for the several hours of perfectly ordinary, mundane, courtship (as in devoid of interfering relations, rogues, gossips, scoundrels, or eight girls) the walk had much to recommend it.

~~~~~

The next week saw the group settle into a routine. Jane’s letters were clever and almost honest (well, almost-almost honest at least), so their stay had been extended until Easter if nothing changed, with Mr Gardiner having legal responsibility for them.

The school had no classes scheduled until after the new year, so they did not have to worry about making room for new students.

Their course curriculum had been thoroughly ravaged, but since they had some time, they decided to continue the rest of the lessons at a leisurely pace. Elizabeth assigned all but Jane and Georgiana to Mrs Rose and spent a few hours with each of the two who had suffered recent disappointments.

She found Jane retained the lovability and kind nature she had always enjoyed, but she gradually reduced her na?veté and tendency to think the best of everyone.

The first breakthrough came when Jane asserted the Bingley sisters were snakes in the grass, and a latter came when she called Mr Bingley a feckless weasel. Elizabeth suggested she might be taking the lesson just a bit too far, as only about a third of the problems they had as a couple could be laid at his feet. Elizabeth did point out that, as the head of his family, and in control of the purse strings, he most certainly owned his sisters’ behaviour.

In the end, Jane decided if he came calling again, she would sit him down and have an honest discussion, though she was not optimistic that he would either come calling or survive the conversation.

Miss Darcy had boxed herself into an endless cycle of her own making since Ramsgate, exacerbated by her brother’s lack of preparing her for the real world she was entering. Elizabeth did not blame him for it, since he did no worse than the vast majority of guardians (including her own), but it was unfortunate.

To Georgiana’s credit, after the takedown of Mr Wickham (whose identity she still fortunately did not know), she seemed to revert mostly to her original personality, which was too shy for Elizabeth’s taste, but not the end of the world.

After a few hours of conversation, Elizabeth quite liked her, and certainly did not consider adding another sister as an impediment to her courtship. She was a lovely young lady with a good heart, and with another year of Mrs Annesley’s tutelage, she would be fine. If she remained too shy, she could always lock her up with Lydia or send her back to the barn to smash targets until she got over it.

Mrs Annesley came over the next day, and never quite left. Georgiana did not feel any need to return to Darcy House, and her guardian liked her right where she was anyway.

The companion resumed lessons with Georgiana, which naturally included all the girls except Jane and Mary, much to the improvement of all.

Mrs Rose had no classes and lived in the house, so she joined in on the instruction, mostly to flex her teaching muscles with something other than their defence curriculum.

~~~~~

For the next fortnight, Darcy and Elizabeth walked most days and even took a drive in Gardiner’s curricle.

Darcy obtained several suits of clothes matching Mr Gardiner’s style, and with a bit of training from Elizabeth about how to behave, he felt as invisible as she did. He even drove her by Darcy House just to test his luck. He was vastly amused when several of his own grooms did not give him a second glance. That was almost as amusing as when he did the same at Bingley’s house, where Miss Bingley stared directly at him and turned her nose up. That was the most fun he’d ever had!

He thought perhaps the old phrase ‘the clothes make the man’ might have been onto something.

One day, when they had become more comfortable and trusting, she even dressed as a maid and wandered the street alone while he observed from down the lane. He was astonished by how well she pulled it off. She was invisible unless she wanted to speak to another servant, in which case she became their best friend in the world for the space of two minutes. She did, however, draw the line at his suggestion that he could dress as a footman. Even she had her limits.

~~~~~

Colonel Fitzwilliam finally was brought into the secret at about the time Georgiana’s course was originally to end. Darcy invited him around for dinner with the redoubtable Mrs Black and quite enjoyed revealing all the secrets of the group. The colonel was as thunderstruck as the rest had been.

During the separation of the sexes, they were speaking of all the things Darcy had learnt, and the extraordinary turn of events.

“I told you, cousin. You have it bad.”

“You notice I never disputed you.”

“Now that you mention it, I suppose not.”

“Now that the secret is out, I suppose I should admit that you were right all along.”

“Ever wonder if you ever would have sucked it up and returned to Meryton,” Gardiner asked curiously.

“I have given that a great deal of thought. I am convinced that our love story was nearly inevitable,” he said, then took a sip and chuckled. “Odds are, had I not encountered her at that ball, I would have returned to Meryton to find her missing, and I would be in your drawing room right now begging you to put me out of my misery.”

The men laughed a bit, and Gardiner finally said, “The colonel had the right of it. You do have it bad. Any idea how she has it… not that it is any business of mine?”

“You do not feel the guardian’s need to poke and pry?”

“I did not say that. I did poke and pry, but—”

His pause was noticeable, but Darcy felt prodding him along would be counterproductive. Mr Gardiner was no Caroline Bingley (or Darcy) to be easily spurned into making a costly mistake.

Gardiner finally said, “I suppose Elizabeth has her honesty policy in place, so you should know. She read a thirty-page report on you before your sister started the school. She knows a great deal more about your life than you know about hers.”

“I suppose you must have commissioned that about the time I returned to Cheapside?”

“I did.”

Darcy was not particularly distressed about it. He imagined there were dozens or hundreds of big reports about him lying all over London. Elizabeth had not mentioned it, but that was not surprising. Even for someone as brave as her, it was not an easy topic of conversation.

Gardiner said, “I shall save you the trouble of telling her you know, since it was all my doing.”

“There is no need. We have been surprisingly easy about sharing intimate details.”

“So, your courtship is progressing, how?” Gardiner asked, more out of curiosity than concern.

“It depends on where you set the beginning. If you start at the failed dinner engagement, it is inching along like a worm. If you start when I asked for a courtship, it proceeds at breakneck speed.”

“Many things in life are like that… slow and then fast. Think about stepping off a cliff. The first dozen yards are relatively peaceful, but the last dozen, far less so.”

They all laughed at possibly the worst analogy in history, which was saying something for a bunch of lunkheaded men.

“My business was like that,” Gardiner said pensively. “When Lizzy came to me, I was just barely keeping my head above water. I had the idea but lacked contacts.”

“What happened?” Darcy asked curiously. He had always been fascinated by self-made men (or women, though they were harder to find). He was born the heir to centuries of tradition. Nothing he ever did in his life could compare because even if he made a new business from scratch, he would always have the backing of Pemberley.

“A lot of things, really. In business, as in much of life, success builds on success—though the converse is true for failure. I had a couple of clients of limited prosperity when Lizzy came. They were sufficiently wealthy to make tempting targets for the Wickhams of the world, but not enough to make me wealthy. Most thought my service was worth about the same as a couple of footmen, and you well know they are a penny a pound.”

“I can see that. I would not have engaged you at that point.”

“True, but when I saved your sister’s life and ￡30,000, I suppose you became a supporter?”

“Naturally.”

“Well, that is how it worked. Lizzy begged me to allow her to earn her keep, so I had her act as a sort of companion. She had to disguise herself as a friend. When she could not get into some functions, she invented the servant’s disguise. I can assure you there is nothing more invisible in this world than a plain looking servant in livery. She was like a ghost.”

“I see.”

“The first time she clearly and unambiguously saved a girl from a rather nasty compromise attempt, things started looking up. We got more and better clients, she refined her disguise, she eventually started her school, and it just built from there. The two support each other now. I feed her school clients, and she makes my job far easier.”

“I salute you, sir,” the colonel replied jovially.

~~~~~

Gardiner turned his attention to the colonel. “I am curious. Are you to return to the continent?”

“I must if I want to make general, and I need that to avoid starving in the gutter when I retire. They make about three times what I do.”

Gardiner nodded, and finally said, “It is not my place to advise you, but if it were—”

“I can always disregard advice, but I cannot evaluate what I do not hear. Only a fool goes into battle without the very best scouting reports he can get.”

Gardiner nodded. “I cannot tell you how to live your life, but I doubt very much that you will ever make general.”

Both the colonel and Darcy perked up at that. “Meaning?”

“This is not based on definitive information, mind you, but you are far likelier to make earl than general, if you take my meaning.”

“I suppose you imply my brother’s longevity is… at risk?”

“Considerable risk. He owes a great deal to people who should not be trifled with.”

Darcy and the colonel did not know whether to feel surprised, sad, or indifferent.

“Is there anything I could do to save him… if I were so inclined?”

“Not unless you could go back in time and beat some sense into your father when you were children. His fate was cast before he left for Eaton. It has just taken all this time, and a lot of difficulties for many people, for it to catch up with him.”

Darcy asked, “Should we at least try?”

Gardiner gave him a very hard stare and just waited him out.

Darcy finally said, “I see your point. In a just world, I would be more inclined to help fate along.”

“Yes. You can do nothing, and you should do nothing. The man has dug his own grave. Let him be buried in it.”

“Good riddance,” the colonel muttered, but he had some thinking to do.

“While you are thinking, Colonel, I would ask you to consider something.”

“Of course!”

“Elizabeth makes more money than a general, and more than her father, while I make considerably more than her. If you deviate from the three professions gentlemen are theoretically supposed to select from, you have choices where you need not even dodge bullets.”

“He has you there,” Darcy said quickly before his cousin could react. “I would be happy to discuss some opportunities with you.”

“More charity?” the colonel asked, though not as emphatically as he once might have.

“Hardly. It would be business… the dreaded trade , but I think you could do many things quite profitably.”

“I will give it some thought.”

“While you are thinking about it, I suggest we rejoin the ladies,” Gardiner asserted.