Page 26 of Such Low Connections

It was a question that Darcy had been asking himself and could not yet answer.

Miss Elizabeth Bennet’s evident partiality to George Wickham also irritated him profoundly, both for the ill-light in which Wickham’s stories likely cast him, and out of unusual and unexpected concern for this young woman herself. Her adult age, well-developed mind, and lack of fortune might minimise any physical danger at the rogue’s hands, but that did not mean her heart could not be broken.

“Do you believe what you have heard of me, Miss Elizabeth?” Darcy put to her bluntly as the music came to an end.

“I cannot make out your character at all, Mr Darcy,” she admitted, although still with a challenge in her eyes.

“No one’s true nature can be learned indirectly,” he warned as they bowed to one another at the dance’s conclusion. “Not even those who smile most easily and speak with greatest amiability.”

Beware George Wickham…

That was what Darcy really wanted to say, but could not.

“I wish you a pleasant evening, Miss Elizabeth,” he said instead.

“Thank you, Mr Darcy,” she nodded, with a hint of a thoughtful smile that gave him a strange sense of hope, although he could not say for what end or cause. “I shall bear in mind all that you have said, together with all that I have heard from others.”

As Elizabeth Bennet walked away towards the music room, Darcy watched her go with a strangely mingled sense of resentment and gratitude, bewilderment and exhilaration.

Chapter 9

“So, that was how I finally came to dance with Mr Darcy, despite all my earlier resolutions.”

“Poor Mr Darcy!” Jane sighed into her coffee as Elizabeth finished relating her side of this story from the previous evening. “Mr Bingley was so distressed when he learned what had happened in the ballroom. He was eating supper with me and had no idea of what was happening until later.”

The two young women spoke quietly together at the breakfast table, where their mother sat semi-prostrate at one end, and their father slouched at the other, absorbed in a book. Their younger sisters had either finished eating or declined to eat and gone to amuse themselves or lie down in the parlour.

“Mr Bingley’s sisters were there in the ballroom,” Elizabeth said with some asperity. “I would have expected them to intervene, both out of duty and out of future hopes, in Miss Bingley’s case. Instead, it was left to me, a guest, to step in and restore order.”

Jane nodded, looking troubled.

“Mr Bingley was upset about that too. I was there when Mrs Hurst said that it would not have been appropriate to involve themselves in Mr Darcy’s affairs. She seemed to think Mr Darcy was somehow to blame, although Mr Bingley did not agree.”

“It was not at all Mr Darcy’s fault,” Elizabeth insisted with a frown. “I think Mrs Hurst only did not want the trouble. The man who insulted him was too drunk and loud, and he spoke very ill of Mr Darcy’s father. I don’t see that Mr Darcy could have ignored such a provocation.”

“No doubt you are right, although I suspect it all happened too quickly for Mrs Hurst to understand, and she only did not want to admit her mistake to her brother. Surely it will all have been resolved at Netherfield Park between their party this morning.”

“What an optimist you always are, Jane! No, I shall continue to believe what I said of Mrs Hurst and Miss Bingley. They wilfully snubbed him last night, after all their previous making up to him. I should not trust them at all if I were you.”

Instead of arguing this point, Jane only smiled.

“There is one thing you have not told me yet, Lizzy. Does Mr Darcy dance well?”

Elizabeth laughed and then smiled back at her sister.

“Yes, I cannot say otherwise. Whatever his true character, Mr Darcy does dance well. I might have even enjoyed it.”

“Ah, yes, my fair cousin, Mr Darcy condescended to dance with you last night, did he not?” interrupted Mr Collins, only now entering the breakfast room and hearing the last words spoken between the sisters. “I hope you are fully cognisant of the honour he did you and our whole family.”

The sisters looked at one another with a slight lift of eyebrows at this speech. Mr Collins seemed to have quite forgotten that, whatever the relative fortunes of the parties or the consequence of their families, the honour in granting a dance was typically considered to be granted by the lady in question, and not the gentleman.

“You will be pleased to hear, Mr Collins, that Mr Darcy even thanked me for my dance,” Elizabeth told him solemnly. “I have no doubt that my performance on the dance floor was satisfactory, even for the master of Pemberley.”

“Indeed, your dancing is most admirable, Cousin Elizabeth. I could not fault you, but Mr Darcy will be accustomed to dancing with the highest ladies in the land, and his opinion is worth far more than mine, just as his dancing is likely infinitely superior.”

“You speak nothing but the truth, Cousin,” Elizabeth told him with a straight face, while remembering how Mr Collins had trodden on toes, turned the wrong way, and proved a general menace to all dancers in the first two measures he had claimed with Elizabeth.

At the head of the table, Mr Bennet looked up over his book with a slight smile of amusement for his second eldest child. A moment later, he looked as though he might have regretted this when Mr Collins used this opportunity to catch his eye.