Page 34 of Such Low Connections

“Yes, no…I don’t know,” Elizabeth answered, laughing at her own indecision and then giving the question more serious thought. “If I were ever to marry, I must both love and respect my future spouse. If no man ever inspires those feelings, then I am content to be a spinster aunt to Jane’s children.”

“You have always been more romantic than me,” remarked Charlotte.

“Is love and respect really so much to ask?” Elizabeth asked. “It is not as though I am waiting for a knight on a white horse to rescue me from a dragon.”

Her friend shook her head.

“It is not so much to ask, but still more than some people get, despite their hopes and vows of love at the altar,” Charlotte replied. “Oh, who can say? Life can be very unpredictable, and sometimes people end up marrying the most surprising spouses and being happy together.”

“Just look at my own parents for a surprising match,” Elizabeth laughed. “They are like chalk and cheese. In their own way, they are happy together, I suppose, although each has disappointed the other. My mother has too little sense for him and my father too little heart for her.”

“Who would be the most surprising match for you, Lizzy?” Charlotte speculated with twinkling eyes. “How about old Mr Corbett of Threadington Hall? He has buried three wives, but the fourth may have better luck.”

“Mr Corbett is past eighty and can talk of nothing but pigs,” Elizabeth answered, as though giving the question serious consideration. “I fear my ignorance of the porcine world would prove an immovable obstacle in our courtship.”

“Then what about Sir Harold Beverley? An unmarried baronet of forty years and thrifty habits must be considered eligible, surely.”

“Any proposal would have to come from his mother, Lady Beverley,” pointed out Elizabeth. “Sir Harold goes about everywhere with his mother and defers to her on all things. According to my Aunt Philips, Lady Beverley disapproves of my habit of tramping about the countryside by myself, so there can be no real hope in that quarter.”

“Dear me, you are very difficult to match, Lizzy. Let me see, what other surprising husbands might I find for you…Well, if he ever comes back to Netherfield Park, what about Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy with his £10,000 a year? He is neither old nor obsessed with pigs, and long orphaned, I believe.”

Elizabeth’s laughter died on her lips, and a strange, uncomfortable heat rose into her cheeks.

“No, not Mr Darcy,” she said quietly. “That would not do at all. Anyway, he would never have me, nor likely any other gentlewoman of Hertfordshire.”

“He danced with you at the Netherfield Park ball,” Charlotte pointed out, and Elizabeth felt her blush deepening with the memory of how surprisingly well Mr Darcy had danced, despite the circumstances and her own expectations. “I do not believe he danced with anyone else.”

“It was a most unexpected invitation,” Elizabeth murmured, recalling the sensation of her hand in his, and then his other hand at her waist, the sense of his height and broad shoulders, and even the faint woody scent of his cologne.

“Still, you accepted his invitation, and everyone thought you looked very well together,” commented Charlotte philosophically. “Might you not accept an equally unexpected proposal of marriage?”

Imagining herself as the wife of Fitzwilliam Darcy gave Elizabeth a different feeling entirely to imagining marriage to anyone else. Unwillingly prompted by Charlotte, she visualised her hand in his at the altar rather than on the dance floor. How very blue his eyes were, like a midnight sky… Elizabeth shivered, despite all her wraps and the warmth of their exercise.

“Some things are more impossible than surprising,” she said firmly and then pointed down the slope from their path. “Come, I’ll race you down the hill!”

Picking up her skirts, Elizabeth ran swiftly away from Charlotte’s possible further questioning and her own unbidden response.

Chapter 12

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Charles Bingley when Darcy told him what had transpired at the offices of Moreton and Belling. “What will you do?”

There were only the two of them at a small dining table in Bingley’s partly-closed London house, and Darcy had waited until the steps of the single footman serving them had died away before giving his friend the full story.

With Caroline Bingley staying at Grosvenor Square with the Hursts, and the duration of their visit to London uncertain, Bingley had not seen the point in immediately opening up the house. Darcy had chosen to dine there instead of at Darcy House, thankfully finding that Georgiana and Mrs Annesley had a pre-existing musical engagement. He could not bear his sister to hear a single word of what had passed.

“It is too soon to say,” Darcy answered, toying with a small glass of wine that he knew to be an excellent vintage, but could not appreciate tonight. “I have not been able to gather my thoughts. There are too many questions still unanswered. How Mr Pinnock’s client obtained my father’s letters, for example.”

“I am not surprised you are shocked. Never mind how this person took those letters, what do they want from you?”

“I asked Mr Pinnock that very question,” said Darcy wearily. “Do you know what he said? ‘The truth’. That is apparently what his client seeks. The truth.”

Bingley frowned and put down his glass.

“What does that even mean, Darcy?”

“God knows. Pinnock seemed not to. It would have been easier if they had asked for money, wouldn’t it? As motives go, financial demands are far easier to understand and to satisfy. Perhaps they expect me to take out a newspaper advert besmirching my own birth, or to denounce my parents from a soapbox in Hyde Park.”

“Do not even joke about that, Darcy!” his friend told him with unwavering conviction. “Whoever they are, this person clearly wants to destroy you and is targeting your weakest point. I do believe they must know you well to do that, whoever they are.”