The colonel remained unmoved. “Good thing I’m not in Spain right now,” he said. “If I’d been caught napping like this over there, I’d have been done for.”
FITZ REGRETTED HIS inattentiveness and laughter the next morning. Had his badinage with the colonel caused him to miss something his aunt had said at dinner? Probably not. It would be more typical of his aunt to have kept him in the dark for an entire dreary evening. “Did you say Miss Bennet?” he interrupted Mr. Collins’s endless speech of welcome, long string of fulsome compliments, and account of visitors at the parsonage. Hateful little toady. If the man had been subjected to the same regimen Fitz had suffered at school, from just one of the masters, he’d have learned to keep his words to the minimum and on the subject at hand or he’d not sit for a week. “Miss Elizabeth Bennet?”
“Yes, Darcy,” Lady Catherine answered. “Said she knew you too. Impertinent, sharp little thing, and with so small a portion she’s unlikely to marry. She’ll learn in time to curb her high spirits and fit herself for her situation in life, as a companion or a governess. I thought we might have her and the Collinses come for coffee some evening after dinner.”
“Well, colonel,” Fitz said, as Mr. Collins was taking his leave, which at the rate he was going might occur sometime before dawn of the next day, “it’s turning out very fine weather. What do you say to a walk? I’m sure Mr. Collins here would be grateful for some company on the way home.”
The colonel, ever alert to the need for covert action, was quick on the uptake. “Good idea, Darcy. Could do with some exercise myself.”
The visit to the parsonage didn’t last long. The colonel had never seen his cousin so quiet. The object of his attention—or seemingly, lack of it—was indeed something quite fine, a small, vivacious dark-haired lady, who was happy to discuss the latest novels, unconcerned at the colonel’s obvious lack of familiarity with the authors she admired. Only one exchange stood out. Miss Bennet asked Darcy an innocuous question, something about her sister staying in town over the winter and had he never met her there—the sort of thing anyone asked in company when there were acquaintances in common—and Darcy had drawn back as if struck, recovering only enough to stammer that he had not.
Once safely outside, the colonel linked arms with Fitz and demanded the full story. “Going to have to acquire some discretion, Darcy, around our perspicacious aunt. She doesn’t miss much, for all her self-absorption. You pricked up like a wolf scenting a penned lamb when Collins mentioned Miss Bennet.”
“Did I?” Fitz replied. “As you saw, colonel, that lamb is more than a match for this wolf.”
“Yes, what happened there? It looked as if she drew blood when she mentioned her sister.” Fitz held his breath, but naturally the colonel made the connection. “Good God! She’s the one you saved your dear Charles from, isn’t she? That’s rather too much, even given what you’ve told me of his uncomplaining nature—stealing her for yourself.”
“Allow me some credit, colonel,” Fitz said. “This is the younger sister. The fact is, if Charles had fallen in love with her I could hardly have blamed him, nor would I have rated my chances of spoiling that match very high. Fortunately, his taste runs to the conventional, whereas this lady is the most extraordinary I’ve ever come across.”
“I see.” The colonel nodded as if he had solved a great puzzle. “That’s why you spoke so little. Worshipping from afar. Unfit to address the object of your devotions directly.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Fitz said.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were hooked at last,” the colonel said.
“Oh, go ahead, laugh at me,” Fitz said. “I suppose I deserve it. She certainly thinks so.”
Thirteen
“SHALL WE ASK your cousin, colonel,” Elizabeth said in response to one of Fitz’s particularly inept phrases, “why a man of sense and education, and who has lived in the world, is ill-qualified to recommend himself to strangers?”
“I can answer your question,” the colonel replied, “without applying to him. It is because he will not give himself the trouble.”
Fitz, mute as a block of wood, apparently unaware that an idiotic smile was plastered across his face, stood by while Colonel Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth Bennet flirted and conversed and laughed at him.
It had been mere curiosity, and the frightening realization that he was trapped for a fortnight at Rosings, that had led to his impromptu visit to the parsonage last week. Just looking for escape from the tedium, although the colonel ought to be companion enough. But today it was all he could do not to fall over in a faint when the visitors arrived at Rosings. The usual discipline of anticipation, of memory and reflection, could not prepare him for this meeting. That first brief call, surrounded by the lesser beings of pustulant vicar, his pitiable wife, her tedious father and unremarkable sister, was like the hazy impression of the deity glimpsed through a veil. Now, after months of mental isolation, living like a hermit in a cave amid the sordid bustle and clamor of London society, the only light having to be laboriously produced by striking a spark from Charles’s tepid and damp affections—now he was in the presence of the sacred flame…
He had felt the dizziness like a swoon. She. Her. The eyes. The wit. He was afraid he might disintegrate at any moment, indecent to stand up, his excitement showing, but not allowed to sit down, the ladies not yet seated. “Miss Bennet,” he had replied to the unnecessary introductions, bending over to kiss her hand with its delicately tapered fingers. “What a lovely, unlooked-for surprise.”
“Lady Catherine did not tell you we were to visit?” She smiled up at him. “I suppose we do not rank very high in the calendar of events at Rosings. After all, we have had far greater occurrences, even at the parsonage. On several occasions, Miss de Bourgh drove by in her carriage. And one time—I promise you, I am embellishing only a little—the pigs got into the garden! Well! After that, a visit by the family and friend of the vicar’s wife can hardly be said to be worthy of attention.”
“You are teasing, Miss Bennet,” was all Fitz could think to say.
“You are most observant, Mr. Darcy.” Her pink, bowed lips stretched in a grin, showing her small, even teeth. “I shall have to be very careful in my speech.”
The rest of the visit went by in a blur. Fitz could see nothing but her face and what little of her bosom showed above the modest cut of her gown. Her neck was long and slender, but had nothing of the wilting frailty of his cousin Anne’s. Miss Bennet carried her slight form so upright and gracefully it was as if she barely touched the ground when she walked. Fitz doubted that her beautiful arse even met the surface of the chair, more likely hovering just an inch or so above it. He wondered how he knew her arse was beautiful, and as quickly chided himself for such stupidity. What else could it be? How could it be any less lovely than the rest of her? Probably a most exquisite example of the female form, very white, round and firm, but not wide…
He forced his mind away from such a dangerous subject. He stared, entranced, as she put a biscuit between her lips, took a neat bite, clamping down smartly with her teeth, and chewed lustily. Did she eat as much here in Kent as she had in Hertfordshire? How did she maintain her slim figure with such a robust appetite? Obviously, hovering or flying or skimming or whatever it was she did must use an enormous amount of energy, far more than mere mortals expended in the most demanding activity. But such a small mouth! Could it possibly encompass him, and would those sharp little teeth get in the way…
“You will never become adept if you don’t practice,” Lady Catherine barked at her.
“I beg your pardon?” Fitz began to rise in defense of Miss Bennet, then realized in time that the instruction, his aunt not having been privy to his thoughts, referred to the pianoforte.
“You are welcome to use the instrument in Mrs. Jenkinson’s room. You will be out of the way there, and inconvenience nobody.”
Why had no one yet strangled Lady Catherine, or smothered her in her sleep,
put poison in her coffee, hammered her head with a fire iron…
Later she played on the pianoforte, despite Lady Catherine’s criticism. Miss Bennet had a clever trick of starting up the music—lively dance tunes or popular airs requiring vocal accompaniment—whenever his aunt intruded on the conversation. Fitz couldn’t recall ever so enjoying a performance on that overworked instrument, except for the times she had played back at Netherfield. Thank goodness he was sitting down now, or all would be lost. Eventually, however, it was safe to approach, and he stood leaning against the back of the pianoforte, watching her face, sometimes moving to her side, turning the pages of the music and drinking in the warmth of her skin, the scent of her hair.
What could he say that would not betray him, that would not disgust her? But she did not appear to be the least disconcerted by anything. She laughed at him and answered his diffident questions with her barbed ripostes, and all was bliss until Lady Catherine put a stop to it. She would not have pleasure and beauty and joy in her house, not if she could help it. And she had never met a happy group that she had failed to rout into disordered retreat and, ultimately, unconditional surrender.
She was superb, Miss Bennet. How could his stupid, dense bitch of an aunt not see it? Somehow this one small woman bore up against the onslaught of Lady Catherine’s incessant barrage. It was like watching a decimated infantry regiment hold off an attack of French cavalry, as the colonel had described. But this battered little red square was all splendor, muslin and lace, brown curls and pink cheeks and laughing wide eyes.
Oh, he just wanted to stare into those eyes until he fell in and drowned. No, they weren’t liquid pools, as some asinine poet had written of his insipid ladylove. Miss Bennet’s eyes were brilliant like jewels, although without their hardness. More like an animal’s eyes, a cat’s. That sounded wrong. It didn’t sound like a compliment, or convey how warm and luminous they were. But the round, unblinking stare, the wisdom lightened and tempered by mischief—that was like nothing so much as a cat’s. And, Fitz recalled again, he had always been partial to cats.
“IF I HAD any doubts before, that lamentable performance dispelled them,” the colonel said as he and Fitz enjoyed their nightly stroll in the park.
“What?”
“There’s only one reason an otherwise intelligent man behaves like an imbecile in the presence of a beautiful lady, but I promise you that silent, hopeless admiration won’t work with Miss Bennet. You’ll have to screw up your courage and talk with her. It’s not all that difficult.”
“Not for you,” Fitz said. “You seemed very much at ease. Whatever did you find to occupy her attention all that time?”
“Reading and music,” the colonel said.
“Really, colonel,” Fitz said. “That’s dishing it a bit too hot. I doubt very much you and Miss Bennet have read so much as one single poem in common. She more or less demolished that approach with me months ago, on that basis.”
“Actually, Miss Bennet and I were delighted to discover that Madame D’Arblay’s Cecilia was one of our favorites.”
“Now look here, colonel. You may be able to deceive a trusting young lady with an outright lie, but—”
“Not your perceptive Miss Bennet,” the colonel said. “There’s no fudging it with her. Just because you only read Latin verse or ancient epics in the original Greek doesn’t mean the rest of us are so limited.”
“When do you have time to read anything but field reports or listen to any other music than the trumpet and the drum?”
“You know, Darcy, there’s nothing like a novel for taking one’s mind off the rigors of campaigning. To my mind, a good novel, more than any other work of literature, conveys the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, and the liveliest effusions of wit and humor, all in the best chosen language.”
“Such vehemence. But ladies’ novels?” Fitz said, packing a world of opprobrium into the emphasis.
“If you mean those outmoded tales of gothic horrors, I quite agree with you,” the colonel said. “But if you mean a good modern story written by a female, you ought to read one before dismissing the entire category. Besides, you are unlikely to win the hearts of many ladies if you take that tone.”
“That’s fine,” Fitz said. “Because I am supremely uninterested in many ladies.”
The colonel gave an arch look and put a finger to the side of his nose. “Ah, Darcy, this is where experience tells. You are used to commercial transactions, I imagine, or those clandestine arrangements with adventurous married ladies, where it is only a matter of coming to terms and striking the best bargain, as you call it, on both sides. But a young, unattached lady requires attentive and appreciative courtship. Now, let’s assume, just for the sake of argument, that a particular lady and I have no reading in common. I simply ask her what she reads. When she tells me, I ask her why she likes it. Then I say I haven’t read any of that author’s work and which would she recommend for me to start with. Once we’ve exhausted that topic, by then I’ll have been able to recall some other book I did read, and we’re off again.”
Fitz laughed. “Ingenious. But rather self-defeating, wouldn’t you say?”
“Only if one’s ultimate objective is to find a woman whose taste in reading is exactly the same as one’s own. For most of us, however, it’s simply a way of engaging a lady in conversation. A very obvious stratagem, but works every time.”
“Then tell me, colonel,” Fitz asked, “who is Miss Bennet’s favorite author? Besides Madame D’Arblay, of course. Dr. Johnson? Laurence Sterne?” He snapped his fingers. “I know! Henry Fielding.”
“Ha!” The colonel poked his cousin in the ribs. “You won’t catch me that easily, Darcy. Didn’t make colonel by falling into ambushes. I’ll give you one hint, though—you’re cold; very cold.”
“Never tell me she truly does read ladies’ novels,” Fitz said.
“Not going to tell you anything more,” the colonel replied. “I’ve revealed enough as it is.”
“All you have shown is that you’re treating this as a kind of game, with Miss Bennet as the prize. But she deserves better than to be trifled with.”
“That sounds a bit like the pot with the kettle,” the colonel said. “Just be grateful that, on a colonel’s pay, I can’t truly compete. Because if it were based purely on merit, I’d meet the challenge head-on, and a paragon like Miss Bennet requires a worthy opponent. If not an equal—Damme! Which of us could measure up?—at least a man who can put two words together in a sensible fashion. Someone like the Fitzwilliam Darcy I used to know. Wonder whatever became of him?”
Fitz shook his head but said nothing. The insipid smile he had worn during the visit from the parsonage company returned, and he walked for several yards in apparently contented silence. “I have one great advantage over you, colonel,” he said as they approached the front door.
“I can count three,” the colonel said in an unusually melancholy tone. “To list them in descending order of importance: Pemberley, your vast fortune, and being the only son.” After a short pause, he added, “To be scrupulously fair, I would add a fourth, which a lady like Miss Bennet wouldn’t admit to considering, but which has an effect all the same: you’re a damned fine-looking, tall fellow, and it’s no shame to the fair sex to say that even the most demure lady must feel her heart flutter when you walk into a room.”
“I would be a fool to deny the truth of what you say, colonel,” Fitz said, frowning in modest discomfort at the subject, “and with the common run of females it sums up the entirety of my dealings with them. But I do Miss Bennet the justice of asserting that all of these superficial qualities would count for little with her if I did not possess this one consequential advantage.”
“Which is?”
“Whether or not we read the same things, Miss Bennet and I understand each other.”
“I don’t wish to be unduly skeptical,” the colonel said. “But in what way?”
&nbs
p; “Temperament,” Fitz said.
The colonel, who had been indulging in his only vice—cigars—suffered an alarming paroxysm of coughing. Once he was able to speak, he said, “You frighten me, Darcy, you really do. You are too young to be growing senile, and too old to believe in fancies. I can think of no two people who are less alike in temperament.”
Fitz, demonstrating again his bizarre new docility, merely smirked at this taunt. “Remember how she spoke of not practicing on the pianoforte? And then launched immediately into one of her most pleasing performances?”
“That was directed at you, Darcy,” the colonel said, “as you would know if you had been attending to the conversation and not lost in some sort of dream. Miss Bennet was making a pointed analogy with your unwillingness to extend yourself in company. She does not attribute her imperfect playing to a lack of natural ability, but merely to laziness, just as you are not incapable of intelligent drawing-room discourse, but are simply unwilling to practice.”
“Imperfect? Laziness?” Fitz fastened on the offensive words. “Miss Bennet is the most industrious individual I have ever met, and her performances are imperfect only to musical pedants. No, colonel, it is clear you misinterpreted her meaning. We neither of us perform for strangers, as I said to her. Practicing is for the rest of the world, which values technical perfection over expressiveness. Superior beings save their best performances for those who can appreciate the deeper significance, the substance. That’s our understanding, Miss Bennet’s and mine.”
The colonel rolled his eyes but said nothing, throwing the butt of his cigar away and preparing to enter the house. A disapproving footman clicked his tongue. “Lady Catherine don’t hold with that, sir.”
“With what?” the colonel asked.
“Your filthy habit,” Fitz said, pointing to the soggy object nestled under a rosebush.
“It’s a Spanish custom,” the colonel said. “Most of the officers and many of the men have adopted it; even Wellington enjoys blowing a cloud on occasion.”
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