Chapter 3

Sleep did not come quickly nor stay long; as soon as the sun was up, so was Darcy, too preoccupied to remain abed. What Elizabeth had meant by calling him jade he knew not, but he spent a good proportion of the day attempting to guess. That she had compared him to something rare and valuable was gratifying, yet he could not but think that too obvious an allusion for one so astute. Confucius had taught that jade represented wisdom. The likelihood that Elizabeth was familiar with such philosophies was only to be wondered at, but if anyone were to be the judge of his understanding, it might as well be her. Seldom had he encountered such a quick wit or insightful mind.

Her meaning plagued him, but he would not condescend to seek an explanation. Since she kept to her sister’s room for most of the day, his resolve not to ask for one remained untested until that evening, when she and her sister were both sufficiently recovered to come downstairs after dinner. Miss Bennet was yet pale and subdued; Elizabeth concealed her symptoms much better. Darcy fancied only someone who knew she had been unwell might discern the slightly too-dark flush to her cheeks or the slowness in her usually lively steps. Her eyes, at least, were bright with challenge rather than fever.

It was a challenge he enjoyed until the conversation turned to an appraisal of his character. Then, his private search for a connexion to the colour jade in everything she said stole much of his pleasure in the exchange. Wisdom, value, and rarity were clearly the furthest things from her mind as she smilingly accused him of vanity and pride.

For a second night, Darcy was kept awake deliberating her meaning, and this time, with a good deal less sanguinity. He knew not what hour of the night it occurred, only that it was pitch black and raining hard outside when he realised what utter rubbish it was to pretend that good manners had prevented him from challenging Miss Bingley’s behaviour. The uncomfortable truth was that he had not entirely disagreed with her. He had, at least initially, thought meanly of Elizabeth’s sense and worth—and he had done so on no better foundation than her situation in life being beneath his. It was the very definition of pride. He had assumed her designation of ‘jade’ must be a compliment—that she must admire him because of his superior consequence. It was the very definition of vanity.

Darcy had not had much cause in his life to feel ashamed, but he felt it now—and more so every time he sensed himself seeking his own absolution. It was no longer enough to defend the unkind things he had said about Elizabeth on account of them being said without her knowledge, for that was not true. She had heard him scorn her looks. Faced with this revelation two nights ago, his response had not been to apologise for saying it, nor to feel ashamed for having thought it—only to complain at having been overheard. Regret weighed heavily upon him. He disliked that he had caused Elizabeth distress; and he found he was more than commonly distressed by the prospect that he had made her dislike him.

When they were at one time the next day left by themselves, he watched her reading her book for a moment while he summoned the courage to say what he knew he must. She toyed idly with the fringe of her shawl as she read, keeping hold of it when she turned the page and as she absently tugged at her ear. Darcy knew not why it endeared him, for it was a trifling mannerism, but it made him smile. Perhaps because, unlike Miss Bingley, who made a point of ensuring he knew whenever she picked up a book, Elizabeth evidently could not have cared less whether he was there or not. She was entirely absorbed in what she was reading. He was reluctant to intrude, but it could not be helped.

“Miss Elizabeth, might I interrupt you?”

She looked up with a slightly wary expression. “By all means.”

“I owe you an apology. You have, over the past two days, brought to my attention behaviour of which I am rightly ashamed. I am sorry that I have contributed to your stay here being difficult.”

She looked amazed, which did not make him feel any better. He must have given a truly awful impression of himself if she thought him incapable of contrition.

“Thank you,” she said after a lengthy pause. “But your apology begs that I make one, too. I am never at my best when I am ill, and I was feeling particularly unwell two nights ago. I said some things that would have been much better left unsaid. My stay has not been as difficult as I perhaps implied. Which is fortunate since my mother and Mr Bingley have conspired to ensure that we do not leave for another day.” She gave a wan smile, but there was no real humour in it.

Darcy noticed that she did not try to excuse the things she had said about him the previous night when she was almost completely recovered. He returned her smile in kind, equally keen to lighten the discussion but similarly unable to summon much humour. “At least you have not been ‘trussed up in a bed’.”

She let out a wry huff of air and shook her head. “I recognise that my small act of defiance was probably not necessary. I was not thinking straight. Laugh at me if you will—I shall not blame you.”

“I might have thought it unnecessary at first, but I could not continue to think so after Miss Bingley confirmed all your misgivings with her reprehensible comments.”

Elizabeth made no reply.

“I do not share her opinion of you,” Darcy continued cautiously. “Whatever you may think of me, I beg you would believe that.” When she still did not speak, he added, “Just as you seemed to disagree with the estimation in which she holds me.”

“I should think Miss Bingley and I hold contrary views on most subjects.”

He chuckled slightly. “Quite possibly—but you were inclined to think me more jade than gold.”

He regretted his words as soon as they were said. So much for not soliciting an explanation! Nevertheless, he waited with bated breath to hear what she would say. To his surprise, she looked exceedingly uncomfortable.

“We have established that I would have done far better to say nothing at all when I was in that state. I really was excessively unwell and still half asleep—I should not have tried to play the game.”

She did not mean to tell him. The pang of disappointment was sharp but rapidly eclipsed by embarrassment, which he supposed served him right. He ought never to have asked. To direct the conversation away from himself, he said, “It seems a game to which your talents are particularly well suited. You have admitted to being a studier of character—and to understanding Bingley’s perfectly. Do you agree that he is silver?”

“Since I have already defended him against the charge of needless precipitance, I cannot reasonably agree that he is mercurial.”

“What colour would you give him?” Darcy had not had any appetite for this game when it was first suggested. Now, the sight of Elizabeth closing her book and deliberating intently on her answer increased its appeal exponentially.

“Yellow,” she said after a moment. “The colour of sunshine. I never met anybody with such happy manners—and that inevitably brightens everyone around him.”

That was, in a nutshell, what most appealed to Darcy about his friend; it was a perceptive choice. “It is a far better match than silver. But now I am intrigued. What thoughts have you about the rest of our party?”

She reopened her book, shaking her head as she searched for her place. “I am sure I do not know anybody else well enough to comment.”

Darcy recognised her prevarication. She had already demonstrated a keen understanding of Miss Bingley’s and Mrs Hurst’s dispositions; he would wager she knew precisely which colours she would assign them and was merely too polite to say. She had better manners than either of them, both of whom had insisted on telling him, as they walked in the gardens the previous afternoon, that they had designated Elizabeth the plainest dun, ‘for there was absolutely nothing extraordinary about her’.

Darcy could not agree. There was certainly something rather extraordinary about the shape of her mouth when she was trying not to smile. “What about yourself?”

“Me? Oh, no—I shall not even attempt to label myself. Nobody ever knows themselves as well as they think they do.”

So Darcy was coming to appreciate. “Your sister, then. You must feel qualified to answer for her.”

Elizabeth peered at him as though distrustful of his purpose, but when he continued to wait in silence, she took a deep breath and turned to look out of the window pensively.

“Jane is like opal,” she said at length. “Beautiful in a pale, serene way, but with myriad colours shining beneath the surface. One must look closely to see them.”

This was another humbling reflection. Darcy had dismissed Miss Bennet as vacuous—of smiling too much and saying too little. But he had made little effort to speak to her. Whatever deeper shades there were to her character, he would never know them if he would not take the trouble of looking.

“She is the opposite of my mother,” Elizabeth added, the now-familiar glint of challenge returned to her eyes. “Mama is like a beacon—a flame that has not a hope of remaining inconspicuous. She does not know how to hide what she feels—although her feelings are no different to anyone else’s. We all want the best for our loved ones.”

Darcy was fascinated to consider that Elizabeth was a curious mix of both women; she had all the hidden depths of her sister, with all the brightly burning passion of her mother. He could not decide what colour that made her.

“What about you, sir? Have you any relations for whom you must blush?”

It was an impertinent question, but Darcy could hear his cousin Fitzwilliam in his head saying “Lady Catherine” and before he knew he was going to do it, he said it aloud. Elizabeth looked as surprised to hear him answer as he was to have spoken.

“My aunt,” he explained stiffly. “She, too, rarely withholds her opinion.”

“We have a fiery beacon in common, do we?” she asked with obvious amusement.

“I might be more inclined to describe Lady Catherine as brass.”

Elizabeth’s small, incredulous laugh mirrored his own chagrin at having said as much. It was egregiously disloyal, yet he could not quite bring himself to fully regret it, for it had made Elizabeth set her book aside altogether and fix him with a look of wonder.

He cleared his throat. “She might be considered overbearing—but like your mother, she usually means well.”

“Usually?”

“Well…occasionally her desire to see matters settled according to her notion of what is right can be at odds with the interests of all parties.”

Elizabeth raised one eyebrow in question, giving an intensely seductive turn to her countenance.

“She wants me to marry her daughter,” he said distractedly, mesmerised by the arch of her brow and the gentle curve of her lips. “I never will, but that has not stopped her pontificating on it for the last twenty-eight years.”

He instantly baulked. What in God’s name had induced him to tell her that?

“And your cousin, whom you are determined not to marry? Pray, what colour would you use to describe her?”

He floundered for an answer. “Perhaps… the colour of chalk? She is…”

“Colourless?”

“And unnervingly brittle.”

Hell’s teeth, he sounded hateful! It was true, but it would have been infinitely kinder to leave the thought unspoken. What was this power Elizabeth had to make him say things he did not mean to say? He ought to have known she would twist the game to her advantage, and lo and behold, here he was, admitting to faults in his own family every bit as lamentable as those for which he had disdained hers.

He could not help but smile. She was quite brilliant.

“But there is little point in me telling you about people you have never met. You have no way of knowing whether my account is accurate.”

“True,” she replied. “Though you will pardon me if I am not convinced that we have any other acquaintances in common whom you know well enough to judge.”

He frowned. He had spoken extensively to many of Bingley’s neighbours, but he supposed she could not know that, for such conversations often happened in the absence of ladies. “I am sorry you think so, but if that be the case, at least we may compare our different opinions.”

“Very well. What colour would you give Sir William?”

“Amber,” he said after a moment’s thought. “He has the warmth commonly pursuant to joviality and eagerness—and he is of an age at which it is not unusual to find deeply imbedded peculiarities.”

To his delight, she laughed merrily, then twisted her mouth into a concessionary grin. “I was going to say orange as well because he is enthusiastic and warm—but that was too easy. Let us do my father next.”

In Darcy’s opinion, Mr Bennet was an easier mark than Sir William, for he was the more dynamic of the two. “He is quiet and watchful with a strong streak of mischief. I should say he is the colour of Blue John—have you ever seen any?”

“I have. It is purplish-blue with seams of yellow. And that is…I cannot improve upon your assessment.” After regarding him searchingly for a moment or two, she asked, “What about my sister Mary?”

“That, I confess, will challenge me more. I have not yet had the pleasure of speaking to any of your younger sisters. If I were to judge solely on her performance on the pianoforte at Lucas Lodge last week, I should say that she is striving to be the same colour as any or all of her sisters.”

“And not quite achieving it,” Elizabeth added ruefully. “That is a very astute observation, Mr Darcy.”

He inclined his head. “I, too, have a younger sister. Georgiana is fifteen.”

“Of course.” She leant forward and propped her chin on one hand. “And what colour is she?”

Darcy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It did not provide him with any clarity on the matter. Georgiana remained a mystery to him. “I do not know—and I do not think she does, either.”

“It can be a trying age.”

The look of pity she gave him filled Darcy with the sudden urge to unburden himself, to tell her everything that had befallen his beloved sister in Ramsgate that summer. He came startlingly close—so close that when she interrupted his reflections, it took a while for his disappointment to dissipate.

“I shall imagine Miss Darcy as the colour of a pristine sheet of blank paper, yet to discover what colours life will paint her.”

“A pretty notion,” he agreed gratefully. “There is another person with whom we are both reasonably well acquainted, whose character we might more readily discuss.”

“Who?”

He hesitated, disliking that he was about to ask again, but he could not withstand the temptation. “Me.”

It was a mistake; Elizabeth sat up straight and brought her book back to her lap. “We ought to stop now. This has been fascinating, but I must find Jane. She is sure to have overexerted herself. Will you excuse me?”

He stood up while she left the room, then returned heavily to his seat, feeling a fool. He wished he had not so imperiously announced during the discussion of his character the previous evening that it had been the study of his life to avoid making himself look ridiculous. It might have lessened his present mortification. He was in the middle of vowing to himself that it would be the last time he asked her about it, when the door opened, and Elizabeth poked her head back into the room.

“No, no—do not trouble yourself,” she said when he put his hands on the arms of his chair to push himself to his feet again. “I only wanted to say this has been a very agreeable half an hour. Thank you.”

She disappeared again, taking all Darcy’s resolve with her. Never in his life had he wanted to know a woman’s thoughts as intensely as he wanted to know Elizabeth’s. Never in his life had he enjoyed so well the battle to discover them. It was a very good thing that she was going home on the morrow; she attracted him far more than was safe. He redirected his resolve to convincing himself that he was glad she was leaving.