Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

“I WAS THINKING too much of other things, I suppose,” Elizabeth murmured as she ran her fingers over the samples of fabric that had been brought by the modiste. There were ever so many shades of light blue and light cream and lavender, too.

She could not possibly decide what she wished to be made for her.

Her head was spinning anyway, at the number of dresses that had been ordered for her. How would she have time to wear so many dresses?

“What things?” scoffed Lydia. “How could you have been thinking of anything other than the fact we would all have husbands, rich husbands?”

“I don’t know,” said Elizabeth. “It seems so obvious now. But I was thinking about how all the money would be spent in three months or something wretched, or that she would determine that I wasn’t worthy of any of it, and she would only give money to the other girls.”

“Mama will hear you,” said Mary, shooting a glance over her shoulder.

Elizabeth glanced at the doorway, where her mother was conversing with the modiste. “We have dowries. We are going to tea at Lady Matlock’s house. Colonel Fitzwilliam has no reason not to ask me to marry him now.”

“Yes, Lizzy,” said Jane with a soft smile, “you must stop thinking everything is so dire as all of that. All your thoughts have been of calamity, and everything is going well.”

“I don’t know,” said Mary. “I’m not sure that Lady Matlock likes us.”

“She liked us!” protested Kitty.

“Of course she did,” said Lydia, giggling. “I want four dresses in this fabric.” She pointed her finger into it. “It is ever so soft and lovely. It would be like wearing a cloud.”

“No, true,” said Elizabeth, nodding at Mary. “She didn’t come of her own accord, I don’t think. Somehow, the colonel got her here.”

“Yes, and when we go to the tea, likely—between the behavior of the lot of you—we’ll be shunned forevermore by proper society in town,” said Mary.

“The lot of us?” said Elizabeth. “That’s not fair.”

“Oh, Lizzy, you have a mouth on you sometimes,” said Mary. “But Jane and I, we are the most sedate of the sisters—”

“Mary, you have an overinflated idea of your ability on piano,” said Elizabeth.

“Oh, as if you’re so much better at playing than I am,” said Mary with a huff.

“I’m not saying that,” said Elizabeth. “I’m saying that I understand that I’m not very good. With you, sometimes it seems you think you are more intelligent and more proper and more skilled than you actually are.”

“Yes, and this is what I’m saying about your mouth ,” said Mary. “You don’t say things like this to people.”

“You’re my sister,” said Elizabeth with a sigh.

Lydia and Kitty burst into giggles.

“I think you should get into a tussle to settle it,” said Lydia. “Hair-pulling, slapping each other, all of it.”

“Lydia, please,” groaned Elizabeth.

“It’s not as if I’ve never seen you pull hair before,” said Lydia.

“True,” sang Kitty.

“Can’t we stop?” said Jane, sighing. “Let’s be good to each other now. We are sisters. We’re all each other has. Everything is different now, and we must depend on each other.”

“I’m not trying to pick a fight,” said Elizabeth to Mary. “I’m only saying, if the colonel got us this opportunity, I may need to make sure he’s pleased enough to continue to intercede on the family’s behalf.”

“You like him, do you not?” said Jane with a smile. “I know you spoke of him with regard, and he does seem ever so friendly.”

Lydia and Kitty brayed with derisive laughter.

“What?” said Jane. “Why are you doing that?”

“He’s ugly,” said Mary quietly.

“Oh, as if that matters,” said Jane.

“True,” said Elizabeth. “It doesn’t.”

“So, if he wished to marry you, you would agree?” said Jane. “Do you think you could love him, Lizzy?”

“I would accept if he asked,” Elizabeth said faintly. She thought she might have to accept. She thought it might go quite badly for her family if she didn’t.

No matter that she wondered about Mr. Darcy.

He’d been willing to marry her before all this, when she had nothing. He had dwelt on her lack of connections rather overlong during his marriage proposal, of course, and that had not endeared him to her. It had not been the most romantic of marriage proposals, not at all.

But she had thought things about his character then that now she realized were false, and time had passed, and she kept thinking about him, and…

You must allow me to tell you how much I ardently admire and love you.

That was what he’d said.

But she’d turned him down.

He would never ask again. She was sure of that. She’d wounded his pride, and he was a proud man. That letter he’d sent her assured her of that truth. Only a proud man must defend himself in such a manner.

“Oh, Lizzy engaged before Jane!” crowed Kitty.

Lydia giggled wildly. “Think if your children have his nose, Lizzy! Oh, I can hardly bear it!”

“Stop, there’s nothing wrong with his nose,” cried Jane. “Why are you so cruel, Lydia?”

Lydia snorted, rolling her eyes.

“I hadn’t thought about marriage,” said Elizabeth, “because for the first time in our lives, it didn’t matter. We don’t have to get married anymore.”

“Of course we do,” said Mary.

Elizabeth sighed.

“You don’t wish to marry the colonel, do you?” said Jane. “Lizzy, if you don’t love him, you can’t agree to marry him. You’ll be miserable. You’ll live a terrible life. And we have enough money now that we can choose.”

“No,” said Elizabeth. “We have money, but it is worth nothing if we are not accepted in the right circles. Money that is gotten in the wrong way is worse than not having money. Everyone likely thinks our mother was involved with Benlolk in some sort of love affair. They think she was unfaithful to Papa, and that she has been rewarded. It looks bad. It’s a wonder Benlolk didn’t think of it when he was drawing up that convoluted legal document, truly.” Elizabeth shook her head. “If the colonel is our way to respectability, I must do what I must.”

“No,” said Jane, “no, of all people, Lizzy, you’re the one who refuses to marry someone you don’t love.”

“Well, I don’t have to marry him,” said Elizabeth. “I can accept him, wait until we have been fully accepted into society, until we’ve made other connections besides the Matlocks, and then end it. A woman can end an engagement, after all.”

“Oh, Lizzy!” Jane was shocked. “That’s dreadful.”

“No, that’s smart,” said Mary.

“It’s honestly too bad he likes her,” said Kitty. “ I’d marry him.”

“I thought you hated his nose,” said Elizabeth.

“I could grow used to it,” said Kitty with a shrug. “Especially if his brother died and I became countess. Who cares what a man’s nose looks like if he’s an earl?”

ELIZABETH WORE ONE of her new dresses to tea at the Matlock house in town. The dress was a light shade of yellow, with long sleeves, as befit a dress made for tea time. It was only Lady Matlock at the tea. Lady Regby had not come.

Her mother spoke too much about the new dresses, about how they had just been made recently, about how enjoyable it had been to dress all of her daughters. “Jane looks like an angel, I think,” said Mrs. Bennet, “but then, I know that when the men here in town see her, they will all be falling at her feet. And Lydia is quite a vision as well, I think. She is not perhaps as pretty as Jane, but she is enticing in her own unique way.”

Yes, of course, because Lydia had a figure—a curvy figure. She was tall and well-formed, stout in various areas.

All of her mother’s speeches were not prompted. Lady Matlock did not compliment the dresses, not until after her mother had talked about how lovely they were uninterrupted for a long stretch of time.

Then, Lady Matlock said, “Yes, well, I would be remiss if I did not comment on your daughters’ dresses now, wouldn’t I?”

Elizabeth was mortified. She attempted, a few times, to interrupt her mother, to stop the words coming out of the woman’s mouth. However, though she could succeed at cutting her mother off, she then felt her wit began to falter, and she could not keep up with anything else to say.

The silence would mean that her mother would speak up to fill it.

The only thing worse than her mother talking (for all her mother seemed to do was compliment herself) was if Lydia chimed in.

“What a beautiful tablecloth,” Lydia said. “I do think it’s rather plain, but the plainness is what makes it beautiful, if you know what I mean?”

Elizabeth thought her sister was trying to be complimentary, but one did not call a thing pretty and plain in one breath, not if one had any inkling of respect.

Lady Matlock spoke little, speaking up to ask questions here and there, questions that seemed to spark Mrs. Bennet to talk all the more. All the while, Lady Matlock had an amused expression on her face, amused and superior, and Elizabeth thought she might die, right there on the spot, from sheer embarrassment.

But the tea came and went, and the Bennet women left the Matlock house, and the day wore on.

That evening at dinner, Mrs. Bennet crowed to her husband over what a success it was and Lydia and Kitty chimed in to agree with great vigor.

After dinner, Jane, Mary, and Elizabeth gathered together in the corner of their new sitting room and exchanged grave looks.

“Perhaps we should tell Papa the truth of it,” said Elizabeth.

“Oh, even if Papa were not behaving like some other version of himself,” said Mary, “he would not care one way or the other. He’d act as if impressing a countess was all a big joke, as if such a thing doesn’t matter. You know how he is.”

“Well, perhaps it doesn’t matter in the end,” said Jane. “Nothing that Mama said made her look as if she had loose morals, at any rate, and that is the danger, isn’t it?”

“If she looks uncouth and ridiculous, it does little to help our cause,” said Elizabeth.

“No, it doesn’t,” said Mary.

“But do we have a cause?” said Jane. “Does it truly matter? What is the point of associating with people like that anyway? It’s not as if we’re part of the peerage. We’re not going to be presented to the Queen or something. Whatever advantages we may have with our wealth, we shall always be a step below. And I don’t know if I mind. Let us simply enjoy our good fortune. Let us not scheme in this fashion. It does not become any of us.”

Elizabeth considered.

Mary considered.

“It does matter,” said Elizabeth. “It matters because we could be shunned by everyone if we do not make a good impression.”

“Just so,” said Mary. “Everyone knows that the lower members of the gentry take their cues from the upper levels of society. If the peerage snubs us, everyone shall. None of us will marry.”

“However,” said Elizabeth, “if I play the colonel correctly, we could all marry men with titles.”

“Is that what you want, Lizzy?” said Jane. “I thought you wished to marry a man you could respect and love.”

“Of course I do,” said Elizabeth. “It’s not for me. It’s for the rest of you.”

“Thank you,” said Mary. “ I want a title.”

Jane rolled her eyes. “They say that the love of money is the root of all evil. And here we are, already getting influenced in that way.”

“Well, what do you want, Jane?” said Elizabeth. “Do you want Mr. Bingley back? Because you could do a bit better these days, I think.”

“He did just abandon you without even saying goodbye,” said Mary.

“It’s not the same for men,” said Jane quietly. “Besides, I don’t know if he personally even objected so much as the others around him.”

“And you don’t think that Caroline Bingley won’t be the first to attempt to bury us?” said Elizabeth.

Jane sighed. “Lizzy, if you think there is anything on earth that will induce me to give my blessing to your pretending to be interested in a man you are not interested in for the sake of cementing this family’s reputation, you are never going to get it. We must do this authentically or not at all.”

At this moment, across the room, their mother, Lydia, and Kitty all burst into gales of laughter that were so unhinged that they all turned in the direction with wide, worried eyes.

“Authentically?” said Mary. “We don’t have a chance.”

Jane made a concerned face.

THE FOLLOWING DAY , the colonel appeared with an invitation to go and walk the promenade for Elizabeth.

Since he had brought no chaperone with him, he agreed that the entire family, including Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, must come.

It was summer, late July.

There were not very many others on the promenade. Indeed, there were few people in town at this time of the year. Most had left in June, even if the Season did not technically end until the end of Parliament’s session. Parliament had not yet adjourned.

But there were some on the promenade, some who tipped their hats to the colonel. He tipped his hat to them in turn, whispering to Elizabeth that he was quite pleased to be seen in public with her. “It’s going to be a good bit of fun showing you off.”

She drew in a breath and glanced at him.

He smiled at her, a wide conspiratorial smile, as if they had just pulled off some massive trick in a card game through mutual cooperation.

It should have unsettled her, but it was a contagious sort of smile. She gave it back to him. She could not stop herself. She did like Colonel Fitzwilliam. He was imminently likable.

What if I did marry him? she wondered.

Truly, she was putting the cart before the horse. All his behavior seemed to indicate an especial interest, but he had not explicitly ever stated he had any desire to marry Elizabeth.

“Not awful for you and your family either, being seen with me, I think,” he said.

“Truly,” she said. “I had thought such thoughts, I have to admit.”

“Yes, you’re shrewd,” he said, gesturing to the way ahead, that they should set off walking together.

She did as he offered, taking to the way, walking away from her mother and father and sisters.

The colonel glanced over his shoulder at her father and then offered her his arm, with another conspiratorial grin.

She took it, unable to resist grinning back. “Colonel Fitzwilliam, it is good to see you.”

“Oh, marvelous,” he said. “What I truly want to ask you about is why you said no to him, because he won’t talk about it. He’s been even more taciturn and glum than usual. To be frank, my cousin is already too silent and too serious. I think you’ve broken him somehow.”

She drew back, looking away. “We are to discuss Mr. Darcy?”

“No, indeed!” He laughed. “What am I thinking? Let us pretend the man does not exist, shall we? Let us talk instead of you, of your mother, of this inheritance.”

“Well, I’m sure everyone knows all the details of that already. It’s quite interesting gossip, I’m sure.”

“He and his wife never had children,” said the colonel.

“Who?” she said. “You mean Benlolk?”

“Who else?” said the colonel. “You might look like him.”

Elizabeth stopped in the midst of the path, gasping.

“Oh,” said the colonel, wincing, shaking his head at her. He had stopped walking also. “I shouldn’t have said such a thing. Come now, it’s a pointless thought.”

Elizabeth’s jaw was loose, and her mouth was open, and her breath was coming in rasps. No, no, no, it couldn’t be.

The colonel took her hand and wrapped it around his arm. Holding her hand there, he started walking.

She lurched after him, breathing noisily.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“I look like my father,” she said forcefully. “We all look like him.”

“Yes, yes, I agree,” said the colonel easily. “But other people will have their fun comparing you to portraits of the earl, you see. They will enjoy the gossip, the transgressive nature of it all. They must see a reason for him to have sent the money to your mother.”

“You are only humoring me,” said Elizabeth. “You think it might be true.” She turned to look at her mother, who was not walking the promenade, but was in the midst of her daughters, telling them something while gesturing with both hands. Elizabeth was too far away now to hear what it was her mother was saying.

“My sincere apologies,” he said. “I’m not humoring you. I think the gossip is mostly foolish and mostly false. I’ve been the subject of false rumor before, and I do know how it feels. But the sad thing is that it feels not unlike being the subject of a rumor that is true. It’s not pleasant when others are discussing you when you aren’t around, I must say. It’s not pleasant at all.”

“You’re saying it doesn’t matter if it’s true,” she said, turning to look at him. “I suppose you’re right. It matters if people believe it, not if it’s true.”

“Quite,” he said. “We shall have you all at a ball this Saturday, I think, and then everyone in town will meet your father and they will like him and we’ll have less people willing to believe him a cuckold. It will help. I shall do everything in my power to help. You are fortunate to have me.”

“Thank you,” she said, eyeing him. She wanted to ask him why he would help her, but she didn’t wish to push him to say things that he didn’t feel comfortable saying yet.

Also, she didn’t know if she was comfortable with his saying them.

If she could avoid falling into a fake engagement with this man, she would. She had no desire to hurt him or to damage his reputation.

After all, when a woman broke an engagement, there was often an assumption that the man had done something wrong.

“You are most welcome,” he said.

“I didn’t realize you would be here,” she said.

“In town, you mean?” he said. “Well, a number of chaps are here because Parliament is still in session, and there’s no shortage of wives who’ve stayed with them—well, that’s not true. There’s a shortage indeed, but there’s enough to host a few balls and some luncheons and that sort of thing. It will be good practice, and before long—”

“I meant in England and not in France, fighting,” she said.

“Ah,” he said. “Yes, I did go back. At the end of April, I went back. I was there all of May and all of June and most of this month.”

“And you are on leave again? You can leave the war so easily?”

“Not so easily,” he said with a laugh. “I do have a short bit of time to accomplish what I hope to accomplish, I suppose.” He waggled his eyebrows at her. “That may be up to you.”

She looked away, embarrassed.

“Oh, dash everything,” he groaned. He led her to walk a bit quicker. “We must talk of him after all.”

“Who?”

“You know who.”

She let out a breath. “Mr. Darcy, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“What must we say of him?”

“You refused him.”

“That’s true.” She was hesitant. All of this seemed highly uncomfortable. She wasn’t sure she wished to speak about it.

“He was convinced it was because you believed Wickham’s lies,” said the colonel. “He said he was going to write you a letter defending himself. I don’t know if he did. I told him not to.”

“You did?”

“Yes, I said that a woman knows her own mind, and there’s nothing she dislikes more than getting some scribbled letter about how she should change her mind and fall in love with you after all. It’s crass, in my opinion. A woman likes you or she doesn’t. More often than not, when she rejects you, she makes something up to tell you, something that won’t hurt your feelings as much as the real truth.”

“No,” said Elizabeth, quite firmly. “No, that is not at all what women do. We do not lie to men.”

“More often than not, women refuse to tell men what they did wrong either.”

She scoffed. “None of this is true, colonel.”

He laughed, grinning one of his conspiratorial smiles, though not at her this time. He seemed to be conspiring with the sky above, she thought. He talked to the sky, too. “I have another suspicion, then, but I think you will like it even less, which is that women don’t know why they don’t want certain men. They only know that they don’t.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she muttered.

“I well understand it,” he said. “For instance, it was suggested to me by my mother, at one point, that I ought to unite with my cousin Anne de Bourgh.”

“Oh,” said Elizabeth in a different voice, turning to look at him.

“Yes, that was my reaction,” he said with a shrug. “I can’t say why it is so very unappealing to me, in truth. It seems tidy in many ways. I need to marry a dowry, and she has one. Keeping Rosings within the Fitzwilliam family is very desirable to everyone involved.” He considered. “Perhaps not to my aunt, Lady Catherine, for she would much rather have Pemberley and Rosings combined, a powerhouse of property and wealth. I am a step down from Darcy, but I would have been acceptable if I had pursued Anne, and I could have.”

“No, the two of you don’t really suit,” said Elizabeth faintly.

He snorted. “I don’t like her either.”

“I never said I didn’t like her!” said Elizabeth.

“Yes, but it’s hard to say why,” he said.

“Oh, is it, though? She’s sickly and wan and tired,” said Elizabeth. “You wish to marry someone to whom you might at least feel some attraction, and I think all people want such things.”

“Well, that is a rude thing to say, perhaps,” he said.

“Perhaps,” she said.

It was quiet.

“We are both thinking about the look of my visage now, I suppose,” he said. “I have oft been informed of how not handsome I am, so you mustn’t think that I’m unaware. If it matters to you, I shan’t judge you. Let’s have it out now, however, before I waste more time.”

“Colonel Fitzwilliam, I am not so shallow,” she said. She turned to him. “And besides, of course you are handsome.”

He laughed ruefully, shaking his head.

“You do not have to believe me if you do not wish to, but I assure you—”

“It wasn’t my cousin’s visage.”

“You know what it was!” she said. “We spoke of it that day. You revealed to me that he had prevented my sister’s union with Bingley.”

“What?” He gave her a look.

“You remember,” she said. “You told me that Mr. Darcy had prevented his friend from an ill-advised union.”

“Oh, heavens,” he said, cringing. “That was your sister?”

She shrugged.

“Which one?”

“Jane,” she said.

“Jane?” He let out a disbelieving noise. “What is wrong with my cousin to have prevented that? She’s lovely. She’d be lovely for Bingley.”

“Well, thank you for saying so,” she said.

“And the Wickham business?”

“Well, yes, I thought the tales Wickham carried were true. But Mr. Darcy wrote that letter, wherein he told me about Miss Darcy, trusted me with that confidence, even as I scorned him, and I must say, that shook me.”

“He told you that?” The colonel sighed heavily. “Well, I should certainly have advised against putting that in a letter. For heaven’s sake, Fitz.” He groaned.

“But it was more than that,” she said. “I’m afraid he has a way about him, something that is haughty and exacting and, well, rather off-putting.”

The colonel let out a guffaw. “You are not incorrect in that observation, I must say.”

“I repent of thinking that, because—”

“No, no, it’s all right, Miss Elizabeth. I promise never to repeat it.” He gave her another conspiratorial smile.

“It’s only that I don’t think that about him anymore, and if I saw him, I would be different with him. I am quite sure of it,” she said.

“Truly, Miss Elizabeth, I shan’t repeat it,” he said, laughing.

She realized that he hadn’t heard her, not really, and he thought that she was just making protestation after protestation in her own defense. How to make him understand that she truly did believe that she had entirely misinterpreted Mr. Darcy’s character?

“I suppose that answers the question that I had, though, then,” he said, giving her a smile.

Her eyes widened. Was the question that he had—?

“I shall feel quite confident in my pursuit, then,” he said to her, his voice dropping in pitch. “And if he has any objections, especially of the I-saw-her-first variety, I shall assure him you were never interested in the first place.”

She swallowed.

This wasn’t true.

She was interested in Mr. Darcy. She often would lie awake at night and replay the entire proposal, wishing she’d said something different. Of course, the way he went about it was awful, and he deserved a tongue lashing, but she was mad to have refused him, mad .

Sometimes, in the darkness, late at night, she thought of what he’d said, that he loved her against his own good sense, against his very will, and it seemed to her to be the height of romanticism, like something out of a novel.

I refused that.

But it wasn’t in her best interest to explain that to the colonel, she didn’t suppose.

In this very conversation, he’d shown her exactly how bad the gossip was concerning her mother’s reputation and—by extension—the entire family’s. They would need assistance to fight against that.

She needed the colonel.

As much as she didn’t wish to deceive him about her feelings for him, she was in a bit of a bind.

“Well, he wouldn’t have objections,” she said briskly. “I’m sure he never thinks of me, not anymore.”

He glanced at her, furrowing his brow, just barely.

She realized her error. That one sentence betrayed her feelings about Mr. Darcy, laid them all bare. She must fix it. “I mean, I hope he never thinks of me anymore. I should be beside myself to think that he was still pining over me after I so soundly refused his offer of marriage. I don’t think he truly liked me anyway. You should have heard this proposal of his, Colonel Fitzwilliam. He spent but one moment on his love for me and the rest of the time on why he was trying very hard not to have any love for me. He dwelt long and hard on how I was lacking in every way.”

“Oh, Lord,” said the colonel, chortling. “Oh, Fitz, you dolt!” He wheezed as he laughed, pounding on his own chest. “Apologies,” he gasped. “It would not be so funny if I could not picture it.”

She began to laugh, too.

They were obliged to stop, both of them, and they stood there together, laughing and clutching at each other, for some time.

When the laughter finally faded, they stepped back and each brushed tears out of their eyes.

They caught each other’s gazes, but this only had the effect of making them both burst into gales of laughter again. When these faded, they did not look in each other’s eyes.

“Miss Elizabeth,” he said to his shoes, “may I continue to call upon you?”

“Yes, of course,” she said to her own shoes.

And when they circled back and found her family, the colonel issued an invitation to the ball, as he had promised he would, and everyone was boisterous in their eager excitement for the coming activity.

“I shall see you then,” he said, looking into her eyes with one of his conspiratorial smiles.

She nodded, thinking to herself that perhaps she might fall for this man after all. Maybe she wouldn’t truly be deceiving him if real regard grew within her.

After all, Mr. Darcy himself had his faults.

And she had no idea if he was still interested.