Page 53 of The Longbourn Bloodline

And there he was—Charles Bingley, beaming like a man who had just discovered that Christmas had come again, his cheeks ruddy from the cold, his eyes already seeking out the one face in the room that mattered to him.

“Mrs. Bennet! Mr. Bennet! What a pleasure! I cannot tell you. We arrived only yesterday; the roads were abominable, but I could not stay away another day.”

Behind him, Mr. Hurst shuffled in, and Mrs. Hurst followed with a tight smile that suggested neither Hurst welcomed the excursion but was compelled by Bingley’s generous wine cellar and table settings.

Elizabeth barely noticed them as she watched Jane.

Her sister’s composure had not cracked—Jane was too well-bred for that—but her face softened, opened, and became luminous in a way that Elizabeth had not seen since that first assembly when they met.

“Mr. Bingley.” Jane rose and curtsied, her voice steady. “Welcome back to Hertfordshire.”

“Miss Bennet,” Bingley said, bowing, and his voice caught. “And the rest of the Miss Bennets, I am so pleased to see you again. So very elegant and joyous.”

Elizabeth and her sisters curtsied, and Mrs. Bennet fluttered. “Come, come, you must sit. Mr. Hurst, there is a chair by the fire. Mrs. Hurst, how well you look. Hill, the Madeira, and Jane, dear, perhaps Mr. Bingley would like to see your watercolors? Mr. Cecil has been teaching the girls, and Jane’s work is quite exceptional.”

Elizabeth sat beside Charlotte on the settee and watched the room rearrange itself. Bingley appeared beside Jane on the sofa, his gaze not losing track of her, and Elizabeth could not help wondering if Jane’s position as the heiress of Longbourn had brought him back despite the slush on the road, accompanied by the Hursts for the barest of all propriety. But she tucked the uncharitable thoughts away, exchanging the barest of glances with Charlotte, who no doubt suspected the same.

Lydia, who had lost even the empathic swipes of Mr. Moretti’s butter knife instruction, draped herself across the window seat and announced to anyone who would listen that she had not seen a red coat in a fortnight and her spirits were in serious peril.

“We had not expected company today,” Jane said, pouring tea with the grace of a woman who had not required Mrs. Beaumont’s tea-pouring lessons. “You must forgive us; we are mid-lesson. Mr. Moretti has only just arrived.”

“Oh, do not stop on our account!” Bingley said, his eyes never leaving Jane’s face. “We are great lovers of music; are we not, Louisa?”

“Charles is a great lover of every form of entertainment,” Louisa said. “Music, dancing, sport, conversation. He is exhausting.”

Mr. Moretti cleared his throat. “If I may, Mrs. Bennet, we had planned a small program for New Year’s Day. The young ladies have been preparing, and it would be a shame to waste their efforts.”

“A musicale!” Mrs. Bennet seized upon this with delight. “Yes, of course, we shall have a musicale. Mary, you were playing beautifully, continue at once. Jane, you must sing, and Kitty, your duet with Mary! And then the watercolors, yes, Mr. Cecil can unveil them properly.”

Elizabeth caught Mr. Cecil’s expression. The art master was a quiet man who had not expected to be thrust into a public unveiling. She suppressed a smile as he frowned at the unfinished work on the easels and retreated into a nook to rearrange the papers and select from the Bennet girls’ various sketches.

“I should be delighted to hear Miss Bennet sing,” Bingley said, settling into a chair with an excellent view of Jane. “I have thought of her voice often these past weeks.”

“And I of your dancing,” Lydia piped up. “Mr. Bingley, will you dance with me? Mary can play something lively, and we can have a proper reel.”

“Lydia!” Mrs. Bennet looked torn between mortification and opportunity. “We cannot have a reel in the drawing room.”

“Why not? We can move the furniture like we did when Mr. Darcy was here. Papa, tell Mamma we can dance.”

“I believe Mr. Moretti has opinions about dancing,” Mr. Bennet said mildly. “Perhaps we should consult him.”

Mr. Moretti, sensing an opportunity to display his versatility, produced a fiddle and began tuning it with theatrical flourish. “For dancing, we have the fiddle. For the musicale, the pianoforte. I am, as they say, a man of many talents.”

“Caroline would be horrified,” Mrs. Hurst observed to no one in particular. “A fiddle in the drawing room.”

“Miss Bingley is not here,” Bingley said cheerfully. “Her nerves would not tolerate winter travel, so she remained in London with our aunt. You shall have to be horrified enough for both of you, Louisa.”

Mrs. Hurst sniffed but said nothing further. Mr. Hurst had already found the most comfortable chair and appeared to be calculating how quickly he could fall asleep without being noticed.

And so Mr. Moretti fiddled, Mary played with great joy, and Lydia danced around the room with Kitty. Jane sang next, insisting that Elizabeth accompany her, and so Elizabeth set down her improvement journal and took her seat at the pianoforte.

Jane stood before the room, her hands folded and posture easy. She sang a setting of “Barbara Allen,” a folk tune. Her voice was not powerful, but it was clear, true, and heartbreaking in the way only Jane could produce.

Elizabeth accompanied her, her eyes drifting to the mirror. In the glass, she saw Bingley. His infectious, bouncing grin had vanished, replaced by an expression of such tenderness, almost worshipful, that Elizabeth’s fingers faltered. It was the face of a man who had discovered his mistakes, filling with a regret mixed with yearning—the way Darcy had looked at her that night in the small parlor. Darcy, who could not grin like Bingley, could not beam or bounce or wear his heart on his well-tailored sleeve, had looked at her with exactly this quality of arrested attention, and she had refused to see it.

The ballad’s notes drifted through the room, carrying the sorrow of a maiden who had tarried too long, singing to a lover already lost. A lump rose in Elizabeth’s throat, and the thought that had hovered since Darcy’s confession finally alighted: she had blamed him for Bingley’s absence, for his advice, but her own pride had played its part. She had steeled herself against Darcy, and now, she could only hope she was not too late.

“Beautiful,” Bingley said when the song ended, and the room applauded as Jane thanked him and returned to the sofa, sitting closer to Bingley than before. They fell back easily, naturally into conversation, and Elizabeth realized that neither Jane nor Bingley was thinking about the changed entail or her status as Longbourn’s heir. Even her mother had subsided, with her hands clasped, beaming at her girls with a calm satisfaction.