Page 8 of The Vanished Bennet Sister

Two weeks later

Within two weeks of navigating the season, Elizabeth had arrived at many realisations. One of those was the fact that she did not quite like Mr Darcy. This was not a hasty generation. She had come to it after enough time had passed to gather concrete evidence.

Mr Darcy was proud. This much was legible from the set of his shoulders and the peculiar economy with which he distributed his social attentions. He stared, rather unabashedly, with a method so practised that it was rare to catch him in the middle of the act. And he asked questions in an imperial tone that often felt like he knew the answers to them before they were uttered. It was a tone that Elizabeth had found, across varying degrees of proximity, consistently difficult to manage without losing her patience.

That he kept appearing at the same events she attended was, she had concluded, a coincidence compounded by the smallness of their social world. London may be large, but the circles in which the Bennets moved were considerably less so.

She was also not going to admit that she had noticed how many times they had come across each other.

The dinner party at Mrs Abbott's was the most notable occasion. They had been placed near enough to one another for conversation to become unavoidable. Mrs Abbott herself was a widow of comfortable means and cheerful temperament who had taken a liking to the Bennets with remarkable speed.

Her house in Harley Street was decorated with historic furniture and recently refurbished drapery. The dining table was made of fine mahogany, and on it were candles from France and a view from the far window of the garden below.

Elizabeth had been aware, then, of the close distance between herself and Mr Darcy, but it was he who broke the silence first.

"I hope your family’s settling nicely in Portman Square."

"We are."

"And did you find it to your liking?"

"Very much so." She had said this with a note of finality.

He had waited. His silence was always full of attentiveness, so much so that it wasn’t quite pressure but a similar sensation. A different man would have dispelled the awkward pause, but he inhabited it and glanced at her expectantly.

"We arrived in early January," she had added. "And we find the situation very convenient."

"Your father did not accompany you?"

"He preferred to remain at Longbourn. He is, by inclination, a man of the country."

"As are many men of sense."

The remark had been delivered without inflection, which made it almost impossible to determine whether he was complimenting her father, censuring London, or both.

"Do you prefer the country yourself, Mr Darcy?" She had asked in a voice that was deliberately vague.

"I prefer Pemberley."

"That is not quite an answer to the question."

He inclined his head. "It is the most accurate one I can give."

She had let it go. Across the table, Jane and Mr Bingley were conducting one of several conversations since their first meeting at the subscription ball.

Elizabeth watched them for a moment with a fond look, but when she looked back, she discovered Mr Darcy had been watching them too. It was difficult to tell what he thought of the arrangement, which annoyed her to no avail.

After Mrs Abbott’s dinner concluded and they had all been returned by their respective conveyances to their respective establishments, Elizabeth's resolve regarding him was decided. Whatever enquiry he was conducting regarding the Bennets' situation was one she would offer no responses to.

She was too worried about the gap between their finely dressed appearances and their financial coffers to dwell on someone with distinctly threaded coats and an air of interest in her family’s personal affairs.

Her own problem was less abstract, and considerably more pressing.

The household accounts, which she tracked in her notebook on the principle that her mother’s awareness of the contents would temper her spending, had reached a figure that required some degree of alertness.

The gowns had been the first casualty of spending. Elizabeth had estimated a price on the basis of what seemed reasonable, but her mother had located a modiste in Bond Street who charged far more. By the time Elizabeth had understood the full extent of the commission, it was already concluded.

The gowns were beautiful, but also very expensive. And then there had been the gloves, bought in dozens because their mother felt two pairs each were insufficient for Town outings, ribbon trims in excess and acceptances to several more events which cost money.