Page 23 of A November to Remember

Every window within fifty feet had acquired a face.

A door flew open across the lane. A plump matron in an alarming quantity of lace descended to the pavement at a speed that defied her years, cap ribbons streaming behind her. She halted at precisely the correct distance, and sank into a curtsy so profound that Robert momentarily feared she might require a winch to be restored to a standing position. She beamed up at him.

“My lord! Oh, forgive me—Mrs Philips, my lord, sister to Mrs Bennet of Longbourn, whom I believe you had the very great honour—that is, whom you visited yesterday morning, which of course I could not possibly know, except she told me and, to be frank, everyone knows, and I said to my maid not five minutes ago, I said, Betsy, that will be the viscount—”

“Mrs Philips.” Robert bowed over her hand with the full ceremony he reserved for duchesses and good horses. “The famous Mrs Philips. I have been informed that the true heart of Hertfordshire beats in this village, and we came as quickly as the mud would allow.”

Mrs Philips turned a triumphant shade of pink.

A second matron appeared at her side. It was the lady who carried the stuffed pheasant upon her head on Lucas Lodge. Robert had not observed her approach; she was simply there, mallow and watchful. Mrs Philips performed the introduction with visible reluctance.

“Mrs Long, my lord. A neighbour.”

“A dear friend.” Mrs Long’s smile was pure syrup. “We were only this moment discussing your party’s arrival at Netherfield, my lord. Such an ornament to the county. Though I do remember—because I witnessed it myself—not that I speak with others of such things—that poor Mr Darcy spent the whole of the assembly glaring at the wallpaper. A weak constitution, I fear. It often afflicts these great families—not yours. Yours is impeccable, though he is your cous—”

Mrs Long trailed off and Robert fell a little bit in love.

Here it was. The apparatus he had glimpsed at Lucas Lodge, now laid bare on the pavement of Meryton: a system of communication of matchless speed, maintained by experts, and powered by tea. Whitehall would weep with envy. And somewhere in its archives, filed between the price of muslin and the vicar’s digestion, lay everything he needed to know about Miss Elizabeth Bennet.

“Mrs Philips.” He pressed a hand to his heart. “Mrs Long. I find myself quite overcome by the October air. Is there, perhaps, a parlour nearby where a weary traveller might—”

“Tea!” Mrs Philips declared, seizing his arm before the sentence could land. “You shall have tea, my lord, my best seed cake, and Mr Philips’s second-best chair, for the best one has a spring.”

“Is there cake?” Richard emerged from the baker’s with a paper parcel already half-plundered. “I heard cake.”

The good lady led the way to her townhouse.

Her parlour was small, violently floral, aggressively warm, and hung with more portraits than a family of two could reasonably generate. It smelled of beeswax, dried lavender, and cinnamon—the last of which had claimed Richard’s soul somewhere in the hallway.

It was also, Robert was delighted to discover, occupied.

Mrs Bennet sat enthroned on the best sofa, fanning herself with a lace fan. By the window, Miss Kitty and Miss Lydia Bennet were pressed against the glass like gargoyles, maintaining a vigilant watch for anything in a red coat. Miss Mary sat primly in a chair by the table.

“Lord Keathley!” Mrs Bennet surged upward. “And the colonel! Sister, quickly, move the footstool! The colonel is too tall for that chair, he will strike his knees against the mahogany!”

“I assure you, madam, my knees have survived French artillery; they can withstand Hertfordshire mahogany.” Richard’s eyes locked onto a towering, precarious structure of iced cakes on a three-tiered silver stand, and he moved towards it with the singular focus of a predator. He paused, bowed to Miss Mary, seemed to think about it, and finally chose a chair at an equal distance from her and the cakes.

Robert took Mr Philips’s second-best chair, which announced his arrival with a chord of complaint, and arranged himself into a posture of conspiratorial intimacy: legs crossed, elbows on the armrests, chin lowered to the confidential angle.

“Now, ladies.” He dropped his voice to a hushed, theatrical register. “I must throw myself on your mercy. I have spent days and days composing...” He realised what he had just uttered and coughed to cover it. “Listening, I meant, listening to my friend Bingley compose silent poetry to a lady’s profile. I am parched, ladies. Starved. I require conversation between adults, and I believe this parlour is the heart of the county. Tell me everything. Who among your neighbours is presently engaged in scandalous behaviour? Speak freely, lest I die of boredom and haunt this excellent chair forever.”

Mrs Philips and Mrs Bennet exchanged a look. It was not a casual glance; it was the silent communication of two generals recognising a foreign dignitary who spoke their language. Mrs Long, in her corner, went very still, in the manner of a cat that has always been in the room and intends to remain so.

“Well...” Mrs Philips signalled Betsy to pour their tea, then leaned forward, adopting his conspiratorial tone. “I suppose you have not heard about the new apothecary’s wig? The one over in Hatfield.”

“I have not!” Robert’s gasp could have carried to the back row of the Theatre Royal. “Is it powdered? Is it à la macaroni? Do not tell me it houses local wildlife.”

“Worse,” Mrs Bennet declared, snapping her fan shut for emphasis. “It is bought second-hand. And not from a gentleman! Mrs Goulding swears on her best china that she saw the very same wig resting on the head of a travelling actress last October. He purchased it from her, my lord. Second-hand hair!”

“Scandalous!” Robert recoiled in delighted horror. “A purveyor of medicine, dispensing tinctures whilst sporting the cast-offs of the theatre. It is a wonder the village has not succumbed to theatrical fever. I shall write to the Royal College of Physicians. This aggression cannot stand.”

“Exactly what I said!” Mrs Philips crowed, slapping the arm of her chair. “But wait until you hear about Sir William’s pig. The man was knighted by the King, you know, and he now believes his livestock equally elevated. He has ordered a velvet collar for the beast.”

“A velvet collar.” Robert’s jaw dropped by a carefully measured half-inch. He leaned closer. “For a pig. In what shade?”

“Blue!” Mrs Bennet supplied, vibrating with glee.

“Oh, a fatal error.” He shook his head with the gravity of a physician delivering a hopeless prognosis. “Blue clashes terribly with the natural pink of a swine. If one must adorn a pig—and I hold that one must—one opts for emerald green, or perhaps a tasteful yellow. The man has no eye for colour. Knighthoods are wasted on such people.”