Page 33 of A November to Remember

“Miss Elizabeth.” Robert seemed delighted. “You walked the whole way? Magnificent. Amazonian. I have known grown men decline such a journey in a covered coach with hot bricks and a flask.”

“It was three miles of mud, my lord, not the Pyrenees. My sister is worth a great deal more than a petticoat.”

“She is,” Robert said, staring at the floor in front of Miss Elizabeth’s feet. Everyone in the room turned to look at him, but he ignored them. He bowed.

Miss Elizabeth curtsied briskly, mud and all, the most unapologetic curtsy Darcy had ever witnessed. She went up the stairs following Hughes, leaving wet bootprints on the marble and a ringing silence in the room.

Darcy discovered he was still standing. He sat down with as much dignity as the operation allowed, which was not a great deal.

“Well.” Miss Bingley’s voice could have frosted the windows. “Well. Did you see her petticoat? Six inches deep in mud, I am absolutely certain of it. And her hair, Louisa! Blowsy as a gypsy’s. To walk three miles, alone, ankle-deep in dirt! It shows an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country-town indifference to decorum.”

“It shows an affection for her sister that is very pleasing,” Robert countered, with such a firmness that Miss Bingley recoiled.

She rallied on Darcy instead. “I am certain you would not wish to see your sister make such an exhibition, Mr Darcy.”

“Certainly not,” Darcy replied.

Miss Bingley preened.

“Georgiana could never manage three miles of ploughed ground,” he continued, reaching for the coffee pot. “She has not the constitution. Few women have.”

The preen died where it stood. Across the table, Robert made a sound into his teacup that he converted, too late, into a cough. Richard did not bother converting his at all.

“And her eyes,” Miss Bingley pressed on, shrill now, a gambler doubling her stake after a loss. “I found her eyes rather dimmed by the exercise. Quite wild, I thought. Feverish. Unbecoming.”

Darcy considered the question with the full attention it did not deserve. He was aware that a safe answer existed; men found safe answers to such questions every day, all over England, and went on to live long and peaceful lives.

“On the contrary,” he said. “They were brightened by it.”

Miss Bingley’s mouth opened and shut. Robert set down his teacup with exaggerated, sacramental care, and his expression filled Darcy with the cold, sinking certainty of an error he would be paying for over weeks.

“More coffee, cousin?” Robert asked tenderly.

“No.”

“You seem warm.”

“I am perfectly well.”

“Of course you are.” Robert settled back in his chair, steepling his fingers, the picture of a cat that had located the cream, the canary, and the deed to the dairy in a single morning. “Perfectly well. Brightened by it. Richard, do make a note of the date.”

“Noted,” Richard said, around the last of the beefsteak. “Shall I fetch the gin now, or save it for luncheon?”

Darcy retreated behind his coffee cup and stared at the tablecloth, where, against his will, the image waited for him: a muddy hem, wild curls, and a pair of dark eyes rendered brilliant by three miles of walking.

Elizabeth followed Hughes up the grand staircase, indifferent to the mud drying on her hem.

The door of the yellow guest chamber stood ajar. Before Elizabeth could even cross the threshold, Sarah, a young maid who had worked in the Longbourn scullery until recently, appeared in the passage, a porcelain basin in her hands.

“Oh, Miss Elizabeth, thank the heavens,” Sarah breathed, sagging against the doorframe. “She’s asked for you twice. Once plainly, and once when she wasn’t fully awake and mistook Mrs Nicholls for your Aunt Philips.”

Elizabeth winced. “Poor Mrs Nicholls.”

Sarah straightened her spine, adopting an accurate, stoic posture. “‘I have been called worse things by this family and survived them all,’ she told her, miss.”

Elizabeth permitted herself a small, exhausted smile. That sounded precisely like the Netherfield housekeeper. Mrs Nicholls had known the Bennet girls since they were feral creatures in pinafores. She had bandaged Lydia’s knees after a plunge from the Longbourn garden wall, skilfully extracted an angry bee from Kitty’s bonnet without disturbing the silk ribbons, and had once carried a seven-year-old Elizabeth home, tucked under one arm like a sack of flour, after an ill-advised attempt to ford a flooded ditch.

Elizabeth pushed the door wide and stepped into the chamber.