Page 50 of A November to Remember

“Mr Darcy,” Miss Elizabeth observed, sweeping his fish to her side of the table. “You play remarkably ill for a clever man. I begin to suspect charity.”

“You may acquit me of charity, Miss Elizabeth. I am ruthless at cards.”

“Then I tremble for your concentration. What can become of it?”

Darcy studied his bad hand for a long while. “The society here is very varied.”

Robert bit the inside of his cheek and led a low club.

Miss Bingley slapped a card onto the table, determined to regain control of the attention. “I was telling Louisa this morning what a comfort it is to have such accomplished company. It is what I miss most from town. Accomplished women.”

“I wonder that you miss them.” Bingley tossed a card onto the table. “It seems to me that all young ladies are accomplished. They all paint tables and net purses and cover screens. I never hear a young lady spoken of but she is called accomplished.”

“Your list, Bingley, is the trouble.” Darcy played a card without looking at it. “The word is applied to any woman who can decorate an object. I cannot boast of knowing more than half a dozen women in the whole range of my acquaintance, who are truly accomplished.”

“Nor I,” Miss Bingley agreed instantly. “I am sure.”

“Then you must comprehend a great deal in the idea, Mr Darcy.” Miss Elizabeth turned in her chair to face him, the firelight illuminating one side of her face, her expression rolling up its sleeves, ready for battle.

“I do.”

“Oh, certainly!” Miss Bingley advanced her argument, the syllabus already unfurling. “No woman can be really esteemed accomplished without possessing a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages. And besides all this, a certain something in her air, her manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions—”

“All this she must possess,” Darcy agreed, holding Miss Elizabeth’s gaze, “and to all this she must yet add something more substantial: the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”

“Half a dozen,” Miss Elizabeth said thoughtfully, sitting back in her chair. “I am no longer surprised at you knowing only six accomplished women, Mr Darcy. I now rather wonder at your knowing any.”

“You are severe on your sex, madam.”

“I am arithmetical about it. Music, singing, drawing, dancing, the languages, the air, the walk, the voice, and a library. I never saw such a woman. I never saw such capacity, taste, application, and elegance, united in one person. I suspect, sir, that if I did meet her, I should not like her at all, and neither could I befriend her. She would have no time; she would be practising.”

“I met her once.” Robert collected the trick. “Vienna, 1809. She was Hungarian, seventy-one years old, and she made the ambassador cry in three languages. Darcy is right that she exists. Miss Elizabeth is right that she is a fearsome sight to behold.”

“She sounds outstanding.” Richard leaned over the table. “Did she cook?”

“Richard, she was a countess.”

“The list did not say she could not cook. The list said everything else. If we are building the perfect woman, I am adding pastry, and I shall defend the addition to my last breath.”

“You see the difficulty, Miss Bingley.” Miss Elizabeth spread her hands. “You have described a woman. The colonel has described a regiment’s mess cook. Mr Darcy requires a scholar. Among the three of you, the poor creature must sing, paint, read, walk beautifully, and produce a pie, presumably all at once. I maintain she does not exist, and if she does, she is exhausted.”

“Some ladies,” Miss Bingley stated, her smile dropping the temperature of the room by several degrees, “undervalue their own sex in order to recommend themselves to gentlemen. It is a paltry device, in my opinion. A very mean art.”

“Undoubtedly.” Darcy kept his voice level. “There is a meanness in all the arts which ladies sometimes condescend to employ for captivation. Whatever bears affinity to cunning is despicable.”

The reply was ostensibly aimed at no one, delivered to the cards in his hand, and landed on Miss Bingley from a great height. He watched her absorb the result of the shot, look at the man she had failed to captivate, and elect to hear it as agreement.

She rapidly changed tactics. She settled back in her chair and arranged her skirts. “These country habits do follow one indoors. Louisa was saying that something in the room smells—what was your word, Louisa?”

Mrs Hurst lowered her handkerchief from her nose. “Foul. Sweetish. Sinister. It began twenty minutes ago.”

“Foul,” Miss Bingley agreed, letting her gaze rest on Miss Elizabeth’s unadorned grey hem. “One does wonder what could have been tracked in.”

The fire cracked loudly. Richard stopped chewing. Robert’s cards came down to the green baize by degrees.

Darcy set down his cards, preparing to deliver the sentence he had assembled somewhere between foul and tracked in. He did not have the chance.

“It is the lilies.”