Page 52 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

She did not ask whose. He saw her think of it, and decide not to, and file the decision away for later, the way she filed her letters. Then she drew on her gloves.

"I shall send to Rosings for it today," she said. "By my own groom. It will be here by Tuesday." She turned to the door. "And, Fitzwilliam."

"Aunt?"

"When we find whoever it is," said Lady Catherine de Bourgh, "you will leave them to me."

She went out. He heard her voice in the hall a moment later, demanding her carriage and a bonnet for Mrs Darcy that was not green, and then Elizabeth's voice, laughing, and then Anne's dry cough and dry laugh, and then Georgiana's, higher and lighter, joining in.

The house was full of women, and noise, and quarrelling about bonnets. It had never been so full in his life. He sat at his desk and listened to them, and for the first time in a week, he felt that they might win.

Chapter 15: Midpoint

Hyde Park. Friday, 3rd April 1812

The new bonnet was straw, with a deep brim lined in dark blue silk and a single curling blue feather, and Lady Catherine inspected it at a quarter to five in the hall with her lorgnette and pronounced it tolerable. Then she took Elizabeth's arm in a grip like a vice and marched her down the steps to the barouche.

They went three times round the Ring, very slowly, exactly as she had promised.

Elizabeth had driven in the Park before, with Lady Theodosia, in a light little phaeton that nobody noticed. This was not like that. This was like being carried through the streets in a triumphal car. The barouche was enormous and old-fashioned and black and gold, with the de Bourgh arms on every panel and two footmen up behind in powdered wigs, and Lady Catherine sat bolt upright in the middle of the seat under a black silk parasol the size of a small tent, and bowed.

She bowed to everybody. She bowed to dowagers and duchesses and young men on horseback. She bowed to Mrs Drummond-Burrell, who had cut Elizabeth dead at Lady Pembury's, and Mrs Drummond-Burrell, catching sight of the de Bourgh arms, turned first white and then red and bowed back so low that her bonnet nearly fell off. She bowed to Lady Pembury, who was driving with her niece, and said in her carrying voice, "Maria! How well you look. And this must be the niece. Such a pity about your ball, my dear. My nephew so seldom dances with anybody but his wife. You must not take it to heart," and drove on, leaving Lady Pembury purple.

At the end of the first circuit, Elizabeth was trying very hard not to laugh. At the end of the second, she had given up trying. By the third, people were beginning to stop their carriages and horses on purpose to see them pass, and several of them were smiling. The old admiral, Sir Hugh, waved his hat from the rail and roared bravo at the top of his lungs.

"You are enjoying yourself," said Lady Catherine, without turning her head.

"I am. I am so sorry, ma'am."

"Do not be sorry. It is quite correct to enjoy oneself. It shows them you are not afraid." A faint grim twitch. "I am enjoying myself too. I have not done this in years. I had forgotten how very much people dislike being bowed to by somebody they have been rude about."

On Sunday, they went to St George's, Hanover Square, and sat in the front pew.

All five of them: Lady Catherine at the end, like a black granite pillar; Anne beside her in her shawls; Georgiana, pale but composed; Elizabeth; and Darcy at the other end, next to the aisle, so that everyone coming up to the altar rail had to pass him. The church was full. Elizabeth could feel the stares on the back of her neck like the heat of a fire. She did not turn round once. She sang the hymns, and said the responses, and listened to a long dull sermon about the Prodigal Son, and when it was over she walked back down the aisle on her husband's arm with her chin up and the blue feather curling on her bonnet, and did not look at anyone.

At the church door, while they waited for the carriage, a small elderly lady in grey came up to her, and hesitated, and then held out her hand.

"Mrs Darcy," she said. "You will not know me. I am Lady Harriet Kerr. I knew Lady Anne, your husband's mother, when we were girls." She pressed Elizabeth's hand. "I only wished to say that I do not believe one word of it. Not one. Nor do a good many others. They are only waiting to see which way the wind blows."

She went away before Elizabeth could answer.

In the carriage going home, Lady Catherine reported on Lady Sandridge. She had called on Friday morning, as promised, and sat in Lady Sandridge's drawing room for an hour and twenty minutes, and at the end of it Lady Sandridge had wept.

"She would not give me a name," Lady Catherine said grimly. "I did not expect it. She is a fool, but she is not so great a fool as to name a lady to my face without proof. But she told me this much. The person who first spoke to her of Georgiana was a lady very near to my sister-in-law Matlock. Very near indeed. In her household, almost." She looked out of the window at Hanover Square. "She said it in a way that told me she thought I should know who she meant, and was surprised I did not."

Elizabeth looked at Darcy across the carriage. He looked back at her. Neither of them said anything.

Anne, in the corner, wrapped in her shawls, said nothing either. But she coughed, once, very drily, and looked out of the other window.

#

Richard arrived on Sunday night, soaked to the skin, having ridden from Canterbury in the rain on a hired hack with a mouth like iron, and walked into Darcy's study at ten o'clock dripping onto the Turkey carpet.

"Seven days' leave," he said, before Darcy could speak. "I told my colonel my grandmother was dying. I have no grandmother. I shall go to hell for it, but not before Monday next." He dropped into the chair by the fire and held out his hands to it. "Brandy. And then tell me everything. Your letter was about as informative as a cavalry dispatch."

Darcy gave him brandy, and told him everything. The wager, the paragraph, the betting book, Aldridge, Hurst and Caroline. The Post, and the door, and good-morrow. The whispers at court about Georgiana. Lady Catherine's crusade. Anne's fishhooks. Lady Sandridge's lady very near to Lady Matlock.

Richard listened without interrupting. He had a gift for it; it was what made him valuable to the men who sent him into Spain and Portugal and places he never named at dinner. When Darcy had finished, he sat for a long time looking into the fire, turning the glass in his big brown hands.