An End to Estrangement - A Pride and Prejudice Variation

Part 21

A gale of laughter sounded behind Darcy's back as he put some distance between himself and Elizabeth and he felt his face flood with heat. Evidently, she cared even less for him than he thought, if she would proceed to joke about him with strangers the moment his back was turned! He sank gratefully into a chair beside Mr Bennet, grateful that the man did not seem to notice his discomposure, but blinked at him with a kind half-smile.

"I am afraid, Mr Darcy, that if you seek to discuss Boswell with me you will be disappointed." His smile grew. "Never could get on with him, and I do not care for his subject, I am afraid, important though he may be -" Here he arched his eyebrows past Darcy in an expression evidently intended for Elizabeth, and from which she drew some inexplicable meaning. "I have nothing good to say about it. My daughter, on the other hand..."

"You have many good things to say about me, Papa, but do not begin them now, or my sisters will grow weary of forever being in my shadow!"

Elizabeth laughed at this pretty little bit of self-aggrandisement, her expression demonstrating how little she believed her words, and how adeptly she had deployed them for comic gain. Darcy's heart caught in his chest, rallying despite itself. He had always so admired this skill in Elizabeth, who never seemed constrained by her faults, nor did she excuse them. Self-mockery had never been Darcy's forte. It was not how he had been raised, and not a skill he had developed in adulthood. Seeing, now, the laughter and affection it provoked throughout the room, he rather regretted it.

The conversation moved on and Mr Bennet, despite his antipathy towards both Samuel Johnson and his biographer, possessed plenty of interesting opinions and Darcy found himself listening to the man's droll treatise on life in Hertfordshire with a pang of regret. This man might have been a father in place of the one he had lost. No mere mortal could usurp the long-lamented, too-soon-departed elder Mr Darcy, whose loss Darcy still felt as deep as if it were a physical injury, but how different his life in the intervening years might have been with a man such as Mr Bennet to lean on, to seek advice from, to grow to know better.

"I did not realise, Mr Darcy, that you were a little acquainted with my cousin. I confess we have been but loosely connected over the past ten years after some falling out between his father and myself over something too petty to recall now." Mr Bennet's smile grew pained and Darcy deduced, correctly, that he did indeed remember what had caused the falling out and thought it quite necessary at the time, although considerably harder to hold onto the grudge now that his foe was dead, leaving his son to mend fences in his stead.

"We are not acquainted," Darcy offered, wrenching his gaze back away from Mr Collins, for it strayed there and rested unfailingly on Elizabeth, who continued to smile and converse with her cousin as if there were no others present, a comfortable arrangement that caused Darcy pain when he saw it, although he could not begin to fathom why. "At least, we are not directly acquainted. It seems my aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, is patroness to Mr Collins at Hunsford." He smiled, grimly. "A fact she neglected to mention to me, although it seems she has scarcely tired of discussing my virtues with her curate."

"Dear me!" Mr Bennet's eyes twinkled. "What must be done but to live up to the picture constructed of us by those who admire us."

Darcy's brows knit and he wondered if Mr Bennet was teasing him. He was not unlike Elizabeth in this, the strange sing-song voice that claimed to be truthful but was belied by a sparkle in their eyes, the tug at the corner of their lips that could not quite be resisted.

"Indeed," Darcy said, unable to conjure a worthy rejoinder, and resolving, instead, to bring the conversation to a close. He scanned the room, eager for some other, safer, topic to discuss with the Bennet patriarch, but was saved from trying by Lydia Bennet, who leaned bodily across Jane so as to attract Bingley's attention and declare in a loud voice,

"Are you to attend the dinner at Lucas Lodge, Mr Bingley?"

Her voice was at such a pitch and volume to cross every other conversation and reach the ears of all present, so that chatter quickly shifted to the upcoming dinner, speculation rife on who had been invited and who would attend, and who might have been snubbed in this current round of generosity by their near neighbours.

"We will indeed, Miss Lydia," Mr Bingley said, affably turning to survey the rest of the room. "I trust you shall all attend? We are still quite newly arrived in Hertfordshire, and so the trial off attending a party will be far more enjoyable if we may rely on the presence of friends amidst the crowd of strangers."

This reference to her as a friend made Lydia shriek and clutch hold of her younger sister, both girls dissolving into excitable giggling whispers.

"Indeed, we are only too delighted to be invited," Mrs Bennet said, with an expansive smile. "Sir William is an old friend to us, you understand, and he was kind enough to extend an invitation not only to us but to Mr Collins as well."

"Well, then! We shall be a merry party, all together!" Bingley declared, turning to draw Darcy into his conversation. "Now, we need only smooth things over with Mr Egerton -"

"What things?"

This question came from an otherwise quiet, shadowy corner of the parlour, from a young lady who looked so like Elizabeth that for a moment Darcy feared it was she that had spoken But, no, she was still sitting on Mr Collins's right side, although he sensed her eyes on him, shifting away quickly as soon as he lifted his head. A second glance confirmed this was not Elizabeth but another sister. Her features were a little plainer than Elizabeth's and her voice shook when she spoke as if it was quite out of character to make herself heard amidst her loud, overbearing family.

"Nought but a case of mistaken identity," Charles declared, with a grin. "Poor Mr Egerton was quite convinced he had met Darcy before, and parted on the very worst of terms, I might add. It took a great deal of persuasion to convince him it was not the case, that Darcy is too good a fellow to ever be guilty of the crimes for which Egerton held him responsible."

Darcy swallowed a groan, knowing, as apparently Charles did not, that this was the very worst explanation he might have offered, bound to inflame rather than douse the group's curiosity. He sank lower in his seat, resting his head in his hands and allowing Charles and Caroline, between them, to field questions whose answers provoked gasps of shock and delighted whispers. Only Elizabeth continued to keep her eyes fixed on Darcy, and for once, he did not look away from her sympathetic gaze.