Page 14 of One Night with Mr. Darcy
She stopped and turned.
“Next time you’re here, please see to your hair.”
“My hair?”
“Yes, you know what I’m talking about. But one glance in a looking glass and you shall be apprised of the horror of which I speak. Make yourself presentable when you are in my presence, is that understood?”
Elizabeth fought a smile. “Noted, Lady Catherine. Apologies, Lady Catherine.”
“I AM ACQUAINTEDwith the parson and his wife, and I thought I might call on the parsonage in the afternoon,” said Mr. Darcy at breakfast. “I was so sorry to have missed her at dinner. We know so many people in common. We’d have much to catch up on.”
Lady Catherine was giving him a look, as if he were the most wretched slug to crawl the earth. “Catch up on, hmm? Yes, well, I think you’ve done quite enough when it comes to the parson’s wife.”
He gave her an odd look.
“It doesn’t sound proper, Fitz,” said Georgiana, who was huddled in her cloak again, claiming that she was very cold even though Mr. Darcy thought the room was sweltering.
“You could come along,” he said to her.
“I don’t think so,” said Georgiana.
“I’m afraid this afternoon is out of the question,” said Lady Catherine. “I rely on you to assist me with the arrangement of the funeral.”
“Perhaps tomorrow then.”
“Oh, Matlock will be here then,” said Lady Catherine. The Earl of Matlock was her younger brother, but long ago, she had stopped calling him Edward and started calling him Matlock or sometimes, if she was feeling especially petulant, Matty. Darcy’s uncle hated it, which seemed to make his aunt do it all the more. Darcy didn’t entirely understand about that, he supposed. “You must be here to greet your aunt and uncle and cousins.”
“Yes, all right,” said Darcy.
“The following day is the funeral, so I daresay you won’t have any time to visit her at all,” said Lady Catherine airily. “She told me you didn’t even like each other, so I don’t know why you’re planning on calling on her, anyway.”
Darcy’s entire face twitched. “She said that.” It was a question, but it didn’t go up at the end. He was resigned to her opinion of him.
“Mmm.” Lady Catherine put a bite of food in her mouth and chewed.
So, Mr. Darcy decided not to see her.
But then the funeral came and went, and she wasn’t there, and then, that evening, he couldn’t bear it.
He’d always been frightfully stupid when it came to that woman, after all, and he had no control of himself.
It was after supper—there had been a formal dinner after the funeral, around tea time. Then, there was just a light supper later. So, it was so late that it was an appalling time to call upon a person. He shouldn’t have gone.
But he found himself crossing the gardens of Rosings in the early darkness of the evening, heading directly for her, like a moth drawn to flame.
THE NETHERFIELD BALL
MR. DARCY WOULDnot remember most of the Netherfield Ball.
He remembered having the ridiculous conversation, begging Bingley to offer marriage to Jane Bennet. He remembered the positively embarrassing and clumsy dance with Elizabeth Bennet. And then he went into the smoking room and found the bottle of absinthe.
It was really Bingley’s absinthe. No one had been drinking absinthe when Darcy had been at university, but the drink had somehow burst onto the streets of Cambridge from its origins in Switzerland sometime in the ensuing years.
Absinthe was green, very strong, and purported to make one hallucinate, rather like opium, but without the obvious and negative dependency issues.
Even so, the bottle had been brought from London to various country houses and then back to London again, and no one had drunk it. It seemed it was something Bingley just liked to cart from place to place and show to people. No one was brave enough to actually try it.
Darcy decided tonight was the night for absinthe.
