Page 37 of Till Death Us Do Part
Anne chuckled but asked nervously. “Are you certain you are over Miss Bennet? Will it pain you to see her again?”
Bingley took her hand gently. “Yes, I am well over her. You can ask Darcy. I have survived such disappointments before, and I am extremely happy to never have to do so again. I made the right choice.”
Anne smiled weakly but still looked nervous. “Darcy, I for one want to be at this wedding. I will feel better about the ghost of Miss Bennet once I have seen her.”
“Before the ball, I would have considered the two eldest Miss Bennets rather elegant and well mannered, aside from the appalling lack of sense the eldest showed in riding to Netherfield in the rain. I always wondered if that was a deliberate strategy, and if so, whether it was the mother’s scheme or a family affair.”
Bingley said, “Mr Bennet was on the indolent side, but it seems unlikely his daughter would ride out to such an important dinner without his knowledge or consent. I would wager it wasMrs Bennet’s design, and her husband went along. Whether the daughters were in on the scheme or not, I could not say.”
Darcy grumbled. “There is a saying the teachers use with children in America:‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.’Mrs Bennet applied that to good effect.”
“It would seem so,” Bingley replied, then chuckled. “Would it be unseemly to celebrate you entering the arena rather than myself.”
“I suppose not. Shall we?”
“Lizzy, I know I am in your brown books, but is there anything I can do to make today better, or even less bad?”
Elizabeth stared at her sister for a minute, feeling like her life was on a precipice. She had spent the bulk of the last fortnight doing what amounted to either deep reflection or sulking.
Her Aunt Gardiner had, true to form, selected a lovely trousseau, and delivered it complete with a new trunk. She looked at some of the gifts, including some scandalous nightclothes that she thought she might as well burn or give to the kitchen for rags since she would never wear them, as a last hurrah from her life as a Bennet.
Her future husband was well known to be high on the instep, and she was not certain if or when she would be able to see her aunt and uncle again. She was not at all concerned with the inconsistency of thinking her betrothed would disdain her connexions in trade, when his good friend Bingley was the son of a tradesman.
She had spent some time choosing which dresses and things to take with her and which to leave for her sisters. Nobody had a word from her groom since the altercation in the hallway three weeks earlier, but she assumed he would either show up or not—probably based on whether he learned of her attempted flights or not.
In the end, she decided to err on the side of generosity. She imagined Mr Darcy would want his wife dressed better than the daughter of an insignificant country squire, so most of her clothing would not see very much use in future. If he expected her to dress better, he would pay for it, would he not? In the end, she only took a few favourite walking dresses, enough to get her by for a month or two and left the bulk of her clothing for her sisters.
Her father insisted she at least take breakfast and supper with the family each day, and on her wedding day they started earlier than usual so she would have time to prepare for the upcoming ordeal.
While the young lady was still angry with Jane, she found she did not have it in her heart to hold onto the feeling with such vigour. She imagined she would have enough vexation to suit anybody with her new husband if he turned out to be disagreeable, and she saw little point in litigating the past. She would never again be what she was with her sisters. Most likely, she would be an indifferent correspondent at best.
It seemed unlikely she would ever return to Hertfordshire. Her neighbours, whom she had known all her life, had not been theworstgossips they could possibly be, but they had not been supportive either. In the end, she could not, at that moment, feel like she needed to see anybodyfrom her family or her home for a very long while, if ever.
“You can fix my hair if you like.”
It was not a full rapprochement, nor was there likely to be one anytime soon, but it was more than Jane expected given the level of their disagreement, and she was happy to take what she could get. In an emotional sense, she missed the connexion she had once had with her sister but doubted it would ever be repaired. In a practical sense, she thought she might be depending on Mrs Darcy’s connexions sooner than later, but shealso felt somewhat guilty about her role in Elizabeth’s current state. She still felt that Elizabeth was being stubborn and not especially bright, but she did not hold the animosity she would if her sister remained recalcitrant enough to sabotage the eldest’s own prospects. She at least understood she was two years closer to a spinster’s cap than Lizzy had been, and the compromise had ended the only promising acquaintance she had seen in years.
After breakfast, they retired to the guest room. Lydia asked if she could join them, and Elizabeth agreed to the scheme. There was little chance her youngest sister would not revert to form during the day, but it would not be on Elizabeth’s head if it happened.
Elizabeth had taken a bath the previous day and did not feel any need for another. It was a small and petty sort of victory, but not the worst.
Jane said, “Lizzy, your gown is… interesting.”
“La, it may be the most boring dress ever made” Lydia added with a giggle, which Kitty echoed.
Elizabeth endured their teasing with ease. “I think it marks the occasion perfectly, and I doubt Mr Darcy will care one whit what I wear… if he even notices.”
Herimprovementsto the dress mostly amounted to remaking it as plain as she could without going overboard into vulgarity or looking like a pauper. Elizabeth had approached the Netherfield Ball with high hopes that she might dance with Mr Wickham and a few other gentlemen, so she had made the dress her best estimate of festive, happy, and ornamental.
On the other hand, her attitude towards her nuptials could best be described ascautiously optimistic it might not be a total disaster, so the dress reflected that sentiment. Most of the modifications amounted to removing expensive lace, and replacing it with either simple ribbons, or nothing at all. The dress was white, an unusual choice for a bride, but otherwiseunremarkable. She did not lookpoor, but she did not lookrichor even very well off either.
As Jane set about doing her hair, which was a particular skill for the eldest, Elizabeth wondered about why she thought that plainness was the right signal for the day. Perhaps, she wanted to enter her marriage without overt pretensions. She had to, somehow, convince her husband that she had nothing to do with the compromise, and that she wasnotflirting with him for six weeks. She thought that if they did not at least start out from a position of honesty and apology, beginning that very day, they were doomed to be at each other’s throats throughout all eternity. It just seemed that wearing a gown that was noticeably better than anything she had ever owned before would seem more like gloating than anything else.
Mary and Kitty joined, and in another life, it might well have been a merry party. In this life, it was sombre but at least moderately cordial.
Mrs Bennet tried to enter the room an hour later to be certain that all was as it should be, but Elizabeth would not even allow her entrance, so she went away in a huff, grumbling about ungrateful daughters with insufficient trousseaus, while yelling for poor beleaguered Hill to bring her salts.
As Darcy’s trio were putting on their wraps for the trip to the church, the Netherfield butler handed him a note. “This just arrived by express, sir.”
