Page 70 of The Briar Bargain
For he had no doubt that Miss Bingley would cause the young man a great deal of trouble.
He cast a glance at Miss Bingley, who took her seat at the end of the table and offered Mrs. Hurst a composed smile. Her fingers adjusted her napkin with a light touch.
Her acceptance of the seating arrangements seemed unusual, but he did not think on it overmuch.
Bingley, prompted by a question from Miss Bennet, launched into a story with the easy familiarity of someone who had never met an anecdote he could not improve in the retelling.
"Darcy once attempted to bake a treacle tart," he said cheerfully, his eyes twinkling with the particular mischief that suggested the tale had been polished through multiple renditions.
“It was a wager at the club,” Darcy replied, shaking his head. He addressed Miss Elizabeth. “My cousin, who is a colonel in the army, is forever baiting me.”
“And you always take him up on it?”
Darcy’s soft snort seemed to surprise Miss Elizabeth. “He is very persuasive,” he replied, by way of explanation.
“And he persuaded you to bake?” she asked.
“We were all reminiscing one evening about the food at Eton. It was inedible.”
“So his cousin wagered that he could not cook anything better,” Bingley added.
Miss Elizabeth turned to Darcy with one slender brow arched. “And did you?”
He smiled at her incredulity. “I did.”
"Ha!” Bingley cried. He addressed the entire table. “They rounded up several men from the club who had attended Eton to settle the matter. Paid them each a sovereign. Darcy neglected the sugar entirely. Confused it with salt, if memory serves.”
Darcy set down his spoon with deliberate care and addressed the table at large. "And yet, it was not entirely inedible. Therefore, my efforts were better than Eton’s, and I won the wager."
"Itwasinedible. It was hard as a brick," Bingley replied with undiminished cheer. "It nearly cracked my teeth.”
“Then you were one of the men who volunteered?” Miss Bennet inquired.
“A sovereign is a sovereign,” Bingley said cheerfully. Then he turned back to Darcy. “The poor cook wept when he saw what you had done to his kitchen. There were flour handprints on every surface, and something that might have been treacle coating the ceiling."
“I had to spend hours cleaning it,” Darcy said, shaking his head. “I could not pay the servants at the club enough to do it for me. But it was worth it to defeat my cousin.”
Everyone laughed, but it was Miss Elizabeth's laughter—warm, genuine, entirely without affectation—that drew Darcy's eyes before he thought to resist the impulse. She did not laugh delicately, as so many young ladies had been taught to do, with false, carefully modulated tones designed to showcase their refinement. She laughed with her whole face, her eyes bright with mirth, and something in her expression told him she found the idea of Darcy wrestling with pastry dough thoroughly diverting.
"I once made a plum pudding so firm," she admitted to everyone at the table, "that my youngest sister used it to chase the cat from the parlour."
"I trust the cat survived?" Bingley asked.
"Physically, yes. But I do not believe she ever forgave us.”
“And my mother used this failure to impress upon Elizabeth that gentlewomen did not cook,” Jane added. “I think we were all afraid to try after that.”
“I only wished to be helpful,” Miss Elizabeth said with a laugh. “But I fear our cook informed me that if I wished to be helpful, I would remain far away from her kitchen.”
“And how old were you?” Darcy asked.
“Oh, eight or nine. I still required a stool to stand on.”
An image rose unbidden of a determined little girl with dark eyes dragging a wooden stool across the kitchen with single-minded purpose, her small chin set with the same stubborn resolve he was coming to know so well. How earnestly she must have climbed up to reach the worktable, how certain she must have been that she would create something wonderful. Even as a child, Miss Elizabeth had evidently possessed an irrepressible desire to be useful, to contribute.
"What a remarkable woman your mother must be, Miss Elizabeth!”
Darcy turned his head in the direction of Miss Bingley’s voice.
