Page 32 of A Most Inconvenient Murder

After twenty minutes, Elizabeth set her teacup down on the small table beside her with deliberate quiet.

Charlotte, sensing the shift, straightened and tilted her head minutely.

Elizabeth considered her next move with the same care she might have given to a game of chess. Anything too abrupt would attract Lady Catherine’s attention. Anything too subtle might go unnoticed by the only observer who really mattered.

She settled on subterfuge.

At a pause in Lady Catherine’s lecture as her teacup was being refilled, Elizabeth acted.

“Colonel Fitzwilliam,” she said, raising her voice just enough to carry but not enough to sound forced, “is the view from that window as fine as I have witnessed in the park?”

Colonel Fitzwilliam smiled. “You have caught me out, Miss Bennet. I have spent some time trying to decide whether the south lawn is the product of nature or my aunt’s choice in gardeners. I am inclined to think the latter, but the effect is so seamless, it makes me doubt my decision.”

Elizabeth let the conversation flow, feeling interest pass through the room. Even Lady Catherine, momentarily diverted from her continuing monologue on charitable education, glanced toward the window with pride. It was enough to buy Elizabeth the space she needed.

She rose, made a show of fussing with her shawl, and drifted closer to the fire, hoping to appear to admire the famed vase of lilies, though in reality, it was designed to bring herself within a yard of Mrs. Jenkinson.

From this distance, the companion’s stillness was more pronounced. The embroidery in her hands was a design of white-on-white satin stitch, a pattern so fine and repetitive that Elizabeth, who had herself endured the tedium of samplers, could not imagine anyone engaging it with real interest for morethan ten minutes at a stretch. Still, the needle did not move at all during Elizabeth’s approach, nor did Mrs. Jenkinson glance up, though Elizabeth could sense her awareness of her every step.

Elizabeth circled the vase, inhaling the scent of the lilies. As she moved to the window, she caught Colonel Fitzwilliam’s eye and nodded, inviting him to resume their earlier thread.

He did so with ease, launching into a story about the hazards of wild sheep in the north, though she could not understand why. Elizabeth only half-listened. She was watching the companion from the periphery, noting the way Mrs. Jenkinson’s gaze now tracked her own progress through the room.

Elizabeth let herself settle on the low stool near the colonel and joined in his banter. Still, when the footman entered again, this time with a tray of pastries, she saw Mrs. Jenkinson’s eyes flick to the servant, then to the tray, then to Mr. Darcy at the far side of the room, before returning to Miss de Bourgh.

When Elizabeth looked up from her debate with the colonel about the merits of scones versus buns, she glanced up to find Mr. Darcy watching her. His eyes held the intensity of a man waiting for information before drawing a conclusion.

She tilted her head the smallest degree toward Mrs. Jenkinson.

With a slow blink, he understood at once. His gaze followed the line, took in the companion’s stillness, then flicked back to Elizabeth with a compression of his brows that signaled he was already revising something in his own calculations.

Elizabeth allowed herself a trace of satisfaction, then returned her attention to the Colonel, who was now speculating whether the lilies would outlast the day.

“It depends,” she said, “on how much the gardener is allowed to interfere. Sometimes a gentle hand prolongs beauty; sometimes it hastens the end.”

It was at this moment that Lady Catherine, her voice a full octave higher than it had been, brought her cane down with a thump on the carpet. “Miss Bennet! You will tell us whether you consider the north or the south to have the finer climate. I am told that Hertfordshire is the mildest in England, but you must have an opinion.”

Elizabeth answered, as she always did, with pleasant candor and no trace of sarcasm. “The climate of Hertfordshire is more predictable, perhaps, but I believe true strength is built when surviving the unexpected. It is what gives character to a place, and to its people.”

Lady Catherine fixed her with a long, measuring look, as if trying to decide whether her answer was an act of insubordination.

Mr. Collins, sensing a threat to the smooth progress of the afternoon, jumped in with a eulogy tribute to the virtues of Kent and its produce, averting any hint of a crisis.

Elizabeth felt the moment pass, but its energy remained. Mr. Darcy had moved from the writing table to the fire, on the pretense of warming his hands, and now stood only a foot or two from where she perched beside the colonel.

In the interval when Mr. Collins fully diverted Lady Catherine’s attention, Mr. Darcy said so low she had to strain to hear it, “You are watching Mrs. Jenkinson.”

Elizabeth did not look at him; instead, she rose and once more examined the vase. “I am watching everyone. But she is the only one watching back.”

A beat of silence. “I had not considered her,” he said.

Elizabeth smiled at the vase. “No one does. That is rather the point.”

Mr. Darcy’s posture shifted, infinitesimally, toward Mrs. Jenkinson’s side of the hearth.

Mrs. Jenkinson, from her post at Miss de Bourgh’s side, caught this change with a single glance, though Elizabeth knew she could not have heard their exchange.

The rest of the visit proceeded as it always did, in a haze of the usual talk and carefully managed non-events. But when the clock on the mantel struck, Elizabeth saw at once that the balance of the room had altered. Lady Catherine swept into the corridor, with Miss de Bourgh trailing behind and Mrs. Jenkinson at her elbow. Charlotte and Mr. Collins followed, arm in arm.