Page 77 of Fortuitous Encounters

“Do not be ridiculous. It was clear from the letter Mr Darcy was suffering from boredom in this county and required the company of some truly refined and elegant society. Imagine how desperate he must be if he is relying on a parson for company.”

I would have continued in that vein for another five minutes, since Charles was a slow-witted boy who had to have everything repeated to him a hundred times, but the door opened. The maid announced us without anything like the respect we were due, and more than a touch of something akin to annoyance and impatience. I gave her a nasty look to show her my displeasure, but the woman was much too thick to recognise the look, and she just grunted and left us to ourselves after announcing our names with the same tone of voice the death-takers used to call out ‘bring out your dead’ during a plague. I would discharge her in a moment if she were my servant, and I might just discharge her anyway, as the behaviour and deportment of the lower classes were shared responsibilities.

We entered a room so small I suspected it was a waiting room, but much to my astonishment, it appeared to be the parlour—the entire parlour. I looked around for the doors that would open up to make it complete, but in fact this room seemed to be all there was. It was around the size of my closet, and nowhere nearly as elegantly decorated. Whoever lived here must live in abject poverty, and I wondered who it was and why Mr Darcy was there. Was he on some mission of mercy or duty to the disagreeable place? It must be like visiting his tenants, which he had mentioned from time to time, though to tell the truth I had no idea what a tenant actually was or why you would visit one.

“Mr Bingley, Miss Bingley. Welcome! Will you join us?”

The woman who jumped up from the table and addressed us so unfashionably forwardly was completely unknown to me, so I assumed she might be the parson’s wife. She was dressed too well to be a tenant, but perhaps if not the parson’s wife, a tradesman’s wife from the village. It would not be impossible, but why she felt she could presume an acquaintance was beyond me. It was incumbent upon me to put the insufferable woman in her place lest she try to become too familiar with her betters.

“Madam, we have not even been introduced. I beg you not to address me with such familiarity.”

She looked like trouble, this one. She looked almost as impertinent and disagreeable, and come to think of it, pale and sickly looking as—

What was she doing here?

There, sitting at a table so small I would not use it to play Solitaire, was none other than Miss Eliza Bennet. Very oddly, she was sitting with Mr Darcy and some army colonel. The colonel was smiling and smirking most unbecomingly. I disliked officers in general, and took a decided dislike to this one instantly, though I had to admit that anyone sitting at table with Eliza Bennet would be in my brown books already regardless of their actions or station.

I would put the woman in her place. “Miss Eliza, what are you doing here?”

The Bennet chit surprised me by glancing at my Mr Darcy and giving him a wink. This was unpardonable, and she answered most impertinently. “Visiting my friend, Mrs Collins, of course!”

I had no idea who Mr or Mrs Collins was, so I decided on another tack.

“Mr Darcy, I see you are taking pity on the members of this group and gracing them with your presence. I applaud your decency, sir. I have always said you were the most honourable and dutiful of all the very many elevated gentlemen I am acquainted with. I applaud you.”

I gave him my most sultry look, with a subtle flicking of my eyelashes while standing straight and surreptitiously pulling my dress tighter so he would know of my approbation. Subtlety was lost on men—you had to make your intentions clear.

Eliza was giving me the same smirk she deployed at Netherfield, probably making some type of desperate ploy for Mr Darcy’s attention, but she had not the slightest chance with his true object now present.

Everyone had stood up from the table, so Miss Eliza said, “Perhaps I should perform introductions?”

I sought to put her in her place. “I have no need of meeting anyone of this rank, Eliza. Perhaps we may await Mr Darcy at Rosings, since my brother has urgent business with him.”

Miss Eliza seemed like she was… was… ah… something, about her demeanour bothered me, but she seemed ready to introduce me to her mousy friend anyway, when Charles interrupted at the worst possible time, and OH! the things he said.

“My pardon for interrupting your tea and I imagine my sister’s rudeness won us no favours. I came as soon as I got your note Darcy, though I must say you had best stop chastising me for my writing. That thing you sent me could not have been any more illegible had you soaked it in the river.”

I was torn between my desires to bash Charles over the head with my fan over his impertinence, and my need to watch what was happening at the table. How dare he criticise Mr Darcy’s penmanship? However, my indecision was cut off because I was distracted by Miss Eliza looking over at Mr Darcy, giving him a small, sultry, entirely seductive smile, and making the oddest gesture involving holding her hand well above her head as if measuring a giant.

I was nearing apoplexy when the gentleman smiled back at her and nodded. So, the little seductress already had her claws in him! Apparently, I had arrived just in time. I considered the honourable gentleman under my protection from such as she, and Eliza was not to find me easy prey for her arts and allurements, I can assure you!

Mr Darcy actually smirked. “I am afraid that is what actually happened. May I invite you and your sister to join us?”

My brother did that annoyingly jovial laugh of his. “The table seems a bit small for two more.”

The pale sickly merchant’s wife jumped up energetically, in a way entirely reminiscent of the trials I had endured with the Bennet family in Hertfordshire. Her demeanour showed an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country-town indifference to decorum. I had not the slightest desire to become acquainted with her, but she managed to beat me to a response.

“Oh, have no fear. We have a card table, do we not Lizzy? Oh! My pardon! We were never introduced in the end. I am Anne.”

With that, she stood and executed the worst curtsey I had ever seen. Really, even a merchant should be able to show respect to their betters? Even the grumpy maidservant had done a better job.

The abominable woman continued her assault. “I imagine you must be Caro!”

I had quite enough of such, and was not about to have some farmer’s wife addressing me with such familiarity, or with such a horrid shortening of my name.

“You may call me Miss Bingley! We are not on such familiar terms, so I imagine you might as well give me your surname, so I do not have to refer to you as parson’s wife or farmer’s wife or some such.”

I had no idea why Charles and Mr Darcy found that funny. I was simply putting the chit back in her place, and the only thing wrong with the set-down is that my lazy brother and indifferent suitor had not taken care of her in the first place; but they were both actually trying to prevent themselves from laughing.