Page 39 of The Matchmaker’s Mistake

“Might I not stay home?”

Her aunt set a stitch. “Will Mr. Bingley be there?”

“I imagine so. He has yet to stay away when Jane is invited.”

“Then Jane must go.” Aunt Gardiner pulled her thread through the cloth.

“Yes.”

“Which means you must accompany her.”

Elizabeth waited, but her aunt did not look up. “Aunt,” she said at length, “may I speak to you about it?”

Her aunt set the apron aside, folded her hands in her lap, and waited.

“I have been thinking that I might decline Friday on some polite pretext. A headache. Fatigue, which would be truthful. Jane could attend with the Bingleys. I would not be missed.”

“You would be missed, Lizzy. But that is by the way.” Her aunt rose, crossed to the bell, rang it, and when Martha came, said, “We are not at home this morning, Martha. If Mr. Bingley calls, he is to be given coffee in my husband’s study and told that Miss Bennet will join him there at twelve. I am sure he will not mind the irregularity.”

Martha, who was a sensible girl, did not blink. “Yes, ma’am.”

“And shut the door behind you, please.”

The door closed with a soft click, and Aunt Gardiner returned to her chair. “Now, Lizzy. Plainly. Why do you wish to decline?”

Elizabeth gathered herself. “Lady Anne does not invite me because she has any business with me,” she said. “She invites me because she believes it would be unkind to invite one sister and not the other. Once I am in her drawing room, I am a spare piece of furniture, and Lady Anne, who orders her household to a nicety, dislikes spare furniture. So she produces Mr. Cresswell of Maplehurst, who speaks to me mostly as a favour to his hostess. If I attend on Friday, I expect she will have someone else.”

“I do not understand the problem.”

“It is mortifying.”

Her aunt’s expression was kind, but she repeated, “And?”

Elizabeth blew out an unhappy breath. “And I had rather not go.”

Her aunt studied her before saying, “Lizzy, you have borne far greater folly than being introduced to a respectable gentleman in a lady’s drawing room. I cannot persuade myself that this is the whole of your objection.”

Elizabeth opened her mouth to say that it was the whole of her objection, but hesitated. How could she explain what she scarcely understood herself? Mr. Darcy did not like her. On that point, at least, there could be no uncertainty. Nor, she was very sure, did she like him.

Yet she had been used to command his notice in Hertfordshire. She had always been able to provoke, to rally, to draw from him some look or a reply.

In London, he treated her with such smooth indifference that it left her strangely disoriented. Was her wit amusing enough for Hertfordshire, but not for rooms filled with those of his own consequence? Or—more mortifying still—had she mistaken the matter entirely, and fancied herself his equal in encounters where he had never been engaged at all?

“Mr. Darcy tolerates my presence for the sake of his friend, but no more,” she said at last. “His mother is attempting to make it up to me in the way she knows best, but . . .” She sighed. “I do not know how to ask her to stop.”

There. The sentence was out. She would not have spoken it to anyone but Aunt Gardiner, and she felt a little ill having spoken it even here, for it felt very close to ingratitude.

Her aunt did not answer at once. She simply looked at Elizabeth thoughtfully, as if deciding how to respond. And eventually, she did.

“I shall set Mr. Darcy aside for the moment, Lizzy.”

“Aunt—”

“I have not enough material for an opinion of him, and I do not propose to acquire any. If you wish, we may take him up again when I do. For the present I shall speak only of his mother.”

“But Aunt, he is the reason⁠—”

“Lady Anne Darcy,” her aunt went on, “is the most accomplished matchmaker in London. She does not waste invitations.”