Page 21 of Mr Darcy’s Lakeside Courtship

“The fault is mine, your ladyship.” Aunt Madeline took the chair Martin drew, and smiled as if punctuality were a charming local custom she hoped to study. “I detained my niece, as we had private matters to discuss.”

Lady Catherine sniffed, but did not argue.

Elizabeth moved to sit beside her aunt. Mr Darcy was there before the footman, drawing the chair for her, and then he was back at the sideboard again.

“Coffee, Miss Elizabeth, or tea?” he asked.

“Tea, I thank you.”

He poured it himself and brought the cup to her. Martin’s eyelid flickered, which in a butler of his calibre was a fully raised brow.

“The strawberry preserve,” Mr Darcy said, and then, catching himself in the act of directing the dish near her plate, he altered course by a fraction and set the pot where anyone might reach it. “Mrs Reynolds keeps a strawberry preserve that we prefer to the orange marmalade. If it is not to your taste, there is honey.”

“It is perfectly fine, Mr Darcy. I thank you.”

“Fitzwilliam,” Lady Catherine bellowed, “is determined to perform the duties of his servants. He was a gardener earlier, and now a footman.”

“I am being a good host. The matter is closed, Aunt.”

“It is not closed if you continue to stand about in this manner. Sit. Anne requires a settled table. Motion at meals is injurious to a delicate constitution.”

Miss de Bourgh buttered a roll with unblinking devotion.

“Mother,” she began, “I have been sitting in a draught. Mrs Jenkinson thought I ought to ask whether the breakfast parlour faces the wrong way for my throat, or whether it is only the window.”

Lady Catherine turned at once.

“The window. I said as much to Fitzwilliam an hour after I arrived. North light is for watercolours, not for constitutions. You will move your chair before you have finished that roll, Anne, and you will keep the shawl on. A chill at breakfast becomes a fever by dinner. I will not have it.”

Miss de Bourgh shifted her chair the required inch and returned to the roll.

Miss Darcy produced an earnest nod that would not have deceived a cat.

“I am glad of the warning, Aunt. Only I am never sure, when a dish is sweet, whether I am admiring a preserve or a jelly, and I should hate to praise the wrong one in your hearing.”

“Jelly is clear; a preserve retains the fruit. It is not a difficult distinction, Georgiana, though I perceive your brother has never thought it worth teaching. Mrs Gardiner, you keep a house in town. Do you permit your cook to call a jelly a preserve, or have you standards?”

Aunt Madeline, who had once won an argument with a Cheapside grocer about the moral difference between jam and marmalade, folded her napkin and gave the question the respect of a full answer. She spoke of sugar, of copper pans, of a relative in Lambton who had experience. For three glorious minutes Elizabeth was forgotten.

Mr Darcy sat at last, taking the chair beside Elizabeth. He moved the salt a little nearer her plate when she reached for it. He did it while answering his aunt on the subject of lime in mortar, so that the salt appeared to have travelled of its own accord.

Elizabeth found the food excellent. Her teacup was still full, because when she had drunk half of it, Mr Darcy noticed, and a footman appeared with the pot before she had decided if she wanted more. It was absurd. It was also, she admitted, rather wonderful. Was this what courtship looked like?

Uncle Edward, between ham and a story about a goat, caught her eye and widened his own a fraction. She widened hers back, which meant later. He returned to the goat without any more widening.

“Miss Elizabeth.” Lady Catherine remembered Elizabeth. “You are very quiet. At Rosings you had opinions on every subject, including several that did not require them. Has Derbyshire subdued you?”

“Not at all, your ladyship. I am merely paying proper attention to the preserve.”

“A neat answer. Fitzwilliam, you will see that Miss Elizabeth is offered the preserve again tomorrow. Anne does not care for strawberry. It heats the blood.”

“I adore strawberry,” Miss de Bourgh murmured into her roll. “It is orange that heats the blood, or perhaps that is only my recollection of a quarrel in a parish I shall not name.”

Miss Darcy coughed into her napkin. Aunt Madeline changed the subject to whether copper pans ought to be retinned every year or only when they spotted. Lady Catherine had a great deal to say about this crucial matter. Elizabeth was left alone with her plate, her tea, and the knowledge that for some reason, three women had decided to stand between her and Lady Catherine.

Breakfast ended in a migration rather than a conclusion. Lady Catherine declared the drawing-room the proper place for sitting after a meal, on the grounds that the breakfast parlour encouraged slouching. Uncle Edward confessed a fascination with the newspaper and remained. Lady Catherine, satisfied that a man of business ought to read something improving even if it was only the price of oats, granted him the parlour and moved to the passage.

They had reached the foot of the staircase when a muffled shout came from above, the shape of a word without consonants. Then the hounds joined it. Apollo’s bay and Diana’s higher complaint rolled along the upper passage.