Page 31 of A Mismatched Compromise

She had decided upon Mr Darcy as an ally because their interests were aligned and because she had no one else to whom she could turn for help. She believed him to be intelligent, practical, and tenacious, and had been surprised and admiring when she had seen the loyalty and affection he felt toward his friend, Mr Bingley. But she had still approached him as a force to be managed, a resource, even — something that was useful, that could sometimes be surprising, but that at the core remained someone she did not like and who did not like her, someone who found her family embarrassing and believed her to be inconvenient, and she had decided that was just how he was, and that it could not be changed.

The man whom Miss Darcy described was not that person.

“He has certainly been very kind to me regarding my… situation,” Elizabeth said, very aware that this was a very inadequate description of how events had transpired over the last several months.

“Has he?” Miss Darcy smiled, her pleasure genuine and artless. “I am so glad. He would not tell me the details, only that there was a situation and that he was trying to help, which makes me worry, sometimes, because he takes a great deal upon himself for others, and they do not always —” She stopped, looking at Elizabeth with a flush of uncertainty. “I hope that I have not said anything I ought not to say, or that is offensive. I am afraid that I am speaking rather freely.”

“Please don’t stop,” Elizabeth said, finding that she very much did not want Miss Darcy to stop revealing things about her brother, and was a little unsettled to realise how much she wanted to hear more.

Miss Darcy looked at her for a moment, then she smiled again — her real smile, if still a bit shy at the edges, and said, “I think Will was right about you, Miss Elizabeth.” She paused, hesitating for a moment, then said, “I wonder — that is, I hope we might use our first names with each other. I know we have not been acquainted overly long, but I find that I already — I think,” she said, taking a determined breath and ploughing forward, “I think I should like it very much if we might be friends. Proper friends, I mean, not the kind where one must always be careful still.”

Elizabeth felt a loosening in her chest and smiled at the girl. “I should like that very much,” she said. “Georgiana.”

Georgiana beamed at her. “Thank you, Elizabeth,” she said with another giggle. And Elizabeth, for the first time in a very long while, felt something that was not quite hope, but close enough that she did not immediately push the feeling away.

Chapter 15

Until his visitors had all arrived at Pemberley, Darcy had not fully understood what it meant to preside over a breakfast table.

He had sat at the head of many breakfast tables in his life, of course, breakfast being a daily occurrence at Pemberley. Those breakfasts, however, were orderly affairs where Georgiana ate quietly, Mrs Annesley poured the tea, and everyone did what they were meant to do with little, but pleasant, conversation in between.

The table at the head of which he currently sat was something quite different from those quiet family breakfasts. Darcy looked down both sides of the table and suppressed a grimace, feeling rather like a general whose intelligence reports had catastrophically underestimated the reality of what was happening on the battlefield.

To his immediate left sat Miss Bingley, who was explaining the merits of the view from the south-facing windows of the breakfast room at great length and contrasting them with the view to be seen from the east-facing windows. He rather suspected that she had introduced this topic because it required her to angle her chair toward him while making her observations. Her sister, Mrs Hurst, occupied the chair across from her and offered supportive remarks at intervals, whether or not they fit or the conversation paused to receive them. Many of Miss Bingley’s comments and questions were directed to Darcy himself, and he responded with as few syllables as he could while his attention focused on other events playing out down the table.

Jane Bennet and Bingley were seated across from each other, he beside Miss Bingley and she next to Mrs Hurst. Technically, both were engaged in conversation with their neighbours (though the Bingley sisters were ignoring them in favour of their analysis of the various landscapes outside the windows), but, in practice, they were doing what they had done since breakfast began, and what they had done each meal since the visit began, which was to speak to everyone around them with perfect propriety, while being thoroughly aware of nothing in the room except each other. Every few minutes, one of them would speak, the other would look up, and they would meet each other’s eyes for a little too long — only to both remember themselves at the same time and look hurriedly away.

It was rather like watching two people pretend that neither could see a candle in an otherwise dark room. Darcy was not a man who easily understood nervous personalities, but being in the presence of Bingley and Jane Bennet for meal after meal was giving him sympathy for those sufferers he had never felt before.

Mr Bennet sat between Bingley and Mrs Annesley, and regarded the entire table in the same way that a man who was thoroughly enjoying a very entertaining play would regard the stage. He caught Darcy’s eye once, over the rum of his teacup, and Darcy had the disquieting impression that he had been assessed and found — not wanting, perhaps, but at least rather amusing.

At the other end of the table, Georgiana, always quiet, had at first been reduced to near-silence by the weight of so much company. Thankfully, she had rallied as the meal went on. Mrs Annesley, who, Darcy reflected, earned her position daily, was conducting a quiet conversation with her that seemed primarily designed to prevent Georgiana from disappearing entirely. Elizabeth Bennet, seated on Georgiana’s other side, was doing the same thing, and though she was less practiced, she was still achieving rather commendable results, Darcy noticed. In the last quarter of an hour, she had managed to ask Georgiana’s opinion on three different subjects, in so natural a way that Georgiana actually answered. Elizabeth had followed up on those answers, giving the girl enough confidence that, by the time Darcy was able to return his attention to the end of the table, his sister was actually talking — carefully, but still talking.

It was rather pleasing to watch. Unsurprisingly so, Darcy told himself hurriedly. He had merely enjoyed watching them out of relief that Georgiana was doing better, and for no other reason.

“Mr Darcy,” said Miss Bingley, reclaiming his attention, which he had only just wrested back for himself, “do you not think that the east aspect loses the morning light rather too quickly? I have heard it said that a well-designed breakfast room ought to hold it for at least an hour after the meal. Perhaps you may consider having the room remodelled one day.”

“The east windows are original to the house,” Darcy told her. “My grandfather quite favoured that view, and preferred it to the morning light.”

Miss Bingley, who had spent much of the meal discussing how the east view was inferior to the southern view, was actually struck silent for a moment. She rallied quickly, however, as she was wont to do. “Indeed! I suppose one cannot argue with tradition!”

“Oh, one can,” said Mr Bennet pleasantly from the other end of the table. “Though it must be noted that one seldom wins.”

Miss Bingley smiled tightly. Mrs Hurst said that she quite agreed, then looked confused when her sister glared at her. Bingley said, “Ha!” but apparently only by accident, as he seemed to be responding to something Elizabeth and Georgiana were saying and not to his sister’s conversation at all. Jane looked at her plate, while Mrs Annseley asked Mr Bennet if he needed more tea.

Darcy sighed.

The moment breakfast ended, Mr Bennet gave his excuses and made for the library, as though he were following a compass bearing he had no power to resist. Darcy gave him enough time to find a book and an armchair, then followed after him.

He found his guest precisely where he expected, seated in the leather chair by the east window, which caught rather more of that morning light that Miss Bingley had been so absorbed by than the breakfast room windows did, with a book open on his knee. He looked up when Darcy entered, his expression resigned but unsurprised.

“Mr Darcy,” he said in greeting. “You have either come to discuss the library project, which would be most welcome, or something else entirely, which I suspect will be a less welcome, though more likely, option.”

“I wanted to ask you about Longbourn,” Darcy said, taking the chair across from him. “I hope you will not think it an impertinent curiosity — I have some interest in the management of estates, and wondered how you find yours. Do you have a good agent?”

Mr Bennet regarded him over the top of his spectacles, his expression not quite amused and not quite wary, but occupying a good deal of territory in both. “I have an agent,” he said. “Whether he is good is a philosophical question I do not feel equipped to explore. In terms of his work, he does what I tell him, I tell him a comfortable minimum, and the estate produces what it produces. We have a pleasant working understanding that way.”

“A good agent can substantially improve the yield of —”