“Miss Eliza Bennet despises cards. She is a great reader, and has no pleasure in anything else.” Miss Bingley’s praise was elegantly edged with scorn. Darcy looked at her in surprise, her attack coming so immediately upon the lady’s appearance among them. Elizabeth had been taken aback as well, or perhaps her few moments of silence were due to weariness, Darcy could not be sure. Her eyes widened at Miss Bingley’s remark and then returned to the tome in her hands before she ventured a reply.

“I deserve neither such praise nor such censure,” she cried. “I am not a great reader, and I have pleasure in many things.”

Bingley, whom Darcy knew to possess the romantic soul of a knight-errant, came to Elizabeth’s rescue with a sincere compliment followed by a self-deprecating description of his own reading habits.

“I am astonished that my father should have left so small a collection of books,” interjected Miss Bingley. “What a delightful library you have at Pemberley, Mr. Darcy!”

Darcy very much doubted that the contents of his library excited quite the degree of delight in Miss Bingley’s bosom that her tone implied. It was much more likely that the wealth to which the sheer number of volumes attested was what excited her admiration.

“It ought to be good,” he replied, but eschewed any credit for it by adding, “It has been the work of many generations.”

Miss Bingley could not admit his modesty. “And then you have added so much to it yourself.” With an air of intimacy she continued, “You are always buying books.”

Darcy almost ground his teeth in annoyance at her persistent flattery and, equally, at the amused light that was appearing in Elizabeth’s eyes at his discomfiture. “I cannot comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days as these,” he maintained as he tossed the cards in his hand into the play on the table.

Miss Bingley proceeded in her raptures from the library at Pemberley to the house in general and on to the surrounding gardens and countryside, ending with an admonishment to her brother to take it for a model and to build for himself nothing less than its equal. Her brother good-naturedly agreed to her scheme and offered to buy Pemberley should Darcy decide to part with it. That possibility was of so absurd a nature that the group laughed genially.

With that topic exhausted, Miss Bingley cast out another with which to secure his attention. “Is Miss Darcy much grown since the spring? How I long to see her again! Such a countenance, such manners, and so extremely accomplished for her age.”

Bingley looked sharply at his sister, trying, Darcy supposed, to dampen her fulsome compliments. Failing, he again attempted to direct the conversation into more neutral courses. “It is amazing to me how young ladies can have patience to be so very accomplished as they all are. They all paint tables, cover screens, and net purses…”

“My dear Charles,” Darcy remonstrated as he forced his eyes away from Elizabeth to regard his friend, “your list of the common extent of accomplishments has too much truth.” Seizing upon the opportunity afforded him to excite Elizabeth’s opinions, he forwarded his own. “I am very far from agreeing with you in your estimation of ladies in general. I cannot boast of knowing more than half a dozen in the whole range of my acquaintance that are really accomplished.”

“Nor I, I am sure,” seconded Miss Bingley. Darcy ignored her, turning his gaze expectantly upon Elizabeth. She did not disappoint him.

“Then you must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an accomplished woman.”

“Yes; I do comprehend a great deal in it.”

“Oh, certainly,” Miss Bingley hastened to intervene. “No one can be really esteemed accomplished, who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with.” She proceeded then to catalog an array of knowledge and talents that only the best education could afford and the most enlightened parent would deem appropriate for his female progeny. “…or the word will be but half deserved,” she concluded with a pitying smile at her guest.

Elizabeth returned her regard with some consternation, her lips pressed together and a martial light in her eye. Greatly desiring to know her mind, Darcy pressed her further, adding, “All this she must possess, and to all this she must yet add something more substantial” — he nodded at the book in her hands — “in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”

“I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women,” she threw back at him, fairly bristling. “I rather wonder now at your knowing any.”

Darcy nearly threw back his head and laughed at her delightful indignation, but he confined himself to raising an eyebrow at her protest. “Are you so severe upon your own sex, as to doubt the possibility of all this?” he goaded her.

“I never saw such a woman,” Elizabeth blustered, her confidence seeming to falter. “I never saw such capacity, and taste, and application, and elegance, as you describe, united.”

The other two ladies present, Darcy recalled, had immediately cried out against her expressions of doubt but were soon brought to order by Mr. Hurst’s complaints of their inattention to the game at hand. A few minutes later Elizabeth had retired and taken with her all the sparkle the evening had provided. Satisfied with the beginning he had made, Darcy had excused himself from playing another game and, sending a summons to his man, had left the Bingleys to their own devices.

She is certainly not a toadeater! Darcy chuckled quietly to himself as he shifted around in the bed for a more comfortable arrangement of limbs and pillows. She would not swallow absurdity with a smile in order to please, nor bow to it in the face of mounted opposition. “Miss Elizabeth Bennet” — he spoke as if addressing her — “regardless of your unfortunate connections, you are a singular young woman. I wonder what weapons you will bring to the fray tomorrow.”

The following morning found Miss Bennet a little improved under the loving care of her sister; therefore, a note was dispatched to Longbourn. The answering of that note with the persons of Mrs. Edward Bennet and her various daughters on Netherfield’s doorstep occurred, to Darcy’s mind, all too quickly. Presently, they attended Jane Bennet, and he and the Bingleys lingered in the breakfast room, awaiting the ladies’ descent. Bingley passed the time pacing, now sitting down to gulp at a cup of tea, then bounding up and pacing again, only to throw himself, moments later, into a chair against the wall and fiddle nervously with the porcelain shepherdess who reigned on the pretty little table that matched the much-abused chair.

“Charles, do put the Dresden back on the table before it is broken,” hissed Miss Bingley, her small reserve of patience with the intrusion of the Bennet family quite at an end. “And please do not pace so!” she added when Bingley once again thrust himself out of the chair. “Mrs. Bennet can have nothing upon which to object. Jane has been afforded every attention, and she is surely regaining her health. Country-bred girls are notoriously hearty creatures, are they not, Louisa?”

“So it must be, Caroline. How else can they be such excellent walkers!” Mrs. Hurst’s snigger was interrupted by the sound of the turning latch of the door.

Mrs. Bennet, in the lead of her daughters, entered the room all aflutter with expressions of concern for Jane’s condition and a horror at the idea of removing her to Longbourn that took no one but Bingley by surprise. By the end of her extended recital of fears and of Jane’s merits, Darcy was certain he had resolved the mystery of Miss Bennet’s remarkably unwise journey to Netherfield two nights previous. The only question that remained and had nagged at him since the note to Longbourn was sent was: Who would be called upon to continue nursing Miss Bennet? It was entirely possible the lady would require Elizabeth at home and send another daughter to try her luck at Netherfield. Or a servant…or, Heaven forbid, he swore silently, his jaw tightening, the mother might intend to stay! He studied Elizabeth’s face as she crossed the room in her mother’s wake and was puzzled at the anxiety he saw in every line. This does not bodewell…Could there be some truth in Mrs. Bennet’s protestations? No, if she is anxious, it is for her mother! He continued to watch them all from his vantage point at the window, the sun shining over his shoulders, as if he were attending a play. Mrs. Bennet simpered and smiled while the younger girls ogled the richness of the room and the ladies’ dresses, giggling and whispering to one another in the most uncircumspect manner. Elizabeth had found refuge from the antics of her relations in a light repartee with Bingley. She held herself less stiffly now, he noticed.

“Lizzy” — Mrs. Bennet’s voice cut through the brightness of her daughter’s conversation — “remember where you are, and do not run on in the wild manner that you are suffered to do at home.”

Darcy’s musings were swiftly brought to heel as the shrill voice caused all conversation in the room to a stop. His back stiffened. He glanced at Elizabeth’s face, noting the briefest appearance of pain in her guarded countenance before she turned back to her mother. The woman was impossible! Seething in displeasure, he quickly turned his back upon the room before he overstepped propriety himself. Was she so lost to proper feelings that she could scold her daughter in their presence!

Bingley stepped into the breach of shocked silence. “I did not know before,” he said, continuing the thread of his conversation with Elizabeth, “that you were a studier of character. It must be an amusing study.”