“Please, sir, if you would be so kind? Pass this to Jane,” she whispered breathlessly. Darcy took the shawl and passed it on to Miss Bingley, discreetly observing Elizabeth out of the corner of his eye as she watched it make its way down the pew. He knew the exact moment Miss Bennet received her shawl by the tender smile that illuminated her sister’s face and felt his own begin to answer it when the choir ended its hymn and the vicar called them to prayer.

The familiar words of the invocation flowed over Darcy, their currents witnessing to him of a higher order of majesty that rarely failed to compel his attention, although Miss Bingley’s whispered complaints of the cold and the length of the prayer were formidable obstacles. The “Amen” was sounded, echoed thankfully by several in their party, and the first hymn announced. It was one not known to Darcy, so he elected to listen rather than pick his way through it. That his tutor would be the lady whose song had so enchanted him the week previous was further inducement to hold his peace. He was not disappointed; Elizabeth’s voice swelled in sure tones, with feeling and a grace that moved him deeply. At the last verse he joined his baritone to her soprano much to the giggling delight of a pair of very young ladies in front of them. As they resumed their seats, Darcy suffered their backward glances only once before treating them to a brow lifted in freezing censure, which served only to send them again into paroxysms of silliness. To his further indignation, Elizabeth seemed unable to resist joining, quickly clasping a gloved hand over her mouth and peeping up mischievously at him. Darcy petulantly ignored her and sternly directed his attention to the vicar.

Sunday’s confession was assigned. Darcy murmured the lines from memory without undue contemplation, the phrases concerning disobedience and ingratitude being, he believed, of little application. When the sin of pride was added to the catalog, Elizabeth stirred beside him and delicately but distinctly cleared her throat, giving him, he was persuaded, perfect justification for laying emphasis on the following transgression, of willfulness, in a manner she could not mistake.

When the second hymn was announced, they were at point non-plus, and Darcy steeled himself against the effects of her voice on his clearly traitorous senses. This one he knew quite well. Turning slightly in Miss Bingley’s direction, he succeeded in avoiding Elizabeth’s amused eyes, but with the unfortunate effect of giving the other lady renewed claim on his attention. It was a poor scheme withal. As Elizabeth’s voice still filled up his senses, he now had Miss Bingley’s comments and compliments to deal with as well.

“Prepare ye the way of the Lord,” the Reverend Mr. Stanley grandly intoned the Scripture. “Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” Darcy drew out his prayer book and swiftly turned the pages to those passages.

“Tch!” Darcy looked down at the sound into Elizabeth’s rueful countenance as she bit her lower lip in consternation at her empty hands. Hesitating only a moment, he gallantly nudged the left side of his prayer book into her hand and bent his head to accommodate her view of it.

“Almighty God, give us grace…,” they read together. Bent as he was over the passage, Darcy’s every breath set the curls at Elizabeth’s ears and temple to dancing, distracting him mightily from the page they shared. “…that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light…” With great effort of will, he set himself to concentrate on the text and was able to finish without his mind wandering into perilous byways. Beside him, Elizabeth settled back into the hard pew, unconsciously searching for a comfortable position from which to apprehend the Reverend Mr. Stanley’s sermon. Darcy’s attempt to do likewise was a dismal failure. Neatly sandwiched as he was between two ladies, he dared not let any part of his person rest too near theirs, so he was reduced to sitting absolutely erect in a manner horribly reminiscent of the schoolroom. There was nothing for it, so resigned to his lot, he crossed his arms closely over his chest and trained his gaze on the vicar’s face.

Providentially, Mr. Stanley was a vigorous sermonizer, catching Darcy’s interest well enough to allow him to disregard, for the most part, the discomfort of his constricted limbs and his tense awareness of the maddening female on his left. However, when the service concluded and the last hymn was sung, he was more than ready to rise and seek in the outdoors an opportunity to work the stiffness out of his back and the lady out of his mind. “Mr. Darcy” came two voices, one from either side of him.

“Miss Bingley, Miss Elizabeth?” He waited, curious to see who would defer to whom for his attention.

“Please, Miss Bingley, you were before me.” Elizabeth curtsied and moved away to link her arm with that of Squire Justin, assuring him as she did so of her sister’s full recovery to health. Unreasonably disappointed, Darcy turned to Miss Bingley and asked how he could be of service. Smiling triumphantly, she took his arm, giving Darcy no choice but to escort her down the crowded aisle.

“No foot warmers, Mr. Darcy, in this weather! It is not to be believed! Next week, I promise you, I shall order the bricks from the carriage to be brought in, warmers or no.”

“As you will, Miss Bingley,” he replied, distracted by a flurry of movement in the section of pews reserved for servants.

“Perhaps Charles should demand the sexton do something about it. How can one be expected to attend to the vicar while turning to ice?”

“Hmm,” Darcy replied, only half-listening. Mildly curious, he searched through the crowd of servants until he found the locus of the disturbance and then was shocked to see at its center his own valet.

“What the d ——!”

“Mr. Darcy!” exclaimed Miss Bingley. “Whatever can be the matter?” Receiving no response, she followed Darcy’s rigid stare into the face of his valet, who with a hand resting protectively on the arm of a young woman, returned his regard with a flustered hauteur the equal of his own. Behind them stood a rather tall, solid-looking footman possessed of a glower that could likely kindle a blaze at twenty paces.

“Is that not your valet?” Miss Bingley demanded. Darcy choked out an affirmative, his jaw clenching and unclenching dangerously. Caught between two dangers, Fletcher dropped his eyes in deference to his master, whose look in reply promised a future reckoning. The footman, seeing himself caught out in his loutish behavior by a gentleman, backed away from Fletcher and the girl, and exited the church in the opposite direction.

Darcy resumed his way down the aisle, Miss Bingley, now silent, on his arm. “Your valet…he has been with you long?” she inquired finally.

“Quite,” Darcy replied stiffly.

“He serves you well? No freaks of distemper or problems with color?”

“Certainly not! At least…” Darcy paused, considering what he had just witnessed. “He is usually completely reliable. I wonder what could be your interest in my valet, madam?”

“Oh, merely idle curiosity, sir. But tell me, have you ever known him to mistake green for gray?”

After handing Miss Bingley into the carriage outside Meryton Church, Darcy went to Hurst’s conveyance and returned to Netherfield as he had come. The ladies were mounting the stairs to their rooms by the time he laid aside his hat and gloves and shrugged off his greatcoat in Netherfield’s entrance hall. Talk of the Bennet sisters’ imminent return to Longbourn drifted down upon him as he paused and, with concern, observed the wistful way Bingley gazed after them.

“If you cared to offer me something warm to drink, old man, I daresay I would agree to it,” Darcy proposed carefully.

Bingley came back to himself and, with an apologetic shake of his head, replied that of course he would order something up immediately. Would chocolate be agreeable?

“Excellent! In the library? You must hear the account I read yesterday of the breaching of the walls of Badajoz.” Bingley weakly smiled his assent and wandered off to request the desired refreshments while Darcy headed for the library, eager to be absent from any public room that might attract Bingley’s sisters or, more particularly, their departing guests. His prolonged nearness to Elizabeth in church had unsettled him and certainly thwarted his plan to stay aloof from her until her departure. This little time remaining, he knew, must be put to good use. His best course lay in safeguarding himself from any contact with her until propriety demanded his presence. If his plan required Bingley’s distraction from the eldest Miss Bennet, so much the better.

They spent a companionable hour “taking” Badajoz from the comfort of chairs set before the library’s hearth. The author’s suspenseful narrative, coupled with Darcy’s talent for infusing the account with a sense of immediacy and heroism, quite captured Bingley’s attention. Looking up from his text, Darcy was pleased to see his friend’s countenance gradually change from that of polite interest to eager anticipation so that, by the time Stevenson apprised them that the Misses Bennet were about to take their leave, he congratulated himself upon detecting in Bingley a momentary disappointment for the interruption.

Accompanying his friend to the front hall, Darcy was careful to remain in the background and kept his gaze traveling indifferently among the participants in their farewells. Miss Bingley’s relief at the ladies’ departure was almost palpable, her sister’s scarcely less so. Hurst had wandered out of the hall as soon as was decently possible, leaving Bingley alone to express a sincere sense of loss for the ladies’ company. Coming forward at last, Darcy bowed briefly to Miss Jane Bennet and wished her a pleasant journey home and continuing good health. He then turned to her sister with similar words at the ready but was almost startled out of his studied gravity by the intense examination he met in her eyes.