Work Text:
“Ladies and gentlemen, la Boulangère!”
The Master of Ceremony’s voice was as grating to his ear as it had been for the previous Allemandes and Quadrilles, but it did have one merit: if Meryton, as was hoped, conformed to the do’s and don’t’s of country dances, this would be the last. Darcy would be spared another survey of the Assembly room (a place of little architectural virtue) and allowed to commit this paltry evening to eternal oblivion.
Would, indeed - but for the dark-eyed young lady now throwing herself in his path and catching his arm.
“Fitzwilliam! Thank God I find you here. I have no idea what -”
Mr Darcy went rigid with outrage. He let his eyes convey his stern, his sterling, his inflexible bad opinion of her, before he turned on his heel. For this was intolerable; this was the proverbial straw in a rising haystack of rural presumption. One should be allowed to express one’s disinterest in the local female gentry without incurring the risk of the aggrieved party meeting indifference with impudence.
Walking over to where Miss Bingley was giving a great yawn above her fan, he firmly dismissed that dark pleading gaze from his thoughts.
“Ladies and gentlemen, la Boulangère!”
She and Kitty had agreed to sit that one out in order to compare dancers - Kitty could boast of young Mr Culverton, the trader’s son, who wore the shiniest pumps in the company; but Lydia had been singled out by Frederick Linton, who could recite every jest from the Almanack and kick a proper lark.
She half expected him to coalesce before her with the next jolly burst of strings. Instead it was Lizzy who turned up, looking quite unLizzylike - an odd blend of agitated and exhausted, even though she had (as testified by Lydia’s pleased eyes) spent the last two dances sitting by herself.
“He will not talk to me,” she now said, “however I approach him. He does not know me. Oh, what shall I do?” She looked so distressed that Lydia pointed Mr Linto to a further corner of her mind.
“Were you cut, sister?” she asked, not unsympathetically.
“Lydia, come dance with me.” The query was made quietly, without Lizzy’s dyed-in-the-wool-irony, and Lydia let herself be led into the circle of dancers. The last dance in an Assembly ball, it was permissive enough that the sisters could partner up as they had done at home, whenever a laughing Lizzy agreed to take on the Lead’s role and coach her younger sisters.
Now her hand grasped Lydia’s somewhat too tightly as the dancers started on the first grand round.
“Make me a promise,” came next, under cover of the general good cheer. “In a month or so the ___shire will come into town. Lydia, you have to promise me -”
But Lizzy had lost her at regiment. Giddy, dazzled by more than the fast-paced circle, Lydia’s wit pounced on the one and only word, letting the others take care of themselves.
“Ladies and gentlemen, la Boulangère!”
Mrs. Bennet, deep in her matchmaking raptures, only noticed her second daughter when Lizzy’s hand beat hers to the negus bowl. This was of no matter to Mrs. Bennet, who favoured punch, but as Lizzy slammed the empty cup down on the refreshment table, she thought it prudent to intervene.
“Daughter, I am sure that we all feel like celebrating -”
“Huh?” said Lizzy, and quaffed the drink.
“Jane, dear. Did you not notice? Mr. Bingley has danced twice with her. Twice!”
“And think you that an exploit? To hear those infernal violins twice?” Lizzy began to laugh, only to hiccup into her cups. “Tut-tut. Too much nutmeg, not enough port.”
It was all that abominable Darcy’s fault: Lizzy, it appeared, had taken his ill-treatment to heart and was looking for solace. Well, well - a little cordial couldn’t harm her reputation, not when Mrs. Bennet had seen with her own eyes Maria Lucas wipe her nose upon her puffed sleeve.
It was unfortunate that Lizzy’s next round of consolation should end with her clutching the table cloth and tipping the negus bowl over. But Lizzy herself looked remarkably philosophical about it, only muttering “Brandy next time”.
“Ladies and gentlemen, la Boulangère!”
It was pleasant to sit this one out with Jane. Their window bench, deserted by the current circulating company, had the advantage of a little fresh air. Jane was glowing, and Mary felt that domestic happiness was “[the] only bliss/of Paradise that had survived the Fall*”.
Apparently, Elizabeth agreed. Or so Mary judged from her sudden appearance, although she looked far from blissful. Dejected - aye, in distress - as she dropped her head to Jane’s warm shoulder.
“Lizzy!”
“I beg your pardon,” Elizabeth murmured, while a concerned Jane handed her fan over to Mary, who did her best to add to the breeze. “Fate has run me out of wits.” She covered her other ear with her hand. “Or Mr. Haydn.”
“A touch of the headache?”
“A touch of despair. For I know - I think - what I am to do, and prevent, but so far have failed in persuading him to help me. Speak plain or speak low, he will not hear me.”
While Mary had not the slightest idea who he was, she felt a jab of sympathy. Her own attempts at persuasion rarely met with success, and while her genius would remain unfazed, Elizabeth was of a less stoical fibre.
“Have you tried singing?”
“Mary, dear -”
“Music,” Mary said firmly, “speaks where speech fails. It addresses the passions directly, requiring no introduction. A well-chosen air, properly expressed, may convey more than the most laboured discourse.”
Jane smiled, but Elizabeth’s response was more unexpected and correspondingly gratifying. She all but jumped to her feet, and then - a gesture never before bestowed upon Mary - she took her sister’s face between her gloved hands and gave her forehead a loud, expressive kiss.
Which showed that even a sister’s mind was capable of improvement - when rightly directed.
“Ladies and gentlemen, la - Miss Elizabeth?!”
In London it would have been terrible can’t to interrupt the Master of Ceremonies. But this was a friend of Mr. Bennet’s, who had once bounced a certain dark-curled infant on his knee. He beamed, and soon the cheerful notes of “The Bluebells of Scotlands” rose in the air.
(Haydn again, but with a difference.)
Fitzwilliam was where he’d been before - his reliability proved, even unwittingly. Elizabeth watched him start; give in to a sense of marvel, as he moved his gaze to the musicians. When it found her, she made her face openly expressive. His still showed that proud veneer, but something in his attentiveness reflected the man who, his face an open book of love, had walked her out of church…
… with her sisters in attendance, Lydia’s face uncommonly silent, her arm already divorced from Wickham’s.
The sorrow and wish had come to Elizabeth in a flash, and the flash had put time out of joint.
“Your sister’s favourite air,” she now whispered. “Requested by you whenever you found her wistful after… a certain sad circumstance.”
He was looking at her intensely, and when he asked “Do I know you?”, there was no haughtiness to his lower tones.
“I cannot answer this yet, sir. I can only trust you, from the honour and kindness which are yours, to believe that I am in need of assistance. I have a sister of fifteen,and Mr. Wickham -.”
Fitzwilliam (how quaint, to name him from the heart and sir him publicly) bowed. It might have been dismissal - the moment’s cue to dissolve. But it was a prelude: now his hand was held out.
“Anything I can do,” he said, and led her - the first spin to their history - past Miss Bingley’s mortified stare to the circle of partners.