Chapter 5
He had absolutely no idea why he had come, other than Miss Bennet had asked it of him.
Darcy had little liking for large noisy gatherings, and here he was in the thick of one. All for the sake of a pair of fine eyes and dazzling smile, both phrases he was coming to regret having thought. Well, perhaps not regret, but surely belabor, to a point.
Ahead of him, the children ran through the snow as though it were a rare treat. Perhaps it was. He, himself, could not remember ever being allowed this freedom with the neighboring children, for his life had been rather sedate. Georgiana was too young to play in the snow during his formative years, and by the time she was interested, he was caught up with more mature pastimes.
"Comport yourself with pride," his father had always declared, his personal answer to everything in life from posture to politics. The young Darcy had never been allowed to slouch.
Now he felt a certain envy, the way he had as a boy when he had watched others play with such abandon. His hands had rarely formed a snowball, and he had only thrown them at the trees and benches in the garden. Elizabeth Bennet's young sisters, however, seemed to have a clearly developed, no, nearly uncanny sense of accuracy when it came to hitting their targets. It took hardly any time at all before the Miller boys seemed to be entirely made of snow, so thoroughly covered with it they were.
The girls, he noticed, were relatively unscathed.
"It is a shame really," Elizabeth remarked, following his gaze. "The boys dare not hit them, because not only are they of the fairer sex, but because of the fine distinctions of class between them. I wonder if it would not be better if they could simply play."
Charlotte laughed as she overheard them. "At their age? I should say your mother would have several choice words to say about great big girls like that acting so much like children still. She would say they are much too old for such nonsense."
Elizabeth made a face. "Then it is a good thing she is not here. Why should they not enjoy their youth for as long as possible, before they are forced to turn into fine ladies like ourselves?" At this she bent suddenly and scooped a handful of snow which quickly formed into a hard ball in her hands.
Charlotte shrieked and ducked behind Mr. Collins. "Lizzy, you would not dare!"
"Fear not, my lady, I will defend your honor!" Mr. Collins cried, surprising them all by placing himself solidly between the two ladies in exactly the right moment to receive a face full of snow.
Elizabeth stood there, absolutely crimson with mortification. Darcy could not help it. To see her so embarrassed, so astonished at the course that her snowball had taken, had him bursting into laughter. However, it ended abruptly when a well-packed missile sailed beside him, nearly hitting his ear.
"There! I have defended your honor, good sir!" Charlotte cried out. It was impossible to miss the satisfaction in her voice, nor the laughter.
Darcy turned his head to look at Collins.
Collins looked right back at him.
In an instant they both had bent and were scrambling to create their own projectiles.
"Tell me how one goes about doing this!" Darcy called to Elizabeth as the first snowball exploded against his shoulder.
"Have you not made snowballs before?"
His eyes came up. "Do I appear as though I have ever prepared a snowball before?"
"Good heavens!" Elizabeth yelped as a snowball came near to hitting her as she grabbed Darcy and pushed him behind a tree. "The first rule of warfare is to never leave yourself exposed."
"And the second?" he asked, examining the lumpy mass in his hand that looked nothing like what the others were throwing.
"Choose your allies carefully," she declared and dumped a handful of snow down the back of his neck.
It might have been a rout then and there had Bingley not turned and seen what was going on. With a wild shout of, "I shall save you, Darcy!" he joined into the fray.
In that moment, Darcy envied Bingley, not for the first time, his ability to just relax and have fun.
Within moments the battle lines were drawn. Charlotte's brother joined Mr. Collins in defense of the ladies, along with the Miller boy, but the younger Bennets had no such qualms about taking sides with Bingley and Darcy against their elder sister or her friend. Lydia targeted Collins with perhaps a shade too much enthusiasm, sending that good man's hat straight into a snowdrift.
Darcy found that while he might have lacked in practice, he quickly learned how to round out his ammunition and that aiming was not nearly as difficult as he had initially thought. His first few throws went wide, of course, but soon enough he was taking a certain satisfaction in hitting his targets the fair majority of the time.
Not that he did not remain a gentleman throughout the game, for while Miss Bennet had no qualms about surprising him with that handful of snow, he found that he was wholly unwilling to hurl it back at her. He instead focused his attacks on Mr. Collins and the boys, thinking it too familiar to attack the ladies of the group so directly, even if they had no such reservations about using him as a particularly favorite target.
The snow flew fast and furious and for a time they forgot about mistletoe and the ball until at last it was Collins himself who called the truce, having been given such a solid thrashing that he might have been a snowman standing there.
"I say, perhaps we had best call it a draw and finish the task at hand. I find myself ravenously hungry after so much exercise and I wager that the ladies will grow cold before long."
That they were all still warm from the exercise mattered little, for Elizabeth and Charlotte both knew his words to be true, so the group ceased the war agreeably enough. If a snowball or two still found its way through the air to pat softly against an unwary shoulder or knee, well, then such was the fun of traipsing through the snow with children, and none complained about their happy antics. In truth, Darcy smiled more than he had in a long time, and was glad suddenly that he had come, even if he was deuced cold under his wet clothes.
Elizabeth had remembered correctly - there was mistletoe aplenty in the woods. Freddie Lucas and the Miller boys were willing enough to climb the trees and knock down bunches of the plant, which Darcy and Bingley gathered up with the linen bags they had brought for just such occasion. It did not take long before they had all that they needed, and were quite happy with the fruits of their labor.
The group that headed back to the house was quieter than the one that went out, but it was a jovial sort of silence, begotten by hours of playing and gathering. Spirits remained high even though they were all tired and hungry, and Mr. Darcy found Elizabeth at his side once more. Indeed, she had been there nearly every time he had searched for her that day, or at least she had not been far removed as she helped gather mistletoe or played in the snow, and he marveled at how reassuring her presence was. Despite their many differences, he found a strange comfort and joy in her company that he had never before experienced with the fairer sex. That she kept returning seemed like a miracle that left him tongue-tied and unsure of what to say.
She, though, had no such difficulty. But then Elizabeth Bennet was not one to wait on words. With a glance as to how far they were from the rest, she tilted her head in his general direction, fastened that pretty gaze upon his face and asked the one thing that he had rather hoped she would not.
"Have you given any further thought to Christmas?"
