The quintet of the Bingleys, Bennets, and Mr. Darcy drew lots to choose the order of recitation. Footmen had cleared the furniture in the drawing to place all of the seating parallel to one wall, wrapping around, and moved the carpet to sit squarely within, to act as a stage. Elizabeth found the room to be so altered, a small jolt of excitement ran through her skin producing a fresh patch of goose flesh.
Jane luckily drew the first slot from the folded bits of parchment in Mr. Bingley's hands. Elizabeth watched her sister's breathing slightly quicken as Jane sat with a serene smile on her face. While Caroline and Mr. Darcy drew their numbers, Elizabeth wished she could offer to take Jane's place to spare her sister the nervousness of performing first.
"Well, Miss Elizabeth, it's down to you. Only the second and fifth spot are remaining." Mr. Bingley played a jolly good fellow and shook his hands to mix up the remaining lots in the cupped cage of his palms. Presented with a fifty percent chance of going last, Elizabeth selected her fate and unfolded the small bit of parchment.
"It would appear I am to conclude our evening's festivities." She flipped the parchment to show a carefully scrawled '5' in the middle of the creases.
"Would you prefer I go first?" Mr. Bingley whispered to Jane, who nodded and blushed. The happy Bingley flashed his intended a bright smile, "I hoped you would agree."
As Mr. Bingley took the stage, Elizabeth slid on the sofa to reside close to her sister Jane.
Mr. Bingley very dramatically cleared his throat and made a flourish with his hands like he had seen actors in London do before starting. "I humbly dedicate this sonnet to the love of my life, my angel, Sweet Jane."
Caroline gasped as her brother stunningly pronounced his attachment to Miss Bennet, a development she and Louisa suspected but hoped would not come to pass.
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love . . ." Charles Bingley began a lovestruck recitation of Sonnet 116 to the inward groan of Fitzwilliam Darcy.
Darcy panicked as the 'surprise' element of this activity robbed him of the sonnet he had prepared with Miss Bingley. He had intended to dedicate it silently to Miss Elizabeth, but now he could not very well stand up and recite the very same sonnet! Darcy racked his brain for a solution as applause broke out for Mr. Bingley's performance.
Jane responded to Mr. Bingley's lovely sentiments with much of her own, through the words of Sonnet 57. The professions of being a slave to her love, of minding the clock without minding his absence, and being a fool in love made the room inhabitants without the initials C.B. very uncomfortable. Darcy acknowledged for a moment that perhaps Charles was indeed quite the lucky man, that a depth of passion did reside beneath that simple woman's sweet smiles and congenial conversation.
Still without an answer for his performance, and only Caroline's to go, Darcy grabbed a copy of the sonnets on the table and flicked to a familiar number. Running his eyes over the words to commit the image to his memory, his desperate adjustment was interrupted when Caroline Bingley began to command attention.
"Like my brother, I too wish to dedicate my sonnet to someone very special in this room." Miss Bingley smiled as Darcy lifted up his head, feeling the other four staring at him. All color washed out of his face at Caroline's first lines:
"A woman's face, with nature's own hand painted, Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;"
Darcy faltered in his indifferent expression as Miss Elizabeth coughed, earning a glare from Miss Bingley. Darcy looked past the happy couple separating him from Elizabeth in the seating arrangement, but his chair was at least half turned so that he could see her without obstruction. His lovely Elizabeth struggled to keep her countenance as it was clear they both recognized the sonnet from the first lines, a lewd dedication to a man, as none other than number 20.
Caroline passionately rendered her superficial understanding of the sonnet, grinning ear to ear as she delivered the final line to a stunned silence.
"But since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure, Mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure."
Miss Bingley smiled and preened, awaiting the applause that scarcely came. Flustered, she furrowed her eyebrows until Miss Elizabeth dared to address her.
"Is that sonnet the one you practiced with Mr. Darcy this afternoon?"
Caroline rolled her eyes at her adversary. "I respected his wishes for a surprise, so I recited one that I memorized this morning as my first choice." Miss Bingley glanced back and forth between that upstart and Mr. Darcy, unsure of what she had done wrong. She had selected a sonnet that complimented a man's handsome features, how could Mr. Darcy not accept the compliment?
"Darcy? What sonnet do you have for us?" Mr. Bingley tried to move the proceedings along so that Caroline might sit down and let Darcy start.
"As you took my first choice, friend, I am forced to recall a sonnet that has been much on my mind lately." Darcy stood up and walked widely around Miss Bingley who did not leave the stage area until the man stood where he planned to begin. Caroline scowled as she took the chair next to Mr. Darcy's seat.
"As Miss Bennet and Charles have dedicated sonnets to each other, and we have had other dedications . . . " Darcy shook his head slightly at the unpalatable memory of Miss Bingley referring to his manhood via poem. "This sonnet is dedicated to a lady of great wit, who deserves more than what a mere mortal man may offer."
Caroline sat up taller in her chair, fully expecting Mr. Darcy's sonnet was dedicated to her. Elizabeth Bennet looked down at her hands in her lap.
"Take all my loves, my love, ye, take them all." Mr. Darcy's baritone voice floated richly through the air over the lines of Sonnet 40, forcing Elizabeth to look up and see he only had eyes for her. Her breath caught in her chest as she mouthed the sonnet along with him, feeling the pricks of tears in her eyes that such a romantic gesture might be directed at her.
"And yet love knows it is a greater grief to bear love's wrong than hate's known injury." Darcy smiled, breaking his serious demeanor as he spied his Elizabeth nodding slightly in agreement to his plea. Finishing with a grand finale, Darcy looked up at the ceiling to invoke his last line:
"Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows, Kill me with spites!" He paused, allowing his booming demand to rest in the air, then slowly he lowered his gaze to offer his Elizabeth a smoldering smirk.
"Yet we must not be foes."
Elizabeth could not help but join him in the last line, to the applause of both Jane and Mr. Bingley. Miss Bingley folded her arms and sulked as she realized Mr. Darcy did not look at her even once during his rendition.
As Elizabeth rose from her seat, she and Mr. Darcy shared a brief moment of quiet camaraderie. She took his meaning, or so Darcy hoped, as he took Elizabeth's seat on the settee for a front and center location for her sonnet, instead of the chair next to Miss Bingley.
"This should be exciting; Lizzie loves to play act." Jane bristled under the excitement of what was to come, having been witness to Elizabeth's extravagant monologues during rainy days at Longbourn in their youth.
"Oh dear, now I shall be sure to disappoint!" Elizabeth laughed merrily as Jane shook her head. Caroline began to speak, but her brother cut her off.
"Do not keep Miss Elizabeth waiting, it is her turn," Bingley nodded to his future sister and Elizabeth nodded back, also striking an elegant pose of her arm draped dramatically over her forehead and her body cheated to the side away from her audience.
"That time of year that thou mayst in me behold," Elizabeth's arm outstretched above her as she bent backward, her profile displaying the womanly curves she was blessed to possessed to great advantage. Her fingers fluttered as she brought her arm down, hunching over so that it hung limply before her. "When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang upon those boughs which shake against the cold."
As Elizabeth shivered and continued to perform an elaborately artful movement to each line of her sonnet, Darcy wetted his parted lips with a slip of his tongue and squirmed in his seat. The woman twisted, turned, and at one point delivered her lines in a booming voice to the far wall! His imagination ran wild producing a cold sweat on his brow of the magical days and evenings the two of them might share at his estate in Derbyshire, two masterful minds of wit and charm.
"This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, to love that well which thou must leave ere long." Elizabeth delivered her last line straight as a stick, doleful, with her eyes on none other than Mr. Darcy.
As the loudest applause yet echoed in the room, Darcy crossed his legs as he considered her last line. Was Elizabeth saying that she lamented leaving Netherfield in the morning? Their earlier conversation had been cut short by Miss Bingley, and Darcy, too, felt desperate to rekindle the subject matter of their feelings for one another.
Caroline spoiled the triumph of Miss Elizabeth by immediately ordering a new game, barking orders at the footmen to hang a sheet.
"Caroline, what's this now? We've all performed as you have desired." Charles Bingley raised his eyebrow at his sister's sudden plans, plans she did not discuss with him at all.
"It's time for shadow pantomime! We have cards and must all try to guess what's being displayed on the other side!"
The room became darker as the majority of the candle light was moved to the opposing side of the hanging sheet from the chandeliers that had been half snuffed. Caroline took the first turn as the furniture too was rearranged to two chairs and the small sofa brought forward. With Jane and Charles taking the lover's seat, Darcy and Elizabeth took the chairs positioned very close to one another.
Caroline began her performance of some exotic bird to the laughs and cheers from Mr. Bingley and Jane. Darcy took the distraction and lowered light to his advantage. He deliberately brushed his bare hand against Elizabeth's as hers rested on the arm rest. To his surprise, when he returned his hand to his arm rest, he was greeted with a similar gesture just a few moments later when Mr. Bingley took his turn behind the sheet.
The two enjoyed this easy, imperceptible affection until it was Darcy's turn to perform. As the man leaned forward to accept a card from Miss Bingley on Jane's far side, he whispered a simple phrase to make Elizabeth's blood thump painfully in her ears from her quickened pulse.
"Gentle thief."
*****
A/N I love it when the characters change things on you! Sonnet 40 is my all time favorite, I've performed it many times for school and in college. I hung out with the drama kids, though my major at university was Political Science. The BEST parties were always with people in theater, because I love to do improv etc! :) So it was funny to me that Mr. Bingley cheekily STOLE #116 and suddenly my Darcy was scrambling for a sonnet! :) The little things that happen as you're writing, deviating from the outline!
I hope you have your seat belts on. We're about to go for a loop!
XOXOXOXO
Elizabeth Ann West