Chapter XXVI
Pas de deux
Smith found himself at the parlor window once again. The browned furrows of the acres stretching between where he stood and the rear piazza of Longbourn matched those creasing his brow. He leaned his forehead against the pane that distorted and refracted the scene before him. The glass chilled his skin but did little to cool the fever that had been burning through him like a blaze rocketing across the forest floor beneath overhanging pines. Old barriers, preconceived notions of his own importance, left dented by his disgrace, now smoked and curled to ash in the fortnight since he had come to understand exactly what Miss Elizabeth Bennet was coming to mean to him.
A bright flash of color bursting from Longbourn snapped his attention back to the outside world.
There, flying ever closer, was a vision of dark curls flowing from beneath a bonnet's brim. Skirts hiked safely above the ground cover, Elizabeth Bennet raced toward the Dower House.
She streaks this way as if escaping the Furies, Smith thought, Yet her face betrays no fear and worry: only happiness if her exultant smile means anything.
As Lizzy grew before his eyes, he began to catch wisps of her song lifted up to the heavens. Her soprano rang like the upper registers of an Abbey full peal.
Ah, my Siren!
As Elizabeth neared the House, Smith turned from the window and hurried to his chamber above-stairs. He rifled through his Wardrobe to discover that young Miss Reynolds had restocked the drawers. A quick change of pantaloons and blousy shirt was all he could manage in the moments before she entered the front door. One more quick pass through the drawer turned up one of Fitzwilliam's outré neckcloths. How his cousin's cravat had landed here was anyone's guess. Looping the colorful silk around his neck, he tried to tie a basic knot, something which he had always ignored, counting upon his valet to do the honors. Failing miserably, he gave up and tucked the ends behind the open-collared chemise's placket effectively hiding his chest hairs from the lady's view. Sliding back into his wood-soled sabots, William did his best to burnish the leather by rubbing the uppers on the backs of his pant legs.
Clothing organized in true Bristol fashion, he peered into the small looking glass hanging on the wall. What he saw led him to snort. While his cuts had closed, the bruises across his countenance, although much faded, still cried out in their green and yellow dog's breakfast. About this, he could do nothing. However, in his former despondent state, he had been remiss in dealing with his coiffure. Smith reached behind his head and untied the ribbon holding his hair off his face. Running his fingers through shoulder-length locks, Smith winced every time he broke through a knot or tangle. Hair retied into its queue, Smith tried to school his breathing before he made his way back to the parlor.
The wooden soles clattered on the staircase, leading Lizzy to abandon her contemplation of the fire merrily sputtering in the grate. When he came into view, the dregs of her disquiet drained away, to be replaced with a pleasurable buzz in her midriff, something which had been sorely lacking in recent days.
Her beaming smile at his entrance laved Smith's soul, cooling with glacial waters the volcanic flows that had been rumbling through his core. Smiling back at Miss Elizabeth was the easiest thing he had done in days.
He bowed to her curtsey. Then, wordlessly, they advanced upon one another.
As Elizabeth came closer, Smith could see her flushed cheeks. Why he could not be certain: whether from her cross-country jaunt or happiness at seeing him. Her eyes, though, seemed brightened by the exercise. At least that is what Smith assumed for he could not believe that a man such as he could improve any lady's demeanor.
Perhaps, though, the blush rising deliciously from beneath her collar toward her bejeweled orbs told a tale which he could only replay in his dreams. Smith had learned to console himself with nighttime fantasies. Those of this young woman looking as she did right now would be amongst his most cherished.
Smith broke the silence, "I must confess to having missed my debating partner these past several days. How many books have been left undissected: how many tidbits of human folly unexamined?
"I must say that, at this moment, you are looking remarkably…healthy. Exercise agrees with you, Miss Elizabeth."
"In the interests of your continued vigor," he added, a slight smile playing around the far corners of his mouth, "could I interest you in taking a stroll around the room?
"I have asked Miss Reynolds to fetch a fresh tea tray as I have been sipping from the old for at least an hour.
At her nod, he turned sideways and extended his elbow. Her hand slid into the crook as if it had been made for it. They slowly moved around the parlor's perimeter to allow for Smith's shuffling gait, limited as it was by his peasant footwear.
Lizzy offered, "Thank you for your compliments upon my appearance, good sir. I fear, though, that I must twig you for engaging in polite flattery. I dashed from Longbourn with little thought about my appearance."
Smith chuckled. The rumble was reminiscent of summer storms breaking against the Chiltern Uplift.
"Methinks the lady…" he offered.
Lizzy playfully slapped his arm, "Be still. I know the way to the front door!"
Then her face fell as she realized what she had suggested: that she was free to come-and-go as she pleased.
She continued in a subdued voice, "While my father insisted that I avoid being in your presence too often, you, I fear, have been under even more severe restrictions."
"That, Miss Bennet, is nothing new for me," Smith replied, "I have been at my warder's beck-and-call for the past five years. I have, to an extent, become inured to my condition.
"I made my choices and must pay the price. I beg that you do not trouble yourself over that which cannot be changed.
"I will admit to missing the sky above my head, but whatever you may think of this captivity, 'tis a gilded cage when compared to some of the places in which I have been confined."
She snorted, and he glanced her way.
Lizzy quickly offered, "I did not mean to make light of your situation, Mr. Smith. An image of the expected resident of a Dower House was joined with the cage metaphor. I was left with a portrait of you wearing black bombazine and a feathered headdress.
"That reminded me of my cousin, a man who might be worthy of ridicule even when he is doing nothing more than sleep. Yet, to those of us at Longbourn, the man is awake far too many hours of the day. He fills that time with orotund verbosity, most often about Lady Catherine DeBourgh. The content of his declamations, though, is the endpoint that led me to laugh.
"Everything I have heard from Mr. Collins' lips about his patroness suggests that she is a lady of great distinction who favors feathers and brocade. I suddenly saw you storming about Rosings Hall poking a gnarled finger to punctuate the only opinion that mattered: yours!"
Smith feigned outrage but did so with a smile to show that he understood the joke. He recalled his last term at Eton when he had been forced to play both the Ghost as well as Queen Gertrude.i The argument that defeated his loud protestations held that everyone knew that the Danes were giants: men and women. As he was the tallest boy in the House, logic insisted that he play the King's Ghost as well as the faithless Queen. As was his nature, he gave the performance his all, fluttering about the stage howling like a banshee when required and otherwise swooning like a maiden aunt in distaff distress.
Miss Elizabeth, even though she never has seen the Mistress of Rosings, none-the-less has described her clothing predilections perfectly.
He genially growled, "Of course you would imagine me as such. Your mind takes such diverting detours. No wonder your mother despairs of you. Yet, I can posit that you supply your father with no end of amusement with your original observations about the human condition.
"I suspect, Miss Elizabeth, and this is not puffery, that the man who seeks to liberate you from your plush nest across the meadow will encounter stiff headwinds from Longbourn's Master."
"Oh, Mr. Smith, I can assure you that any man seeking to carry me off will have to offer me the deepest love and my father a great bookroom so that when he visits my new home to assess my well-being, he will be able to ensconce himself with a stack of dusty tomes at the one hand and a flagon of well-aged port at the other," Lizzy gibed back.
As they approached their starting point, the wiry maid made her way back into the room lugging a great silver tray. Smith quickly escorted Elizabeth to her seat and made to assist Annie. The young woman briskly shook her head and pointed her chin toward his chair. Abashed at being treated as a better, Smith gave way.
Once Annie had departed, Elizabeth poured for Smith and offered him his favorite treats. Then she served herself and settled back.
He chuckled as he watched her blissful smile grow after she bit into a lemon bar.
His baritone rolled across the gap above the tea fixings, "I can well imagine the battles that must go on in your home if any of your sisters like those lemon confections as much as you."
"Lydia," was her terse and muffled reply made around a mouthful of pastry.
At Smith's confused look, Lizzy stopped, swallowed, and dabbed at her lips with a serviette. Then she answered, "My youngest sister, Lydia…she is but five-and-ten…can become quite greedy when it comes to sweet things. However, lemon shortbreads and custards are by far her favorites. That girl has bruised every one of her sisters bowling them over if they get between her and the serving tray."
Smith sagely nodded and said, "My aunt and mother said the same about my cousin and me. Whenever Cook made her lemon bars…well, suffice to say the Heavy Cavalry would have been hard-pressed to keep us away from the table."
Another piece of Mr. Smith's background clicks into place, Lizzy thought. At some point in his life, he was a 'better' being served tea and lemon bars by those who would otherwise have been invisible. Yet, just seconds ago, this son of the gentry tried to help a maid navigate across a parlor!
He sadly added, "I fear I must not become used to such delicacies. At some point, Mr. Bennet will arrive at a decision about my fate. Whatever he determines, Miss Elizabeth, I am certain that my next residence will not have such a talented cook. T'will be back to burgoo and porridge for me."
The disappointment coloring his voice tore at Lizzy's heart, and she sought to change the subject to other, lighter topics.
"My, my, Mr. Smith, we are certainly fishing in deep waters no matter which conversational gambit we attempt.
"Perhaps I might bring you up-to-date on the happenings in our household," she suggested.
Lizzy expounded upon the preparations for Mary's wedding and made sure to amplify her mother's distraction at trying to assemble a modest country wedding in a little more than three sennight's notice. Smith made appropriate male noises of noncommittal agreement, bemused wonder, and congenial dismay.
While he heard her words, he did not really apprehend them, but rather allowed the sound of Elizabeth's voice to flow over and around him. The satiny smoothness of her soprano was a healing balm: something to be hoarded against the darkness looming over any future he could foresee.
Then she shifted to the Netherfield Ball.
Again, Smith basked in her tones. Now, however, she was touching upon a subject with which he was familiar.
His face softened as wistful memories of what his life had been but could never be again bloomed afresh. T'was as if they had been formed a day rather than a decade ago.
As his attention turned inward, Lizzy stopped mid-sentence.
Smith's eyes focused on the juncture between the two walls and the ceiling above the crown of Elizabeth's head. He filled the gap in a dreamlike soliloquy, "When I was a young boy, I would sneak into the musicians' mezzanine and watch my mother and father dancing. The women's jewels, the men's silver buttons, threw the light of 500 candles about the room. I thought my parents had ordered all the stars in heaven to spend this one night in our ballroom."
"Then mama died," his voice tore on the sharp edges of those words, "Papa was never the same man after that. Dancing was not banned, for he did attend whenever my aunt would mount a gala. But, no one ever entered the great mirrored hall in our house except the maids. Papa found that duty was the only reason to continue on. Then he died. Dancing did not seem magical any longer.
"For me, the ballroom became like the hunt except I was the fox and baying women were my pursuers. I came to detest dancing even when my partner was someone well-known to me, and her motives were pure."
He shook himself and continued, "Unsurprisingly, I have not been able to learn if my feelings about dance have altered in the past five years."
A dismayed Lizzy absorbed his recollections and considered the ache undergirding his reverie. A tear broke free and trickled down her right cheek as his despair at all that he had lost swept over her.
What was it about this man that affected her so? Every fiber of her being cried out to ease his pain. If she could have gathered him into her arms to murmur those inarticulate, she would have. Propriety at all levels shouted out against this.
Then a fierce resolve seized her.
Elizabeth placed her cup back on the table, the clatter of the saucer earning a surprised glance. She stood and came to stand by Smith's side.
She smiled down at him and said, "Well, Mr. Smith, there is no time like the present. Come, you must dance with me. I wager you will be shocked by the latest dance craze. 'Tis an Austrian import, the waltz.
"Almack's patronesses are positively scandalized with the waltz as it involves the two dancers actually holding one another. No line of dance where the closest contact is the touch of hands."
Smith made to demur, complaining that his back was as yet tender to the touch.
Lizzy, eyes narrowed, "Are you saying, sir, that you cannot dance? Why every savage can dance!
"Or, are you opining that I am not handsome enough to tempt you?
"Well, which is it, Mr. Smith? And, I would suggest that you tread carefully!"
Mouth agape, Smith absorbed her impertinent air with no little trepidation. The last thing he wished was to offend this pert young miss! While he had never been considered an adept at reading social cues, he had thought they had been on a good footing. Now, Miss Bennet was bristling…or was she.
Saying nothing, Smith studied the face which inhabited his dreams. The longer he took, the more the microscopic insights into Elizabeth Bennet came to light.
Although her skin still bore the dewy freshness of her youth, Smith recognized the gentle crinkles of laugh lines spidering around the corners of her chocolate brown eyes. Then there were the tiny twitches of her brows and lips. Her arms were not crossed defensively, but rather were at her side, elbows bent and hands on hips. Miss Bennet was displaying aggression, yet her teeth were not bared. She purred not growled. Smith could almost see the friendly aura as she hovered over him.
Smith understood.
Elizabeth Bennet was teasing him once again to break through his reserve. This was something she had been persistently undertaking since he regained his senses.
He dipped his head conceding defeat and bowed to the inevitably pleasurable exercise of dancing with Elizbeth.
Lifting himself from his chair, he took one step backward and made his bow. Request made and accepted, Lizzy started to move toward him, her arms in a bow. His lack of movement and look of utter incomprehension momentarily puzzled her. Then she nodded.
Of course, he would not know what to do with his hands. His incarceration took place before the waltz was brought back by our officers. And, we need some music. I must be able to chat with him as we dance, something I cannot do while I am humming the tune.
An idea struck her, and she turned and asked of the maid who had been sitting quietly in the corner of the room, "Annie, is there a chance that you might play the pianoforte? If so, you might be able to supply Mr. Smith and me with accompaniment for our waltz."
Annie smiled as she recalled her Papa, proud in his butler's blacks, standing next to her as she faced the towering upright that Lord Tom Cecil had imported from Philadelphia and installed in Larchmont's servants' hall.
He had declared to her, "Child, you know that your Mama, God rest her soul, loved to lift everybody's spirits down here with a song or two. Her fondest dream was that you would find the same joy she did. So, you are going to take lessons with Mrs. Masters in Belbroughton. Your Mama left a bit of the necessary to cover the cost."
Thus, she happily discovered that she had a talent for the instrument. No, she would never be anywhere near as accomplished as Miss Darcy, who probably would tour the Continent one day in the future, playing for the crowned heads of Europe. Whenever Annie would visit her Aunt Addie, Pemberley's housekeeper, she would hide in the servants' passage adjacent to the music room. Sitting on the floor of the dusty hallway, she would lean her head back against the rough lath strips and listen to Miss Darcy's practice for hours. Annie would often play her own "air pianoforte" as she tried to mimic the heiress' fingering.ii
Since Aunt Addie had asked for Annie's transfer from the Cecils to the Darcys, Annie had had little time to play. She had been busy learning the ropes of a great house. She knew that she had been tipped as her Aunt's successor at Pemberley. Her fingers had itched to play the small box piano that graced the corner of the Dower House's sitting room, but Miss Reynolds was too fastidious in her understanding of her position to presume to touch the piano much as she would never tinker with Miss Darcy's Broadwood. Now the Mistress was granting her leave to become visible, to leave her menial tasks behind for a moment.
At Annie's ready assent, Lizzy moved to her side. The two put their heads together, the wall between better and lesser crumbling. Then they divided: Annie to the bench and Lizzy back to Smith.
"Our accompanist," she nodded toward Annie, "assures me she is familiar with the waltz. It seems that a few mustered-out members of King's German Legion filtered first through Sussex before ending up in Warwickshire at her previous estate. They brought a taste for the waltz below stairs.
"Now I must teach you the dance steps. If you have ever moved through any of the complicated forms that fill assembly rooms, the waltz, risqué as it is, will be simplicity itself.
"What is wonderful is that the style of the waltz—the man and woman in each- others' arms and separated from the other dancers on the floor—allows for nearly uninterrupted conversation! There is nothing that frustrates me more than to be unable to converse with an interesting partner except for a few seconds at a time."
The dance lesson went smoothly. Smith did not endanger Lizzy's half-boots. His hand in the center of her back was firm but also everything proper. Lizzy felt five years of rust in his movements, but she could also sense an underlying muscle memory which bespoke of a dance master somewhere in Smith's history.
"Now, we go full speed," Lizzy smiled up at Smith and looked to her right to give Reynolds a nod.
The music carried Lizzy and William around the parlor's small seating area.
Smith began the dance as had been his habit, without saying a word. Then he recalled Miss Elizabeth's assertion about the waltz and talk.
"You said that you admired the waltz because it encouraged conversation. Do you talk by rule, then, while you are dancing?" he asked.
Lizzy replied, "Sometimes. One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd to be entirely silent for half an hour together; and yet for the advantage of some, conversation ought to be so arranged, as that they may have the trouble of saying as little as possible."
Smith replied, having felt that he had upheld his end of the exchange, "Very well. That reply will do for the present…But now we may be silent."
Elizabeth's eyes sparkled. She was enjoying the closeness of this man, his scent, and the feeling that this space—deep in his embrace—was exactly where she was meant to be.
She could not, though, move through the box steps without the rich undertone of his voice weaving its way through Annie's melody.
"Smith is such a frightfully common, and I do not mean common in the sense of base, name," she pertly said, "One cannot know if 'tis the Cheshire Smiths or those from Dorset."
William replied, "I imagine you could have also scanned Smiths from Derbyshire, Yorkshire, or Nottinghamshire. There are far many more Smiths than Joneses and I believe you could not visit a hamlet anywhere in the country without turning up at least one Jones.
"I do note that there are many Smiths who labor under His Majesty's hospitality. I doubt if 'tis the name that warrants a conviction or the verdict that earns the name."
Lizzy was startled by the clever riposte that revealed much yet concealed more.
Her contemplation of the enigma guiding her was cut short by the mantel clock tolling the lateness of the afternoon.
Elizabeth jolted from her reverie, stopped dancing. Smith nearly trampled her as he had been guiding her backward.
Lizzy exclaimed, "My heavens! Look at the time. Mama will be in a complete pet! I must leave."
So saying, she dashed from the room leaving a bemused Smith standing there. Annie leaped from the bench and followed Lizzy out the door.
But, before Smith had a chance to shift from where he had been frozen by her departure, Elizabeth returned, buttoning her pelisse and knotting the ribbons on her bonnet.
She sketched a curtsey to Smith and said, "I fear that I will be unable to visit until the day after tomorrow. Between Mary's wedding and the Netherfield Ball, I worry that my dance card will be too full. I must say, though, that you are free to consider our moment here as my first set of the Ball.
"Mr. Fitzwilliam is leading me in the opening set tomorrow night. I will be sure to bring you a full report when I next see you! However, I must run for it!"
Her exit left William in the center of a swirl of emotion. He would be spending the next day wrestling with the green-eyed monster over Richard Fitzwilliam's interest in his Elizabeth.
i Characters in William Shakespeare's Hamlet
ii This few paragraphs can be found in Annie Reynold's tale in The Maid and The Footman, Ch. XXIX.