The afternoon before the assembly ball that he was obligated to attend as Mr. Bingley's resident friend, Fitzwilliam Darcy watched Bingley play with his young son, waving a toy around the nine month old's head that made the baby give a delighted squeal and reach up to bat at the rattler. This little creature's birth had ended the life of Mr. Bingley's beloved wife, but Bingley showed no resentment towards little Charlie for that.
Watching the domestic happiness of his friend had begun to kindle in Darcy himself over the past years his own desire for a wife and children to play with and dangle from his knee, and help to learn to ride and fight.
Darcy liked to watch Bingley with his child; most men were quite distant from their children, at least until they were old enough to speak and walk.
From the way the Bingleys' other child, Harriet, held herself back from playing with her tiny brother, Darcy suspected she did blame him a little for her mother's death.
Mr. Bingley's sister, Louisa Hurst, preferred to play with the niece to the nephew, claiming an abhorrence of infants — a matter that Darcy knew was not her native habit, as she had been a devoted mother to both of her children when they were infants. Both had been killed by the fevers particularly common before the first year of age, as many children did.
It was often viewed as unwise to care much for a child until they had reached at least their first year, and perhaps not until they had reached their fifth year, at which time the odds of their death — according to the insurance tables — began to be similar to those of an adult in the prime of life.
Death was part of life, present everywhere. A man could only control himself, and his own behavior, not the future. And Fitzwilliam Darcy always controlled himself.
As Mrs. and Mr. Hurst had a comparatively modest income and no estate, they attached themselves to Mr. Bingley's establishment whenever possible. Darcy knew that though his sister sometimes annoyed him, Bingley liked having members of his family generally near and around.
Bingley's other sister had at last married three years before — Caroline Bingley had made herself decidedly tiresome in Darcy's eyes with her constant attempts to attract his interest through extravagantly agreeing with everything he said, and wearing clothes whose expense he knew ran past her fortune.
Miss Bingley, though a fine woman, and one whose marriage Darcy was glad to see, would not have been suitable as the wife of a man such as Fitzwilliam Darcy, and he lost nothing because she had married some six months before Darcy determined that he would marry himself and set upon the task of finding a suitable wife.
When Mr. Darcy made that momentous determination — one which seemed less and less momentous, and more mocking, as months — now years — passed without success in the matter of finding an appropriate woman — Darcy gave careful and extensive thought to the serious concern of what sort of woman he ought choose to serve as the companion of his future life, the mother of his children, and most significantly, the Mrs. Darcy of Pemberley.
Caroline Bingley would have been rejected simply because she spent too much, neither read nor thought much, and lacked a certain firmness of character. Also, she was a little lighter in the dowry and substantially less respectable in the breeding, despite Darcy's deep affection for Mr. Bingley, than ideal.
An exceptional man such as himself ought to marry an exceptional wife.
Darcy had always held himself chaste and behaved in all matters as a gentleman of probity, character and religious seriousness should. And in like serious manner Darcy dutifully embarked upon the task of finding a woman to marry. That first season after this determination he attended a dance every night for the first half of the sitting of parliament, and every second or third night for the second half, when he had gotten worn down and tired of the whole matter.
He went often to soirees and dinners with those of his acquaintance who had unmarried daughters or sisters. And then, after he had found all of their relations unsuitable in some respect, he had attended dinners and house parties, and gone on picnics, and done all matter of disagreeable socialization with the acquaintances of his acquaintances and friends.
His friends and family had put the news about town that the great fortune of Fitzwilliam Darcy was at last in want of a wife, and he endured the introductions to one pretty, accomplished, quick speaking and young debutante after another. Each woman Mr. Darcy met, he analyzed with serious care and serious concern. He inspected and questioned each to determine from their behavior during the dance and their answers to his questions if she was the one who was worthy to become his wife.
Darcy demanded the best from himself in all matters.
Darcy demanded honesty in his business dealings. He demanded himself to be a skilled sportsman. He demanded himself to be an astute scholar whilst in university. He demanded of himself to be the best of landlords. He demanded of himself to always face any task set before him and to excel.
He would acquire the perfect wife.
Darcy wrote down a list of traits that were generally admired in a wife, and he would find a woman who met all of them: His wife was to be of exceptional beauty; kind; of religious disposition; demure when appropriate. A confident and capable hostess, capable of making a witty splash in society. His wife would embrace the duties of being a Lady Beneficent to his tenants, and she would happily retire to the countryside when it was Darcy's preference to avoid London. Yet she also would be a helpmeet who would encourage him to go out amongst his acquaintances, building valuable connections and desire him to spend that time in society which was proper for a man of his position.
She would be a woman who was widely read, and who thought deeply about both matters in the feminine sphere and those which were of great importance that many thought were the sole province of men. She would have the full measure of accomplishments that a well-bred woman would have, and she would have something beyond that — an independence and individuality of mind that showed she was not merely a slave of fashion. She would be healthy, and she would be still young enough when they married to be considered fully in bloom.
Beyond all of these considerations, the wife of Fitzwilliam Darcy must have an irreproachable pedigree, the best of connections, and a large dowry.
Mr. Darcy was not actually a fool.
He would settle for less than all of this in a woman, but he was determined to find a woman who was better than the average his friends had found for themselves. Such was his duty to himself, to achieve all he could and to fulfill the potential and promise of his fine person, his fine mind, and his fine estate. Darcy had in fact met many young women who had many of the features and attributes he looked for. Enough that he certainly thought he should see them as accomplished, connected, clever, beautiful and dowered enough for a man such as himself to marry.
In those cases he had spent a decent amount of time — but not so much as to arouse premature expectations, merely expectations of expectations — around such women in conversation. And in every case, pursuing this particular woman did not… feel quite right. Each woman he'd met in the past three years of far too, too many balls had lacked in some respect.
Some essential respect.
On rare occasions Darcy thought that the essential matter missing might be in himself, not in the women he met. Perhaps he had a disinclination to be pleased.
However, upon sober and unbiased reflection, Darcy knew that he was not the problem. A perfect woman existed. A completely perfect girl, who met every requirement that actually mattered to him — i.e. connections, beauty, being well read, well spoken, and… all of them. And this girl, which he simply needed to continue to hunt for, she would also have that je ne sais quoi lacking in the women whose superficial features had been good enough for him to marry.
As he searched for his belle dame, as a true chevalier would, unceasing in the pursuit of his lady's hand, Darcy ought have been quite willing to go to any ball where there would be young ladies, not yet of his acquaintance, who might be the one.
However, Mr. Darcy was not eager to go to the crowded assembly rooms of a minor market town thirty miles from London, to be fawned over by every unwanted Miss and her mother as soon as they learned that the great Fitzwilliam Darcy, with his income of ten thousand a year, and very likely more — it was, indeed, more — had arrived.
They had been informed of the situation and prospects and connections of the principal families of the neighborhood prior to Bingley taking the estate, and no woman at the assembly ball would meet one of Darcy's primary requirements in a wife, that she be well connected, of impeccable breeding.
What chance was there to find a woman with excellent accomplishments or a first rate brain in such a locale? None at all! — both required a first rate education, paid for by the resources only available to the best families.
No, no. The best Darcy could hope to find in this assembly was a particularly pretty girl — the most beautiful of roses could blossom in the least prepossessing of neighborhoods. But what matter that to him?
Fitzwilliam Darcy was no shallow man, to only care about the appearance of a woman! Not he!
Darcy still went to the assembly ball, grumbling the whole way to amuse Bingley, who liked to imagine Darcy was even more asocial than he actually was.
In contrast to Darcy's half faux and half genuine distaste for the dancing that he looked forward to, Bingley looked more cheerful than Darcy had seen him since the death of Mrs. Bingley. He lolled back with his hands behind his head, taking up an entire corner of the large carriage, whistling the tune to a jig that had been popular seven years before.
The melancholy was still there. Whether Bingley was consciously aware of it or not, Darcy recognized that as the tune he'd been told many times was the music that the band had played the first time Mr. Bingley danced with Isabella.
Louisa Hurst said after they had sat in quiet for a minute. "I do not know what to expect — this shall be… quite a rustic assembly?"
"Oh, I dare say." Bingley straightened and he smirked at his sister. "I dare say it shall be. Filled with barbarians — Mr. Morris informed me when I took the place that they wear naught but the blue paint and loincloths with which their ancestors faced Caesar's legions. Eh — what think you, Darcy?"
"For my part," Darcy replied, "I believe the populace here was entirely replaced by the Anglo Saxons — so they do not descend from those ancient Britons who faced Caesar and his legions. However, whilst they likely are so modern as to wear untanned deer skin and wolf furs, they are not like to have learned any tongue any of us have hope to understand."
Mrs. Hurst huffed. "Both of you of a type. You know what I mean — they are not society."
"Hear. Hear," Mr. Hurst said in his rolling voice. "Never any good wine at a public ball."
The good gentleman's wife rather annoyedly looked at her husband as she absently pulled her sparkling grotesquely bejeweled bracelet up and down her arm. "The women will all toss their bonnets at you; you must be on your guard."
"I do not expect to meet anyone who could meet my standards here," Darcy said, imagining that she must be speaking to him. "But I thank you for the warning."
"No, not you," Mrs. Hurst said annoyedly — she had been considerably less polite to Darcy since Caroline nee Bingley had finally given up on her designs on Darcy and married a man of middling fortune, middling looks, middling height and less than middling sense. Darcy preferred the change. "I spoke to Charles. Mr. Darcy, everyone knows you will never marry, for no woman could ever meet your 'standards.'"
"I assure you I shall one day find the right woman."
"And then she shall not wish to marry you."
"Becalm yourselves, why do I need to be on my guard?" Bingley asked grinning. "Bonnets being thrown at me, you say? Sounds a terrible fate. Might lose an eye."
"You know what I mean — you must marry again for little Harriet and Charles's sake. But the women here shall not do. They are outside of society. You can't make a good match here."
"That is poor reasoning," Darcy said. "In general it is considered that a man with children should not expect to find so good of a wife for his second as he did for his first, as the resources of his estate shall in the larger part go to support the offspring of the first marriage."
Bingley rolled his eyes. "Darcy, you need to fall in love. Properly and deeply."
Louisa huffed. "Must you both be dense? I do not wish to see my brother make a brilliant match — someone so well connected as Isabella cannot be expected—"
"That was not why I married her. I would have married her had she not a farthing."
"For Heaven's sake, I hope not!" was his sister's instant reply. "I only want you to marry someone from good society."
"Here and arrived!" Bingley exclaimed as the carriage slowed to a stop. "Now to see what the women of this barbaric outpost from antediluvian times look like." He whistled. "Well, they do not lack for looks."
A pale short woman with brown hair who was yet young, though Darcy judged her with his well-studied eye for assessing potential wives to be likely past twenty and five, and thus too old to meet his requirements, walked past the carriage and into the assembly hall. She had a tasteful though slightly too low-cut dress that was somewhat out of the mode — another mark against her. Darcy did not care for himself: she looked absolutely lovely in the dress and it clung close and nice to her curves. But the wife of Darcy must provide no opportunity for the censure of others.
The woman's mother pulled her to a stop and pointed to make the young woman look at their carriage.
Her eyes met Darcy's, brown, sparkling and glinting in the fading light of sunset.
Something leaped in Darcy's throat and stomach that he did not understand, and that he did not remember feeling with all of the childlike debutantes he had tried to interest himself in over the past years. He had perhaps never felt any such thing since the infatuations of his late boyhood.
And then she looked away and hurried into the assembly hall, and Darcy blushed. That moment, such as it had been, was gone.
"Lovely girl," Bingley said as he climbed out of the carriage. "Lovely and lovely. Did not see her when I returned the calls of the gentlemen who knocked on my door since I've settled here — I'll seek an introduction. Darcy, do you want to claim first dance with her? I saw your eyes meet."
"No. No," Darcy replied once his feet were on the solid sober cobblestones once more. "Lovely as she was, I can already see she would be entirely unsuitable as a wife to me. I give you leave to pursue her as you—"
Darcy's magnanimous dismissal of his interest in the unknown miss was cut off by a half shriek of laughter. The girl… woman… beautiful human being stood there, not three feet away from Darcy, having stepped back out of the assembly hall for some reason. Her eyes danced with something, either anger or humor, and Darcy could not judge which.
She coughed gigglingly, and then bobbed her head to Darcy, Mr. Bingley and Mrs. Hurst. She ignored Mr. Hurst by accident. She smiled, and Darcy, against his will, could not keep from feeling a jump in his stomach at being smiled at in that way by that girl. He returned her smile, though he did not mean to.
Without a word she returned into the ballroom.
"Well, Darcy," Bingley said amicably. "I certainly shall beg a dance from that woman. Though from how her eyes lingered, you are more to her taste — Jove, I would not be so fastidious as you for a kingdom."
"Nonsense," Mrs. Hurst said, quietly as they had just been made aware they could be overheard, "that dress is years and years out of date."
"Her eyes drove any such thought from my mind. And her other assets." Bingley grinned. "She wore the dress, even if it is antediluvian, very well."
Darcy felt a frisson of something like jealousy and irritation at Bingley's admiration of the woman.
Absurd.