Christmas at Pemberley

Part 10

Not for the first time, Darcy was pleased he had married someone far more gregarious than he. Lizzy expertly navigated no fewer than three conversations at once, amusing and delighting her guests with her quick wit and gentle humour, the very things that Darcy had grown to love most of all about his pretty, clever wife.

He did not glean more than a passing sense of her conversation, though, because his mind was entirely taken up in observing the behaviour of another of his guests.

Daniel Lambert was turned in his seat almost entirely to put Georgiana at his back, which behaviour would ordinarily have struck Darcy as entirely ill-mannered, had Georgie not turned equally against him. Indeed, his sister had never been entirely adept at keeping her true feelings from showing on her delicate features. Whilst she smiled and laughed along with the exaggerated story Mr Gardiner was telling, Darcy was astute enough to notice the sharp crease in her forehead that never completely lifted and the way her eyes kept lifting over her shoulder, to the back of Mr Lambert's head.

Lambert himself was almost unrecognisable from the young man who had first made Darcy's acquaintance a day or two prior. He was sensible and sober, still, but his head seemed too heavy for his shoulders, as if it cost him a great deal of energy to sit upright and keep from slumping forward into his soup. Darcy recognised that level of exhaustion. He had felt it himself on only a few distinct occasions: twice at the hand of George Wickham, when he sought to separate first his own sister and then Elizabeth's from that man's clutches and a third time, during his convoluted courtship with the lady who was now his wife. What, then, caused Daniel Lambert to feel such agonising weariness?

Darcy interlaced his fingers, leaning his chin on his knuckles and regarding the man carefully across the table. Carefully, but not subtly.

"Don't you agree, dear?" Lizzy said, turning adroitly towards him.

When he did not reply immediately, she nudged him with her elbow, forcing him to straighten and look at her in surprise.

"What? Oh, yes. Quite so. Indeed."

He smiled, fleetingly, and feigned an interest in his own soup-dish which had been sorely neglected during his observations.

Lizzy made a joke, laughing and urging her neighbours to converse between themselves, before turning back to her husband with concern.

"Are you quite well?" she straightened her cutlery. "I know that a dining room full of friends and relatives is perhaps not high on your list of favourite things, but you did encourage me to arrange this evening."

"Encourage is rather a strong word," Darcy replied, arching an eyebrow at his wife. "I believe acquiesced to your suggestion is a more accurate reading of what happened with regards to this evening."

"Very well," Lizzy grinned. "But I at least gave you some say in the guest list. Mr Lambert, for instance, was all your choice. I had no say in the matter of his invitation."

This made Darcy's frown deepen.

"And would you have said anything to counter it? I sensed some animosity between you and him, and now Georgiana is doing a poor job of ignoring him. I thought him quite amiable on our meeting, albeit a little quiet." He smiled. "Please do not tell me you bear a grudge only against men who prefer to keep their thoughts to themselves than to speak them aloud at any and every opportunity."

Lizzy pulled a face at him.

"It would be foolish for me to adopt that position," she said, lifting a glass to her lips and taking a sip of her drink. "He was so rude to us when all poor Georgiana and I did was laugh!"

"The audacity!" Darcy said, allowing his voice to grow warm with gentle teasing. "I trust you were not laughing at him, and thus justifying his outburst?"

"No, indeed!" Lizzy bristled, although two spots of colour in her cheeks suggested his assertion was not entirely wide of the mark. "Well, anyway, we did not say anything bad about him whilst he was there to hear it." She ducked her head, having the grace to look a little embarrassed by this behaviour. "It was perhaps wrong to speak unkindly of him, but this was in retaliation for the way he acted. You ought to have seen him. He huffed and puffed in our general direction until apparently he could bear it no more and left, gathering his belongings and storming out of the tea room as if he could not believe we had the nerve not to sit in abject silence and allow him to work." She shook her head. "It was not as if we were in a church! He might work just as easily in his study as in our tea room."

"Your tea room?" Darcy deployed his eyebrow once more.

"The tea room," Lizzy clarified. "The public tea room. The one that is open to the public and anyone who might care to converse over their refreshments and not merely peg away at studies." She bit her lip. "I ought to apologise, I suppose."

"It would be charitable," Darcy remarked. He patted his wife warmly on the hand. "Recall, not all gentlemen handle crowds and introductions as well as you do."

Their eyes met and they smiled, both recalling their fractured first meeting and the misunderstanding that had undermined their first year of acquaintance.

"You have already demonstrated your ability to forgive a poor first impression. Take another look at our curate. Perhaps he is hiding his light under a bushel."

Lizzy frowned.

"Perhaps. On the other hand, he does not seem to have endeared himself greatly to Georgiana, and I think we can both agree she is far more easily pleased than I am. Oh dear!" She sighed. "I had high hopes for matching the pair when you mentioned inviting a newly-arrived curate to dine with us. I could not have imagined that he and our grumpy companion were one and the same, and had constructed a pretty little romance for the pair."

"Romance?" Darcy's expression darkened. "Between Georgiana and a curate?"

"Do not say curate like that as if I suggested matching her with a street-urchin. I wager you would not even consider the Prince Regent himself a suitable match for your sister, but I thought you had learned not to judge quite so harshly according to one's status and position. Or have you forgotten your aunt?"

Darcy groaned. He rarely had cause to think of his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, but that did not mean she was often very far from his thoughts. She was only too fond of remarking on people's pedigree and had used social status as the very cornerstone of her objection to Darcy and Elizabeth marrying. He shuddered. He did not care to be like his aunt, and if Lizzy was already drawing parallels between Lady Catherine's fierce guarding of his affections and his own protection of Georgiana, perhaps he ought to take care.

"That is entirely different," he whispered, although he could not quite believe it. "I am concerned about Georgiana's wellbeing."

"As am I, and you needn't fret. Now that I have met the bad-tempered Mr Lambert, I have no more plans of matching the pair than I have of taking a vow of silence. Now do, please, finish your soup. Everyone is eager for our next course and we delay only for you!"