“I heard him mention more than once after that ball how Mr. Darcy was both skilled with the sword and a gun.”
Elizabeth laughed.
“Don’t cry too much, dearie,” Mrs. Hill said. “If he’d not still been heartbroken over that first wife of his, he would have come up to scratch.”
“That was not—” Elizabeth paused. “You know, I daresay he would have.”
This thought made Elizabeth feel enormously more cheerful. He would not have engaged in such a quixotic quest to punish himself for liking the look of other women if he had not loved Anne dearly.
“It is an odd sensation to realize I have lost in a competition with a ghost. But it is salutary to at last realize that I was in such a competition.”
Mrs. Gardiner raised her eyebrows.
Mrs. Hill said, “That Darcy was a fool to let his sadness over a woman who is gone blind him to a perfect living creature who he might have married.”
“Oh, of a certainty,” Elizabeth replied, smiling. “But are we not all fools at times? I am.”
In the end Elizabeth did travel to stay with the Gardiners in London for a period of unspecified length. She eagerly offered herself as a secondary nursemaid and governess for the children, and Mrs. Gardiner told her that she should not worry about being a burden.
There was some discussion of them all traveling to the Lakes in the summer, though Jane wished Elizabeth to be present with her at Hunsford when the time came for her confinement.
In London Elizabeth’s bruised heart had a chance to heal, though it remained a little tender. The children kept her busy and joyous, the parties that Mrs. Gardiner took her to engrossed her in the concerns of a new circle of persons. She had unlimited access to books, even greater because of the amenities of the city, than she enjoyed at Longbourn when Papa was alive. She heard more of the news of the day from Mr. Gardiner, and she often read bits from his newspapers.
Days and evenings filled with plays, operas, visits to Vauxhall, walks about the parks, and a general experience of pleasure.
She was not lonely. Both Mrs. Gardiner and Mr. Gardiner were clever, thoughtful persons, who displayed true gentility. The persons who they dined in circuit with likewise showed a far higher quality of conversation than those Elizabeth satisfied herself with in the country.
Elizabethdidworry that she was a burden, as she knew that neither her mother nor Mr. Collins sent the Gardiners any money to cover her expenses, in the way that Papa used to.
When she mentioned this to Mr. Gardiner, he waved away the thought. “Your fun is not so expensive, and you do a great deal to help with the children and the servants. It makes the house a more pleasant place to have you with us.”
Darcy and thoughts of Darcy receded from Elizabeth’s mind.
No one in the Gardiners’ circle had any close connection to him or spoke often about that elegant and wealthy gentleman with a scandalous sister. And when the time came close for her to travel to Kent to be present during the last month before her sister’s confinement, Elizabeth had begun to notice once more that on occasion these unattached gentlemen had nice smiles, fine hair, and an amusing ability to flirt.
Though her recovery hadnotprogressed so far that any of them could give her flutters in her stomach as Darcy did. Perhaps that too would return in the goodness of time.
Chapter Eleven
Only Mary and Elizabeth travelled to Kent to attend to Jane during the month prior to her confinement. There simply was not enough room for all of them to move into the parsonage, and as not all of the sisters could fit there, Mama needed to remain at Longbourn to supervise Kitty and Lydia.
Elizabeth departed for the parsonage directly from Gracechurch Street, and she took to the journey with eagerness.
Though her time with her aunt and uncle had been good for her soul and spirit, and though she had enjoyed the advantages of a sojourn in London, the simple fact was that she was a woman who preferred wood and rill to street and lamp.
The City possessed a variety of fine, large, excellent walking parks. But none so close to the abode of her aunt and uncle that it was an easy matter of simply stepping outside to reach them when the urge for seeing the wind blow the leaves and watching the birds hop from branch to branch took Elizabeth.
And none of them could be the same as the truer wildernesses found in the countryside.
In even the most abandoned greenery in the vicinity of London, one still met another man every twenty minutes, and there was nowhere without a plenitude of beaten trails. She never gained that sense of peace, of communion with the sublime that she missed.
Nowto the countryside! Now a return to wide fields, muddy ponds, wide mowed lawns and small hidden alcoves. And what was more, she would enter a fresh countryside that she had never seen before. To add one final generous dollop of sugar to the cup of her delight, that best of seasons, Spring, had begun.
Elizabeth further anticipated fine amusement from her likely opportunity to receive the condescension of LadyCatherine de Bourgh. Though it was unfortunate that the woman would no doubt remind her of Mr. Darcy. But everything that she had heard of Lady Catherine said that she would call up remembrance of Darcy's worse traits, rather than his better ones. Enough time had passed that Elizabeth did not fear that she would cry without warning, or even have a particular urge to do so.
And the Lady herself was an object of awesome curiosity.
A woman who inspired such devotion from Mr. Collins, such tolerance from Jane, and such distaste from her own beloved nephew was a woman well worth meeting.
