It was the question Elizabeth dreaded, but she answered as honestly as she could. “I do not know. He did not say so, but I would not expect him to tell me if he did. I looked for it, but it was impossible to tell without you there. I am sorry.”
“Oh, do not be sorry for me,” Jane said with a sigh. “I have had plenty of time to become accustomed to my disappointment. Yours is much fresher.” She tucked Elizabeth’s hair behind her ear and cupped her chin. “But I am confident you will not be unhappy for long.”
Elizabeth did not feel consoled. “We shall never see either of them again if Lydia cannot be found.”
“Of course she will be found! She and Wickham must make a handsome couple—somebodywill remember seeing them.”
“What if she is not with him anymore?”
“You cannot believe him so bad as to abandon her!”
“I am sorry to say it, but I do.”
“Oh, Lizzy!” Jane covered her mouth with her hand. On anybody else, the gesture would have looked affected. It made her sweet, unsuspicious sister look truly horrified.
“I know,” she whispered. “She is so naïve. She would not understand the danger she was in until it was too late.”
“I cannot bear to think what that would do to Papa. You should have seen him when the express came. I never saw anyone so shocked.”
“I cannot bear to think what it would do to any of us, Jane. There would be no gentlemen callers from Derbyshire or anywhere else. We would all be ruined. And as for our poor, reckless sister? Well, we had better pray that our uncle knows where to look for her. It is the only hope for any of us.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO
THE PRICE OF HAPPINESS
The library was the largest room in Pemberley, bigger even than the great hall, yet not until now had Mrs Reynolds considered it to be imposingly so. Hitherto, its walls of books, abundance of reading chairs, and two fireplaces had made the cavernous chamber welcoming, in spite of its grandeur. As its shelves were slowly emptied and its furniture removed, the space felt ever less familiar.
She patted the wall next to her and whispered. “Poor old girl. I know how you feel.”
She did, too. It was another damp day, and her ailing body ached and groaned in new places and foreign ways. It no longer responded to instruction as it had used to, and she found herself, on occasion, staring up a flight of steps or at some other obstacle, wondering when her limbs had become so truculent. When she tried to walk away from the wall, her feet were disinclined to obey, and she staggered slightly.
“Mrs Reynolds, are you well?”
She glanced behind her, mortified to discover that the master had observed her frailty. “Quite well, thank you, Mr Darcy.”
He pierced her with an unnerving look. It was one he had mastered at an exceedingly young age, and which she had observed him use on countless people in her time. She could not deny its efficacy. “It was just a little turn. It will pass.”
He immediately signalled for two footmen, who were marching towards the door with a wing back chair slung between them, to bring it to him instead; then he insisted that Mrs Reynolds sit in it. She did, knowing the pain in her side would ease faster that way.
Mr Darcy beckoned the nearest maid. “Hannah, fetch a glass of wine for Mrs Reynolds, please.”
After a quick, concerned glance at her and a curtsey for him, Hannah hastened from the library. Mr Darcy perched on a nearby stack of crates. It looked neither dignified nor comfortable, and Mrs Reynolds suspected he did it only to make her feel less conscious about sitting down herself.
“I am terribly sorry, sir. I shall be as right as rain in a moment.”
“Do not apologise. But be frank with me—is this all too much?” He gestured to the wider room.
There certainly was a good deal going on. Three of the housemaids were in here, packing books into crates. Since very few of them knew their letters, each had been paired with a clerk, hired from the village to inventory the contents of every crate. Two footmen were stacking furniture by the door ready for collection. Two more had lowered one of the library’s huge chandeliers onto a wooden trolley and were detaching it from its pulleys and ropes. A man she did not know was up a temporary scaffold, hammering at the wall above one of the windows. And she had come, as she did several times a day, to ensure the smooth running of things, to check that all was well with the house. A little like visiting a dear old friend in their sickbed.
“I have never been frightened of hard work.”
Mr Darcy gave her a small but sincere smile. “I am well aware. But your stumble just now—I hope you are not over-fatigued?”
Mrs Reynolds hesitated. She would have to tell him at some point that he would need a new housekeeper, but not when the poor man had so much else with which to contend. “I should say I am more melancholy than fatigued. It is difficult to see Pemberley being pulled apart in this way.”
His expression softened, revealing a sadness in his countenance she had not noticed before. “But of course, this has been your home for almost as long as it has been mine.”
“I daresay I am as fond of it as you are, if it is not impertinent to say so.”
