Elizabeth had been to Pemberley; she had seen how many people relied on Darcy for their livelihoods and homes. She had discovered what the house itself meant to him, and how conscientiously he cared for it. For the first time, she properly understood the responsibility he bore to marry well, for the sake of the estate and all its hundreds of dependents. That obligation was even greater at present, for he must pay for the repairs to the house as well.
In disregarding that onerous duty, in choosing her, he must have decided that she was more important to him than any of it. Remorse wrung her heart, for nobody was fortunate enough to be loved in such a way twice in one lifetime. She would never feel such devotion again, and it was a bitter truth to swallow.
She sat alone with her regret until she could be sure the visitors would be gone, then returned to the house, only to find everything had worsened. Jane had sent for the apothecary to attend their father, whose condition had deteriorated upon reading a letter recently arrived from their cousin in Kent. Mr Collins, it seemed, had heard from his wife, who had heard from her family, that Lydia was now Mrs Wickham, and he had written with barely concealed contempt for her choice of husband and her method of ensnaring him. Elizabeth dared not suppose what Mr Collins had discovered of Lydia’s ‘methods’, but if news of her dalliance with ruin had reached Kent, then all hope of containing it was lost.
Mr Bennet’s declining health and the exhaustion of her own forbearance induced Elizabeth to press for Mr and Mrs Wickham’s expeditious departure. They left Longbourn the next morning, and it felt to her that they stole all her dreams with them.
CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN
AN UNEXPECTED TRAITOR
With the east wing off limits for the foreseeable future, Darcy had taken over the Argyll room, at the opposite end of the house, as his permanent study. It was a poky space by Pemberley’s standards, made even less welcoming by the pyramids of upended furniture and crates presently lining the walls.
For an hour, he had been picking his way through the unremitting stream of trivia and trouble that was strewn across his desk. None of it ought to have taken this long to review, yet of late, he struggled to apply himself to anything, too occupied with the effort of ignoring the hollowness eroding him from within.
He snatched up another letter. This one was from Jacobs, expressing his professional reservations that even a decade’s worth of rainwater run-off could account for the severity of the damage sustained on the east wall. ‘Redirect the culvert, by all means,’ was his position, ‘but do not rely on it resolving the underlying issue.’ Would that Jacobs had applied himself as assiduously to identifying ‘the underlying issue’ as he had to decrying every solution Darcy’s own men had thus far proposed!
He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. ‘Manifestly more than stones and mortar’—so Elizabeth had said, and so he kept repeating to himself. Alas, such comfort as it gave was always countered by the misery induced by all reminders of her. God knew Pemberley would be manifestly more if she were here, making it a proper home.
Someone knocked on the door, and he called an instruction for them to return later, then ran a hand over his face and forced himself to pick up Jacobs’s letter to read again, for it required an answer. He had forgotten the first knock entirely by the time the second came.
“Not now!” he repeated, this time allowing his displeasure to bleed into his voice. To his consternation, the door opened anyway. He prepared to deliver an angry remonstrance but bit it back when his housekeeper edged nervously into the room. “Mrs Reynolds. I can only assume you did not hear me when I said I was not to be disturbed.”
“I did hear you, sir, forgive me, but I must speak to you. About something of the utmost importance.”
Darcy could not recall ever having cause to be angry with his housekeeper, and the sensation was not in the least agreeable. “Whatever your concern, Mr Ferguson is quite capable of dealing with it. There is nothing I can assist you with that he cannot.”
“I am afraid that is not so,” she said in a quavering tone. “This has to do with Miss Elizabeth Bennet.”
“What?” The word tore from his lips before she finished speaking. He regretted his discourtesy when Mrs Reynolds appeared to shrink from him. Her shoulders folded inwards, and her countenance crumpled as though she might weep, which was most unlike her. “You had better come in,” he said more collectedly.
His alarm increased when she shuffled into the room as though the weight of the world were bearing down upon her. He waited with simmering impatience for her to come to a halt in front of his desk, but once there, she did not say a word. She only fidgeted with her chatelaine and took the occasional deep, shaky breath. It was as though someone had kidnapped his assured, competent housekeeper and replaced her with an awkward, inexperienced housemaid.
“Madam?”
“I beg your pardon, sir. It is difficult to know where to begin.”
“Well, I should be grateful if you would begin somewhere.”
She nodded and raised her head to look him in the eye. “I have made a terrible mistake.”
It took all Darcy’s restraint to wait in silence for her to gather enough courage to continue.
“When Miss Bennet first came to Pemberley, several things happened that made it appear she was not a friend to you.”
“And since when has it been your place to have an opinion on such matters?”
She ducked her head. “Never. I beg you would forgive my presumption, only it seemed very much as though Miss Bennet did not care for you beyond—that is, I had very serious cause to believe she was attempting to—that she would make you exceedingly unhappy. I know now that I was wrong, but I only wished to do the best by you, sir.”
“What have you done?”
She visibly swallowed. “I did not pass on her message to you.”
“What message?”
“That—that she was sorry to be leaving so suddenly. And that she—she hoped to see you again soon.”
It was becoming increasingly difficult for Darcy to remain calm. Fury, elation, despair, disbelief—they had all been whipped up at once, and he knew not which to respond to first. “When did she give you this message?” he said when he could be sure of his own voice.
