“Might I suggest that you would have more time to make your assessment if you did not immediately provoke him into evicting you from the house?” Elizabeth replied with cool composure.
“You have lost none of your impertinence I see!”
“Your ladyshipwould speak of impertinence?” Darcy replied incredulously.
Elizabeth placed a hand on his arm and tried to disarm him with a look, but she could see straight away it had not worked. He continued to seethe as she spoke. “Lady Catherine, you have travelled a long way. Can I offer you some refreshments?”
Her ladyship reluctantly conceded that she would accept some tea, adding unhelpfully, “Since your servants did not see fit to offer me any such courtesy while I waited for you.”
Elizabeth rang the bell then turned to Lady Catherine. “We are in a period of upheaval. I know your ladyship is sensible enough to comprehend that there may be the odd interruption to the smooth running of things.”
“That is a sanguine evaluation of the situation, Mrs Darcy. ‘Upheaval’ implies a temporary inconvenience, not one that lasts until death do you part.”
Darcy’s countenance had darkened alarmingly. “You know perfectly well Elizabeth was referring to the problems with the house.”
“Do I?” his aunt retorted. “It seems to me that your wife has more foresight than you, Darcy. She is at least aware of the turmoil surrounding her. You seem blind to every dire consequence of this scandalous alliance.”
“I am painfully aware of the turmoil surrounding us. I do not need it pointed out to me.”
Elizabeth listened to them rail at each other, her mind racing to think of a way to prevent an all-out war, when the door opened, and James poked his head into the room. She hastened to him and whispered, urgently, “Please have some tea sent up. Ask Mrs Lovell to come too. But first, find Mr Ferguson, and tell him to invent an emergency. I do not care what it is, but it must require Mr Darcy’s immediate presence. Do you understand?”
He nodded and hastened away.
“And what do you propose by coming here?” Darcy was saying when she turned back to the room. “Do you think you can somehow undo my marriage?”
“Would that were possible! Alas, I cannot work miracles.”
“I see. I must conclude, then, that your design is to burn every bridge that exists between us to ensure we need never speak again?”
“It would be better if we could all remain reasonable,” Elizabeth tried, to no avail. She only drew Lady Catherine’s ire back upon herself.
“Oh, but Iwasreasonable while I accounted to my friend the Marchioness of Shrewsbury, why my nephew had overlooked my daughter in favour of a penniless nobody from Hertfordshire. I was theepitomeof reason when Lady Alcroft uninvited me from her soiree.”
“Lady Shrewsbury, who slighted Anne at court?” Darcy replied angrily. “Lady Alcroft whose husband could not trouble himself to attend Sir Lewis’s funeral? These are not your friends, madam. Are you truly more concerned with appeasing them than looking to my happiness?”
James cleared his throat from the doorway. “Pardon the intrusion, Mr Darcy. Mr Ferguson has requested that you join him at the dig site.”
“Tell him I shall come presently,” Darcy snapped.
James glanced fretfully at Elizabeth.
“Did he say it was urgent?” she asked him. James nodded feverishly, making her feel bad for having embroiled him in the first place. To her husband, she said, “I think you ought to go. I can manage things here.”
Darcy did not move immediately, but at length he muttered what Elizabeth did not doubt was an imprecation and took a step towards his aunt. “Do not allow it to slip your mind in my absence that Elizabeth is the mistress of this house. If I hear that you have caused her more insult, I will personally see you turned out.” Then he left, and it felt for a moment as though he had taken all the air from the room with him.
Lady Catherine recovered first. “A few weeks of marriage to you and he has become a savage! Never have I heard such language from him.”
“I think it fair to say that he was equally dismayed by your behaviour. It was hardly civil.” Mindful of her aunt Wallis’s recent advice to make an ally of her ladyship if she could, Elizabeth forced herself to adopt a more collected tone. “I can see his anger has surprised you. Perhaps you thought he would tolerate your unashamed invective against his wife, and indeed, he might have done had he married a woman for whom he felt nothing. But you must know that is not the case.”
“I cannot deny that he is completely under your spell. Do you care what injury you have done to my relationship with him?”
That Lady Catherine thought anybody other than herself was responsible for the schism with her nephew only demonstrated the magnitude of the conceit Elizabeth was battling. Nevertheless, she persevered.
“Please, let us sit.” When they were both seated—something that took longer than it needed to thanks to her ladyship’s stubbornness—she continued. “It goes without saying that Darcy holds you in extremely high regard. If he did not, we would not be having this discussion. He would have dropped the acquaintance after what transpired at Longbourn.”
“Do not remind me! His behaviour towards me that day was unpardonable!”
“And what was yours to him? You came, hoping to persuade me—or scold me, or scare me—into forsaking him. I wished at the time that he had not discovered you there, for it hurt him deeply to know that was your object. Yet even then, I doubt he would have spoken so intemperately if your attempt to separate us had been the first. But Mrs Reynolds had already tried—and almost succeeded. Coming so soon after her betrayal, yours was all the more painful.”
