Carver inclined his head. “You are welcome, though I am no more after thanks and praise than your lovely wife has been all week. ’Tis a meal shared between friends, that is all.” He began to eat, as did everybody else.
Darcy’s gaze drifted back to the bowl before him, but his appetite had long since fled. “Reduced him to his present state of poverty, indeed!” he thought bitterly as he ripped his roll in two.The audacity of the lie was as staggering as the inaccuracy of it.No less his due than his dessert?What Wickham believed had proved manifestly out of kilter with reality.No more after thanks and praise than your lovely wife…
Replaying the words caught his attention as they had not when Lieutenant Carver spoke them aloud. He placed both halves of his roll down on the table and turned to regard Elizabeth. She must have noticed, for his injury required him to twist his entire frame in her direction, yet she did not acknowledge his attention. He began to feel more than commonly anxious as he reflected on her observation several days prior that the broth they had supped together could do with more salt—and that of the broth which she had brought him the following day being saltier. “You might find her in the kitchen,”Timmins had said.Elizabeth’s cheeks pinked under his continued gaze, but still she did not look up, and Darcy knew then, with abysmal certainty, that she had been cookinghis food all week. While he lay abed bemoaning any prolonged absence from his side.
“It is very good, Carver,” Latimer said with a mouthful. “Though I own I do long for a good beef steak.”
A low rumble of accord rolled around the room. Darcy’s head began to throb. How was he to know she had acted as servant all week, for she had said nothing of it!
“I used to like snow,” said Mrs Ormerod. “But I shall not be sorry if I never see another flake.”
“No, nor I,” replied Mrs Stratton. “The novelty of making do has most definitely begun to wear off. I should very much like to go home.”
“I spoke to a Mr McGregor in the village, dear,” her husband informed her. “He is of the opinion the roads ought to clear in a day or two. Merryweather will be back with the carriage as soon as may be.”
“I understand you have sent word to your cousin, also, Mr Darcy?”
Darcy lifted his gaze to Lieutenant Carver’s and mouthed, “I have.”
“And that he is in the army?”
“He is.”
“What regiment, might I enquire? Might be as I know him.”
He sincerely doubted Carver would be acquainted with an officer of Fitzwilliam’s rank, but was sufficiently curious as to be willing to find out. Elizabeth forestalled him, however.
“Oh, he moves about far too often for us to keep track of him,” she said airily. “We have long since given up attempting it.”
Darcy looked askance at her. She returned his glance with a subtle but expressive look and extended one finger in their established signal for no. She did not wish that he revealFitzwilliam’s identity? The fog in Darcy’s head made it uncommonly difficult to attend to reasoning why. He supposed, were Fitzwilliam to be known to Carver, then his own identity as master of Pemberley would soon after be confirmed. His gut knotted. She wished that the tale of Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet’s incarceration together not be revealed to the world. For which there could be but one explanation: she would avoid any possibility of being forced to marry him.
He returned his gaze to the table. Notwithstanding the revelation that she believed Wickham’s tales of woe, still it dismayed him to discover the degree of her antipathy to the union.
“That is often the case,” Carver replied, oblivious to their private exchange. “It can be an itinerant occupation and lonely as a consequence.”
“Precisely why I opted for innkeeping,” Timmins piped up. “Society comes tomethis way and is generally too thirsty by the time it arrives to object to this.” He waggled his right shoulder up and down to indicate the unnatural curvature of his spine.
“My father desired that I go into the navy,” Mr Ormerod croaked. “I preferred the church. There seemed to me much less chance of getting wet.”
Darcy sneered at his soup. His own father had intended that George Wickham should be awarded a living in the church. Would that the work-shy reprobate had gone to sea instead; considerable misfortune might have been avoided.
“Your young man has a most forbidding countenance, Lizzy.”
He gritted his teeth. No doubt he had not been meant to hear this whispered remark from Mrs Ormerod, leant almost out of her chair to make the observation to Elizabeth—but hehad, and it soured his temper further still. He was in no humour to perform to this motley assembly of strangers. And he was not ‘Elizabeth’s man’.
“You must not be afraid of him, Mrs Ormerod,” Elizabeth replied in a voice evidently intended that he should hear. “He has a severe mien, but he is notat allabove his company. If he were able to speak, I am sure he would charm you all with his easy conversation and inviting manners.”
“I am not surprised to hear it, my dear, for you are so like that yourself,” the old lady replied. “And, in fairness, I imagine he is still in a good deal of pain. Anybody so seriously injured has a right to look as displeased as he does.”
Darcy would have given his left arm to lie down. His head swam in such a way as threatened to drown every thought—though his indignation was more than sufficiently buoyant that he chafed at Elizabeth’s veiled reproof. He had never excelled at catching the tone of people’s conversation or appearing interested in their concerns, as he often saw done. That did not make him disagreeable; it made him a man of few words.
He attempted prodigiously hard to ignore the recollection of having made the same observation, in a less charitable light, of John but a quarter of an hour earlier.
“We are an odd mix, are we not?” Timmins said. “An innkeeper, a soldier, an actor, a merchant, and a clergyman. I expect I could find a joke in amongst that lot somewhere, were there no ladies present. Pray, Mr Darcy, what is your profession?”
A curt and derisive laugh came from the seat by the fire. “You may surmise, from that look, that you have mortally offended him, Timmins,” Latimer drawled. “Mr Darcy is evidently not a man with anoccupation.”
“A gentleman then,” Timmins replied. “But you are not offended, are you, sir?”
