“I’ve already discussed this with Lady Jersey. She assures me that the bank’s representative will not be a single gentleman—certainly an accountant or clerk with his wife would be appropriate. There’s no reason for concern regarding propriety.” Darcy squeezed his sister’s hands. “Sweetling, I know this is a lot to ask. While I’m away, you’ll need to act as Mistress. Mrs. Reynolds, Winthrop, and Baxter will support you. If you’re ready, I’ll call them in now to explain the situation. Mrs. Younge, though your companion, should not be told the details—they must remain confidential from all but the senior staff.
“Lady Jersey, from Child & Co.? Why, I met her at Lady Matlock’s only two months ago. She’s quite intimidating, but her companion was very kind.”
“She is formidable,” Darcy agreed. “But for now, let’s call in Mrs. Reynolds, Winthrop, and Baxter. You’ll be Mistress, but the loan requires you and the household to defer to the bank’s representative. I’m assured they won’t interfere with the running of the estate. Indeed, being an accountant from London, I suspect they will know little of managing an estate—they’ll focus solely on accounts, rents, and expenses.”
Darcy watched as Georgiana’s posture straightened. One day, she’d make an excellent mistress of an estate. But now, at just sixteen, she was being asked to manage Pemberley, its staff,tenants, and cottagers. Was he asking too much? Only time will explain.
* * *.
TheEarl of Moira, a packet out of Liverpool, was a sturdy vessel of eighty-nine tons, remarkably well appointed for its purpose and commanded by Captain Skinner, a seasoned naval man. Darcy lingered on deck as long as the brisk northerly wind would permit, but the chill finally sent him below to his small cabin. Parting with Georgiana had been wretched; never before had he left her for so long, nor entrusted her with both the care of Pemberley and the unknown presence of an accountant from Child & Co.
Mrs. Reynolds, ever steady, had assured him she would watch over Miss Darcy as she always had since Lady Anne’s passing. For fifteen years, she had been more than a housekeeper—practically a second mother to Georgiana.
The crossing to Dublin, Captain Skinner insisted, was a quick one. Darcy, after thirty-seven hours of being flung about by the Irish Sea, disagreed. Mrs. Reynolds had provided ample bread, cheese, and cold meats for him and his man, Croft, which they consumed huddled together below decks. By the time they finally entered Dublin Bay, Darcy was in a sour mood, unmoved by the scenery his fellow passengers claimed was comparable to the Bay of Naples. All he wished was to be done with the two sandbanks—the North and South Bulls—that kept larger ships from harbour, and to tie up at the Pidgeon House quay.
His mood soured further when customs officers rifled through his luggage and charged him a three-shilling fee for the privilege. They boarded a lumberinglong coach, crammed with sixteen passengers inside and as many clinging outside, and set off for the city, a scant three miles distant, pulled by fourmiserable horses. If Dublin Bay was picturesque, the town of Ringsend, through which they passed, was its opposite: squalid, noisy, and foul beyond description. Every house teemed with half-clad tenants, and heaps of refuse blocked the narrow lanes.
Croft, squashed opposite Darcy and saddled with a parcel belonging to a young woman, muttered, “A veritable hell.” The bundle soon revealed itself, to Croft’s dismay and his pantaloons’ ruin, as a large piece of prize pork, sweating profusely.
At last, they reached the city, crossed a tangle of bridges, and were deposited at the mail-coach office. From there, they proceeded to Leech’s Hotel on Kildare Street, where Darcy was astonished to find himself comfortably lodged.
“I think I shall take a turn about town, Mr. Darcy,” said Croft once they had freshened up. “Will you be dining here?”
“I shall, Croft,” Darcy replied, “though I doubt the pleasures of Dublin might improve my mood. Go and see the sights while there’s still light—though the moon is bright enough tonight.”
“Very good, sir. I’ll return before you retire.” With that, Croft left Darcy in the hall and slipped into the street.
Dinner proved far more agreeable than Darcy had expected: boiled chicken, mutton, duck, lamb, ham, salad, peas, asparagus, and—happily—none of the ubiquitous Irish potato. All washed down with a decent claret.
Yet even this did little to cheer him. The dining room bustled with Englishmen on business, voluble Irish merchants, and a handful of officers whose laughter rang off the walls. Darcy ate quietly, resignedly thinking of Pemberley’s calm and Georgiana’s music in the drawing room, then reluctantly returned to his apartment.
A knock on the door cut short his reverie. Croft entered, wind-blown and a little sooty. “A lively place, sir,” he reported. “Livelier than London, perhaps, though not so fine. The streetsare narrow, the people bold, and I could hardly move for beggars and fellows hawking maps, books, or whiskey.”
Darcy managed a smile. “We shall be glad, I think, when our business is finished. For Georgiana’s sake, I hope it will not keep us long.”
Croft nodded. “All will be well, sir. Perhaps we can leave sooner than we expect. I shall see to your bed, which, mercifully, is longer than that dreadful one at Knutsford on our journey to Liverpool.”
* * *
Darcy boarded the fly-boat at the Royal Canal Harbour at Broadstone, opposite the King’s Inns, a rather grand building surmounted by a domed tempietto—pretentious, like much of Dublin’s architecture. The boat, taking passage to Thomastown, was long and narrow; both the first and second class cabins were covered over; the first cabin served tea, breakfast, and dinner. Though it travelled at fast pace—drawn by four horses at seven miles an hour—Darcy discovered it was the smoothest travel he had ever experienced. Progress was initially slow, as the canal ascended from the River Liffey at Dublin through twelve locks to Castleknock, a distance of six miles. The passage through a lock was a cumbrous affair. The fly-boat entered the lock-chamber, and heavy timber gates—sealed with oak and supported by limestone masonry—were closed behind it. The lock keeper lifted the sluice paddles in the opposite gates, letting in water to lift the boat.
“How much water does it take to fill the chamber?” Darcy asked the boat’s guide, who stood at the bow.
“Ah, sure, it’d be nigh on five hundred barrels, so it would, an’ when the water runs low, faith, it’ll take a fair bit o’ time tofill, so it will,” the guide replied in his thick Irish brogue—a way of speaking Darcy would surely soon be accustomed to.
He slipped the guide a coin—if he were to complete the canal from Thomastown to Mullingar, then it would be best to be on good terms with the canal workers. The boatmen were the public face of the canal, and it was through their labours that the company earned its income—little enough to pay out the interest and capital. Darcy knew that, by the time the canal reached Mullingar, over £700,000 would have been spent—a prodigious sum.
The canal boat slowed as they traversed theDeep Sinking,where the canal had been dug and blasted through a limestone quarry, the bridle path over five and twenty feet above the canal. It was here that the company had spent £10,000 on gunpowder alone for just a mile and three-quarters of canal; all because the Duke of Leinster wished for the canal to pass close to his country residence at Maynooth, just twelve miles from Dublin.
Once the boat had passed beneath the Leixlip Confey bridge, it soon traversed the lofty aqueduct spanning the Ryewater, an elegant structure rising seventy-five feet above the River Rye. Darcy could not help but reflect, with a mixture of astonishment and dismay, upon the singular history of the aqueduct—a monument to the ingenuity of engineer Richard Evans, whose ambitious undertaking had demanded a sum of £27,000 and suffered the ignominy of collapse not once, but twice, before its completion. How swiftly, he mused, might the £184,500 secured upon Pemberley be squandered by such extravagant undertakings! And yet, he had not been afforded the benefit of a proper map detailing the lands about Thomastown, and the prospect of the canal encountering another river, perhaps as troublesome as the Rye, filled him with a most uncomfortable apprehension.
As the fly-boat pressed onward, the landscape slipped by in a patchwork of green fields and grazing cattle, interspersed with the occasional turf-roofed cottage and reedy bog. Darcy watched the reflection of the towrope along the water’s surface, its tautness a visible symbol of the determination—often improvident—that had driven the canal’s construction this far. The passengers, a mix of merchants, some English tourists, and the odd country squire, lounged about the cabin, taking tea and exchanging murmured gossip about the fortunes and failings of the towns along the canal’s length.
It was not long before the conversation turned to the canal itself. A portly gentleman, whose accent betrayed a recent arrival from London, opined that the canal was “the very height of Irish ambition—splendid, but doomed to cost twice what it should.”
The helmsman’s wife, who tended the kitchen, overhearing, replied with a cheery smile, “Well sir, it’s a rare thing to find a dream worth half its price, and this one’s worth every shilling.”
Darcy smiled politely, though his thoughts were less sanguine. He could not help but calculate the mounting cost, the vast sums swallowed by every lock, bridge, and aqueduct. Yet with each mile, he saw not only expense, but the living proof of human ingenuity—stone embankments standing firm against a river’s restless flow, arches of cut limestone spanning valleys that would have been impassable a generation before.
