Chapter Twenty-One
Upon leaving Lambton, hopefully for the last time in a good long while, I was far less relieved than agitated. I have many faults, but since a wont of understanding was not one of them, I could not escape the fact that Elizabeth Bennet was not merely indifferent toward me; she was quite averse to the acquaintance.
I directed my coach to the squire’s house, Hinwick Manor. The Manor, as it was called locally, was a building of some history. It had probably been there as long as the village church and had been added to and repaired to such an extent that it was now an imposing, ungainly sprawl. If Pemberley was the seat of elegance in the district, then Hinwick was the seat of provincial power.
Sir Hugh Pembridge was not a nominal knight in the style of Sir William Lucas. The suits of familial armor lining the great, flagged hall at Hinwick Manor, and those standing guard on either side of a hearth the size of Mrs. Jennings’s entire kitchen, stood in mute testimony to his ancestral lineage. The house had been built on ground they had contested, probably with the same axes, shields, and longbows that hung on the walls.
Sir Hugh, a barrel-chested, silver-haired brute of a man with a loud voice and wide stance, admirably represented his ancestors and was perfectly suited to such a place. This was a man for the hunt, the race, the mill, and the horse fair, and though I met with him often on many matters, it was his lady I had come to speak to on this particular day.
“What is to do, Darcy?” was her bluff greeting. Lady Pembridge was not one for preamble, so I explained my errand succinctly.
“She is an acquaintance, you say?”
“I met her in Hertfordshire when visiting a friend’s estate.”
“And her father also owns an estate there?”
“As I said, not a rich one.”
“Are you certain she is not chasing after your fortune, Darcy?”
“Positive, ma’am.”
“Very well. I shall recognize her.”
“I would be grateful if you did.”
“I am sure you would. You cannot yourself be constantly visiting to assure she is comfortable without raising expectations.”
“Certainly without bringing unwonted attention to myself and Miss Bennet.”
To this reply, Lady Pembridge only nodded, but by the slight raising of her right brow and scant smile, I felt the recipient of a look that suggested she thought she knew more about my intentions than I.
Little did she suspect that my strong inclination was to rid myself altogether of intentions in that direction.
Having discharged my duty, I expected to be left in peace. However, rather than forgetting Miss Bennet, which was my sincere wish, I played our last conversation again and again in my head. I ascertained that her aunt and uncle, likely the same relations who lived in Cheapside, were unaware of Mrs. Jennings’s condition, and Miss Bennet was obstinately resolved to keep them ignorant at least until the lady’s companion and housekeeper returned. She would then return to London, explain the case to her uncle, and he would decide what was to be done.
I did not agree with this strategy, but I understood it.
Other revelations were harder to comprehend. She had the capacity to speak quickly, packing her every utterance with bits of truth, farce, nuance, irony, and amusement. I could not easily pick apart the wheat from the chaff, per se, but I was able to infer she had refused an offer from Mr. Collins and was in disgrace with her mother in consequence.
That Miss Bennet had escaped such a ludicrous match was unremarkable, but the idea of her marryingsomeoneforced me to pause and wrestle with the fact that thissomeonewould not be me. With the determination of a Roman philosopher, I shook off these plaguing, oppressive thoughts and applied myself to my own business—the business I was born to do.
Almost every winter in memory brought a fair amount of trouble to the area. Our diminishing mineral resources and the resultant loss of prosperity meant that men could no longer work and families were left in deeper poverty. Charity from the local estates could not do for people what a thriving industry could, and I met with Squire Pembridge twice to discuss the ramifications of yet another mine closure. We came up short as to what to do, which frustrated me sufficiently to allow me a bit of distraction from what I had come to classify as my personal troubles. Industry seemed to be the way of the future, and though our estates thrived and we supported many people in the time-honored way of agriculture, we could not snap our fingers and conjure a steel works, nor were we close enough to the harbors to delve into the milling of cotton or the deportation of made goods.
We had gritstone, shale, and limestone, yet the mining of these paltry riches was hardly lucrative when considering the remoteness of our location from the industries that relied on them. Transportation of heavy stone was the principal impediment to wealth, and naïve investors from Derby and elsewhere who began their operations with high hopes, often ended them by means of simple abandonment, as had recently been the case.
All I had as a remedy was the arable land I owned. Sufficiently discouraged by any grander schemes, I applied myself to opening our poorer fields to productive uses by experimenting with tough grasses that might sustain geese and goats.
To put it bluntly, estate ownership is not a glamorous business, and as I engaged in various conferences with my steward, canvassed poor plots as yet unclaimed by tenants, and consulted heavy tomes on the minutiae of grass, I chuckled inwardly to consider the dismay this reality would cause Miss Caroline Bingley, who thought of Pemberley as a mere palace of luxury.
Regrettably, this led me to loop around to what I didnotwant to dwell on.
What had Miss Bennet said?Shewas not the least bit fragile and could suffer the indignity of a little work.Shewas not one of the “temptingly handsome” ladies of my acquaintance. Clearly, she had heard what I had intended to be a private assessment of her at the Meryton assembly and meant to wound me with that jab; in truth, I did feel the stab of shame as a result.
***
Time in February marches slowly. The estate continued prosperous even in winter, producing cheese, hams, eggs, and butter that we carted weekly as far as Derby where fresh goods commanded better prices. My steward also found a family of cottagers willing to tend goats on my rockier fields in exchange for a place to live and half their production. I settled in for the long wait for spring when I could travel and, by default, distance myself fromvillage happenings.
