I found her huddled in the darkened hall where I had beaten her assailants into submission, and I roared at her. “Are you out of your mind to be letting men like that in this house? Where is your backhouse man?”
What I then heard enraged me further. Mrs. Jennings’s backhouse man did not sleep on the premises. This was an inexcusable lack of caution that had led to the very peril Miss Bennet had just endured. When I voiced my disbelief, however, she heatedly defended herself on the basis that he was too old to have done her any good had he even been present. Unbelievably, the lady then added a pithy reflection that it was ludicrous of me to rank a creaking elder at ten times the value of a strong and healthy woman, in other words, to have classed her as useless in comparison.
Unable to disguise my exasperation, I clapped back. “You choosenowto enter into a debate?”
It had all been too much, however, and she slumped against the wall. Was she on the verge of fainting?Good lord!I grasped her around the waist before she fell, and newly chastened and extremely sorry to have admonished her at such a horrible moment, I helped her to sit in the kitchen on a bench by the warmth of the stove.
Even before I got Miss Bennet to the kitchen, she began the violent trembling characteristic of a shock.
I could only think of brandy, which she did not have, so I thought to make her a cup of strong, sweet tea as a poor replacement.
To the dregs of righteous anger that still circulated within me was added a further dose of irritation, for the condition of Mrs. Jennings’s kitchen was little better than that of a tenant farm—perhaps worse. The kettle was dented, the tea tin nearly empty, and the cream pitcher utterly so, and as I inwardly complained, Miss Bennet sought to come about.
“Do you indeed know how to make tea, Mr. Darcy?” she asked, but in such a trembling voice, I hardly felt as teased as she intended.
I thought back to the many times I had sat over a twig fire as a boy, boiling water in a can and steeping leaves before heaping the brew with sugar and a few drops of stolen brandy I hoarded in a small glass bottle.
“Every boy has been on a tramp at least once in his life,” I replied, striving not to sound as harassed as I felt. I could not find the teapot anywhere.
“There, by your left hand,” the lady said, in a slightly stronger voice. If she were not shivering uncontrollably, I am certain she would be laughing behind her hand at me.
I vented my annoyance. “Is there a reason this room is so dark?”
In response, and to my utter horror, she began to cry.
While sobbing out her heart, she emptied her budget. I heard about the tallow candles and the chicanery of the butcher, the baker, and even the laundress, which surprised me because I had known Ruth Watkins all her life, and she had never struck me as the least bit mean.
Her face fell into her hands, and she spoke in a mumble of disjointed sentiments, all of which led me to understand Miss Bennet had not had a moment of leisure, nary a kind gesture, or the merest hint of welcome from anyone in Lambton. The weather, as I feared it would, had daunted her, and without beeswax for candles or lamp oil, which was too dear to burn for pleasure, she could not even retreat into the comfort of a book—one of her principal diversions.
I offered her my handkerchief, and as I sat crouched before her, I melted into a pudding of dismay. The day I had seen her disheveled in this kitchen, I had never seen anyone more beautiful. Now, in that very room as she wept out her troubles to me—and to me alone—a deep tenderness arose within me. I felt the sting of sympathetic tears in the back of my eyes.
“And?” I asked gently, for I wished to hear the whole of her heart. What I heard made me smile at her bent head—the artless and passionate disclosures that she had enraged the cook, was declared fit to be a charwoman by her mother, and had entertained the busybody next door, who had her living from a brothel. Even in the grip of a shock, with its attendant storm of emotions and bitter memories, she found humor in the ridiculous.
Somehow, in the course of this torrent of tears, I found myself sitting next to her on the bench, and once or twice I thought—I hoped—she would rest her head on my shoulder. But she happened to turn to face me, and raising her eyes to mine, she let me look my fill. A light rain began, water dripped from the eaves, and a dog barked somewhere far away. We sat staring at one another, breathless and entranced, until she spied the cut on my lip. Had I not stopped her from touching my mouth, I am certain we would have ended that encounter in a prolonged, fevered kiss.
“Were you hurt?” I asked, fending off this tender attack.
My question surely reminded her of what she had endured. When she slumped in fatigue as her only reply, I helped her up the stairs to her room.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Once I had secured the lady in her room, I returned to the bench in the kitchen. I stripped off my coat with a mighty wince, raised my shirt sleeves, and sat with my fists plunged in a bucket of cold water. I cannot say I thought of much and do not rightly know how long I sat there. The events of the evening had been too bizarre, and I, too, had suffered a shock.
But I was not left to my stupor for long. A soft knock on the kitchen door alerted me to the return of Keller with the coach, and I roused myself. There were still decisions to be made.
Sam came into Mrs. Jennings’s kitchen with linen straps used in the stable for splinting horse bones, and as I stripped off my shirt and allowed him to bind my ribs, I said to Keller, “Take the coach up the road a bit and walk the team if need be. I do not want any more attention drawn to this house. I shall send Sam with instructions momentarily.”
“Aye, sir.”
Wrapped, my ribs were less painful, though putting on my coat was not. Sam was unsympathetic.
“Well, if ye’d a let me do what needed doin’,” he began, with a cluck of his tongue.
“Have I not already said I should have? I have no excuse, except that my fists did not think to call you.”
He relented with a grunt, and having had my fill of his mothering, I turned his attention to what remained to be done.
“Take the coach back to Pemberley. Do not wake the house, but rouse Parker and tell him to send me a dozen candles, milk, cream, tea, and brandy. Be sure to tell him it is my wish that the fewest people possible know there has been any trouble tonight.”
