“Oh well,” I said lightly. Again, I do not know why I could not issue a polite lie to the man, but I could not. “You must surely recall Hertfordshire and its myriad examples of village life, Mr. Darcy. There is always some trifling upset, particularly to girls of a certain age, and my family is made up entirely of girls, if you recall.”
“Do you have sisters?” Miss Darcy asked in surprise. “I would dearly love to hear about your family—forgive me! I should have enquired long ago…” Her voice faded into embarrassed dismay.
“Would you? Perhaps tonight, when Mrs. Jennings has won all the little prizes we have gathered, I shall tell you about them. Mr. Darcy, I am certain, will be only too happy to be excused, for he has met them, and they are, save my eldest sister Jane, all extremely silly.”
“No!” she laughed. “Surely you are being unkind.”
“Your brother can attest to the generosity of my calling them merelysilly,”I replied with a chuckle. “Might we again plunder the bric-a-brac box for our game tonight?”
“Better yet, I shall take you up to the nursery. There, we shall find a bounty of buttons and cards and I know not what else.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The day came and went when Mr. Darcy’s courier would have delivered my letter to Gracechurch Street. I tried to drag my mind away from my uncle’s imminent arrival, for I knew him well enough to believe he would come as soon as he could arrange travel. But to try to guess what he would say to me and what he would determine must be done for Mrs. Jennings was to engage in fretful, repetitive thinking with no clear answer, so I left it alone.
Not above twice in a day did I remember my violent ordeal. Days and days had passed, the event faded in significance, and I felt far too secure to dwell upon that terrifying hour of my life. When the memory did intrude, it was at odd times and in flashes of the strangest bits, such as stirring the last of the cream into chips of dried beef, and the smell of the cellar when the door first came open—earthy and damp, with the pungent overtones of roots and dried meat stored there year upon year.
I absolutely forbade myself from recollections of sobbing into my rescuer’s handkerchief or the strength of his arms as he swept me off my feet.
So it was that I could not think of home lest I become discouraged, and I could not think of my future for the same cause. Barring all these pressing subjects to think of, I was left with very little upon which to place my mind. One subject, however, loomed large—that of Mr. Darcy.
I did not want to think about him at all. Yet, whenever Ididthink of him, which was not above fifty times in a day, a dreadful melancholy settled over me. The cause ofthatI refused to consider, classing it as something of an involuntary tic of nerves.
On the few occasions when I was left alone, I went to the gallery and wandered up and down its length for exercise and solitude, staring solemnly from the windows down onto a small lake half-covered in ice. I was in this attitude on Saturday, the tenth of February, when Mr. Darcy discovered my whereabouts.
He came down the long hall, dressed in buckskins, top boots, and a well-tailored blue coat. His stride, I thought, was never leisurely, and he gave off the impression of being a man of purpose. But while his bearing was one of constant occupation, his manners to me were not. He spoke to me as we wandered down the line of portraits as though he had all the time in the world for me, and me alone.
“There you are,” he said with a strange light in his eye.
“Have you been looking for me, sir?”
“Everywhere. I see you have found the judge.”
We were by mere chance standing below the likeness of that awesome personage.
“Oh, he and I are old friends. He disapproves of my pertness of course, and I am of the polite opinion he is a dead bore.”
“That he was. Let me take you to meet a more pleasant member of the family: my great grandmother.”
“Forgive me, Mr. Darcy, but she fairly terrifies me.”
“Ah. Well, come to think of it, she did me as well. She pinched me whenever I had the fidgets in church.”
“She has the look of a pincher. And who is this?”
As we walked, my heart twisted and compressed painfully. It was impossible not to imagine he would introduce his bride to these ancestors in exactly this way, and she in turn would begin to feel a curiosity, an affinity perhaps, and even a kind of pride in what was to be her new family. I felt myself to be something of a surrogate while the gentleman rehearsed this ritual for the benefit of someone else, and after a painful quarter of an hour, I was moved to escape.
On approaching the long clock at the far end of the gallery, I said, “Goodness—the time! I suppose I should find out whether Auntie is finished having her hair dressed.” I curtseyed with haste, for it looked to me as though Mr. Darcy meant to talk me out of going, and I left him no choice but to bow and watch my retreat from where I left him standing awkwardly alone.
This was but one occasion of that sort; he seemed to haunt the halls.Well, I suppose itwashis house, and theywerehis halls.In any case, he managed to present himself to my notice often and at all times of day. This struck me as merely an attempt to be a good host rather than a symptom of his regard, and it further abraded my sensibilities.
Surely, he knew that to pay me so much attention as to suggest an interest must distress me.I am not a lady given to flirtation or one to easily brush off atendreonce formed. I came quite close to feeling ill-used or played with. Only his apparent lack of comprehension in this regard prevented me from classing him as a man who enjoyed trifling with a provincial miss who could have no rational aspirations for a match.
With regard totriflers,I suppose I had developed a sensitivity.
Mr. Wickham may not have kissed me in a darkened hall, but I felt trifled with nonetheless. I reread Lydia’s letter three times before bundling it away, for no other purpose than to assure myself I had not dreamt the insult or imagined it worse than it was. In fact, with every reading, I became more affronted. Had he no better notion of my integrity than to think that I, upon the excuse of visiting a relation, had gone to Lambton out of an ambition to force an attachment to a rich man? He made me out to be no better than a camp follower, which led me to think that this was a precise estimation of my own youngest sister’s character.
Upon this worrisome idea, I continued to brood whenever I was not required to enact the role of contented guest and Miss Darcy’s new friend.
