“Oh?” he asked dangerously. “Who is to stop us? Your paramour? Has he offered you a house in town and tickets to the opera yet?”
This was a sufficiently infuriating insinuation to rouse me to anger, and it was my turn to stare at him and to let stretch between us an awful pause.
“Sir, if you think me so lost, then your anger must seem rightly placed to you. But you are unjust and have addressed me with an indifferent cruelty that must stagger my mind.” I spoke with cold indignation but ended upon a much more impassioned note. “Do you notknowme?” I cried.
A flash of remorse in his eyes gave me sufficient courage to speak on. “Think what you will, but you know nothing,nothing,about the reason I am here and the gratitude I owe Mr. Darcy and his sister. As to leaving, we shall do just as you say, of course. But first, I believe you should see Mrs. Jennings.”
Rather than overpowering me, my uncle’s lashing himself into a fury had the opposite effect. With my chin slightly higher than it should have been, I preceded him at the dignified pace typical of the wrongfully accused to our private parlor upstairs.
We met Georgiana at the doorway with a book in hand as though she meant to sit with Auntie, and since they had apparently already met, evidenced by her bobbing curtsey and his civil salute, we entered the room together. Mrs. Jennings looked up then, and nearly condemned me forever in the eyes of my uncle.
“Oh, Mrs. Darcy!” she said happily.
I thrust Georgiana forward to fall on the sword for me, and said, “This isMissDarcy, dearest. And look, you have a visitor.” We stood to the side so that Uncle Gardiner could come forward, which he did, greeting her in a reasonable imitation of amiability.
But Auntie, who is never fooled by what wepretendto feel and, sensing my uncle’s strong disapproval of our circumstances, shrank from him.
“I do not want to see the solicitor, Hannah,” she said in a despairing whisper.
“But he is not the solicitor, silly. This is your niece Madeline’s husband, Mr. Gardiner, come to see you all the way from London.”
To no avail did Uncle Gardiner try to be agreeable and draw her out. She even cringed in her chair when he offered her his hand, so I called for the day maid to take her to her room. Miss Darcy had the delicacy to help with this operation, and she shut the door behind her, leaving me alone with my uncle.
“She is very bad, Lizzy,” he said in disbelief, having come down a peg from his rage.
“In general, she is easy to manage, sir, but she sometimes takes fright in the presence of strangers. Still, you must see that to remove her would not be a simple matter. It took days and days of careful attention to make sure she is used to these surroundings, and to take her back to her house would be akin to ripping her away from what she now thinks of as home.”
“Good lord, Elizabeth. How came you to get yourself in such a position? Am I to be beholden to Mr. Darcy’s hospitality after I have once refused it?”
“You could go to Mrs. Jennings’s house, sir, or the inn,” I replied coolly, knowing his objections to my being at Pemberley “alone” would prevent him from doing so.
He ruminated on his options with a look of resentment on his face. “I shall seek out the gentleman and beg his pardon,” he said grimly. “But you will be pleased to explain why you could not write to me about the lady’s condition and stay at Mrs. Jennings’s house until I arrived.”
“I believe, sir,” I said in a voice of deadened calm, “that we should drive to Lambton in the morning so that you can discover for yourself why she is better off here. Excuse me, for I must not leave her overlong in the care of maids. Would you like me to ask whether Mr. Darcy will see you?”
“I only hope he may.”
I stepped gratefully out of that dreadful meeting and ran down the stairs. “Mr. Parker,” I asked with a heaving chest, “where might I find Mr. Darcy?”
He took me to a door halfway down the marbled hall, knocked, and ushered me in to what appeared to be Mr. Darcy’s private study.
***
Mr. Darcy stood abruptly upon seeing me standing at his door, wringing the life out of my handkerchief, and nodded the butler out of the room.
“What has happened?” he asked sharply.
“Oh, sir, my uncle thinks—”
“I know very well what he thinks,” he said quietly.
“Was he terribly rude to you? I cannot bear it if he was because you havesavedme from—”
“Surely, you did not tell him so,” he said, visibly alarmed.
“Of course I did not! I would not for the world put you in any worse position than I already have.”
After a pause, he spoke more reasonably. “Mr. Gardiner was meticulously polite.”
