“Of course he was, but in truth, he is not deeply invested in our lives. But it is not on account of my father I ask you to shield me. I really do not want my mother to know. She will tease me relentlessly and wonder aloud to everyone why I could not entice Mr. Darcy to offer for me, and I would find it painful for her to speak of it.”
Uncle Gardiner only agreed to consider it because he is not a man to commit a lie by omission and said so rather pointedly since that is precisely what I had done with regard to Mrs. Jennings’s situation. As to the expense I had put him to, he patted my hand and said I must not think of it; the enterprise of a boarding house in Lambton would easily see him repaid.
We arrived late in the afternoon, both of us road-sick and weary. I was swarmed by my sisters and brought into the house where I endured half an hour of such abrasive comments as must annoy a saint.
“Well, well—my prodigal daughter has returned, has she? Remind me, Mrs. Bennet: What is her given name?” from Papa, and “Lord, you look ten years older than when I last saw you, Lizzy!” from Lydia.
When I kissed Mama on the cheek, she spoke to me in a tone of injury. “I see you are come back. Well, I suppose you may, though what I shall do with you I do not know.”
From Kitty I heard relief but for selfish reasons. “You are here at last, Lizzy,” she said, sidling up to me at the first opportunity and speaking in a low murmur. “Lydia has been such a witch to me, and I hope you give her a lecture.”
To Mary, who hung back in an attitude of indifference, I extended myself. Kissing her on the cheek, I said, “I am happy to see you, Mary. Maybe tomorrow you might show me the music you are learning?”
And with Jane, there was nothing but love expressed between us without words and in a long, fervent embrace.
“You are done up, Lizzy,” she said kindly. “Come and lie down. Would you like a cold cloth on your head and a warming pan for your feet?”
I was home. I lay in the darkened room as though Ihaddied, and every moment that passed from then on would constitute a strange, new existence.
Chapter Thirty-Five
6 February 1813
Pemberley, Derbyshire
Darcy’s Story…
Miss Elizabeth Bennet sat down for dinner—at my table—and in my house. I could hardly believe it and tried to shake the feeling of having stolen her from her rightful owner. She looked slightly nonplussed to find herself there, and the deliberate alertness of her every word and movement led me to suspect she was not a willing prisoner of my hospitality.
Her objection of having only “one good dress” also struck me as less silly than reasonable, for against the backdrop of a lavish Flemish landscape painting, she looked the part of a provincial girl turned out for a Sunday dinner. Rather unfortunately, Carsten had decided the occasion of company was a sufficient excuse to pull out my very best suit, and Georgiana, who was terribly excited to have a guest and wanted only to honor her, came down in gold satin. Miss Elizabeth’s bravery, however, in facing down the inadequacies of her costume—her stoicism, if you will—did not allow me to pity her. Instead, I was struck by how endearing a strong character could be. That chin!
She managed to make a creditable showing though she was obviously tired and still suffering from the residuals of shock from both her ordeal and from leaving Mrs. Jennings’s house so precipitously. After dinner, she expressed her intention to write to her uncle, and I escorted her upstairs to an escritoire in my mother’s parlor.
It could be said of village life that everyone is aware of everyone else’s business in minute detail. In that regard, Pemberley is a village, and I came to know a great deal about our guests without being directly told or outright asking.
For instance, the following morning I heard two maids outside my apartment discussing the placement of fresh tapers in the sconces in the halls, one claiming she “took a fright that Miss Bennet might stub her toe on the way up to the gallery.”
Ah. She has been to the gallery, has she?I thought. I also heard that “Miss” was writing and should not be disturbed, so I went out riding before making myself available to collect her letter. I arrived at the doorway to the parlor just as she stood up from the desk, envelope in hand, her face reflecting the strain of concentration, and I could only guess what a difficult letter that had been to write. I offered to send it express or by the usual post, but when her shoulders sagged at the likelihood of startling her relations on the one hand, or suffering a prolongation of the conclusion to her predicament on the other, I suggested a private courier.
After a barely perceptible rolling of her eyes at the extent of my resources, she graciously accepted that offer, rendering me mildly exasperated. In actuality, I do have a private courier, but he only goes upon necessity and not with any regularity, which I had implied because I did not want her to find a reason to object to the trouble or the expense. More to the point, I did not wish her to know the lengths to which I would go for her happiness, but I had inadvertently painted an unflattering picture of myself as a man who could not suffer even to wait for the mail.
The attention to and entertainment of our guests fell to my sister and her companion. This was natural, yet it placed me firmly in the category of an unnecessary fixture in my own house. To add to my sense of being perpetually in the way was Miss Elizabeth’s determined avoidance.
For whatever reason, she so little wanted to be the subject of my notice that she skirted around anywhere I might be found, darted away from me as though on a mission of vital importance, or failing that, hid in her room.
On the second night, she had refused to sit down to dinner with us again, claiming that to do so would be to commit a moral sin against her great-aunt. Her argument was so expertly crafted that I thought she might actually believe it except for the fact it placed her fully in the category of a selfless anchorite, and in the end, she could not meet my eye.
On the heels of this recital, the lady suddenly remembered the servants at the Frye house. She looked up sharply, almost in horror, to realize she had not once wondered how they got on. This had been one of her original hesitations in coming to Pemberley, and I had since made arrangements to keep the house running in the absence of its mistress. When I enumerated what had been done, she subsided into an unbecoming resentment and thanked me with a tight little platitude. But she had too much natural humor to take herself too seriously, and erasing any affront I might be harboring, she darted the most adorable grin at me, her eyes sparkling up through lowered lashes, and ending with the curtsey of a remorseful child.
Then and there I ceased to think of her asMiss Bennet.I knew her too well! She wasElizabethto me, and I longed to laugh aloud at her performance, for I had the advantage of seeing through it. My sister, however, bought it whole, telling me later that she had never met anyone so deeply good and so willing to sacrifice her own comfort for the smallest attention to someone else—even the servants!
***
We proceeded along these lines: Elizabeth pretended I did not exist. My sister was enthralled with her company and far too engaged in their every waking moment. My servants thrummed with curiosity at the exalted status of two barely genteel village persons of whose existence few knew until the sixth of February.
And I was in an intense struggle to manage what could erupt into a disaster at any moment of the day or night. Much as a man feels when driving a team of eight horses, there were so many currents in play that I was nearly unequal to it. My principal job was to convey bland, conventional normality, as though to have a very elderly lady with a mental debility as my guest was, if not a common occurrence, at least not an unexpected one.
My sister’s devotion to the widow and her pretty relation was also a matter requiring my attention. If I had expressed a particle of consternation over this development, my entire household would have risen up in arms to have “Miss Darcy’s generosity” so horribly used by mere nobodies. Thus, I made a show of occasionally sitting with the ladies and looking benignly and encouragingly upon my sister.
