He looked up with sharp interest. “A boarding house, you say?”
Our constraint was momentarily set aside, and we spoke freely of the possibility of creating a business in Lambton, of agents, bankers, solicitors, and the skilled laborers he would require to change the interior of the widow’s house to better accommodate lodgers.
We were not now instantaneous friends. He was still quite put out with the circumstances in which he found himself and still shocked by Mrs. Jennings’s condition. He was not a man to enjoy being helped along, much reminding me of someone else in that family, but he did seem more at ease with me and less suspicious that I was a dangerous rake; I hoped he would soften his opinion of his niece’s conduct accordingly.
“I am afraid I must impose on your hospitality for a few more days at least, Mr. Darcy,” he said almost sheepishly. “There is much to arrange before I leave for London, and Lizzy will need some time to make arrangements for Mrs. Jennings. I shall certainly need to hire an attendant.”
“I am told one of the upstairs maids is very good with the lady. Might I suggest her as a possibility?”
He shook his head and almost chuckled. “I should have known you would have a solution.”
“I have been recently taken to task for presumption, a habit that is harder to break than one might suspect.” I replied with rueful amusement. “Might I presume once again and speak to Mrs. Reynolds?”
We shook hands again and spent the bulk of that day and the following ones in our separate pursuits. Mr. Gardiner went to Derby one day and back and forth to Lambton on the others for various meetings with regard to the disposition of the house. I was glad of the reprieve of whatever time was left to me to steal glimpses of his niece before he took her away.
***
The glimpses I was afforded were at times quite mundane and at other times crushing.
On Sunday, we went to church. Miss Bennet, known to everyone as a nobody from somewhere else, sat with my family and endured the whispers and stares with patrician disinterest. She looked blandly upon the vicar and his wife who, recognizing they had perhaps overlooked someone they should not have, were anxious to make amends. The remainder of Sunday was restful however. She sat at a little desk in the salon and wrote a letter that consumed her interest for a prolonged period and threw her into a deeply introspective mood. I longed to commiserate and offer what comfort I could, particularly when I saw her deftly toss the pages of her letter into the fire.What must she have written?I wondered.
I watched her from the window as she entered her uncle’s coach for a visit to the village. I missed her return but listened for the sound of her footsteps on the staircase. I had become utterly attuned to her as though I was a mere compass needle to her magnetic north. It was pitiful—indeed, I did pity myself—and it was also wonderful to spend days upon days without once thinking of myself.
I saw her face at the window as I rode out to meet with my tenants, and I heard her humming sweetly to herself as she went down the hall. I was also perfectly aware when a woman presented herself at my front door and demanded to see her, and I could not refrain from stepping out of my library to catch a glimpse of the dreaded Mrs. Burke.
What I saw caused me to stifle a shout of laughter, for this was just the sort of commanding autocrat as would instantly raise Elizabeth Bennet’s hackles. Clearly, Mrs. Burke was on a mission of confrontation, and if there had been a contest in the ring, she would have prevailed, for she was a brute of a woman indeed. But this was no longer the dark ages, and they would wage war with words, and I pitied the woman for the shredding she was about to undergo. For the hundredth time in the last three weeks, I would have paid a fortune to witness what was taking place in my own house.
I did not expect ever to find out what was said between them, but that afternoon, my opportunity to enquire whether the woman was sent home in a demoralized heap presented itself.
I was encamped in my study, ostensibly pouring over my ledgers for hours on end, but in effect, this was the virtual hill upon which I stood in watchful readiness to go to Elizabeth’s aid should she have need of me. The door, when left slightly ajar, was angled perfectly to catch many sounds, and I was perpetually in the attitude of listening for news. Brown must have stepped away from his post momentarily since the first floor of the house was almost deathly quiet when I heard a lady’s footsteps come down the staircase, and by their tripping cadence, I knew to whom those slippers belonged.
I quickly stepped out of my room and met Elizabeth outside the door to the library to take advantage of such an unexpected, private opportunity, and I greeted her almost as I would a long-lost friend.
We smiled warmly at one another, and I said, “I understand your arch enemy paid you a call this morning.”
She chuckled in reply that the woman very soon regretted her courtesy since Mrs. Jennings did not recognize her, and she suddenly found herself making an application to Mr. Gardiner for her continued employment rather than offering up whatever scold she had come to deliver.
“Is your pride avenged?” I asked, wishing with all my heart I could tuck one of her curls back behind her ear.
She flicked the ringlet back into place and grinned as though ashamed to admit just how much pleasure she took from introducing Mrs. Burke to her altered circumstances.
I was aware Elizabeth had not come down to speak to me but to go to the library, and I was even more acutely aware that we were in a private conference in a public space. Thinking we could steal a few more moments together, I extended my hand toward the library door and asked, “Might I help you find a book?”
That proved a fatal question. Suddenly, as though mutually staggered by the same invisible blow, we realized that, with the early arrival of Mrs. Jennings’s housekeeper, Mr. Gardiner had no reason to linger.
The lady’s eyes flew up to mine before she lowered her face to the ground, and murmured, “Perhaps I should not become immersed in something new.”
Then, as was so typical of her, Elizabeth retreated down the hall, treating me to yet another prolonged view of her back.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
That night at dinner, Mr. Gardiner happily announced the date of their departure. Georgiana struggled not to appear despondent in the face of this news, but neither Elizabeth nor I could pretend to be otherwise. Being a rational man, I had expected this announcement for such a significant length of time that I should not have been so shocked that I would be cast into such a terminal, disconsolate silence. I could do nothing for Elizabeth, who was clearly stricken mute by the prospect of leaving Derbyshire.
After dinner, upon pouring out the glass of ritual port for Mr. Gardiner, I asked after his travel plans, which placed the burden of speaking on him. My responses of, “Oh?” and, “I see,” were thankfully sufficient to spare me the appearance of being outright rude to a man I did not dislike. I could not blame him for taking his niece away. He could not stay here forever. But I did not have to like it and forgave myself for hating the sight, if not of his face then of his obvious relief to be leaving us in two days’ time.
The subsequent hours passed slowly, marching cruelly onward and in the company of the ticking clocks that seemed to be everywhere at Pemberley. When had we accumulated so many long clocks, such an unreasonable collection of mantle clocks? It was absurd, I grumbled inwardly.
I had lost both my parents, and I knew what was meant by a death watch. This was not unlike that—the interminable suspension, the deepening silence, the lowering of the great cloud of existential awareness that all things must change.
