This unfortunate decision resulted in a declaration of war on the part of the cook. And though I went to Stevenson’s on Monday morning and brought home a replacement pot, paid for out of my own meager purse, nothing the cook prepared would ever taste the same again.
“A new pot canna just get bought and then boil up anything fit to eat in under five years!” Mrs. Smith had bellowed.
You would have thought I had murdered her firstborn child. And as if to prove her point, while she had only ever produced passably edible food, she then began to set before us nearly inedible and unrecognizable fare.
While the tension in the kitchen grew thick, I had other concerns—most notably the regularity with which Mrs. Jennings became frightened in the late evenings. The dark seemed to conjure every feeling of abandonment, threat, and overwhelming grief. This was distressing to me because I could see that the loss of her memory left the lady susceptible to the very possibilities that flashed into her uncertain mind as though they were real. I do not know what was contained in the sleeping draught I gave her every night, but I was grateful that, once she fell asleep, this potion helped her to stay soundly oblivious and thereby escape her terrors.
Thankfully, the old lady recovered her sweet optimism most mornings, and I believe a naturally happy disposition aided her in this regard. After Doreen finished helping Mrs. Jennings to wash, I dressed her in her silk robe and slippers, pinned her thin white braid into a neat bun under a warm flannel cap, tucked the blue shawl over her lap and the ivory one over her tiny shoulders, and we sat down to breakfast. Directly after I introduced myself as Elizabeth-Bennet-from-Hertfordshire-niece-to-Mrs.-Gardiner-in-London, she invariably asked me the same question day upon day.
“Is there any pork jelly, Madeline?”
“No, Auntie, not today.”
I had surrendered perhaps too easily, but Mrs. Jennings found it easier to think of me as her own familiar relation than a more complicated—and unknown—great niece. She sometimes, for nearly three quarters of the day, could remember who I was when she believed me to be fourteen-year-old Madeline Jennings my own Aunt Gardiner.
Out of compassion, I allowed her this small error, for I had become increasingly protective of her, given the severity of her debility of retention. And while I congratulated myself on how well I cared for my elderly “Auntie”—how I held her hand at night until I was certain she was soundly asleep and entertained her by singing songs heard in nurseries everywhere as we sat over our needlework—I could not claim success so long as she pined for pork jelly.
Short of begging Mrs. Edmonton for some of hers, which I would never do, I came to no solution. Even a visit to the local apothecary, Mr. Kelly, the man Mrs. Burke had warned me against, had been fruitless. I had gone into his tiny shop as a last resort, and once my eyes had adjusted to the dimness of the room, I had asked him whether by chance he sold pork jelly. A man with an apparently gloomy disposition to match his establishment, he grudgingly pulled a jar off the shelf, blew a cloud of dust off the lid, and thrust it forward for my examination.
“How much is it?” I asked tentatively, striving not to sneeze and regretting my enquiry in the first place. He named a price, I declined on the grounds of thrift, and I left his shop, thus extricating myself as politely as I could.
I then went to the small bookseller’s to search out any reference I might find that would inform me about jellies and any other housekeeping matters. Other than a pamphlet on a formulation for the elimination of black beetles in a kitchen and another on the multiple uses of carbolic, both of which I purchased for a penny apiece, I left as ignorant as I went in.
My last errand of the day was at Stevenson’s, the sundries shop. I did not go for the purpose of finding pork jelly—they did not sell that sort of thing—but because Mrs. Jennings was in need of yarn for her knitting. The dear was prolific with her needles and had worked a shawl large enough to comfort an elephant before coming to the end of her skein. Doreen had whispered that Mrs. Burke pulled out half the mistress’s stitches and wound the yarn up again every night since the poor lady never could tie a knot. But I did not have the will or the resolution to execute such a drastic economy. Besides, I thought it the basest form of trickery to deceive a person so crippled of memory.
Thus, I stood before the yarn and was on the verge of selecting a ball of ordinary cream wool when I began to listen to the lady at the counter who was transacting her business with the primary shopkeeper.
“I will have two pints of carbolic, the pine wax, and three lengths of the ticking—not that one, the other—yes.”
I had been caught by the reference to carbolic, so lately on my mind, and I surreptitiously eyed her as she went through her transaction. She was dressed plainly, almost severely, but in a coat of such obvious quality and warmth that I envied her. But it was her carriage of authority I truly envied. I could not help but notice she was treated with twice the respect I had ever received anywhere in Lambton.
I dawdled by the yarn until the woman finished her purchases and left, before I went to the counter.
“Who was that lady?” I asked of the junior clerk sent to manage my inconsequential purchase.
“Mrs. Reynolds. She is housekeeper at the great house.”
“The squire’s housekeeper?”
“No, miss. She keeps Pemberley.”
I stood in arrested silence for a few seconds too long.
“Miss?”
“Thank you,” I said, taking my parcel. “Pemberley is near Lambton, then?”
“Just down the church road.”
“Is that so? Do you happen to know whether Mr. Darcy is at his estate for the festive season?”
He openly smirked at whatever far-fetched social aspirations I might be harboring. “He brings his sister from London any time now, so’s we hear.”
My walk home in a determined pelting of rain was pensive enough that I barely noticed my drenching. I knew Mr. Darcy hailed from Pemberley in Derbyshire, for Miss Bingley had mentioned it often enough. Yet, Derbyshire was an entire county, and it had never occurred to me that his house would be anywhere near Lambton. I could only shake my head in perplexity at a proximity I had not suspected.
Chapter Five
Directly after breakfast the following morning, I stood Doreen and Penny together in the kitchen, announced I would be gone for several hours, and sternly suggested they attend to their mistress in my absence lest they suffer the consequences of my displeasure. The cook dared to make a small noise of disgust, prompting me to speak to her perhaps too candidly.
