“Yes. I came to love her a great deal. She must have been a delight when she and her sister, Hannah, were young. But she is surrounded by people now, and I must take what comfort I can from knowing she has a pleasant view, a good fire, and all the pork jelly she could wish for.”
She looked at me questioningly, and I brought us out of our feelings of regret by entertaining her with the story of my first attempt at cookery. It made for an excellent tale, replete with descriptions of the stench, Mrs. Edmonton’s mastiff, and the cook’s outrage at the loss of her favorite pot.
“That is how I met Mrs. Reynolds, you know,” I said with a smile of fond remembrance.
She then unbent and told me of that lady’s longstanding maternal dominance and of a wild escapade in which Mr. Darcy had enticed her to escape the house and ride her horse in the rain. “She scolded him roundly for it,” she said with a spark of glee.
“And how did you escape her wrath?”
“Oh, I had only to pretend to cough twice in a row.”
We laughed but almost instantly lapsed again into silence. I missed Pemberley too much to speak of it, and noticing we had left my sisters behind, I found a stone wall of a comfortable height where we sat to wait for them.
“I see we lost Kitty and Lydia.” I called as Jane came toward us.
“They did not want to spoil their best slippers in this grass,” she said apologetically, looking behind her at their retreating forms. My eyes followed hers by instinct, and in the distance, I saw Mr. Darcy step out of the house and turn toward us.
Georgiana must also have seen him. She stood abruptly and spoke with a sudden, telling animation.
“Miss Bennet, should we take Queenie back to the house or maybe even to one of the grooms if your mother does not like dogs?”
Jane glanced at me with piercing perception. She knew now, of course, who possessed my heart.
“Yes, certainly!” she replied with equally false brightness, “I would like to go too before I stain my own best slippers any more than they are. And yours? Oh dear. Perhaps Mama will have Mrs. Hill make up a little blotter for us.”
Chapter Forty-Three
I waited in a state of paralysis—without thought, breathless, and confused.
“Have they all deserted you?” he asked, approaching in his gleaming top boots with his purposeful stride.
“I am afraid we are the victims of a conspiracy, Mr. Darcy.” I was deeply embarrassed and blushed as I stood to meet him. “Should we follow our sisters back to the house?”
“No. We should give them what they want. Let us go on a brief tramp,” he said with the oddest half smile.
Before I could say otherwise, he had secured my arm and steered me around the stone walls and onto a path that went behind one of our fallow fields. Almost abstractedly, I reflected that this had been my path when escaping the wrath of the farmer’s dog. Strange how life has its looping threads, weaving us into some creation beyond our comprehension and taking us back to places we have already been to be experienced anew.
We did not speak for some time, and I suffered a bitter heartbreak while deeply relishing our every comingled breath. My mind reeled. Why had he come? What could he mean by it? Had I not told him bluntly our regard for one another was hopeless? Had I not said plainly I would ask no more of him?
When we came to a muddy dip that made the path unpromising, we turned back, and he said, “Will you not share what has so captured your thoughts?”
“I was recalling how often I walked this path when I was a child,” I replied vaguely.
We were nearing the stone wall again, and he took my hand purposefully. “Perhaps we should find a place to sit,” he suggested.
“My goodness. Do you forget with whom you are walking? I am not remotely tired, nor would I be if we walked ten times as far.”
He hesitated before capturing my eyes with a most arresting look, and my heart began to pound in a purely reflexive response.
“I know it, but I am afraid I have done something you will not like, and I wish you to be seated when I tell you.”
I whipped around to face him directly. “You cannot be in earnest that I am to sit down and stare up at you for some awful news! I demand to hear whatever you must say while standing!”
“Very well.” He smiled almost apologetically and said, “I have spoken to your father, Elizabeth.”
“Yes, I saw you, and…?” I demanded fretfully.
“You do not understand, dearest. I havespokento your father.”
