Dear Richard,
Forgive me. I have been a poor correspondent of late as you pointed out in your most recent letter. To answer your question, yes, I am still in what you call a ‘quiet fury’. The initial shock has not worn off. In fact, it may be even worse since I now suffer unrelenting anxiety as I strive to make this unworkable union somehow work. I am a man, not unlike yourself, who has had power and control all my life. I might by now have overcome the sudden stripping of all choice in the matter, but to have been made the victim of a scheme is a blow that staggers me still.
To answer your kind offer of assistance during this dreadful passage, I find I must ask for a particular favour. Our doctor is nearing his dotage, has retired, and we are in urgent need of a replacement. In particular I wish to find a naval man, since he would have experience with a pervasive complaint common to seamen of every rank. I hope this favour is within your capacity, though I do not expect you to relish rubbing your red elbows up against blue ones.
Darcy
I began to write a note to my wife, but after pulling forward a clean sheet of paper, I looked at the clock. Our daily appointment in the library was not so many hours away. This business of writing was more taxing than I expected, and I admonished myself to once and for all conquer my aversion to speaking to her. I decided to fill the time by riding to the south entrance bridge, taking my exercise and overseeing progress at the same time. Pemberley was demanding enough to require every efficiency of which I could conceive, and I congratulated myself on my great good sense.
I rode hard, spotting Mrs Darcy being led out by Carl for her thrice weekly expeditions on Georgiana’s ageing Thistle.
I will be damned to hell if I buy that woman her own horse, I said to myself, spurring my newest hack into an even more furious pace. I justified this unnatural extreme as a means of putting the recently acquired chestnut stallion to the test. The beast was not averse to a full gallop but tired half a mile sooner than I expected. Was my life to devolve into one disappointment after another?
I arrived at the bridge, badgered my engineer with unreasonable demands for completion, stared down my nose at the brigade of hired hands, asked obnoxious questions about matters that did not involve me, and left the site much unhappier than it had been when I arrived.
I returned to Pemberley in a state of tightly controlled annoyance.
“Well, sir? What did you make of him?” Keller, my stablemaster, had come out to take the reins as I dismounted.
“I have decided on a new name for him.”
“What is that, Mr Darcy?”
“Sluggard. He does not have nearly the wind I had hoped for with such a chest.”
“Ah well,” he replied philosophically, “he is a youngster, after all. He has to grow into his capacity, as do we all. In time, he will be your favourite stud, I make no doubt. Come along Ormond,” he said, patting the horse’s neck reassuringly, “you did well for yourself today, my boy.”
I momentarily felt all of twelve years old. Keller had been stablemaster since that time and had regularly put my adolescent pretensions down half a dozen notches. I huffed inwardly and marched up the stairs, and after a wash and change of clothing, marched back down again to the library. The room, which used to be my own personal haven, now reeked of Mrs Darcy’s lavender soap. I no longer felt I entered a refuge, but instead, dreaded the daily ritual of meeting my wife as I would dread a trial at court.
“Mrs Darcy,” I said, approaching her at a business-like pace. I stopped where she sat at a table and bowed, glancing at what she worked on so diligently. She had stood upon hearing my greeting and curtseyed.
“Sir,” she said in that provokingly calm tone she habitually used with me.
“In regards to your note of the morning, I acquiesce to your plans for Mrs Travers and have written to my cousin to search out a naval doctor. Does that conclude our business for the present?” I really wished I, too, could use a provokingly soothing tone with her, but she stood looking at me intently as if trying to see into me and read all my private thoughts, and this brazen examination unnerved me.
“I thank you,” she said evenly. “I hope someone arrives soon, as Mrs Pirtle has also taken me aside and spoken to me.”
“Mrs Pirtle! Of what does she complain?”
“Of somewhat similar symptoms, I am afraid.”
“Good Lord! Are we to have an epidemic?” I cried, hurling words at her as though this was her doing.
“We may have to brace for one if your farmers cannot refrain from taking their pleasure outside of marriage,” she said coldly. “I realise I am a messenger with unwelcome news, but I am hardly to blame for what has occurred here.”
I turned abruptly away from her, rubbing the back of my aching neck as I paced to the far end of the room. Once there, I whirled to face her. “You have the gall to blameme, madam?”
“I do not blame you.”
“You do indeed! By all your looks of righteous reproach, your tone, your unconcealed disgust of the male sex, you throw blame upon me.”
“Forgive me if I have done so through some unconscious judgment,” she said, as if by rote, while continuing to examine me with her gimlet eye.
She asked too much. I could forgive her nothing—ever. I merely did what any gentleman would do. I executed a crisp bow and turned to my chair where I sat on the boil for half an hour. When I had cooled sufficiently to see anything but red, I began to closely examine my wife.
She sat in great concentration over an illustrated atlas of naval history. She was writing or drawing something referenced in that valuable book. Her intellectual pursuits struck me as wholly unflattering. Yes, I would prefer an intelligent, well-read woman, but I did not like a woman who felt free to studyanythingwithout the guidance of a lettered man. Her independent study galled me. In fact, it was the independence of her nature that rankled.
My study was interrupted. Mrs Reynolds gently knockedon the door and called my wife to answer some trifling question regarding afternoon callers arrived too early.
