Page 35
“You are improving already,” Elizabeth told her, and meant it.
“Mrs. Reynolds has been showing me, ma’am. She says the trick is confidence. I am not yet confident, but I am determined, which she says is almost as good.”
A proper lady’s maid might have been mortified, but Hannah seemed to take pride in her rattling tray and errant pins. Elizabeth offered her an encouraging smile and made her way to the breakfast room, Hannah’s cheerful chatter trailing behind. The corridors were deathly silent, and she caught glimpses of footmen and house maids, always disappearing into a doorway or rounding a corner away from her.
The breakfast room was a pleasant apartment on the eastern side of the house, smaller than the formal dining room and warmer, with windows overlooking the kitchen garden where two men were already turning earth for spring planting. Darcy rose when she entered—he had been reading correspondence, a small stack of letters beside his coffee cup—and pulled out her chair with a courtesy that seemed, this morning, slightly strained at the edges.
“Mrs. Darcy. I trust you slept well?”
“Tolerably, though I confess the Derbyshire air is colder than I anticipated. Hannah informs me you prefer it so.”
He inclined his head with that careful courtesy of his, and resumed his seat. “The mornings are brisk at this elevation. You will grow accustomed to it.”
Elizabeth accepted tea from the footman and let her gaze drift to the silver salver on the sideboard, where the morning post lay. “Are there any letters for me?”
“The post is slow in winter,” he replied.
“But it should have been faster than two travelers who stopped at every coaching inn. I know my family would not use expresses, but surely, Mr. Sowerby should be in touch now that Reverend Pennyfeather has recorded our marriage.”
“He would have had to send agents to Meryton to examine the register, wait for their word, and then travel here to see you.”
“Then might we have gone south to London?” Elizabeth did not see the reason for repairing so quickly to Pemberley. “You have pending business also.”
His brows lowered, and he accepted a cup of coffee from the footman, reminding Elizabeth of his warning that he was not conversant before ten in the morning.
“Then I shall merely eat my breakfast,” she muttered. She helped herself to toast and preserves. The bread was excellent, the butter fresh, the preserves—gooseberry, she thought—very fine. The kitchen garden, at least, was thriving. “I had hoped to hear from Jane. She promised to write as soon as we had departed Hertfordshire.”
“You shall, Mrs. Darcy. And you are welcome to help yourself to ink and paper and write to her as well.”
“Then I shall send her an express which will frighten her enough to write back immediately,” Elizabeth half-jested, watching Darcy’s expression.
He averted his gaze, contemplating his coffee as though it might yield some secret intelligence. At Netherfield, Caroline Bingley had summoned express riders to London for a misplaced fan, and Bingley himself once dispatched two expresses in a single afternoon over the relative merits of partridge and grouse. Yet Darcy had not sent a single express in four days of travel. Perhaps nothing, in his estimation, merited urgency. Elizabeth, thus rebuffed by his studied silence, returned her attention to tea and toast.
The morning post arrived as she took her second cup of tea. Hodges placed the silver salver on the table near Darcy, and Elizabeth watched expectantly as her new husband sorted the few letters. His brow furrowed as he opened the first one, then asked the butler to fetch Mr. Miller, his steward.
Elizabeth wished she could snatch the newspaper and hide behind it as her father did, but Darcy had one hand over it, fingers tapping as he waited. For her part, she yawned rather conspicuously and tried to appear disinterested.
A few minutes later, Mr. Miller appeared in the doorway—a spare, anxious man. “Mr. Darcy, you called?”
“There seems to be a problem with the bank draft,” Darcy said. “I gave instructions before I left for Hertfordshire, and I should like confirmation that the matter has been settled.”
“We might not have had the funds to clear it,” Miller replied nervously, his gaze shifting about the room.
Darcy murmured about reviewing the accounts, about debt payments taking priority over invoices, and Elizabeth pretended to be absorbed in the butter pattern on her bread while her mind raced through the implications. Darcy was juggling between paying bills and servicing debts. No wonder repairs were deferred, and the fires went unfed.
Miller withdrew with assurances of immediate investigation, and the breakfast room fell silent except for the clink of Elizabeth’s teacup against its saucer.
After a suitable interval—long enough for Elizabeth to wonder whether Darcy lingered out of duty or the faintest sense of honeymoon obligation—she caught his eye and bestowed a pleasant smile.
“If I recall, Mr. Darcy, you had once asked the privilege of accompanying me on a walk?”
“I did.” He nodded absently, setting down his correspondence.
“Then I shall be inclined to permit you to show me the grounds. I find myself rather in need of exercise after being confined to a carriage, and if you are not too occupied with business, I should be glad of the tour you promised.”
The morning was bright and bitter, the kind of March day that punished optimism with a north wind. Darcy offered his arm, and they set out along a gravel path that wound from the south terrace toward the ornamental gardens.
The path near the house was well-raked, but as they moved farther away, it grew rougher, with patches of mud and gaps where the edging stones had shifted. The hedgerows looked like those at Longbourn, untrimmed and rustic, and the gate they passed through dragged against the ground at an angle that spoke of hinges long neglected.
