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“What is it you were reading?” Her sharp gaze fell on the book he held. “It appears to be a Gothic. Ann Radcliffe?”
“Yes, it was one of my mother’s favorites.” He held it tighter. For some reason, he did not wish to share his mother’s private thoughts with Elizabeth. “I am sure there is another copy of The Mysteries of Udolpho amongst the shelves.”
“I have already read that book.” She moved further into the room, her gaze scanning the nearest shelves. “But since you are here and not taken up with estate business, might I ask your advice?”
Darcy started, his back resting against the bookshelf.
“What do you require from me?” he asked, unsure of her intent.
Elizabeth withdrew a volume and examined its binding. “Mrs. Reynolds mentioned that callers might be expected in the coming weeks. The vicar’s wife, the local gentry. I confess I do not know what is customary, or what Mrs. Reynolds requires of me, or what…”
She trailed off, and he understood what she was not saying. She was not the bride brought in after a successful courtship. She had no existing connections to draw on, and the neighborhood would be curious to seek entrance into Pemberley under the guise of calling on a new bride.
“We have not had many callers for years,” he explained. “I was considered an eccentric bachelor, and Georgiana resides with my Matlock relations in London.”
He left unspoken the matter of tea and cakes, the necessity of well-furnished rooms and cheerful fires. Sharp-eyed callers would not fail to notice the thinning staff and the subtle shabbiness creeping into every corner.
“However, now that you have a wife, I should take that responsibility.” Elizabeth set down a book she had been perusing. “I merely wish to be useful.”
She looked so appealing standing there, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright, the portrait of a healthy country girl, unaware of how precarious his family’s name was.
“You have only arrived, Mrs. Darcy. The neighborhood can wait.”
“Perhaps, but this condition cannot be hidden forever.” Elizabeth’s eyes flashed toward a shelf already emptied of its volumes. “Rooms closed and left unheated. A skeleton staff. No candles in the upper corridors, and, of course, the uneven gravel on the drive, one of the first economies noted. Callers would speculate about the postponed repairs and report on the empty coal scuttle. Perhaps the weak tea or the frayed draperies. Pemberley, it appears, has been in hiding for quite some time.”
“Pemberley’s affairs,” he said carefully, “are not a matter I would burden you with so early in our acquaintance.”
She jutted her chin at him. “We are married, Mr. Darcy. Bound to each other. I am now a Darcy, and Pemberley is my home. Do you imagine I can invite my family here to see this? When they all imagined your estate in all splendor? Hundreds of servants, tens of thousands of volumes in the library, and hothouse flowers in every room?”
“You are ashamed,” Darcy noted, his jaw tense. “I do not require your critique.”
She stepped closer, her eyes flashing in a way that did not bode well for him.
“I do not consider it a burden to understand the situation in which I find myself. If the household requires economy, I could look at the accounts, speak with the housekeeper, see where savings might be found—”
“Pemberley is not Longbourn.”
The words came out sharper than he intended, and he saw Elizabeth’s chin rise another fraction. “No,” she agreed. “Longbourn has fewer chimneys and more working fires.”
Darcy felt the heat rise to his face—the familiar surge of pride that had served him so poorly in every significant conversation he had ever had with this woman.
“Mrs. Darcy, I am managing Pemberley without need for your assistance,” he said, his voice tightening with a defensive stiffness he despised even as he used it. “If it is household accounts you require, I can have Mrs. Reynolds share the details with you. However, due to obligations brought on before I was born, the budget will be necessarily small.”
“By obligations, you mean servicing debt? Interest payments for which you have to sell books to cover?” Her perceptive gaze returned to the folios stacked on the table.
Darcy nodded, calculating how he could remove the two 17th-century volumes he had earmarked for sale and escape the too-warm library. “I have important matters to attend to.”
“I am sure you do, Mr. Darcy. But as the new mistress of Pemberley—who must receive callers, or people will talk and speculate and find fault with me—I may be persuaded to advance the funds necessary to restore Pemberley to its former glory.”
“Elizabeth.” His breath left his lungs in a sharp hiss. “I would not require my wife to sacrifice her fortune to debts taken on before she was born.”
“I have eighty thousand pounds. Why will you not let me help you?” she asked, challenging. “What if I told you I wish to restore Pemberley so I can show everyone that a country miss with mud on her hems can become mistress of one of England’s greatest estates?”
How was he to make her see that he wanted neither her fortune nor her pity—only that she remain unscathed by his ruin?
Gesturing toward the pair of winged armchairs flanking the hearth, he forced his posture to unbend. “I believe you might wish to sit, Mrs. Darcy, for what I have to say.”
Her eyes narrowed, lips parting for a retort, but when he moved with deliberate calm toward the chairs, she crossed the room and claimed one for herself.
