“Gardiner,” Darcy remarked. “If the weather clears, I think I may ride out tomorrow to see that tenant I mentioned to you earlier, the one currently having fierce disagreements with my steward. Would you care to accompany me? He is a rather interesting fellow.”
“What exactly has them in such hostility?” Mr. Gardiner inquired.
“I would not call it hostility. A speculative difference. Peter Morrell, my tenant, has some rather new and untried ideas regarding land management and Mr. Forster believes them to be ill-advised.”
“And where do you stand?”
“With neither one nor the other. Peter Morrell is a very intelligent and well-informed farmer. He knows of what he speaks. Mr. Forster is judicious and cautious. Each position has its merits. I have approved Morrell’s experiments. If his ideas prove successful it would be beneficial to the whole.”
“And if not?”
“A nominal loss. Progress and improvements cannot be made without some reasonable risk.”
“I could not concur more, Darcy. You must be wary of those who insist that all change is detrimental. Too many in your position are apt to believe that time and resources do not alter and forget that we must change with it to remain prosperous and relevant. I shall be very interested to discover this man’s ideas. When you are next in London you shall come with me to meet a young fellow I am acquainted with who possesses some very enlightened views on production and economics in general. There is much change coming. You will find it beneficial to hear his views, I am sure.”
As they continued their conversation, unmindful of the presence of the rest, Mrs. Gardiner turned to Elizabeth with a smile and remarked quietly, “It would appear our husbands are in a fare way of becoming very great friends.”
“So it would seem,” Elizabeth replied, delighted to hear they had dropped the formal ‘Mr.’ between them. It gave her a profoundly satisfying pleasure to see the true warmth and respect that had so naturally and rapidly been established between them. To see her uncle so clearly on a level of equals with Darcy was gratifying on many different levels, and she was as proud of her uncle as she was of her husband. Indeed, Mr. Darcy could not fail to recognize to Elizabeth when the Gardiners had departed how much he valued them and how he lamented once disparaging them sight unseen. “It shames me that I was once so foolish.”
“Had we not determined that we have neither of us been free from prejudices, darling. What matters is to have rectified, to not continue in ignorance and willful blindness.”
“Come,” he replied, “and sit with me. I am not tired.”
They were in their chambers and he was sitting in the corner of a large and comfortable chaise, wearing a quilted silk dressing gown of deep greens. As Elizabeth approached him she breathed deeply and smiled, recalling their first night as husband and wife. How she had flushed in admiration when he stepped into the room dressed in this same garment that flattered so particularly well his tall, graceful frame; she had been unable to prevent her gaze from running the course of his figure in open approbation. His appearance had enthralled her and as he had approached her across the room, she had fallen silent, captivated by the unexpected splendour of his barely covered figure.
She sat beside him, curled her feet underneath herself and laid against him, her head resting upon his breast, the even sound of his heartbeat reverberating in her ears like a familiar, favoured melody. A profound sense of belonging settled over her. These first weeks of marriage had surpassed all her hopes—what happiness at his side, what delight in his arms—and she understood it could not always pass so harmoniously, but whatever should come, she was exactly where she belonged.
There had been moments during their courtship when she had wondered if it would be so, moments of awkwardness that seemed to illuminate a gulf between them that perhaps could not be so easily crossed by good intentions and warm affections. In particular there had been one rainy afternoon when they could not escape the confines of Longbourn’s drawing room as they so often had at other times. Her mother and her Aunt Phillips had been at their most mortifyingly blundering and they had, as if by acclamation, decided it was the afternoon to extol the virtues of George Wickham. However her father, or Jane, or she tried to turn the conversation, they came back again and again to his charms of person and manner, and to lament the great distance from Longbourn his new commission had required. Darcy had remained the entire afternoon in a stoic silence that neither her own sweet attentions, nor her father’s good-humored sarcasm, nor his friend Bingley’s diversions could break. She had never felt so ashamed of her mother’s lack of discernment and they had parted that evening with less warmth than had become customary between them.
After such a display she could not but spend the entire night recalling in pained detail every word from his first, objectionable proposal; every explanation in his since destroyed letter that so clearly evidenced the perceived inferiority and unacceptability of her family. She had struggled afresh to accept that a man could truly have changed so much, that love for her could have worked such an alteration, that such heated feelings of disapprobation could be so fully sublimated. Could it truly be? Had they fooled themselves in thinking it so?
In the morning she had offered embarrassed apologies, and he had simply replied, “It does not signify, Elizabeth.” She had known it did. He had simply let it go with the same generous forbearance she had come to know was as true a part of his character as his sometimes-exercised hard resentfulness. She understood now those seemingly contrary traits were born from the same place—he felt deeply, passionately. There were no half measures in his regard or in its loss.
She lifted herself from her repose against his breast, examined his strong features, his lips slightly lifted, his dark eyes bright with contentment. “I love you, Fitzwilliam Darcy,” she declared.
“Why do you always affirm it exactly so?” he inquired with a chuckle. “You never say ‘I love you, Darcy’, or ‘darling’, or any other sobriquet you might invent. Nor even simply ‘I love you’. Always ‘I love you, Fitzwilliam Darcy’, why is that?”
“Your letters,” she replied after some consideration.
“My first letter was written in a great bitterness of spirit. It could not possibly inspire your avowals of affection now.”
“I first began to truly know you through that letter and you signed it Fitzwilliam Darcy. I had not even known you were named Fitzwilliam until I received that letter. Though the circumstances were all the contrary, you signed your second letter Fitzwilliam Darcy as well.”
“Is that all you recall of my second letter, that I signed it Fitzwilliam Darcy? And I laboured with such devotion on every word to ensure that having destroyed my first letter you would find the replacement in no manner a lacking substitute.”
“I did not say that it was all I recalled,” Elizabeth replied, and coloured deeply, for the recollection of that second letter had still the ability to powerfully move her. He had written to her from London and when the letter arrived her mother had pressed and prodded her to disclose its contents, but she had quickly escaped to the privacy of her room. Ensconced there and free from prying eyes and inopportune questions, she had trembled in delight and anticipation, marvelled at the tender, passionate heart he presented into her keeping in all those carefully written lines. “I recall every word,” she added softly. “From its heartfelt beginning to its passionate adieu.”
She placed her hand against his cheek, kissed him and whispered out words from that impassioned letter. “I cannot regret that ours has not been a sentimental romance of easy infatuation; I would not alter a word or a glance exchanged in either the aversions of our early misapprehensions or the pleasure of sincere understanding, for it seems to me we will go to each other stripped of all pretention and artifice, as God and time have made us, to love without reservations or unnatural modesties.”
“What did I truly know when I wrote those words, Eliza? I had not sufficient imagination to understan
d what we would so quickly become to one another.”
“Nor had I,” she murmured in reply, wrapping her arms around his neck and resting her lithe figure fully against his own. “And yet, how truly it has been between us.”
BOOK TWO
A Winter Sojourn in Town
Chapter 12
Mr. Darcy’s London
Darcy and Elizabeth had determined between them to spend three months in town after their first Christmas season spent so happily at Pemberley. Elizabeth was not impatient to leave Pemberley and was eager to return to Derbyshire in time to see the grounds bloom into their full spring glory. It pleased Darcy that she placed so much value on the grounds and that her enthusiasm for each lane and path and grove of trees was unquenchable; he knew that when she experienced the remarkable spring blooming she would be still more enchanted. He felt as though the house never could have inspired her love for Pemberley in the same manner. If she was not quite indifferent to the splendour of the house, it was the grounds and the park that had so quickly rooted her to the place, to the history of which she was now a part, as no fashionable rooms or furnishings could have done.
“How I will miss Pemberley,” she declared the morning of their departure for London. “What lovely walks we have shared here.” Resting her hand upon Darcy’s arm she looked out the carriage window at the house and grounds retreating into the distance. “When we return all will be beginning to bloom.”
“These months are hardly worth repining, Elizabeth. I can assure you that it is very grey and dull in Derbyshire these months of the year.”
“It is beautiful, even in these wintry months,” she insisted. “Moreover,” she added playfully, “without so many gardens and lanes, where shall I escape to in London when you have made me cross?”
“I shall endeavour not to make you cross!” Darcy chuckled.
Georgiana, who sat across from them, smiled and turned to look out the window. She was now grown accustomed to Elizabeth’s sportive manner with her brother. Indeed, now comprehended that a woman may take liberties with her husband, which a brother will not allow in a sister more than ten years younger than himself. “Although, Georgiana,” Elizabeth had once declared to her; “It would not be injurious to anyone if you allowed your affection for your brother to overcome your respect from time to time.”
If Elizabeth was not so eager to depart Pemberley, Georgiana was delighted to be going to London with her brother. Now that he was married she would reside with him at the house in Portman Square and not in what had been her quiet establishment with Mrs. Annesley. Since the time of her father’s death when she was but ten years of age, she had not felt she truly had a permanent home, shuffling between school and Pemberley first and then to her quiet London apartment. She had longed to live with her brother, but it had been thought by all that it was not a proper arrangement for such a young girl to live alone with a bachelor brother who would be so often occupied or absent. In London she would not be partaking in all that the town offered during the season, for she was still but sixteen and her brother was opposed to her being out in society prematurely. Elizabeth, having the hard-learnt wisdom of her own younger sister’s experience, certainly counselled the same. In truth, Georgiana herself had no great eagerness to be out—the mere fact of being with her brother was enough. To partake in whatever entertainments he deemed appropriate would more than satisfy her wishes.
Elizabeth was not greatly familiar with London. She knew the bustling area of Cheapside where her uncle lived close to his warehouse, but that was a very different London from the quiet, elegant square where she now resided. During past visits with her aunt and uncle there had certainly been the occasional visit to the theatre, to dressmakers and other shops, but she had only attended the opera once and concerts not above a half dozen times. The Gardiners lived a busy but largely domestic life; he was dedicated to his business and she to the children and the running of her household. They did not enjoy the many entertainments of London to the extent a member of Mr. Darcy’s circle would. When Mr. Darcy had brought Elizabeth briefly to London after they wed, they had gone out little. She was now curious to know her new London environs as well as she could.
“Surprise me,” she said to her husband when they had arrived to town and retired to their chambers to change from their travelling clothes. “Tomorrow I should like for you to take me to some place that is a favourite of yours. You have spent so much of your time here. I want to know your London.”
“Tomorrow? You will not wish to rest?”
“Rest? Whatever for? I know so little of London, certainly of the London that you must have experienced so fully all these years. Surely, you must have some place that is very dear to you, some place you go that is out of the common way? Of course, I can always make my way alone should you prefer time at your club far away from your difficult and demanding wife,” she added mischievously.
Darcy laughed, charmed, as he had been at Pemberley, with her great eagerness and curiosity. There was nothing passive or lethargic in his wife; he delighted in her activity and purpose.
“Very well; a favourite spot; out of the common way. I shall take you to a place in London where I have whiled away many hours. It would not be to the liking of most, but I am confident you will approve it. In truth, I have never gone there with another person.”
“I am intrigued.”
“Perhaps I am creating too great an expectation. It is no pleasure garden or the like. You must know I abhor such places; they are such a strange stew of people; such cacophony. It is simply what you have asked for—a favourite place.”
“Then it will be my great delight to see it, whatever it is.”
“You may think your husband a very dull fellow when you discover my secret London hideaway!”
“A dull fellow?” Elizabeth murmured, stepping close to him and wrapping her arms around him. “I don’t believe I could ever think such a dreadful thing,” she declared warmly, suddenly filled with memories of when they had first shared these rooms together.
“Eliza,” he sighed happily, filled himself with similarly invigorating memories. Unlike on that first night they had shared these chambers, when he had brought her into the ample, sumptuous bed with a cautious, solicitous passion and they had so solemnly revealed themselves to each other, now they embraced with a joyful intimacy, an eager, playful passion. To the sound of affectionate murmurs and soft laughter and delighted sighs, they fell gladly into bed together to indulge in the pleasures of their own private Elysium.
In the morning Darcy and Elizabeth ventured forth. To Elizabeth’s great surprise a relatively modest carriage awaited them and not the luxurious carriage to which she had quickly grown accustomed. Noting her surprise, Darcy remarked that in some quarters he felt it best not to call overmuch attention to oneself.
“Where are we going?” Elizabeth inquired, her face alight with inquisitiveness. Darcy handed her into the carriage without remark.
Elizabeth’s curiosity grew as the wide elegant streets were left behind and they made their way into a part of London she would have never imagined her husband to have ever entered, let alone frequent. The streets became narrower, darker, dirtier and more crowded. The carriage, although certainly not the finest in the Darcy stable, was still conspicuous. Darcy was enchanted by Elizabeth’s response. He had told her nothing regarding their destination, he was simply taking her into a hectic, unfashionable quarter of London, and she showed no anxiety, no displeasure, she merely marvelled at all that was around her. She was truly like no other woman he had ever known.
“You must believe I am taking you somewhere quite unsuitable.”
“I am sure you would never take your wife any place unsuitable. I am all curiosity. Why have we come to this peculiar quarter of the city?”
“Wolfe’s,” he admitted at last.
“Wolfe’s?”
Darcy smiled broadly. “He sells books.”
“Books!” she cried in dismay. “In
all of London you must come here to purchase books?”
Darcy chuckled happily. “Everyone of fashion goes to Sandberg’s of course. It is such an elegant shop and its ample space makes it ideal for being seen by those with pretentions of cultivation. Pemberley’s library did not become what it is depending upon the likes of Sandberg’s, filled with nothing but the silliest, overwrought, sensationalist novella of the day. Wolfe’s is an absolute disarray of a shop. I never do comprehend how he knows where anything is, but he is the best bookseller in all of England. Ah,” he said as the carriage came to a stop. “We get off here. We will need to walk. The streets are too narrow for the carriage from hereon.”
“The best bookseller in all of England? Down a small, dark alley?”
“Yes.”
“Remarkable.”
“You asked for me to surprise you.”
“So I did,” she laughed.
After a brief walk through some narrow, crowded streets, they came to a storefront with a large window and a plain sign hanging above the door: Benjamin Wolfe Bookseller.
They walked into a shop that astonished Elizabeth from the moment they entered—she thought immediately of her father, and how intrigued he would be by this surprising place. Everywhere were piles of books, seemingly arbitrarily arranged, some on tables, some on chairs, some on the floor, some more neatly stored in glass enclosed shelves. The room smelled of leather and tobacco; the rug was worn and faded. The shop was poorly lit except a table at the back of the room, which was the only spot seemingly clear of books. Mr. Darcy walked to the table, behind which was a curtained doorway, knocked loudly on the table and called out, “Hello there, Mr. Wolfe!”
To Teach the Admiring Multitude Page 11
