“She propositioned you?”
“She did not explicitly so say, but was clearly offering herself as my established mistress.”
“Your established mistress?”
“Yes, I believe so,” he replied quietly.
“Such a term!” Elizabeth responded, rising and pacing slowly back and forth before the bench until she walked to a tree and rested her hand against the trunk and looked down the lane, to the darkening sky and the rising moon. Glencora Morris’ beautiful face framed in her bonnet as she had seen her at the dress shop that morning in London came vividly before her, and she saw now the mendacity of her smile, and understood the desperation of her brazenness. “Of course it is shocking, and yet entirely common and unremarkable. So many marriages established on all the wrong terms; how can it be otherwise?”
She turned back to Darcy and approached him. His expression was clouded and everything in his posture and movement indicated his profound unease.
“Elizabeth, you are very quiet. You express no anger? No offense?”
“I am angry, offended, disgusted,” she replied at last. “Somehow I am not surprised. But I don’t know what to do with this information; how am I to respond?”
“You must understand that I could not keep this from you. Should she make it known she was at Portman Square; you comprehend what people would think. I could not leave you in ignorance.”
“Why would she make it known?”
“She is clearly in a desperate situation and I have no notion of what she is capable, of what motivates her actions. She claims to hold me complicit in her disgrace. I am afraid she will wish to harm my reputation and that of our marriage. We cannot ignore that she may have been seen entering or leaving the house. What is more, I instructed Perkins to see her safely home; it was very late and I could not have done otherwise. Our livery may have been recognized. Reputations can be damaged by far less and I would have you informed of the truth from the first, as a precaution.”
“I feel dizzy,” Elizabeth responded and turned to the tree again and rested her hand against it anew.
“Elizabeth!” he cried in agitation, nearing her.
She turned to him and saw his countenance was awash with distress and something like shame. “I do not wish to know if that woman succeeding in awakening for even a moment those old, fervent feelings. A wariness that she might have is already too much.”
“I sent her away immediately, you must know this? Elizabeth!”
Before he could say more, she reached her hand out to grasp his within her own and with the other hand she pressed her fingers to his mouth to halt any injurious declarations. He felt her trembling and tightly grasped her hand within his own.
“I trust in your fidelity; I know your heart,” she declared.
“You are trembling.”
“I am thinking of Lydia.”
“Lydia?”
“I abhor that woman though I have spoken no words to her; the thought of her makes me shudder. And yet, I think of Lydia and my anger is subdued by compassion.”
“Compassion? That woman deserves no compassion!”
“Perhaps she does not. Yet there is Lydia. What would have become of her had you not bribed Wickham to marry her? She would have born all the consequences of her reckless, immoral adventure and Wickham none. She would have been no different than this woman who alone bears the shame and the burden of her seduction, whilst her seducer, whoever he may be, surely carries on with his life with no guilt for having ruined another or he would not have left her to such a precarious fate. And there is a blameless child to be hidden away and cared for, marked for life as an outsider. I despise that woman for what she dared attempt, for the offense against our marriage; but even so, I must never forget Lydia’s case. My own sister so nearly ruined and all of her sisters in her wake. I will have compassion for the injustice of this woman’s situation, for the pitiable fate she will surely not escape. A woman’s fortune is exceedingly precarious, her allowance for error so small; she is seldom allowed the opportunity to renew her reputation as easily as is a man. Such brazen immorality to go to you as she did; and yet, such pitiable desperation!”
Darcy lifted Elizabeth’s hands, kissed them reverently, admiration and respect for the woman standing before him filling his heart anew. “You are the most extraordinary woman I have ever known. You have no equal. I am the most fortunate of men to walk through life at your side and our children will be the most blessed for having you as a mother.”
“Oh darling,” Elizabeth replied. “A little compassion ought not make me extraordinary. In truth, I am merely obstinate. I do feel a strange pity for a woman so desperate. But I am no fool. Whatever other inducements led her on, I comprehend she was not averse to causing me harm into the bargain. I never told you this, but we stood not two feet apart from one another in a dress shop once, and I shall never forget how she looked at me. I have never experienced such open enmity, never felt a similar cold chill as that which ran through me on that day. I am obstinate! She will have my compassion in lieu of a resentment or disquiet that could mar my happiness or my peace of mind; she will not have a moment more of my attentions.”
“I did not err in informing you? I would not have secrets between us.”
Elizabeth looked up into his face, so beautifully illuminated by the risen moon’s light. “Truly the best man I have ever known,” she whispered, grasping his face tenderly between her hands and kissing him. “We should return inside,” she remarked after a delicious interval of understanding.
“Not just yet,” he said quietly. He took her hand and placed it over his heart. “Yours,” he declared. “Faithfully, irrevocably yours.”
Chapter 35
Lady Catherine is Not Pleased
Lady Catherine de Bourgh was not a woman who habitually doubted a decision once made, but as her carriage neared Pemberley, she felt an unfamiliar vacillation. A woman who was most certainly not her daughter was to shortly greet her as mistress of Pemberley; a young woman whose impertinence and audacity gravely offended her ladyship’s sense of propriety; a young lady, moreover, who had most brazenly rejected her ladyship’s directive to withdraw herself from consideration of such a marriage. She breathed deeply in anxious consternation.
As the carriage neared the house, Lady Catherine turned to her daughter who sat across from her, silently looking out the window. “Anne, are you quite prepared?”
“Prepared, Mother?”
“To greet Mrs. Darcy with dignity and indifference? You are not to allow her to see your disappointment or your displeasure with the current circumstances. She remains entirely beneath you.”
“Naturally, Mother. I am the heiress of Rosings Park,” she replied quietly.
Satisfied that her daughter’s resolve would equal her own, she was able to alight from the carriage with her composure restored and to greet her nephew and his wife with the studied pomposity that was her ordinary way. If the warmth with which they were received surprised her, she kept such feelings well concealed.
“I acknowledge you are looking very well, Darcy,” Lady Catherine offered as she took his arm and he led her into the house.
“Thank you, your ladyship. I am very well,” he replied with a small smile. He was in a very fine humour and felt his aunt could not have arrived at a more propitious time. The house was full of guests, which would certainly help to distract from any lingering discomfiture between them. What is more, after he and Elizabeth had held the difficult conversation regarding Glencora Morris’ audacious intentions the evening of his return from London, they had enjoyed all the sweetness of a first reunion. That night when they had retired to their bed, they had made love with an unhurried, gentle serenity that had been exhilarating for its profound tenderness and luminous intimacy. They were both in particularly high spirits and Pemberley was at the moment a busy and cheerful place.
Lady Catherine was surprised to find the house so full and her nephew so discernibly satisfied
with his situation. She was not pleased and quickly retired to her rooms to rest until dinner.
As Pemberley’s guests gathered for another evening of affable company, Lady Catherine dallied in her room, unsure of her wishes or intentions. She had begrudgingly admired the elegant naturalness with which her nephew’s wife had received them, as though no embarrassment need accompany the peculiar circumstances of her visit, yet she certainly cherished a secret hope that Mrs. Darcy would prove an unremarkable mistress at best. At last she gathered her fan, squared her shoulders and made for her private battle. Making her way down to the parlour she confirmed her earlier observation—Mrs. Darcy had made little substantial change to Pemberley. That, at least, was a small consolation, for she had suffered visions of a gaudy disturbance of the stateliness for which she took such unmerited credit. She wondered if perhaps Darcy had simply disallowed his wife such authority, aware her tastes were inadequate to the task. After all, it was unusual for a new wife to not indulge the prerogative of fixing up a principle room or two.
With these thoughts entertaining her passage, she arrived to the drawing room, the last guest to join the party. She entered with authority, draped in enough silk and jewels to impress the wealthiest of sultans. Elizabeth immediately went to her side. The contrast between the two ladies as they made polite greeting at the room’s entrance was stark and not all to Elizabeth’s disadvantage. From the relative soberness and quality of her gown, the modest use of jewels, one could see that Elizabeth was neither gaudy nor uselessly fine, with less of splendour than Lady Catherine, and more real elegance.
Lady Catherine made no reply to Elizabeth’s cordial welcome; she simply bowed her head slightly and condescendingly in recognition. She looked around the room and examined the party before her, searching for suggestions of the low connections Mrs. Darcy had brought with her to the marriage, seeking evidence of the pollution now tainting Pemberley’s hitherto pristine shades. She was not entirely sure if she was disappointed or gratified to see no indication of the same. “I see the James Thorneys of Edgewood Hall are here,” she remarked at last to Elizabeth.
Although entirely anticipated, Elizabeth was piqued by Lady Catherine’s dismissiveness and responded with less graciousness than she had intended. “Naturally. My husband and Mr. Thorney are such old friends. I must say, Mr. Darcy’s friends have been remarkably warm in their welcome, just as I had always supposed they would prove to be,” she observed evenly, but in clear allusion to the terrible confrontation between the two women when Lady Catherine had appeared at Longbourn and attempted to berate and insult Elizabeth into subjugation.
Lady Catherine turned to Elizabeth and raised her brow disbelievingly. “I have always approved of their friendship, Mrs. Darcy. You of course know that Mrs. Anne Thorney is one of the Norfolk Cartwrights and the late Mrs. Hester Thorney was a Carlisle. Such eminent and respected old families,” she added provocatively. “Ah, Nephew,” Lady Catherine smiled as Darcy approached from across the room. “Your arm.”
As Darcy led her to a seat, Lady Catherine surveyed the assembled party with her customary superciliousness, defining and relegating each person to their proper place. “It seems a respectable enough party, Darcy,” she intoned as she mentally observed that the gentlemen were clearly all that they ought to be with not a vulgar fop among them. The ladies offered more variety for her scrutiny. She was pleased to see Georgiana in animated conversation with a young lady of about her age, although the giggles of her companion were less than dignified. She immediately dismissed Miss Bingley as the common London fashion girl, and Mrs. Ashton she found unassuming and genteel. She was surprised to find Mrs. Thorney—a famous beauty—in conversation with a lady of equal beauty. Indeed she found the pretty, delicate face more to her liking than Mrs. Thorney’s more glamorous type.
“Pray, Nephew, who is this uncommonly lovely lady?” she inquired, stopping immediately in front of Jane and examining her with unambiguous inspection. “Such a pretty, serene countenance she has.”
“This uncommonly lovely lady,” Darcy responded as Jane blushed, “is my wife’s elder sister, Mrs. Jane Bingley.”
Evidently surprised at the connection and displeased to have so singled out a relation of Mrs. Darcy, Lady Catherine simply harrumphed inelegantly and continued on to her seat.
Mr. and Mrs. Thorney were soon before her presenting their respects; the late Sir Lewis de Bourgh and the elder Mr. Thorney had been acquaintances. Greetings dispensed with, Lady Catherine was immediately interrogatory of their stay at Pemberley, eager to glean what she could about Mrs. Darcy’s comportment. Her intentions were clear to Mrs. Thorney who was amused to find the great lady so plain in her desire to judge the woman who had successfully supplanted her own daughter’s intended place. Mrs. Thorney was pleased to oblige.
“Pemberley is always a pleasure, your ladyship, but this summer party is not quite the same. To be sure Mrs. Darcy brings her own personality to bear,” she offered mischievously.
“In what way?” Lady Catherine inquired.
Mrs. Thorney smiled, a rare, genuine smile that gave to her beautiful countenance a warmth that was often lacking. “I confess, Lady Catherine, I believe myself half in love with Mrs. Darcy. She is a delight and makes everything around her equally delightful.”
Lady Catherine opened her fan with force and made no response. Mrs. Thorney curtsied elegantly. “Your ladyship,” she said as she departed the great lady’s side. She enjoyed nothing more than to provoke and to do so in defence of her new friend was an added pleasure. She strolled across the room light-heartedly, her husband following behind as he shook his head. His wife could be difficult, but he recognized she was never dull.
Soon they rose for dinner and in her irritation Lady Catherine felt compelled to exert the authority she had always believed she possessed in the rooms of her nephew’s house. “Darcy,” she declared commandingly, “you must take Anne into dinner. She is fatigued from the travel.”
Darcy stared at her in silence, a look of antipathy spreading across his mien. He found it entirely preposterous that she should suppose she could usurp his wife’s position as mistress of the house and that she could freely manage and order people about as she did at Rosings Park. He was on the point of declining to oblige in some curt and uncivil fashion when he felt Elizabeth touch his arm lightly as she spoke cheerfully, seemingly indifferent to the presumption of her guest.
“Yes do, darling,” Elizabeth replied with sweet defiance. “I would not wish cousin Anne tired unduly.”
Darcy looked first at his wife and then at his aunt, annoyed by the silly stratagems of the one as much as by the defiant challenge of the other. He loathed the artful parlour games played in so many London drawing rooms and he certainly did not wish to see the same exercised in his home.
“It must be as you wish, Elizabeth. Then pray, Sir Hamish, will you not accompany my wife to dinner, and Mr. Bennet, will you not do the same for Lady Catherine?”
As Mr. Bennet was bowing politely to Lady Catherine and offering his arm, the Lady looked him up and down in open assessment, unaware that there were few people who could be more indifferent to the same. “Mr. Bennet,” she said coldly as she took his proffered arm. “I have heard much of you from Mr. Collins.”
“I should imagine you have. He is a very amusing correspondent. Mr. Collins has an opinion on everything; it must be very convenient that they should always be so well aligned with your ladyship’s. As you can surmise, I have likewise heard much of your ladyship. Mr. Collins enjoys nothing so well as sharing his admiration for his distinguished patroness.”
Another inelegant “humph!” was all the reply she made.
Lady Catherine watched Anne lead the party into the dining room upon Darcy’s arm and felt her ire chafe bitterly against her intentions of reconciliation. Her bitterness would not have been lessened had she known the observations of more than one person of the party.
“That is the famous cousin he was meant to
marry?” Mrs. Thorney whispered to her husband when Miss de Bourgh had first entered the parlour, expensively attired, small, wan, withdrawn and sullen: entirely unappealing. “Well, everything is ever so clear now,” she added. “Had Mr. Darcy acquiesced to that marriage my admiration would not have survived the day. If I were a gentleman in his position I can assure you I would have acted exactly as he has. To settle for a wife so frail and morose for the sake of a fortune would have been a great mark against his character. She will do, I am sure, for some second son.”
“Indeed,” Mr. Thorney concurred. He had long wondered why his friend had been so reticent to speak of his heiress cousin and his family’s wishes. It was clear enough now and he was relieved that the ease of their old friendship had not been marred by the arrival of so unappealing a wife.
During the meal Lady Catherine quickly observed that the former Miss Elizabeth Bennet had lost none of her decidedness when it came time to voice her opinions. She seemed, in fact, to have acquired still greater facility for the same. To her displeasure she saw that her nephew was, if not mawkishly demonstrative towards his wife, certainly unapologetically admiring.
“Youth!” Lady Catherine muttered under her breath, at one particularly frank and good-humoured exchange across the table regarding the capriciousness of society’s dictates.
“Yes, youth,” Mr. Bennet responded. “So reprehensibly broadminded!”
Lady Catherine was unmistakably displeased by Mr. Bennet’s irony, so evidently expressed at her expense. Clearly, she concluded, it was from her father that Mrs. Darcy had learnt her insolent ways. Before replying, she observed the assemblage with something like objectivity. She would not credit Mrs. Darcy for the excellence of the table—Pemberley’s staff and her own nephew’s fastidiousness ensured its continuance. The disposition of the party, however, the collective character of the intercourse, was more clearly her doing. Whilst she could not fault Mrs. Darcy on civilities, the air of ease and liveliness that suffused the company was not at all what she was accustomed to finding at Pemberley, and she was uncertain as to its being sufficiently dignified for such a fine estate. That Mrs. Darcy had imposed her personality upon the house and company as Mrs. Thorney had professed—without altering much more than the location of an object or two outside her private sitting room—left Lady Catherine no alternative but to conclude that the young woman’s confidence was not to be easily shaken. She should have expected as much after the young lady’s audacious display of will at Longbourn. Moreover, whatever her own feelings about the relative exuberance of the party and their lively discourse, she was honest enough to recognize in her nephew an air of gladness she was quite unaccustomed to seeing. He seemed more like his father than ever before. Nevertheless, she could not share in what she considered his misbegotten pleasure.
To Teach the Admiring Multitude Page 38
