In order to prevent Darcy from visiting Anne in Kent, he needed a rider to go to Rosings to update their cousin on the swirl of events taking place in London, and for that, Richard was in need of the services of Gregg, Antony’s manservant, an accomplished horseman. Richard brought his brother up to date on the disaster-in-the-making that was the Montford/ Darcy courtship.
“This does not sound like the Darcy I know,” Antony said. “But if he is not going to learn from my mistakes, then why should I help him? On the other hand, he is my cousin, and on occasion has lent me money. So I shall agree to send my man to Kent, as Darcy lacks my experience in handling unpleasant situations. However, I would like to know how Anne is going to help prevent a marriage in London when she is sequestered with Empress Catherine in Rosings Park.”
“I need Anne’s help to get Darcy to Pemberley. Once there, our cousin will be unable to resist the charms of Miss Elizabeth Bennet. I am telling you, Antony, he is head over heels in love with the lady. This is a Will Darcy you do not know.”
Richard also took Mercer into his confidence, urging him to plant seeds of doubt about Miss Montford whenever possible, even at the risk of his master’s displeasure. Mercer readily agreed, as he was a daily witness to his growing unhappiness. When Mr. Darcy had repeated a comment made by his housemaster at Eton, “You have made your bed, and now you must lie in it,” Mercer had responded by saying that was an excellent lesson for a boy, but perhaps being miserable for the rest of his life might be too harsh even for his housemaster.
“And what did Mr. Darcy say?” Richard asked.
“He told me he wished to hear no more on the subject.”
The next evening, after dinner, Darcy took the day’s post into the parlor and was happy to see that he had a letter from Anne de Bourgh.
“Damn!” Darcy said after scanning the letter.
“What?” Richard asked innocently.
“Anne is to go to her Aunt Hargrave’s and will not be at Rosings when I had planned to visit,” and he read on. “However, she is eagerly looking forward to receiving a description of the autumn colors from Georgie. Very interesting since I had not mentioned that Georgie was in Derbyshire. I had intended to tell Anne when I saw her.”
“I may have mentioned it to Antony, and I know he is in frequent correspondence with Anne,” Richard said, quickly trying to cover up Anne’s mistake. He could not blame his cousin for the slipup as she was a novice conspirator.
“Am I to believe that Antony immediately dashed off a letter to Anne to apprise her of Georgie’s whereabouts? So my next question is, did you have something to do with this?” and he held out Anne’s letter.
“I thank you for the compliment. If you think I am capable of informing Anne in Kent of events in London that have only just happened, you obviously think me a clever fellow.” Darcy agreed that it was unlikely. “Listen, Darcy,” Richard quickly added, “you cannot avoid Miss Elizabeth. Her sister is to marry your closest friend, and you will see her at the wedding, at christenings, when you visit with Bingley at Netherfield, and on many other occasions. I suggest you write to Georgiana and tell her you are coming to Pemberley for the shooting and fishing and that you will have limited contact with her guests.”
“I don’t know what else I can do. If I am supposed to be in Derbyshire, I cannot be seen anywhere in town. I am beginning to feel like an adolescent incapable of managing his own affairs.” After several minutes of thought, Darcy agreed. “You have convinced me. I shall tell Mercer to make preparations for us to go to Pemberley.”
Mercer stepped into the room from his listening post in the hall. “I assume that we are to leave first thing in the morning, sir. May I suggest that we travel lightly? I will arrange for a wagon to come to Pemberley the next day, carrying your trunks as well as the colonel’s. In that way, we will make excellent time because we will have a lighter load.”
“Mercer, tell me the truth. Had you already started packing?” There was something going on here, but he had not figured it out yet.
“Sir, part of being a good valet is anticipating the master’s wishes, so I have packed some things, but not all, and there is much to be done.”
“Well, it seems the Fates, being helped by others, I suspect, have conspired to have me in Derbyshire, and I will not defy them.” But what would he do once he got there?
When Colonel Fitzwilliam emerged from the Darcy townhouse, he was expecting to get into the Darcy carriage. Instead, the Gardiner carriage awaited. Richard, who lived the life of a soldier, had no problem with the simpler conveyance. But it would be a good deal noisier than Will’s well-sprung, thickly padded carriage, and he wished to speak to his cousin about Miss Montford. With Mercer present, he was unsure of how much he should say. It quickly became a moot point because, despite the noise and bumps, Mercer went to sleep almost immediately.
“Do not worry about him,” Darcy told his cousin. “There are only two things that will wake him up. One is if you say his name, and the other is if the carriage makes any noise that in his many years of experience in driving a coach sounds wrong to him. He will sit straight up as if a cannon has gone off. It is amazing, but he is able to filter out all other sounds.”
“Like a man who cannot hear a baby crying.”
“Exactly. I will provide a demonstration of how quickly he reacts when we get near to the inn. In any event, you may speak freely whether he is awake or not. But if you want to talk to me about Miss Montford, I must tell you I have grown weary of the subject. There is nothing more to be said.”
“Will, I must speak, as I believe your happiness depends upon it, so let us look at the facts. You have paid Miss Montford only enough notice so that people suspect you are about to embark on a courtship. But even the limited amount of time you have spent in the lady’s company is too much for her, which is why she has encouraged you to go to Pemberley.”
“Are you saying she does not want me to court her?”
“Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. I think you quite overwhelm her. You two are so different. I wonder what you talk about when you are together.”
“She likes to speak of the weather and ladies’ apparel, and the opera, but after a half hour, there is nothing more to be said. The last time I called on her, I thought I should turn the conversation in a different direction. Make it a little more interesting. I had just spoken with Mr. Gardiner, Elizabeth’s uncle, about how remarkable it is that our tea and coffee come from such distances.”
“Did she swoon?” Richard asked, and Darcy rolled his eyes. “You spoke of tea and coffee. That is not exactly the language of love.”
“I know what the language of love is, and it is nauseating. And that was not the only thing discussed. I also admired her hair and her handiwork that is prominently displayed throughout the house. You cannot look anywhere in the drawing room without having some accomplishment in view. It is like visiting a gallery. But her favorite topic is the weather. On each visit, she has commented on the chilly, foggy mornings, which are followed by afternoons with either sunny, partly cloudy, or cloudy skies with a possibility of rain—or not—followed by cooler temperatures and darkness. This is typical weather for London in late November and has been since this town was known as Londonium under the Romans.”
“Those are things she has been taught to do and say. The more accomplishments a lady has, the more likely she will marry well, and being so new to society, what do you think she is going to talk about? The debates in Parliament? You are used to discussing such things with Mrs. Conway in her salon.”
Darcy did not respond to Richard’s comment about Mrs. Conway, his friend as well as his lover. Once he had decided to court Miss Montford, he had to stop visiting her as it would have been inappropriate, but the result was that he was starved for intelligent conversation, as well as other things.
“You speak of accomplished ladies,” Darcy said. “Recently, I have changed my opinion as to what constitutes an accomplished woman. If Miss
Montford played only the pianoforte, I would consider her to be accomplished because she plays brilliantly. She need not do anything else, except one thing. She must read books and newspapers. She must know what is going on in the world in which she lives. I spoke to her of the power of ideas. I gave as an example America and their remarkable experiment with a government with no monarch at its head, but she showed no interest.”
“You spoke to the daughter of a Tory politician about America, a country who overthrew its king. Will, for God’s sakes, that is something to debate at your club, but it is not something you discuss while courting, which makes my point. The two of you do not belong together. I suspect she wishes to see the back of you, as much as you wish to end it with her, but she cannot because of her father.”
“I have noticed a change,” Darcy said, nodding his head in agreement. “As soon as I deviated from the pedestrian, she looked almost alarmed.”
“All right then. We are making progress. Now, I am going to tell you something that you must keep to yourself,” Richard said as he lowered his voice. This was something that even the trusted Mercer should not hear. “The king intends to award four baronies in order to fill the House of Lords with Tories who will maintain his policies long after he is gone. He suspects that the Whigs will continue to push for Catholic emancipation and the expansion of the franchise to vote.”
“And we shall. It is a matter of fairness.”
“I have no argument with that, but our king and Sir John do, which is why he will be one of the four barons.”
“How do you know this?”
“Antony told me. Say what you will about my brother, but he knows what is going on in Parliament. So I took the liberty of sharing something with my brother without asking your permission.”
“This better be about politics and not romance,” Darcy said, and his green eyes bored into his cousin, “because anything you share with your brother has an excellent chance of ending up in The Insider,” a scandal magazine, which he despised, especially since it had exposed his relationship with Mrs. Conway. “If this has anything to do with my courtship of Miss Montford, you have done me no favor.”
“That is not it at all. Antony told me that Sir John is boasting to everyone at White’s that England will have one less
Whig to make mischief once a certain event occurs.”
“To hell he will. I am no Tory.”
“Exactly. So I told Antony you were saying the same thing about Sir John; that is, you hoped to turn him into a Whig. Of course, I told him not to say anything to ensure that he did. My brother can be very helpful in that way.”
“If we succeed in putting an end to this farce,” Darcy said, “I would like it to appear as if Miss Montford and her father have called an end to it. Except for impropriety, they can say what they will about me. But this will take time to play out, and there is no guarantee of success. Because of that, I must adhere to my original plan. I shall say that my purpose in going to Pemberley is to shoot, and we shall see how much damage Antony can do in London.”
“It has to succeed, Will. We are talking about the happiness of four people.”
“Four? Does that include Sir John?”
“No, it includes Jasper Wiggins. Wiggins was paying a fair amount of attention to Miss Montford, but withdrew from the field once it appeared as if you were going to court her. I have made discreet inquiries, and I have learned he is still very interested in the lady, but cannot act because of you.”
Darcy smiled. For the first time in weeks, he had hope, and knowing that they were drawing close to their destination, he turned to his manservant. “Mercer, we are nearing the inn.”
Mercer sat up as erect as any soldier on review. “Sir? Other than the usual arrangements, is there anything you require?”
“Thank you, Mercer, but no,” and Darcy laughed to himself, something he had not done in ages, or at least since the last time he had seen Elizabeth.
Lizzy thought she had been as quiet as a church mouse in performing her morning toilette, but within minutes of her rising, the maid appeared to assist in dressing her. At Longbourn, although Mr. and Mrs. Hill were servants, they were so entwined with the Bennets that each thought of the other as family. During their childhood, Mrs. Bennet had instructed her girls that the servants were there “to help” not “to do,” but it was the opposite at Pemberley.
Lizzy had met Ellie the night before when the maid had come to help her prepare for bed. It was all Lizzy could do to not giggle, but amusement turned to appreciation when Ellie brushed her hair and told her that she would certainly be able to tame any wayward curls.
In the morning, when Lizzy came down to the breakfast room, she found that her Uncle Gardiner had already left for his first day of fishing with Cubbins, and Mrs. Gardiner, an avid gardener herself, was getting a private tour of the gardens with Mr. Ferguson. But Georgiana, with Pepper, her pug, on her lap, was waiting for her. There were also two whippets that had the run of the house and seemed to be on some sort of mission as they went from room to room, and Georgiana explained that they were Will’s dogs, David and Goliath.
“When I come to Pemberley, they think Will must be here as well, so they just keep looking for him until he does come, or I go. He would never admit it, but they are part of the reason he comes home so frequently.”
Georgiana had not prepared any events for the day, but she did ask a favor. “Mrs. Reynolds is to conduct a tour of Pemberley for some visitors from the inn, and I would ask that you join them. Our housekeeper came to Pemberley from Kent with my mother when my parents married, and she delights in telling people about the family and estate. I have heard her tour so many times that I have learned it by heart. In addition to telling you about the portraits and the dimensions of the room, she will mention that my brother is the best landlord and master who ever lived, that my father was an excellent man, and that Will is as generous with the poor as my mother had been. I will not repeat what she says about me, only that she is too kind.”
All was as Georgiana had said it would be, with the housekeeper pointing out some of the exceptional pieces in the Darcy collection: a Van Dyke here, a Reynolds there, and a Greek antiquity nestled in a niche. Of particular interest to Lizzy was the family portrait painted when Miss Darcy was about five and her brother fourteen. When Lizzy said that Miss Darcy resembled her mother in all things except hair and eye color, Georgiana was elated.
“Now that I have been out in society and have seen the best that London has to offer, I still think Mama was the most beautiful woman in the world. She was a little taller than you, perhaps five feet, four inches, with the tiniest waist, and she wore these enormous hats with an abundance of feathers. And I loved her dresses. Unlike the very straight lines of our frocks, hers were all frills and flounces, and I thought that she might take flight.”
If Georgiana resembled the Fitzwilliams, her brother was all Darcy and a younger version of his father. When Miss Darcy showed her another portrait of her brother that had been painted three years earlier when he was twenty-four, she remarked on how much he had changed since becoming the master of Pemberley.
“My father died while my brother was traveling on the Continent. Will once told me that he had left Pemberley a boy but had returned as a man. You can see it in his face; he is so very serious. The management of such a large estate and being responsible for so many others, including the servants, our tenants, and me, weighs on him because he always does the right thing even when it costs him personally.”
The two ladies rejoined the tour group with Lizzy only half listening to Mrs. Reynolds’s recitations. However, there were two statements that did merit Lizzy’s attention: “Some people call my master proud, but I am sure I never saw any such thing. To my fancy, it is only because he does not rattle away like other young men.” Lizzy agreed that no one could ever accuse Mr. Darcy of “rattling away.”
But it was her response to a second question that truly puzzled Lizzy. When aske
d if there was a Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy, Mrs. Reynolds had replied: “Not at present, and I do not know when that will be. I do not know who is good enough for him.”
Had not Mr. Darcy gone to town for the purpose of beginning a courtship with Miss Montford? But if that were the case, then why was Mrs. Reynolds completely ignorant of the news from London? Lizzy looked at Georgiana, and seeing the confusion on her friend’s face, Georgiana knew what Lizzy was thinking, but could say nothing.
A relaxing afternoon was followed by supper in the most elegant dining room Lizzy had ever seen. Robert Adam had designed all the public rooms at Pemberley, and his soft colors and classical embellishments lifted one’s spirits as soon as you entered the manor house. An aura of tranquility was present in every room, and for a man with as many responsibilities as Mr. Darcy had, Lizzy understood why Pemberley would be a welcomed retreat. He had confided in her that whenever he was troubled, he returned to Pemberley because the clean air and magnificent views provided clarity, and she wondered if, instead of going to London after the Netherfield ball, he had returned to his beautiful estate in Derbyshire, if things might have turned out differently.
Although initially a reluctant rider, Lizzy was coming along nicely. When Sugar had returned to the stables that first time, the mare had stood in front of her stall patiently waiting for Belling to remove her saddle, but after Lizzy had stopped laughing over her inability to control the ten-year-old horse, she had remounted, and Georgiana and she had ridden around the lake. Now she and the old gray mare were friends, especially since Lizzy stuffed her riding coat full of carrots.
The following day, Lizzy was looking forward to another ride around the lake, but her hostess had something else in mind. With Mr. Gardiner gone off at dawn for another day of fishing, and Mrs. Gardiner once again in the gardens with Mr. Ferguson, Georgiana decided to teach Lizzy how to drive a phaeton, and she protested in vain.
A Wife for Mr. Darcy Page 11
