by Jessie Lewis
Elizabeth bit her lip and gazed at him tenderly. “Thank you. But…do you not suppose it possible that Lady Catherine also believes she has been acting in the best interests of her family?”
“I am her family. How has she acted in my best interests?” he said with startling emotion. Never had he appeared so young, so vulnerable as in that rare unguarded moment, and Elizabeth thought her heart might break when his meaning struck her. Lady Catherine had been the one to proclaim herself almost his nearest relation, and she had been correct. It could surely only have been worse had Lady Anne Darcy herself scorned his choice of wife and industriously maligned him to the whole world.
She reached to gently squeeze his hand. “Well, I am your family now. And I love you enough to out-vie a thousand ignoble aunts.”
Darcy stared at her silently for a moment, his gaze swimming with sentiment. Then his lips quirked and he shook his head slightly. Reaching sideways, he plucked a leaf from a nearby potted plant and presented it to her with a look so intense it made her shiver. “You fell me, Elizabeth. I have no words.”
She beamed at him. “Good, for I have another letter to read, and your chatter would make the task impossible.”
She withstood his smouldering gaze very well as she read Mrs. Gardiner’s note confirming their expected arrival on Saturday morning, by now more than comfortable being the object of his adoration.
Pemberley, Derbyshire
July 29
Dearest Jane,
I hope this letter finds you well. Mr. Bingley has written with the news that you are travelling north, but it was not clear from his letter whether or not you intend to visit Pemberley. I beg you would. I know we parted on an unhappier note than either of us would have liked, but we have never let a quarrel keep us long divided, and I hope this one may be soon forgotten also. Pray, write to say you will stay with us for a little while at least, or if you cannot, send addresses where I may write to you while you are on your travels.
Oh, Jane, Pemberley is wonderful! Such a home I never saw—so filled with light and elegance and surrounded by a stunning park. The house is large, but Darcy is determined to show me every corner, thus little by little I am discovering its secrets. I have met his parents at last of a fashion: I have seen their portraits in the gallery. Lady Anne looked to be a very fine woman with a marked resemblance to her sister, though less severe and, of course, much younger. The late Mr. Darcy sports a wig and seems very sombre in his portrait, though he has kind eyes. More than that it is difficult to impart from two paintings, but you will be pleased to hear they made no objections whatever to our marriage.
All the servants have been exceedingly patient as I fudge my way through household tasks that must seem elementary to them. I think it will take some time to become accustomed to it all. Darcy is adamant that everybody should fit in with me rather than the other way around, but I cannot agree. Pemberley has run perfectly well without a mistress for years. It seems nonsensical to adjust perfectly good practices simply to save me the bother of learning them. Still, until I am proficient, the entire staff and my poor beleaguered husband must make allowances for my mistakes!
Georgiana, too, has been a dear. We spend much time together, particularly when Darcy is occupied with estate matters, and we are growing very fond of each other. She seems so very young compared to Kitty and Lydia, mostly because of her shyness, I think, yet I do believe I have detected a small streak of playfulness that wants only a little encouragement to blossom into a very fine wit. I have added her edification to my list of duties.
I will end, for I could write another eight or ten sides and not impart half of what I have to tell. I will save it all for subsequent letters or, better yet, for your visit. I await your response impatiently and hope to hear of all your adventures in London and plans for travelling north.
With the warmest affection,
Lizzy
***
Sunday, 2 August 1812: Derbyshire
It was a moment after Miss Darcy played the last chord of her aria before Mary recollected herself and applauded. Rarely had she heard the pianoforte performed with such proficiency and elegance of expression. So great was her awe that she was unusually unwilling to accede to Mrs. Gardiner’s suggestion that she play next.
“I cannot but think the comparison would show me to great disadvantage.”
“That is easily resolved,” Elizabeth announced, standing up. “I shall play first; then all subsequent comparisons will be favourable to you.”
Mary felt a swell of gratitude then a twinge of sadness that her sister was forever gone from Longbourn. As all eyes followed Elizabeth to the instrument, she took a deep breath to compose herself. She had arrived with her aunt and uncle, as planned, the previous afternoon. It had been an unnerving day, for her new brother was a formidable man and Pemberley vast. This afternoon, the gentlemen had left the women on their own and gone fishing. Two hours of feminine conversation had returned Mary to some semblance of equanimity, but it did not require much to remind her how far removed she was from her usual sphere. She marvelled that her sister showed no sign of being similarly daunted. To all appearances, she was as well settled as though she had lived her entire life in such grandeur.
Elizabeth fudged and faltered her way through a minuet before calling upon Mary and Miss Darcy to join her in playing a trio. After but three bars and thrice as many mistakes, however, she threw her hands in the air.
“’Tis no good! You two had much better play without me.”
“You did not play so very ill, Lizzy,” Miss Darcy hastened to assure her.
Mary said naught. Her earlier gratitude notwithstanding, she had dearly wished to impress Miss Darcy and would have made no mistakes at all had Elizabeth not forced several upon her. She would have thought, with an instrument as fine as this to play and a husband as grand as Mr. Darcy to please, her sister might trouble herself to practice more often.
“Mary does not agree,” Elizabeth said with a wink as she stood to rummage through the sheets of music atop the piano. “What say I find a reel that we might all dance a little?”
“A reel, Lizzy?” Mrs. Gardiner said with a raised eyebrow and a smirk. “Hardly a dance befitting the mistress of Pemberley.”
“I daresay nobody will be surprised,” Elizabeth replied. “Very little of what I have done thus far befits the mistress of Pemberley.”
“I have seen you do nothing unbefitting of your situation,” Miss Darcy said. She sounded more than a little alarmed, reminding Mary how unaccustomed she must be to Elizabeth’s teasing.
“I agree,” she added, more for Miss Darcy’s sake than Elizabeth’s. “You seem remarkably capable to me.”
“You are both invaluable as sisters, discerning none of my mistakes, but I assure you the servants have noticed.”
Mrs. Annesley, Mary observed, had picked up her hoop and was too busy attending to her stitches to contradict Elizabeth as she described the butler’s horror the first time she returned home from a walk, caked in countryside.
“Though I believe it was my attempt to come into the house via the kitchens that most horrified him. I would have been better advised to trample the clean carpets than his sensibilities.”
“Oh, is that why Cook was in a lather on Wednesday?” Miss Darcy enquired.
“No. That was due to my trespassing in her domain to hang some flowers to dry.”
“You are not supposed to go below stairs at all?” Mary queried.
“I only think I need to announce myself in future. I had on an apron, cap, and old walking dress, and the poor woman mistook me for a maid. She served me the sharp edge of her tongue before she recognised me.”
“Oh my! What did you do?” Miss Darcy exclaimed fretfully.
Mary was unsurprised to hear her sister say she had only laughed.
“Might I suggest you make an effort not to shock your poor staff with such regularity? You would not like to sink any further in their esteem,” Mrs. Gardiner ventured. Her tone, which verged on admonishing, caused a fluttering in Mary’s stomach, for it made her wonder whether Elizabeth had not been teasing when she decried her performance as mistress.
“No, indeed! I have mortified them all enough,” Elizabeth agreed. “I thought my lady’s maid would faint when she caught me mending my own chemise. Still,” she added, looking up from her search and grinning at them all, “if my husband can tolerate my unfashionable independence, I am sure the staff will grow accustomed to it in time.”
Mary knew not whether to be diverted or dismayed. That her sister should be struggling to adapt to her new life would have been vastly distressing but for the fact that Elizabeth did not seem in the least perturbed by her professed insufficiencies. She had no time to do aught more than frown over it. Having found the piece of music for which she had been looking, Elizabeth announced her intention to have the staff move the furniture aside. Rather than walking around the piano to the bell pull, however, she squeezed between the stool and a nearby pedestal, sending the very expensive-looking miniature bust atop the latter sailing to its demise.
No one spoke as all five women congregated around the shattered figurine, each gazing down upon it with various degrees of alarm.
“Whose likeness was that, Georgiana?” Elizabeth said quietly.
“I am not sure. Nobody I knew.”
Elizabeth breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, then, do any of you think Darcy will notice?”
“My dear girl,” said Mrs. Gardiner, “your husband is apparently blind to just about everything where you are concerned! I daresay you could string the pieces together and hang them as bunting, and he would not blame you for it.”
This comment, after a short, shocked silence, set them all off into the peals of laughter that consumed them still when Mr. Darcy and Mr. Gardiner entered the room. Having the most direct view of the door, Mary noticed them first and watched with considerable trepidation as Mr. Darcy took in the scene.
It was her uncle who first spoke. “It seems we need not have been concerned for their entertainment after all, Darcy. They appear to have been amusing themselves perfectly well without us.”
All four of the other women started and spun around.
“So it would seem,” Mr. Darcy said, his gaze fixed upon Elizabeth as he crossed the room and came around the piano to discover the source of their amusement.
Mary fought the absurd impulse to whimper.
Elizabeth only grimaced contritely—and barely so. “Forgive me. I was a little too eager to begin dancing.”
“You intended to dance?” he enquired gravely, adding, when she nodded, “Without me?”
Elizabeth broke into an exceptionally mischievous smile. “Yes, I felt a great inclination to seize the opportunity to dance a reel.”
Miss Darcy sucked in her breath. Mary quite agreed with her apprehension. She thought she might cry when Mr. Darcy turned his piercing gaze upon her—until he smiled. Then she thought she might swoon.
“Mary, would you be so kind as to play for us?”
She nodded mutely, but he could not have seen, for his eyes were already upon Elizabeth again.
“I am suddenly tempted to dance myself.”
Mary watched, incredulous, as Elizabeth accepted his proffered hand and stepped clear of the broken bust.
“Yes, mind not old Tobias,” Mr. Darcy said, so dryly it almost belied the glint in his eye. “He only built the place.”
Elizabeth was yet smiling over that remark when all the chairs had been pushed aside and her husband whisked her with improbable dignity into the first figure of a most undignified reel.
***
Thursday, 6 August 1812: Derbyshire
Elizabeth returned to her bedchamber to find her aunt as she had left her, wandering the room, peering curiously at everything. She closed the door behind her. “There, he knows you are here and will not disturb us or wander into the room in his undress.”
Mrs. Gardiner looked at her in mild surprise. “He does not knock before entering?”
“Not usually,” she answered, sitting on the bed and curling her feet beneath her.
Her aunt turned fully towards her, her surprise transformed into alarm. “He ought to! Do not be afraid to ask it of him.”
“I have no wish for him to knock first. We are very easy with each other. We come and go as we please between all our rooms.”
Her aunt looked decidedly sceptical. “Familiarity is one thing; privacy is quite another. What if you are…you know…”
“I have a separate room for my toilette.”
“No, no—well, yes, that is bad enough, but what if you are unclothed?”
Elizabeth laughed. “Well, forgive me, but that is often the point of his coming in.”
Her aunt’s eyebrows shot up divertingly. “Indeed! I did mean to enquire whether you were yet comfortable with the intimacies of married life, but I take it you have overcome any trepidation in that quarter?”
She nodded, unable to keep from grinning.
“Lizzy, you look unpardonably smug.”
“Do I?”
“You know you do. And let us not be shy about it: you have good reason. Your husband is an uncommonly handsome man—with something particularly pleasing about his mouth when he speaks.”
Elizabeth wondered whether her aunt knew she was blushing and if that was why she changed the subject.
“Tell me: Is Jane as contented with Mr. Bingley?”
The question caught Elizabeth by surprise. She pulled a pillow from behind her and hugged it to her chest. “Truly, I could not tell you. She was not happy with me when I saw her last. How happy she is with her husband was not something she wished to discuss.”
Mrs. Gardiner came to join her, perching on the edge of the bed. “Why was she unhappy with you?”
“She was upset that I neglected her at Lady Ashby’s ball.”
“I do not take your meaning. In what way did you neglect her?”
“She felt I cared only for my own reception and paid no heed to how she was treated—which, by her account, was with a marked want of respect.”
“Well, what on earth did she expect? Fanfares? She is not of the same sphere.”
Elizabeth shrugged. “Neither am I.”
“But you are now, Lizzy. If Jane imagined she would be received with the same deference as Mrs. Darcy of Pemberley, she was dreaming. She ought to be careful. She will make people think she is jealous.”
“Darcy said something very similar. I do not wish to believe it of her though.”
“Neither do I, but we are none of us without faults.”
“True, but why should Jane be jealous? She is five times as pretty as I and ten times as good.”
Mrs. Gardiner leant back against the bedpost, rearranging her skirts around her. “Mayhap, therein lies the rub. How often have you lauded Jane’s goodness? How often does your mother boast of her beauty?”
“Often, I suppose. Why?”
“I can conceive that being told constantly she is superior to all her sisters and friends might have instilled in her a propensity to resent anything—or anyone—who makes her feel inferior.” There was a pause. “I suspect, presently, that anyone is you.”
“Yes, I gathered you were heading in that direction,” Elizabeth replied miserably. “But Jane has never coveted greater consequence. I cannot comprehend why she should suddenly be envious of my having a superior situation.”
“Perhaps not of your better situation, per se, but that your situation means you are better admired.”
“Hardly!” Elizabeth exclaimed, with a bitter bark of laughte
r. “Half of society despises me, and the rest is completely indifferent to me!”
Mrs. Gardiner raised an eyebrow. “Truly? Because Jane’s grievances, as you have related them, rather suggest it was she to whom society was indifferent and you whom they admired.”
Elizabeth shook her head, wondering vaguely when it had begun to ache. “Jane may have been less admired than she felt she deserved, but I assure you she was under no illusion that I fared any better. Indeed, she went to great lengths to ensure I understood just how ill my new family thought of me.” She picked unhappily at the pillow’s trim. “They will never like me, apparently, if I do not learn to respect them properly.”
When she received no answer, she looked up and was taken aback to discover Mrs. Gardiner’s lips pressed together into a tight line and her countenance stained an angry red. “What is it?”
“I am loath to say too much more, for I would not stir ill-feeling between the pair of you, but I regret it sounds very much as though Jane has maligned your success merely to lessen her own disillusionment.”
Elizabeth recoiled. That Jane should feel some jealousy for their altered situations was, perhaps, only natural. That she should blame her for it, consciously set out to punish her for it, was inexpressibly painful. “Think you that was her design?”
“I sincerely hope it was not her design, but it may well have been unconsciously done.”
Elizabeth felt quite nauseous with dismay, yet a friendship such as hers and Jane’s was too important to be forsaken over such a nasty little thing as jealousy, and she was nothing if not obstinate. “Then I shall just have to convince her she has nothing of which to be jealous, shall I not?”
Her aunt smiled warmly. “And I have every faith you will put it all to rights, Lizzy, but you look tired. Let us speak no more of it this evening.” After a fond goodnight, she left to find her own apartments.
Mere moments after Elizabeth closed the door to the hall behind her aunt, the one from the sitting room opened, and Darcy, after a quick glance to ensure she was alone, stalked in.
