Page 2 of Old Boots (Pride and Prejudice Variations #3)
CHAPTER TWO
S hortly, we were in the yard at Netherfield Park.
As I stepped into my coach at Longbourn, I had told my footman that I wished to be taken to the service entrance of the estate, so we went down a rutted road south of the house rather than the manicured drive that led to the front door.
We clattered to a stop amid the usual buckets, barrows, feathers, and composting rubbish found at the back of any large house.
Becket opened the door. “Fetch the housekeeper,” I said, in no mood for pleasantries.
The lady came out, looking slightly harassed. When she told me her name, I said, “Mr Bingley is expecting me. As you see, however, I have lately had to—I am not inclined to be received by the ladies of this house just now, Mrs Nicholls.”
“No, sir—I mean, yes, sir, Mr Darcy. ”
“And I would rather not be stared at.”
She seemed to understand, and after a curtsey and begging my pardon, she went inside for a length of five minutes. When she returned, she said, “The way is cleared, sir, and your room is ready, if you would follow me?”
“Has my man arrived?” I asked tersely.
Carsten, my valet, had served a duke’s son who died young, and he had very fastidious notions about travelling ahead of his gentleman to make things ready.
That very morning, he had shaved and dressed me before dashing, I presume, to catch the nine o’clock mail to Hertfordshire.
This left me time to have a leisurely breakfast, speak to my sister, read my letters and the news sheets, select a book from my library, meet with my personal secretary, and otherwise fritter away the time until my planned departure at half past ten.
“I told him that you will be needing dry clothes and hot water, sir,” she said.
There were no servants to be seen. I traversed a darkened hall, and the steep, ill-lit service stairs, and was soon shown into my room.
“Sir!” Carsten gasped.
“Just so,” I said grimly.
He rushed to help me out of my coat which was no easy feat, given that I shivered uncontrollably and the sodden wool was plastered to my shirt. Soon, I was stripped from the waist up, and when I sat down, my valet bent to attend to my boots.
“Oh, sir,” he gasped again, this time mournfully.
“Ruined, I am afraid.”
“Yes.” He could say no more, though the subject loomed large between us for the interminable length of time it took for him to wrestle those wet, muddy boots off my legs.
All I could think of was that it had taken three months for this pair to be made, that my second-best pair was in Derbyshire, and that my spare boots, which I had brought along for tramping through fields, had no shine left on them, not to mention a few scars and scrapes in the leather.
“Should I send to Pemberley, sir?” Carsten asked, apparently having had these same thoughts.
“No.” I may have been rich, but I had not yet become ridiculous. “Send to Hoby to start work on another pair. We shall manage with the ones I have. We are in the country, and from all appearances, we shall meet only rustics here.”
As I lowered myself into the water, I could not remember when I had anticipated a hot bath more. Perhaps that was because I cannot remember when I had ever been colder or muddier.
Carsten tiptoed around collecting the rest of my wet and ruined clothes.
He must have sensed my mood, which I admit, was sullen.
I had spent the principal years of my adulthood catering to duty and secretly resenting my endless obligations.
Some of the stoniness of my thoughts must have melted away as he brought up a third round of hot water because the longer I soaked in luxurious warmth, the less irritable and more reflective I became.
I principally pondered why I found myself in this mediocre spot on the map. Soon I came to own the truth. I had been glad of an excuse to escape my sister Georgiana’s haunted face. She was impossible to console and suffered from an irrational belief she had disappointed me.
In truth, she had disappointed me, but I thought I had done an excellent job concealing my sentiments. I found it difficult to accept that my sister had lowered her guard so completely that a rake could convince her to elope. Thankfully, I arrived in time to rupture his plan.
I scowled and submerged my head for the fifth time. When I came to the surface, I set those memories firmly aside and settled into the examination of my other motives for this excursion into the country.
Leaving London was always a pleasure to me. I am not a town dandy, and by retreating to Hertfordshire, I was spared any number of balls and parties my position required me to attend.
I reflected with almost a melancholy air on the carefree days when my father was alive, and I could engage in the anonymous and ordinary pursuits of a young and healthy man of privilege.
I enjoyed shooting, fencing, visiting friends, and travelling as widely as I could.
I went on a petite grand tour at the age of fourteen, and on a lark had even gone as far as Gibraltar in my cousin’s sailing yacht before he lost it at cards and before Napoleon became such a menace in the Channel.
I excelled at my studies and revelled in the pliability of my mind.
Being raised on a generously funded estate, I had many full-blooded horses upon which I exercised my freedom.
I balanced out the discipline of my education with wild stunts, pranks, and breakneck rides, and I could not have been happier to be challenged in those equal and opposite ways.
But when my father died, I was immediately buried under a tower of ledgers and beset by a trail of persons.
The steward, the vicar, the housekeeper, the banker, the farmers, and the magistrate all lined up at my door and demanded my attention.
My ‘salad days,’ as my cousin Richard called them, were at an end.
When he, a second son, bought a commission and went to war, his salad days ended, too, and without his levity to lighten my burden of responsibility, I retreated to my estate where I became the sober-minded man I am today.
Having been habitually more inclined to enjoy myself, the task of becoming an important landowner, guardian to my young sister, and custodian of a staggering fortune required an exercise of will.
I was proud of how assiduous, responsible, and dependable I had become.
I had learnt reserve, having suffered the consequences of my adolescence early on after inheriting my position.
Giddy confessions, impulsive disclosures, ill-considered investments, and the imposition of many false friends quickly taught me not to be anyone’s gull.
The maintenance of this closed, dignified bearing was not effortless, but nothing worth having is free for the taking to my way of thinking.
Not only was I required to become serious and calculating, but my father’s unfortunate and untimely passing thrust me into the glare of lights on society’s stage.
And this, more than the press of responsibility, I truly resented.
For in addition to having inherited both a fortune and a highly profitable estate, I had relations in the peerage.
This in itself would have been bearable, but the fact that I then became little more than a prize bull at a market of heifers was intolerable.
Women regularly sidled up to me, bumped me accidentally, dropped things in my way, invited me to call on them, or to routs, or to musical performances, and even, with unnerving frequency, to some secluded alcove where, presumably, my baser nature would overwhelm my good sense.
Even married women apparently lusted after me, a circumstance that mortified me and my cousin Richard found hilarious.
My reserve only deepened, as has my general resentment at being little more than a commodity, and worse, thought so stupid I would fall prey to such schemes.
This thought brought me directly to Bingley’s sister Caroline. Miss Bingley was the worst of the worst, believing that since I was her brother’s friend, I was also necessarily destined to be her husband.
“Carsten,” I said, my eyes flying open. “When I am fit to be seen, discretely find Bingley and ask him to come to me.”
My valet knew what was required. He had become an ally in the war to protect me from manipulation of all kinds.
Half an hour later, sleepy, warm, and wrinkled as a dried apricot, I met Bingley in my dressing gown.
“Darcy!” he cried. “We have been in the parlour waiting for you to come the entire afternoon!”
“Forgive me. I had to stop to help a lady. She fell into the river, and I fished her out, but I was too filthy and chilled to arrive at your front door.”
“Rescued! Gracious, Darcy. What was she doing in the river and at this time of year?”
“Never mind that. The point is I do not want it touted about. Do you suppose it is possible that I can just go down for dinner and make your sisters believe they missed my arrival?”
Miss Bingley gasped as I came into the salon just as the dinner gong sounded. I bowed to her in acknowledgement.
“Mr Darcy! But—” she spluttered, almost at the volume of a screech. “I—we have been waiting all afternoon to greet you properly! How did I miss your arrival?”
I temporarily ignored her to greet her sister, Mrs Hurst, and her husband. I then returned my attention to the horrified countenance of my hostess, and said as meekly as I could, “I do not rightly know, madam.”
As the hours of the evening progressed, this mild deception began to strike me as something of a tremendous prank.
Miss Bingley must have been glued to her chair, determined to receive me.
How I entered the house without her knowing confounded her to a vexatious degree. She could not cease to remark upon it.
I began to suspect that she was no particular favourite of the servants of the house.
From the butler to the lowliest maid, I detected a closed rank.
No one was the least bit sympathetic to Miss Bingley’s quandary.
When questioned as to when I arrived, as they invariably were, they collectively feigned confusion, ignorance, or to have been elsewhere at the precise moment in question.
She had requested the butler to look over the wine for dinner, she had sent her footmen out to the stables to assure the grooms’ readiness to receive visitors, and she had sent Mrs Nicholls upstairs to look over the rooms. All manner of excuses were serenely provided as to why no one could tell her the particulars of my arrival, and her distress seemed to entertain them almost as much as it did me.
Even Bingley, who is not the sharpest blade in the armoury, blandly looked upon his sister’s bewilderment and said, “Pish, Caroline. Give over. The man is here, as you see.”