Page 26 of Old Boots (Pride and Prejudice Variations #3)
There at the front door, we were greeted with looks of exasperation by everyone, my coachman looking particularly thunderous for having had to force his restless team to wait on us.
The carriages were ready, and with Bandit barking madly with excitement on the box where he sat between Reese and Matthew, we were soon away in a little cavalcade of joy, heading towards, I could not help but feeling, the best days of my life.
We did not forewarn Mr Bennet of our arrival, though everyone else at Pemberley knew and participated in our deception.
I suppose we had caught the fever of mischief and wished to shock a man who always seemed impervious to surprise.
The Miss Bennets burst into the parlour after our surreptitious arrival at the service entrance, and I could not shake my amused remembrance of playing a similar prank on Miss Bingley.
“Mary? Jane? What-what? Lizzy?” He stood on shaky legs as his daughters laughingly surrounded, hugged, and kissed him.
Only Kitty hung back, but when Mr Bennet saw her, pulled her forward, and gave her a kiss, she knew she was forgiven.
She discretely blew her nose and then joined her sisters in their raillery, led by Elizabeth.
“We came because we feared you had forgotten where you live, sir. Were you going to batten yourself on Mr Darcy until summer? ”
Mr Bennet ignored Elizabeth’s question, having caught sight of Bandit.
“You did not bring that animal, Jane. Tell me this is one of Mr Darcy’s dogs with an uncanny resemblance to your own.”
“We could not leave him behind, Papa,” she said. “He would have run after the coach and gotten lost.”
“That is precisely why you should not have brought him, my dear. But come, how is it you have travelled all this way to interrupt my holiday?” He turned to my sister and her companion.
“I appeal to you ladies to overlook the intrusion of these silly girls. If we ignore them, perhaps they will go away. Let us go back to ordering your collection of feathers, Mrs Annesley.”
I had hung back during this reunion, and after welcoming the ladies, Georgiana came to stand with me.
I kissed her cheek and took her hand, and I do not think I was imagining that she stood closer to me than she used to do.
We looked fondly at Mr Bennet as he teased his daughters and was fussed over in return, and we were in an attitude of filial oneness when Elizabeth came to us.
“You are very indulgent to agree to our invasion of your household, Miss Darcy,” she said. “I wonder, is there somewhere we can safely stow Jane’s dog before he destroys something?”
In no time, the two of them walked away from me down the hall, their heads bent in eager conversation with Bandit pulled behind on his lead.
By the time they turned the corner, Elizabeth had induced my sister to laugh with her, a sound so strikingly natural I thought it was surely—it must have always been—the sound of home.
Mrs Annesley took the ladies to Mrs Reynolds to be shown their rooms, I went to the stables to assign Bandit a dedicated minder, and later we had an elegant dinner.
When I saw how Mary in particular looked wonderingly and appreciatively at the table, how she relished her sudden status as a lady of privilege, I gave up my plan of only serving raised pie and fruit tart at Pemberley.
Those homely delights I would reserve for my visits to Longbourn.
Mr Bennet and I did not speak, though we once exchanged knowing smiles. He was immensely pleased to have his family with him, and I was equally pleased to have brought them. Only after dinner, when the ladies retired from the table, did we have a moment to ourselves.
“Tell me of my youngest daughter,” he said bluntly as I poured out a glass of port for him.
“I told you everything in my letter. I am sure Mr Gardiner wrote to you as well.”
“I am not so old I need to be served pap. Neither of you said one glowing word about my new son-in-law, which leaves me to believe he is a rascal. In fact, he must be, if he resorted to Mrs Trencher.”
“Your youngest daughter is settled. That is the beginning, the middle, and the end of the tale. Do you mean to badger me much more on this subject? If so, I believe I shall retreat to the music room where I cannot hear you over my sister’s playing.
” I spoke with a chuckle in my voice, though I must say, it is marvellous to be able to speak so brusquely to another man because we are, in fact, such good friends.
He grunted and harrumphed, and I decided Mr Bennet needed to think of something altogether different.
“Elizabeth has agreed to marry me, sir.”
“The devil you say!”
I laughed aloud, both at his consternation and from the deep pleasure of having secured his daughter’s affection.
“I thought she would give you a better chase. I own I am disappointed, Darcy.”
“In the match itself or in how easily I won her? If it is the latter that disappoints you, I would have you know she tortured me. I never could look at my boots without thinking of her, and a man looks at his boots a hundred times in a day, you know.”
“Ah well, I suppose she could not hold out. Elizabeth has nursed a violent tendre for you for quite a long while now.”
“Has she? Did she tell you so?”
“Good heavens, no. But she was so openly resistant to you, while at the same time always looking out the window in hopes of your arrival, I could not escape knowing it. Why do you suppose I refused to even consider making you marry Jane at the sword-point of general expectation and duty?”
“You are a brute, sir. Could you not have given me a hint? Until the moment of my declaration, I never knew where I stood.”
He chuckled. “That is a consolation, I suppose.”
“You are far too smug at my expense. Have you not suffered your own uncertainty?”
“I do not understand you.”
“Impossible. There is nothing on earth you do not understand. I left the fox in the henhouse while I was away. What might Jane say to you when you tell her she is to be unseated as mistress of Longbourn?”
The man’s demeanour of ironic self-satisfaction crumbled before my eyes. In a voice of great humility, he said, “You have no idea how I have wrestled with that question.”
“Let me be kinder to you than you were to me and inform you that Jane will be greatly relieved to return to being a young lady again. She has borne the responsibility admirably, but she does not relish her position.”
“But how would it be for my girls to see another lady occupy their mother’s room?”
“Strange at first but unremarkable in no time at all. Mrs Annesley is both wise and wonderful. She will ease them into the umbrella of her maternal concern without them knowing what happened to them. Would you like me to invite Mr Bingley to Pemberley to engage Jane’s interest and create a distraction?
He was fairly bowled over by her, you know. ”
Mr Bennet wrinkled his nose and the wolfish glint returned to his eyes. “No, no. I have someone less insipid in mind for Jane. I assume Colonel Fitzwilliam will stand up with you?”
“How uncanny you are,” I said on a laugh, for I had more than once indulged that same notion.