Page 19 of Return to Pemberley
Chapter eight
Lady Catherine's Challenge
E lizabeth had always regarded the morning room at Pemberley as her stronghold, but there were days when even the most cherished battlements seemed insufficient to the assault.
On this particular morning, the air was so pure and bracing that the remnants of the previous evening’s company—the laughter, the faint scent of beeswax and lilacs, the echoes of fine conversation—were swept away, leaving the room susceptible to new invasions.
Elizabeth, whose habit it was to greet each day with an hour of solitude, had arrayed herself at the window, a crystal vase of fresh narcissus in one hand and a set of pruning shears in the other.
Her mind, contentedly engaged in the perfection of her arrangement, did not at first register the approach of imperial footsteps along the corridor.
The arrival of Lady Catherine de Bourgh was never a subtle affair.
She advanced on the morning room with a stride more proper to the command of a province than the management of a drawing room, her daughter trailing in her wake like the silent footnote to a legal brief.
Lady Catherine’s entrance, marked by the sovereign rustle of black taffeta and the calculated deployment of her cane, transformed the character of the room as thoroughly as the sunrise banishes a shadow.
Anne de Bourgh, as always, hovered a pace behind, her slightness rendered almost spectral by her mother’s eclipsing presence.
Elizabeth, who had learned the wisdom of meeting such incursions with dignity rather than alarm, set her vase gently upon the table, wiped her hands on the cloth, and turned to greet her formidable guest. “Lady Catherine, you honour Pemberley with your visit. Miss de Bourgh,” she added, with a warmth meant as much for the neglected daughter as for her mother, “you are always most welcome.”
Lady Catherine, whose inclination to be pleased was as rare as it was brief, acknowledged the greeting with a glance as cold and appraising as a magistrate’s.
She did not sit—indeed, she seemed to consider sitting an act of surrender—but remained in the centre of the room, her figure erect, her cane planted like a sceptre.
Anne drifted to a settee and seated herself with all the self-effacement of a shadow melting into the upholstery.
“Mrs. Darcy,” Lady Catherine began, her voice modulated to the frequency of pronouncement, “I perceive you are making some change to the morning room. I trust you are not so rash as to disturb the arrangement of Lady Anne’s furniture?”
Elizabeth smiled, unruffled. “Indeed, Lady Catherine, I find Lady Anne's arrangements so perfectly suited to their purpose that I dare not presume to improve upon perfection. I am, as you see, reduced to the humble task of maintaining what superior judgment has already established.”
A flicker of something—approval, perhaps, or the barest acknowledgment of a worthy adversary—crossed Lady Catherine’s brow.
She advanced a half step, the tip of her cane tapping once against the gleaming parquet.
“I am glad to hear it. I should be most displeased to find the traditions of the family displaced by foreign fancies. I have seen many a great house ruined by the innovations of a new mistress.”
“I value tradition as much as anyone,” Elizabeth replied, “particularly those traditions which have proven their worth by surviving the test of daily application. Though I have always believed that the best traditions are those which admit of a little kindness, and perhaps a touch of improvement. But you will find nothing altered here that is not, I hope, for the better.”
Lady Catherine drew herself to her full, commanding height, which, though unremarkable in inches, conveyed the authority of a queen.
“There are some improvements, Mrs. Darcy, which are more to be feared than welcomed. I am not insensible to the changes in the household since your arrival—indeed, all the county speaks of it. It is said that Pemberley has grown… lively. That is not, I assure you, a compliment in all circles.”
Elizabeth set her hands lightly upon the edge of the table, her posture composed but unyielding.
“I regret if my presence has been a source of inconvenience to any, Lady Catherine. I have only endeavoured to fulfill my duty as mistress of the house, and to support Mr. Darcy in the business of the estate.”
At this, Lady Catherine’s eyes narrowed, and her voice, already sharp, grew honed to a finer edge.
“Duty is not the matter under discussion, Mrs. Darcy. What concerns me is the restless curiosity that has lately seized this house—the rummaging in old papers, the questioning of servants, the prying into matters that were settled generations ago. I do not speak without cause. It has come to my attention that you have been making inquiries into the west boundary—a topic not properly within your province, I think.”
Elizabeth coloured, but did not look away.
“How very observant of you to notice, Lady Catherine.
I have indeed been consulting the records—a practice I understood to be quite in keeping with the duties of my position.
I find that understanding where one's responsibilities begin and end requires a most careful attention to boundaries, don't you agree?”
Lady Catherine’s cane struck the floor with a sharp, final accent.
“There are questions, Mrs. Darcy, which are best left to those qualified by birth and by experience. I do not doubt your intelligence, nor your… energy. But the management of Pemberley has always been a family concern, and it is not the part of an outsider to unsettle what is long established.”
Anne de Bourgh, who had until now sat with her eyes lowered, shifted slightly on the settee, her lips parting as if to speak. But whatever impulse moved her was immediately checked by a glance from her mother, and she relapsed into silence, her pale hands folded neatly in her lap.
Elizabeth, sensing both the peril and the opportunity in the moment, replied, “I am not unaware of my origins, Lady Catherine. But if marriage to Mr. Darcy has made me mistress of this house, it is both my right and my obligation to understand its affairs. I would be remiss in my duty—indeed, unworthy of the name Darcy—if I did less.”
There was a pause, during which the air in the room seemed to crystallize. Lady Catherine’s nostrils flared—a gesture less of anger than of deep inhalation, as if she drew in the very essence of combat. Her next words, though spoken softly, carried the weight of an indictment.
“Unworthy of the name Darcy? You say it yourself, Mrs. Darcy, and yet you do not comprehend the full import of the position. You presume upon the privileges of your situation, but not the restraints. There is, I am sorry to say, a recklessness in your behaviour—a tendency to interfere where delicacy and sense would counsel reserve. My late sister, Lady Anne, was a model of propriety; she would never have countenanced such impertinent investigation into family secrets.”
Elizabeth, whose patience was not infinite, felt the first stirrings of indignation.
“Ah, the Blackwood boundary—you are remarkably well-informed, Lady Catherine.
I confess I had hoped my little researches would prove both more discreet and more tedious to general observation.
But if my investigations have attracted notice, I can only hope the results will prove as beneficial as the intentions were innocent.
As to Lady Anne's opinion—I should not presume to speak for one so universally revered, though I cannot help but think that a lady of her evident good sense would approve any effort to secure justice for her tenants.”
“Lady Anne is not here to judge!” retorted Lady Catherine, her voice now pitched to a cutting hauteur. “But I am, and I will not see the memory of my sister made a pretext for—” She stopped short, as if the very word she wished to use was too indecorous for utterance.
Anne de Bourgh, whose eyes had grown wide, again seemed on the verge of speech, but checked herself with a visible effort. She regarded Elizabeth with an intensity that bespoke, if not alliance, then at least sympathy.
Elizabeth’s reply was crisp, unvarnished, and entirely her own.
“It is possible, Lady Catherine, to love a house without being born to it. If I err, it is out of a desire to preserve, not to destroy.” She stood her ground, hands now steady on the flower vase, as though she drew her strength from the roots of the very narcissus she arranged.
There was a silence of such density that even the birds beyond the window seemed to pause in their song.
It was Anne de Bourgh, unexpectedly, who first breached it.
“Perhaps,” she ventured, her voice so thin it barely disturbed the air, “it is well to examine the old things, if one is to understand them. Mama, you always said—” But the force of Lady Catherine’s glare sufficed to reduce her daughter once more to invisibility, and the remainder of her thought vanished like a mist in sunlight.
Lady Catherine, thus deprived of an easy victory, resorted to her most formidable weapon: the invocation of pedigree.
“It is all very well, Mrs. Darcy, to speak of preservation. But do not flatter yourself that good intentions are a substitute for breeding. The house of Darcy is not a laboratory for the experiments of the upstart or the sentimental. You have made yourself the talk of the county—delving into ledgers, interrogating the staff, even—so I am told—entertaining notions of correspondence with persons wholly beneath the dignity of your position. It is not to be borne.”