Page 3 of Return to Pemberley
D inner at Pemberley, even on the most intimate occasion, observed the stately traditions of its lineage.
Elizabeth found herself seated at the foot of a table so prodigious in length that the flicker of candlelight seemed to dwindle halfway along its polished surface before reaching her husband, who presided at the opposite end.
The effect was, she suspected, intended less to promote privacy than to amplify the ceremonial grandeur of the meal; but tonight, with only a brace of footmen and Mrs. Reynolds in the offing, the pageantry verged upon the surreal.
The two Darcys presided over opposite ends of an expanse capable of accommodating a minor gathering of the landed gentry, yet tonight its only other occupants were the footmen—spectral in their navy livery—and Mrs. Reynolds, who stood sentinel near the sideboard as if guarding the traditions themselves.
The service proceeded with an elegance too precise for spontaneity; each course appeared as if conjured by the invisible hand of custom, the silver covers whisked away with synchronized restraint, the wine decanted in solemn silence.
Elizabeth, who had dined in her father’s house amid the cheerful tumult of five sisters, found the comparative hush almost deafening.
The ticking of the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece was as distinct as the occasional footstep of a servant at the far side of the room.
She stole a glance toward Darcy, who seemed absorbed in some internal calculation.
His expression, habitually grave, bore a softness tonight—a diffidence Elizabeth suspected was owed less to fatigue and more to a cautious wish not to overawe his new wife with the grandeur of her position.
After the soup and a subtle dish of veal, Darcy broke the silence in a voice modulated to the occasion.
“I hope, Mrs. Darcy, that the house and its company have proved not entirely disagreeable?” There was, behind the formality of his address, a faint quiver of amusement—a signal meant for her alone.
Elizabeth, composed and ready, responded in kind.
“Entirely disagreeable, Mr. Darcy, would be a cruel exaggeration; I have so far survived the first tour without fainting, though I reserve final judgment until I have met the full complement of maids and housekeepers, whose powers of scrutiny, I hear, are formidable.”
He allowed himself the smallest of smiles, then: “You have only to match them in wit. It has always proved sufficient elsewhere.”
“I shall rely on it, since other weapons are denied me. But I must ask, is the table always kept at such vast proportions, or have you made an exception tonight in deference to my country habits?”
Darcy considered the table as if seeing it for the first time.
“I admit, it may be excessive. My mother favoured the custom. The table was never shortened, regardless of company; she claimed it preserved the proper sense of proportion.” He regarded Elizabeth with a sidelong glance.
“You need not observe it, if it displeases you.”
“I am not displeased. I am only reminded of a favourite story from my childhood, in which a table was made to expand at the whim of a fairy, until it outgrew the house. Perhaps Pemberley’s table will one day require its own wing.”
He laughed—not loudly, but with the relief of one who finds himself understood. “There are some who would prefer to build a new wing, rather than adjust their habits.”
The moment of levity seemed to embolden her. “Though I confess it makes me wonder what other customs I shall discover.” She paused, studying his face. “Do you find yourself anxious about such things? Whether I shall take to the ways of the house?”
His smile faded slightly as he considered her question, and Elizabeth noted the searching quality that returned to his gaze.
There was, beneath the practiced ease, a current of anxiety—more for her comfort, she sensed, than his own.
The notion unsettled her, and she spoke more gently.
“You are kind to inquire after my impressions. I confess I expected to find the place daunting, and so it is—but it is also beautiful. It feels less like a domain than a living story, whose next chapter I am not quite ready to write. Yet.”
His features relaxed, the edge of his reserve softened. “You need not hurry. The house has a great patience for adjustment. So too, I hope, do I.”
The third course arrived, a roasted fowl with a sauce of such delicate savour that Elizabeth could not help but marvel at the skill of the kitchens.
The footman served her in silent deference, withdrawing with a precision that made her wonder what whispered opinions might be exchanged below stairs regarding her table manners, her posture, her conversational style.
When the footmen retreated, leaving them the illusion of privacy, Darcy ventured: “If you have any suggestions for the running of the house, or the comfort of its inhabitants, you need only speak. Mrs. Reynolds is formidable in her loyalty, but not unyielding to improvement.”
Elizabeth dabbed at her lips and considered. “I am not yet bold enough to propose improvements, when I am still learning which doors lead to which rooms. But perhaps, in time, I may risk some innovation—provided the consequences are not catastrophic.”
“You will find,” Darcy said, “that the consequences of change are rarely so dire as we imagine. The house adapts, as do those within it.” He set down his fork and regarded her with renewed earnestness.
“If you ever find Pemberley—” he hesitated, searching for the word, “—unsuited, or unhappy, you must tell me.”
The abrupt sincerity of the statement startled her. “Is it so easy, then, to unmake a place as to build it up?”
He shook his head. “Not easy. But possible. I would sooner see the house undone than the mistress discontented.”
The room, vast and echoing, seemed to contract around the warmth of that declaration. For a moment, Elizabeth forgot the formality of the occasion, the presence of the staff, the weight of expectation. She smiled at him—a smile of rare intimacy. “I believe,” she said, “you would do so, at that.”
The meal concluded with a compote of preserved cherries, the sweetness a pleasant relief after the stringencies of earlier courses.
When the dishes were cleared and only the port remained, Darcy dismissed the servants with a subtle nod, and the two were left alone in the candlelit cavern of the dining room.
He rose, then, and walked the length of the table, stopping beside her chair. “My dear, I had hoped to spare you ceremony this evening,” he said, a wry note in his voice. “I see now that I have only succeeded in magnifying it.”
Elizabeth met his gaze. “It is not the ceremony that intimidates, but the magnitude of all this—” she gestured to the room, the chandeliers, the reflection of their faces in the glass above the mantelpiece, “—and the sense that I am the latest in a very long line of scrutiny.”
Darcy was quiet for a moment, then moved closer to her chair.
“Dearest,” he said, and something in his voice made her look up.
Only then did he reach for her hand. His own, when it enclosed hers, was warmer and less steady than she expected.
“You do not disappoint,” he said, voice low.
“Indeed, you are everything I had hoped, and more than I dared expect.”
The words were not those of a man lightly given to sentiment; they carried the weight of long discipline, of feelings measured and hoarded.
Elizabeth felt the tremor in his grip and, for the first time since entering Pemberley, believed in the possibility that she was wanted, not as a function of the house, but as herself.
“Then we shall endeavor to exceed hope together,” she replied, not withdrawing her hand.
They stood thus for a moment, the only sound the faint hiss of the candles and, somewhere in the distance, the cry of a night-bird on the lawn. When Darcy released her, he did so with reluctance, as if loath to return her to the world of expectation and display.
“Shall we take coffee in the library?” he suggested.
She nodded, and together they left the formal chamber behind, the echo of their footsteps marking the first of many evenings that would, in time, make Pemberley as much her own as it was his.
Yet as they passed beneath the archways and into the comparative dimness of the gallery, Elizabeth caught the glint of Mrs. Reynolds’s eye from the shadows—watchful, not unfriendly, but alive to every detail.
She wondered, fleetingly, what stories would be spun from this night below stairs, and resolved to live in such a way that they would make the telling worthwhile.
T he eastern rooms allotted to Elizabeth were, as promised, the most serene in all of Pemberley, their elevation affording views that stretched to the horizon.
That night, after the house had yielded its last footfall and the servants had retired to their distant quarters, she stood alone by her bedchamber window, the heavy curtains pulled wide to admit the pale wash of moonlight over the grounds.
Beyond the glass, the estate stretched immaculate and endless—lawns silvered to the horizon, groves rendered spectral by mist, and the faint, glassy glimmer of the lake where it curved away from the house.
In the silence, she could almost hear the hush of the water, the distant pulse of wind in the high branches.
It was a scene of such perfect, ethereal order that Elizabeth, for all her familiarity with natural beauty, found herself momentarily overwhelmed by its calculated grandeur.
She drew her shawl more tightly about her shoulders, less against the chill than from a wish for comfort.
The fabric—new, but chosen for its familiarity—smelled faintly of home, of the sisters she had left behind and the vanished disorder of the Bennet household.
In the reflection upon the window, she saw a figure both familiar and entirely altered: her own face, candlelit and wavering, overlaid upon the cold perfection of Pemberley’s lawns.
The day replayed itself in fragments. The arrival at the steps, the assembled servants, Mrs. Reynolds’s measured greeting.
The gallery of portraits, each face a study in expectation.
The dining room, vast and echoing, where she had smiled at Darcy and meant it, and where, for the first time, she had sensed the possibility of belonging.
But other recollections pressed themselves forward with uncomfortable persistence.
The servants' whispered comparison to the late Mrs. Darcy lingered still, and she found Lady Anne's influence imprinted upon every detail—the arrangement of flowers, the unchanging routines, the very atmosphere of expectation that seemed to attend each room.
Even her husband's tender solicitude at dinner, his earnest hope and searching gaze, now carried obligations that Elizabeth, for all her determination, could not contemplate without a measure of unease.
She pressed a palm to the cold pane, tracing with her finger the indistinct line where the edge of the lawn met the encroaching woods.
The touch grounded her, reminded her that this domain, however overwhelming, was now hers to steward.
She thought of the generations whose names were woven through the ledgers and whose faces still watched from the halls.
How many of them, she wondered, had stood at this same window, reckoning with the future that had been handed to them in a moment of marriage or succession?
Outside, the moon rose higher, its light sharpening the angles of the house and casting the garden statuary into high relief.
The effect was almost theatrical: a set piece awaiting its principal actress.
Elizabeth felt the familiar surge of irony—hers was not a life she would have scripted, but it was now the only one she would have.
She allowed herself a single, honest shiver, and then, almost imperceptibly, straightened her back. The reflection in the glass grew clearer for a moment: a young woman, eyes bright with purpose and uncertainty both, standing sentinel over a world she barely understood.
“I am not afraid of you,” she whispered, to the house, the grounds, and the very weight of history. Her voice, though quiet, carried the defiance she could not yet show the portraits. “And I will not be diminished by your grandeur.”
The words dissipated into the stillness, but the resolve remained. Elizabeth let the curtain fall, extinguished the candle with a practiced pinch, and made her way to the canopied bed. The sheets, freshly aired, held the promise of comfort, if not yet of rest.
Tomorrow, the routines would begin: the calls to be made, the household to greet, the thousand and one decisions that would, over time, make her mark upon Pemberley. Tonight, she claimed only this: the certainty that she was equal to the task, even if she had to pretend so at intervals.
She lay awake listening to the house settle itself around her, the timbers creaking, the distant clock marking the passage of hours.
Eventually, fatigue drew her under, and the last thing she remembered was the sweep of moonlight across the ceiling—a quiet promise that even in this strange grandeur, the night could offer kindness.