Page 18

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ROSINGS PARK

Darcy

W e made the turn from Hunsford Village to the gatehouse of Rosings and passed the parsonage on the left.

Since I happened to be seated on that side of the coach, I saw Mr Collins in his front garden bowing and waving like a pestilential flag.

Next to him stood three ladies and one of them, I would have sworn looked…

“What is it, Darcy?” Richard asked when I sat up abruptly on an inward-drawn breath and nearly hit my head on the roof.

I struggled to regain my composure. “Nothing—only my posterior is beginning to suffer from so much travel. I shall be very glad of a walk.”

“Which you will not get. We shall be dragged into the parlour to stand in front of Black Annis while she sharpens her iron nails.”

I remained unsettled, but Richard’s joke distracted me.

When we were boys, we referred to Lady Catherine as Black Annis, a witch of lore who ate lambs and children and hung their skins outside her hut.

Our relation was, in truth, a self- consequent bore, and before I could think, we were making our bows in front of her as she sat in an elevated chair with a faded velvet footstool.

No sooner had we said what was required, than my cousin Anne was called.

She dragged herself forward with a great show of suffering before wordlessly sinking in her chair and looking at us in a pucker of resentment.

Whether the girl was truly ill or only ruined by such a stupid mother I could not decide.

In either case, she was an awkward occupant of any room, for she refused to speak if she could get away with it.

“I see you look at Anne, Fitzwilliam,” Lady Catherine said with satisfaction. “She has improved, has she not?”

Road weary as I was, I had not the temper to play this game. I turned to my cousin and said, “Have you improved, Anne? Are you feeling stouter this year?”

This was not the improvement my aunt had in mind for me to notice, and she sought to bring attention back to herself by trying another tack.

“We shall have company for tea. My parson has married, and his wife’s sister and friend from Hertfordshire visit.

With Mrs Jenkinson and you two, we shall fill out two card tables.

I do not let Mr Collins play. Darcy, you will sit at Anne’s table.

Anne, you will play,” she said as she motioned for her butler.

“Benson, see the tables put up before tea.”

Struck perfectly dumb, I sat for a quarter of an hour as mute as Anne, leaving Richard to shoulder the burden of entertaining my aunt.

Once released to refresh myself, I staggered up to my room.

My mind reeled, my body thrummed with anxious disbelief, and the words, ‘Elizabeth. Married!’ ran round and round in my head.

Then I knew what I had refused to admit before. I harboured some idea of having the lady myself. Not only did I harbour this notion, I had come to regard it as a settled course, and worse, like any self-possessed savage, I had become overtly possessive of my woman.

My own unacknowledged passion and the worm of Georgiana’s arguments had woven into the base of my scull, and like the Matlock fortune, my objections were eaten away from below, leaving only a thin veneer of reasonable denial on the surface.

The shock remained for some minutes but was soon overtaken by rage which, illogically, I directed at the lady in question.

How could she demean herself and marry that prosing, bumptious idiot? What joy would she gain in producing sons and daughters from such a man? They would be mealy little beasts and the getting of them—I nearly retched to picture her lying under the flailing buttocks of such a pig.

I had absolutely no plan in mind, but I wrenched off my travel clothes and put on the garb of a country gentleman out on an errand of murder—buckskin breeches, black frock coat and my second-best boots. My valet did not smirk at me for whistling now, I thought darkly as I scowled at him.

“Briskly, Carsten. I am not dressing for a ball. Tell my cousin I am walking off a cramp, and if he is lucky, I shall be here in time for tea.”

I stormed out the south-side door, an exit my aunt did not haunt, wove around the house, and walked at a stiff march to the parsonage.

What I meant to say to Elizabeth Bennet was in the nature of ‘How could you!’ The tone I meant to use was the roar of a bull on the charge.

I was close to snorting when I arrived and stormed into the parlour where sat my woman, my betrayer, my love.

Barely noticing the other ladies in the room, I bowed reflexively, and suddenly, I could think of nothing to say. Blank. Bug-eyed. Panting and stricken.

“Mr Darcy!” Charlotte Lucas gasped upon my abrupt arrival. The ladies curtseyed, and I bowed again, still unable to make my jaw move.

“You are very welcome, sir. Will you have a seat?” Charlotte Lucas still spoke, which struck me as strange, but my head was benumbed, and I sat. “You remember my sister, Maria? And Miss Elizabeth and Miss Mary Bennet?”

Finally, I mustered the courage to look at my woman, the woman I had stupidly forfeit for—Wait! “Miss Bennet?” I asked fuzzily.

“Mr Darcy,” she said with concern written on her face at my strange manners. “I did not know you were in Kent, sir.”

“My aunt,” I mumbled. My tongue felt foreign, like a link of sausage lodged between my teeth.

“Lady Catherine has both nephews to visit her at Easter every year, Lizzy,” Charlotte Lucas explained, and thinking the conversation was as bad as it could be, I looked up and saw Mr Collins enter the room.

“Mr Darcy! What condescension, sir, what a compliment!” He babbled at me for a full minute. I heard nothing he said. Suddenly the room was silent, and I knew my turn to speak had come.

“I wish you joy on your marriage,” I said woodenly.

“Yes, yes. My dear Charlotte,” he said, putting a hand on Miss Lucas’s shoulder, “has made me very happy.”

The room again went silent, and I looked for the first time at what was presented to me. Charlotte Lucas sat in a place of prominence by a tea tray, Mr Collins stood smugly behind her, while Elizabeth, Mary Bennet, and Maria Lucas sat on a pretentious little settee.

“Congratulations, sir, Mrs Collins,” I said again in a colourless voice. And then without preamble, I turned to my object.

“Miss Bennet, the grounds at Rosings are known for their walking paths. Might I show you a passable lane you would like?”

She stood briskly. “I would be grateful for a walk, Mr Darcy.” She glanced at her sister Mary and said something with her eyes which I took to mean she did not wish for company. “Charlotte,” she said, turning to Mrs Collins, “might you spare me half an hour?”

“Of course. I know you love a walk.” She turned to me and said serenely, “You are kind to think of my friend, sir.”

Mr Collins looked perplexed and might have objected at my going with his cousin unchaperoned, but his new wife turned to him and said, “Will you find Papa and let him know Mr Darcy has called? He will want to greet him after his little walk with Lizzy.”

“Is Sir William with you?” I asked, still slightly stupid. “I shall be very happy to greet him.”

Elizabeth

Mr Darcy! In Kent!

He walked me as one walks a dog or a horse—that is to say perfunctorily—up a pretty lane, lined with limes and small wood just starting to show green. We went forward, tense, brisk, and silent. At last I could contain myself no longer.

“Was that your notion of a bride visit?” I asked sternly.

He stopped abruptly and turned to face me in an attitude of fury. “I thought you had married Mr Collins.”

“I?” I too came to a furious halt and turned to face him.

“My aunt said he had married and that his new wife’s sister visited him from Hertfordshire. What was I to think? I saw you standing next to Mr Collins with your sister when we passed in the carriage and I-I thought you?—”

“And you arrived at the parsonage to—to what end, sir? To remonstrate with me for marrying my cousin?”

“For marrying a toad, yes. I credited you with a stiffer backbone.”

I turned away to continue my much-needed walk. “Well!” I said in a huff.

“Indeed.”

His ill humour amused me, and my anger died as suddenly as it had flared. “A lucky escape,” I said sweetly to tease him.

“Yes.”

“I think you would have beaten me, sir.”

“I might have. There is nothing I hate more than waste, and you would be wasted on that man.”

At last I laughed. It began as a sort of reluctant chuckle and ended in a chortle of mirth. “Come, Mr Darcy,” I said eventually, “you must be diverted at least a little?”

He looked at me with his mouth still stiff and puckered up. “I find nothing diverting at all in my mistake.”

“Oh,” I said lightly. “I had forgot. You are not a man who makes mistakes. Well then, I shall retreat into grim silence, and we shall march up this hill.”

The most reluctant, begrudging grin peeked out and he held out his arm to me. I took it and we did then walk for a good distance in total silence. The exercise was not unpleasant. In fact, I felt myself falling deep in love with this haughty, broodingly superior man.

At a crossroad where our path met a lane, we paused to let a little phaeton and pony go by.

I noticed a lumpy figure reclining on the bench, while a liveried servant held the reins.

Mr Darcy looked slightly piqued by this person’s passing, and so, breaking our silence, I asked him in my lightest imitation of a busybody, “And who was that, sir?”

He turned to me with the shadow of a smile in his eyes. “That,” he said flatly, “is the woman my aunt intends me to marry.”

“That is Miss de Bourgh?” I could hardly disguise the surprise—nay, the objection—in my voice.

“My cousin Anne.”

“And are you indeed going to marry her, sir?”

He looked at me again, and this time the smile in his eyes was unmistakable. “I would as soon run away with the goose girl.”