Page 2 of The Last House in Lambton (Pride and Prejudice Variations #6)

“But that would not do,” Mrs Gardiner replied, looking askance at the letter in her lap.

“She asks me to come for three months together, and with travel both ways and the inevitable delays one is faced with everywhere, I do not see myself returning in under four.” She looked at both Jane and me directly, and said somewhat apologetically, “I do not want to be gone from my children for so long. Nor do I wish to leave my husband to fend for himself.” She smiled and added, “But I do appreciate you volunteering to stay, Lizzy. Of a surety, I would also miss time with my two favourite nieces.”

She shook her head several more times after she went back to her knitting, and I suspected she was still musing over the quandary of what to do. I was proven right later when my uncle came home, and we sat down to dinner, for she presented her dilemma to him as we ate.

The topic was canvassed at length. Mrs Jennings, a widow, had been married to Aunt Gardiner’s paternal uncle John.

Mr John Jennings had a modest pension supplemented by his hobby of writing pamphlets on various mundane topics for a limited press in Derby, where they had lived for some years.

When his health began to decline, they returned to the family home in Lambton, the house where Mrs Gardiner had lived as a girl, which Mr Jennings inherited and his widow now lived.

Mrs Gardiner did not know Mrs Jennings well, not having lived in Derbyshire since she was fourteen years old.

They corresponded two or three times a year, and my aunt believed the lady lived in reasonable comfort amongst friends, though at the age of almost five-and-sixty, she was now deep in her dotage.

Her urgent request for Mrs Gardiner’s help had been prompted, according to the letter, by the temporary loss of her long-time housekeeper.

“Could your aunt not find someone to take her place meanwhile?” my uncle asked, speaking my own question aloud.

But no. Mrs Burke’s only daughter was soon to give birth in Yorkshire, and the woman had served Mrs Jennings exclusively for so many years that the old lady hardly felt capable of surviving the housekeeper’s absence.

The woman must be more of a companion than a servant after all that time, and my aunt assumed that being elderly, Mrs Jennings would not want to submit herself to the indignity of hiring someone unknown or begging friends for help.

She wished only for a relation, and perhaps Mrs Gardiner had implanted the idea by casually mentioning she often thought of visiting Lambton when last she wrote .

An explanation was pieced together by interpretive means, since the letter was rather oddly written, and in that light, the request seemed understandable.

“I will go,” I blurted out.

“What? No, no, Lizzy,” my aunt replied.

“But why not?”

“Your family will miss you too?—”

“I had rather thought my family would be glad to be rid of me for a while. My mother in particular would bid me good riddance.”

“Lizzy,” Uncle Gardiner said in a cajoling tone of disbelief.

Jane cleared her throat, made use of her napkin, and gently related to our uncle the business of the draper.

“Good lord,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “I shall write my sister a letter and convince her to comport herself reasonably.”

“If you write her a letter of rebuke, sir,” I said in alarm, “you will permanently cement her dislike of me on the grounds of talebearing.” I turned to my aunt.

“Do consider sending me to Mrs Jennings, ma’am.

I would dearly love a furlough from Longbourn.

Was there not a Roman poet who once said, ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder’?

Perhaps if I am gone for some months, I will be welcome at home when I return. ”

Neither my aunt nor uncle were quite convinced. Derbyshire was a long way to send a young lady with no one for company, save a maid hired for the journey.

Jane, too, expressed ambivalence about the plan, citing how much she would miss me as a reason to abandon the idea.

But I, having suddenly felt that quickening prickle of destiny, did not surrender quietly as one would if they were not truly serious.

My earnest insistence, judiciously applied, along with a reading of Mrs Jennings’s letter aloud, soon did the trick.

“I suppose you might enjoy Lambton,” Mrs Gardiner mused.

Clearly, Mr Gardiner did not like this plan, for not only did he continue to express his scepticism as to its wisdom, he attempted to dissuade me from my growing attachment to the idea.

“But you will miss Christmas at Longbourn, Lizzy,” he said reasonably.

“Dear Uncle,” I said with a smile of affection.

“Imagine precisely what I will miss when I am not even to have new muslin the whole of next year. Add to this the unhappy fact that Mr Collins will most likely spend Christmas at Lucas Lodge and marry my friend Charlotte just weeks after. I will be made to sit in the corner on Christmas Day, I assure you.”

“It is too far to go and for too long a time, Lizzy,” he said in a tone of finality.

I suspected my aunt must have worked upon her husband’s resistance, however, when the following morning at breakfast, she again mentioned the notion of me going.

Mr Gardiner then said, in a good-natured grumble, “Well, if you are still determined to go, and to go so far, Lizzy, I will not send you without both a manservant and a maid.” I kissed his cheek, and he patted my hand, and added, “They can return on the mail coach once they have seen you safely there.”

I had won my point and went to bed triumphant, only to awaken with a few lingering doubts.

“What sort of duties do you suppose I will have?” I asked my aunt at breakfast.

“Oh, you will hardly be busy,” she assured me.

“The house is comfortable but not large, as I recall. I gather from her letters my aunt has a cook as well as two maids and a man of all work. In consequence, her housekeeper could hardly be overworked. Besides, you are a gentleman’s daughter, and other than paying out wages and deciding what will be served at dinner, no one will expect more of you than to support Mrs Jennings in the manner of her companion and company. ”