Page 26 of The Last House in Lambton (Pride and Prejudice Variations #6)

I sat across from her and observed her closely, and it was then she raised her eyes to mine for the second time in our acquaintance.

She was unbecomingly stubborn and often irate, not a lady to flaunt her feminine gifts or much inclined to shower me with expressions of gratitude.

But she had wept openly in my presence and confided much to me in the intimacy of firelight.

I had seen into her soul once already, and to the accompaniment of the most mundane sounds of a dreary little house, she allowed me to look deeply therein once again.

Clearly, she wished to speak to me privately, to unburden herself of some thought or other. But more striking was the awareness that after the events of the previous night, she trusted me, and this was close enough to love to fill me with a strong determination to earn her affection.

“Would you care to step out for a little air?” I asked.

“I would be grateful, sir,” she said, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “Perhaps the cold will relieve my head.”

We stepped out into a chill breeze. I helped her across the gutter, and we walked between the ruts in the road, heading away from the village and towards a vast patch of scrub bushes—the scrubbery as Richard was known to call it in our youth.

Miss Bennet was silent until we were past the hearing of my coachman and groom, who were walking the horses behind us. And then, with a delicate clearing of her throat, she stopped and turned to me.

“I have no right to ask this of you?—”

“Let us settle it that between us we do not speak of rights or obligations. If I can be of service to you, I will without hesitation.”

She looked downcast. “I do not deserve such kindness. I have not always been civil to?—”

Again, I interrupted. “And to that list of rights and obligations, let us add the idea of deservedness. I abhor the notion, for it casts me in the role of judge. I should mention I had a great uncle who was a judge of the high court, and I did not like him at all.”

She smiled, though it was but a ghost of her generally beaming expression. “Very well. I wonder if I might yet avail Mrs Jennings and myself of Pemberley’s hospitality, sir?”

“Ah, but I never offered, did I? I announced my plan without thinking to ask and thereby guaranteed a rejection. Might I now ask if you would like to be our guests?”

“I am afraid I never want to sleep in that house again, Mr Darcy,” she admitted sheepishly.

“I would wager that is not the most charming house in which to sleep,” I replied lightly, and with that we began to walk at a gentle pace conducive to the rhythm of our quiet conversation.

“I believe my tramp in the wilds of Lambton has come to an inglorious end,” she said.

I could not help but smile at the lady’s forlorn pronouncement, though her head was turned away and she looked impassively at the brambles now bare and sodden.

“Perhaps I should relate that not all tramps end in a triumphant return home.”

“No?”

“I was once carried home on a litter.”

“Were you? But what happened? Were you injured?”

“Nothing so interesting. I had—er, let us say, a stomach ailment. The less said the better.”

She smiled. “I suppose you were foraging for sustenance?”

“Hmm. There are some things that are indigestible.”

“And how did your family find you?”

“In a moaning heap and well after dark the day after I was told to be home.”

“They must have been frantic.”

“Oh, indeed. They were so afraid for me that after the doctor declared I might just survive, I was sent to my room in disgrace.”

She chuckled, and then said, “You should not make me laugh, sir. It hurts my head most abominably. Were you indeed punished? I would have thought your illness would have been sufficient consequence.”

“Do you know? I was of the same mind,” I said, swivelling to look at her directly. “Should we turn back? How is your head? ”

“I expect to live. The cold is providing a bit of relief.”

“I am glad to hear it. When would you like to come to Pemberley?”

“Would this instant be too soon?”

“On the contrary, it will be most convenient.”

“But…perhaps your sister would not like the idea of us coming.”

We walked a few steps in silence, and I said, “What other reservations might you now be entertaining? Let us dispense with them all at once.”

“I hope Auntie will tolerate such a shift.”

“Hmm.”

“And I do not know what to do about the servants. I can hardly send the girls home. They are a burden on their families. But I do not like leaving them alone. And then there is the cook and when to pay them, and how to keep the house running.”

“And?”

“I shall want to stay in the same room as Mrs Jennings so she does not take fright, and I doubt we shall be fit to sit down to dinner today, or any day for that matter, since I do not believe Auntie owns any finery at all, and I have brought with me but one good dress. But how strange to descend upon your house, closet ourselves in a room, take our supper on trays, and otherwise act as though we have escaped some sort of domestic disaster—which, in truth, would be the case.”

“I see. What else?”

“Oh well. Beyond these immediate concerns is the anxiety of writing to my uncle, explaining why I had not said anything before now and awaiting his decision. And then, to put a cap on it, Mrs Burke?—”

“Who?”

“Mrs Jennings’s housekeeper. She will return from her furlough and find things in total disarray, her mistress displaced, and her servants all left to shift for themselves.”

“I do not understand why her opinion is of any interest to you.”

“Perhaps you should know that upon my arrival she looked me up and down as though I were no better than a stupid girl, and I have nursed a strong inclination to show her otherwise with my management of Mrs Jennings’s house.”

“My, but you are a proud one,” I remarked with a wink. In defence of my uncommon attempt at flirtation, I was staggering from fatigue.

She did not seem to mind my teasing, however, and replied with the dawning of a twinkle in her weary eyes. “And now the pot calls the kettle black, I take it?”

“We have had this debate once already. Have I not said that pride, if under good regulation, is never a fault?”

She gingerly shook her head in dismay, and replied, “Oh, well, if we are going to glorify our faults, then by all means, congratulate me for my schemes with regard to Mrs Burke.”

We were approaching the gutter outside Mrs Jennings’s house, and I slowed to a stop.

“Have you talked yourself out of visiting Pemberley, then? Or, would you allow me to manage your trifling concerns.” I spoke in a tone of impartiality I did not feel.

“Aside from the matter of your only having one good dinner dress—which, forgive me, is the silliest concern I have ever heard—and aside from whatever your uncle may have to say to you, you have presented me with no great challenges.”

The exertion of walking may have sent a flush to her cheeks, or perhaps she was blushing. In any case, her pallor had been replaced by a pink glow, and she spoke with rare, shy, sweetness.

“I am in your hands, Mr Darcy. Or, at your mercy. Or, perhaps simply surrendered to your overpowering urge to make me comfortable? ”

The mere mention of overpowering urges and her surrender in the same sentence inevitably aroused in me a masculine thrill.

I do not know if I, too, blushed, but Keller’s discreet cough alerted me to the fact that we stood staring into one another’s eyes again.

Miss Bennet and I then retreated into embarrassed formality as I helped her across the gutter and up the steps, and once inside, she escaped me and went to Mrs Jennings.