Page 31 of The Last House in Lambton (Pride and Prejudice Variations #6)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

T he day came and went when Mr Darcy’s courier would have delivered my letter to Gracechurch Street.

I tried to drag my mind away from my uncle’s imminent arrival, for I knew him well enough to believe he would come as soon as he could arrange travel.

But to try to guess what he would say to me and what he would determine must be done for Mrs Jennings was to engage in fretful, repetitive thinking with no clear answer, and so I left it alone.

Not above twice in a day did I remember my violent ordeal.

Days and days had passed, the event faded in significance, and I felt far too secure to dwell upon that terrifying hour of my life.

When the memory did intrude, it was at odd times and in flashes of the strangest bits, such as stirring the last of the cream into chips of dried beef, and the smell of the cellar when the door first came open—earthy and damp, with the pungent overtones of roots and dried meat stored there year upon year.

I absolutely forbade myself from recollections of sobbing into my rescuer’s handkerchief or the strength of his arms as he swept me off my feet .

So it was that I could not think of home, lest I become discouraged, and I could not think of my future for the same cause. Barring all these pressing subjects to think of, I was left with very little upon which to place my mind. One subject, however, loomed large—that of Mr Darcy.

I did not want to think about him at all. Yet, whenever I did think of him, which was not above fifty times in a day, a dreadful melancholy settled over me. The cause of that I refused to consider, classing it as something of an involuntary tic of nerves.

On the few occasions when I was left alone, I went to the gallery and wandered up and down its length for exercise and solitude, staring solemnly out of the windows down onto a small lake half-covered in ice.

I was in this attitude on Saturday, the tenth of February, when Mr Darcy discovered my whereabouts.

He came down the long hall dressed in buckskins, top boots, and a well-tailored blue coat.

His stride, I thought, was never leisurely, and he gave off the impression of being a man of purpose.

But while his bearing was one of constant occupation, his manners to me were not.

He spoke to me as we wandered down the line of portraits as though he had all the time in the world for me, and me alone.

“There you are,” he said with a strange light in his eye.

“Have you been looking for me, sir?”

“Everywhere. I see you have found the judge.”

We were by mere chance standing below the likeness of that awesome personage.

“Oh, he and I are old friends. He disapproves of my pertness of course, and I am of the polite opinion he is a dead bore.”

“That he was. Let me take you to meet a more pleasant member of the family—my great grandmother.”

“Forgive me, Mr Darcy, but she fairly terrifies me.”

“Ah. Well, come to think of it, she did me as well. She pinched me whenever I had the fidgets in church. ”

“She has the look of a pincher. And who is this?”

As we walked, my heart twisted and compressed painfully.

It was impossible not to imagine he would introduce his bride to these ancestors in exactly this way, and she in turn would begin to feel a curiosity, an affinity perhaps, and even a kind of pride in what was to be her new family.

I felt myself to be something of a surrogate while the gentleman rehearsed this ritual for the benefit of someone else, and after a painful quarter of an hour, I was moved to escape.

On approaching the long clock at the far end of the gallery, I said, “Goodness—the time! I suppose I should find out if Auntie is finished having her hair dressed.” I curtseyed with haste, for it looked to me as though Mr Darcy meant to talk me out of going, and I left him no choice but to bow and watch my retreat from where I left him standing awkwardly alone.

This was but one occasion of this sort. He seemed to haunt the halls.

Well, I suppose it was his house, and they were his halls.

In any case, he managed to present himself to my notice often, and at all times of day.

This struck me as merely an attempt to be a good host, rather than a symptom of his regard, and it further abraded my sensibilities.

Surely, he knew that to pay me so much attention as to suggest an interest must distress me.

I am not a lady given to flirtation, or one to easily brush off a tendre once formed.

I came quite close to feeling ill-used or played with.

Only his apparent lack of comprehension in this regard prevented me from classing him as a man who enjoyed trifling with a provincial miss who could have no rational aspirations for a match.

With regard to triflers, I suppose I had developed a sensitivity.

Mr Wickham may not have kissed me in a darkened hall, but I felt trifled with, nonetheless.

I reread Lydia’s letter three times before bundling it away, for no other purpose than to assure myself I had not dreamt the insult or imagined it worse than it was.

In fact, with every reading, I became more affronted.

Had he no better notion of my integrity than to think that I, upon the excuse of visiting a relation, had gone to Lambton out of an ambition to force an attachment to a rich man?

He made me out to be no better than a camp follower, which led me to think that this was a precise estimation of my own youngest sister’s character.

Upon this worrisome idea, I continued to brood whenever I was not required to enact the role of contented guest and Miss Darcy’s new friend.

She gave off every impression of being starved for companionship, and once she had overcome her natural reserve, she doted on Auntie and, perhaps more so, on me.

I had grave misgivings about befriending her because it could not last. Our worlds were too far apart.

What shocks she would suffer were she ever to take it into her head to pay a call at Longbourn on her way south.

However little I wished to care for her in any deep or meaningful way, Mr Darcy’s sister was, under cover of her superior upbringing and staggering accomplishments, irresistible.

The fact that she still suffered from awkwardness in spite of such fastidious polishing as she must have endured made me inclined to love her. It was a terrible business.

“You will never guess, Elizabeth,” she said one morning, bursting in upon us in our little parlour. And then, blushing, “Oh, do forgive me, Miss?—”

“If I may call you Georgiana, which I have often longed to do, then you must certainly call me Elizabeth. But what has happened to cause you to look so distressed?” My heart began to pound and I rose to go to the window.

“Surely my uncle is not here yet?” He had returned word with the courier that he would come as soon as arrangements could be made .

“No, no. But we have callers. Sir Hugh is come and with him Lady Pembridge, and—” her voice dropping to a hissing whisper—“she overwhelms me. I cannot think of a word to say to her. And the squire is even worse!”

“Mrs Annesley?”

“She does what she can, but will you not also come down and bear me up?”

“Certainly.”

“Let me send my maid to Mrs Jennings, then. Just for the length of the visit?”

I stood, brushed the wrinkles out of my dress, and with Mrs Annesley leading the way, I went down in support of my ruffled young friend.

Sir Hugh, to whom I was introduced forthwith, struck me as a perfect foil for his lady, and the reason for Georgiana’s trepidation became quite clear.

They both spoke with decisive confidence, sparing us the lubrication of polite inanities and otherwise shaking us out of our complacency with their rousing manners.

“Well, Miss Darcy, how do you fare this winter?” Lady Pembridge asked briskly.

“Very well, ma’am. And you?”

“Winter agrees with me. And you, Miss Bennet? I was happy to learn you are this lady’s guest.”

“A most fortunate circumstance, ma’am,” I replied.

Really, what more could be said? I did not dare ask after anything frivolous and had not the courage to enquire as to the state of her legendary poultry yard, which I suspected was one of her principal concerns.

She would instantly detect I did not know how to tell a pullet from a cockerel and issue me a set-down on the grounds of stupidity.

Fortunately, her husband, who stood squarely in the room with his arms crossed, began to speak so loudly of his most recent shooting party as to prevent our further struggles to converse.

When his eyes lit upon me as though seeing me for the first time, however, he changed the subject and addressed me as though I were a rare antelope.

“So,” he boomed, “this is Miss Elizabeth Bennet of whom I have heard so much.”

Georgiana looked appalled at his lack of tact, but I found his style more amusing than offensive. “My word, Sir Hugh.” I laughed. “Do you imply I am infamous or merely a curiosity?”

Mr Darcy, with studied calculation, took a step and placed himself between us, as though he would shelter me from the man’s further scrutiny, or perhaps shelter the squire from my tart replies. In any case, he managed to change the subject rather adroitly for such a taciturn man.

“We have a new litter in the kennel, have I told you?”

“From the bitch I sold you last year? What a fine pup she was!”

“Yes. Would you like to see her? Parker, have Fee brought up to the house, will you? And send with her the best whelp.”

“Capital! I would like to see how she has developed.”

The conversation, thus diverted, meandered along these lines and drew in Lady Pembridge, who was naturally conversant in the stirring news from a kennel.

Georgiana and I sat silent, for the most part out of ignorance, both of us striving to look riveted by talk of which hounds would be groomed for the hunt and which would be sold to ladies and gentlemen in Derby who wanted well-bred companions for their children.

Once, Mr Darcy threw me a look of commiserating apology, and I could not help but smile at him.

I must have caught him unawares, and he actually smiled back at me.

He was so far from horrible when he smiled that my breath caught under my ribs.

I sincerely hoped he did not think I was trying to attract his notice, but I did manage to earn Lady Pembridge’s scrutiny .

“How does Mrs Jennings?” she asked sharply.

Did she mean to draw my fire in order to protect Mr Darcy? Gracious. It was almost too much to refrain from throwing my handkerchief at the gentleman in order to agitate her in earnest.

But the squire rescued me from more smiling at Mr Darcy and the censure of his lady for what she perceived as flirting.

He interrupted my reply with regard to my great-aunt, as does any man who regards the concerns of ladies as mere fluff.

He apparently took his role as local magistrate seriously, and he also seemed a man who had no patience to wait for his turn to speak once a thought occurred to him, which it must have done, for he abruptly enquired if anyone at Pemberley had seen the stragglers Mr Arneson had reported were coming down from Yorkshire.

Mr Darcy smoothly denied this, but the subject must have also reminded Sir Hugh of yet another of his magisterial concerns.

“Oh, I say, Darcy, I have been meaning to ask you, what do you hear of Wickham these days?”

This caught Lady Pembridge’s attention as much as it did my own. “Wickham, did you say?” she asked. “I had thought that rascal would be dead by now. Hung by the neck or rotted in goal.”

“I will see him there if I can ever catch him,” Sir Hugh said grimly to his wife, “if only to keep Arneson from murdering him.”

“What has Arneson against him?”

“What else? He swindled the poor man out of a large slice of his operating capital in one of his rascally schemes, and now that the mine has closed and his business is in decline, Arneson is determined to get back what was stolen. I shall never understand how Wickham’s father, that decent and practical man, could have had any hand in the making of such a son. ”

Mr Darcy stood stock-still for this exchange. He glanced at me before he replied in the measured and disinterested tone of someone who wishes to quit a subject, “I have lately heard George Wickham is an officer in the militia.”

“The militia? Good God. What, are the barracks of the home guards to become a refuge for gutter rats? Where is he posted?” he demanded to know.

Mr Darcy, I noticed, was closely observing his sister and did not instantly reply, so I cleared my throat and said, “I do not know if he is the same man you speak of, but I made the acquaintance of a Mr Wickham under the command of a colonel by the name of Forster. They are stationed in the southern counties for the winter—in Meryton.”

“Where is Meryton?”

“Hertfordshire, sir,” I replied, striving not to glance at Mr Darcy in confusion. Why had he left this explanation entirely to me?

“Well, well. I will be damned. Arneson will be glad to know, since he is—Oh, there is Fee,” he cried, crouching down to greet the approaching liver and white spaniel.

Wood, the master of the kennel, stood politely at the doorway, holding a stout and curious pup, and nothing more was said of Mr Wickham.

The arrival of the dogs allowed me the opportunity to covertly observe Georgiana.

She sat calmly and with a pleasant expression, but there was a suspiciously frozen quality to that look that reminded me of a mask.

Mr Darcy, too, looked a touch grim and had seemed intent on turning Sir Hugh’s attention entirely away from the subject of Mr Wickham.

For my part, I was both shocked and gratified.

I had recently begun to question that man’s character, but to hear in plain terms that he was a scoundrel and perhaps even fleeing an unsavoury past astonished me!

Every memory of having encouraged his confidences, of hotly defending him against Mr Darcy’s cold remarks, of taking his side—oh, I could not bear to think of it! I am sure I blushed for my stupidity.

In another ten minutes, the company left.

Georgiana went upstairs to her room, and Mr Darcy, with his jaw hardened and a look of distraction in his eyes, bowed me out of the room.

Mrs Annesley and I went up to the little parlour, and while Mrs Jennings dozed in her chair, the lady knitted a scarf, and I, still reeling, pretended to read a book.