Page 56 of The Last House in Lambton (Pride and Prejudice Variations #6)

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

I awoke to light streaming through the crack in the curtains in my room, and when I looked out upon the world, I saw that instead of the rain and clouds that so often painted the background of our love affair, the sun had come out for Mr Darcy and me.

In the golden glow of morning filtered through the chaff from yesterday’s harvest of a small field of shallots, the carpenters and masons were arriving in the yard below.

Papa had undertaken to enlarge the stables to accommodate a few more horses, they were nearly done with their work, and Lydia now owned a solid little filly named Pearl.

She had dropped all plans to elope with Captain Carter or whoever she could recruit into a scandal that would redirect the attention of the world away from me and onto her.

She had only to sit uncertainly in the saddle for the first time to know her destiny.

She would be a famous horsewoman! Perhaps she would marry the most prestigious member of the Jockey Club, whoever he might be, but he would also have to be an earl, at least. I could only laugh, for Lydia was still just a child, and life—or perhaps a little unruly capering on the part of Pearl—would soon knock her down to a more reasonable self-opinion.

Meanwhile, I had been wild with curiosity as to just how Mr Darcy talked my father around his objections to my scheme, but he would only shrug, or, if pressed, he would cast a wry look at me and purr mysteriously that he had always been an overbearing, interfering sort of man.

If I did not believe him, I should consult Mr Gardiner.

What I did know, however, was that Mr Darcy arrived at Longbourn some few days after I returned from Brighton to meet with my father over the formal settlements that had been drawn up.

They spoke privately for some time, and thereafter, they seemed to have a more settled, dare I say, comfortable understanding.

In short order, Lydia’s horse and groom arrived, and the stables became a hotbed of activity.

I did not solve this puzzling complacency on the part of Papa until, upon surveying the disruption out of the breakfast parlour window with an uncharacteristically benevolent eye, my father made a rather sly remark about the other improvements he meant to make at Longbourn that I would not get to see, unless I deigned to visit him from time to time.

“What improvements, sir?” I asked, my interest piqued. “You have always resisted doing anything to enrich Mr Collins’s future enjoyment of this house.”

He flashed me a long, penetrating look. “Mr Collins will have to enjoy some other house, I am afraid.”

Then it dawned upon me. “You will break the entail?” I cried in disbelief.

“My word, child. You know me too well to think I have the stomach for writs of exception and court proceedings. But Mr Darcy seems to relish the prospect of securing Longbourn for one of my grandchildren, and who am I to crush his ambition?”

I was about to laugh when I checked myself. “Poor Charlotte,” I said a little mournfully.

“Poor Charlotte, indeed. Mr Darcy will ruin her future by paying a handsome fortune for Mr Collins’s release of claim, and she will have to console herself with money alone.”

My expression must have reflected my feelings, for Papa then turned from the window and sat me in a nearby chair to recuperate.

“Do not look so upended, Lizzy. You have only yourself to blame for attaching such a man. But your Mr Darcy is not so very bad. Did I tell you? He has sent me a catalogue of his library. I may yet find it in me to tolerate him as a relation.”

He had been salty, as was his way, but I saw through his sarcasm and realised I had never known Papa to be more self-satisfied, to have such purpose.

Mama had always been the one to lament, and to do so loudly, but I saw in that moment how much my father cared for his ancestral home and how much he must have hated to see Longbourn entailed away.

Lydia was the first of my sisters to burst in upon my morning, forcing me to cease marvelling over Longbourn’s renovations and future plans that would unfold without me.

“La, Lizzy, you have picked a fine day to marry!” she cried. “Do I not look divine in this hat?”

She stood before me in her riding costume with her crop in one hand and her train in the other. “You are my most dashing sister, Lyddie. Do come back from your ride in time to go to church, will you?”

Jane came next with a tray of tea and muffins, and then Kitty, who threw herself on my bed and said, “I cannot wait to go to Pemberley! But must we take Mary? She is likely to preach at me the whole time. ”

“I shall be too busy looking at the scenery to think of you for once,” Mary said coldly from the doorway.

“If you wish to please me,” I said, bringing Mary into the room by the hand and sitting her down next to Kitty, “you will arrive in Derbyshire as very good friends. Come, there will be something there to satisfy both of you, and I shall not have you pouting for any reason. Besides, you will both be occupied condemning Lydia for her new passion.”

They agreed on something for perhaps the first time in a year: our youngest sister had grown intolerable. Unfortunately, we were interrupted in our uncommon moment of sisterly harmony by a screech from my mother.

“Lizzy! Come here, child! I must speak to you.”

“Dear me,” I murmured to Jane. We looked at one another with some degree of consciousness, aware that my mother intended to educate me on all matters relating to marital relations.

Mrs Gardiner had days ago done a much more thorough and interesting version of this talk for both Jane and me, and thus I endured my mother’s jumbled account of the nuptial bed, deeply embarrassed and mumbling, “Yes Mama” and “No Mama” throughout.

I returned to my room, threw myself down on the bed, and covered my face with my pillow to muffle my giggles. Thankfully, Mary and Kitty had since left, and only Jane remained. She sat beside me whilst I vented my mortified feelings.

“Was it very bad, Lizzy? What did she say?”

“I cannot tell you lest I die of—” I panted, wiping my eyes.

“I do not know what I shall die of, but suffice it to say, I hope to forget that conference by the time I stand up at the altar, lest I break into yet another bout of demented laughter. If only I could write it down in Mama’s book of housekeeping hints!

But your turn will come, my dearest, when you decide which of your many suitors will win you. Who will it be, hmm? ”

“Do not tease me to ease your discomfort. You know I have decided to wait until you are wed to think of my own prospects.”

“And Miss Bingley? Has she been a little kinder of late?”

“Oh, Lizzy, she is so distraught to have lost her chances with Mr Darcy,” she said in a scandalised murmur.

“And to have lost out to me, no less.”

“Truly, she will make herself ill if she does not come around to the notion that you will be Mrs Darcy today. I am half afraid that if I encourage Mr Bingley to come to the point, she will fall into some sort of decline, for not only would her own plans be thwarted, she had harboured such hopes of a brilliant match for him.”

“Oh, by all means, consider her happiness well before your own. God forbid she be made unhappy because you have secured your own future.”

“Hush. I do not want to speak of Miss Bingley.”

“Very well. But when you decide, whether for Colonel Fitzwilliam or Mr Bingley, or the handsome tinker, or some new prospect as yet unknown, you must come to Pemberley for Christmas.”

“I shall indeed, and I promise to secure my own happiness, Lizzy. I have seen you do so, and I am inspired to be brave for the sake of my heart.”

We then looked at the clock and jumped out of bed, for we had lingered overlong in our last conversation in that room as intimates, as girls not yet grown up, and we began to prepare in earnest for a wedding.

My dress was a truly beautiful froth of cream silk, and not only did I have a necklace of pearls that had belonged to Mr Darcy’s mother, but Miss Bell came from Netherfield Park to dress my hair into a mass of shining curls with pearl-studded combs.

My trunks were sent back with her to Netherfield Park, where they would be strapped to Mr Darcy’s coach upon our leaving.

I chuckled to myself to think of the shameful excess to which I would now be clothed in the same year I was told I did not deserve a new muslin.

Of my visit to the drapers of London with Mama, I could only shake my head and hope to never do so again. I had even told Mr Darcy he would have to send to the Continent for my wardrobe in future, for I would never show my face on Bond Street again.

The rest of the morning was something of a trial, and I was left craving a moment of silence, a spell of calm reflection in which to ponder the enormity of committing myself for life to a man who would now claim all rights over me.

But no. Mama had predictably worked herself into a lather of anxiety interspersed with odd little sounds that might have been stifled shrieks of joy.

Never mind that this was my particular day, for she required a great deal of attention, lest she suffer a case of the vapours on the steps of the church.

I looked into Mr Darcy’s face as he stood in front of the vicar and offered him a rueful smile.

He winked at me in the spirit of commiseration, for had we not once agreed that a wedding was the least romantic occasion in the world?

Yet, time was our friend and, reminding me a little of Doreen, it shuffled interminably through the wedding breakfast until suddenly, we were in the coach—shaded, cool, silent, and alone.

“Is it over?” I asked in a tone of benighted fatigue.

“Yes. Perhaps I have you to thank for the fact we are on our way an hour before I expected to be.”

“What? Did I indeed exhibit unseemly haste in leaving? My word, I certainly hope I did not do so for reasons I once attributed to Mr Collins.”

“Do you mean lust and an urgent desire to be home? For if you do, I pray you might just this once take his example, Elizabeth. ”

Mr Darcy, who once condemned me as a person whose first object in life is a joke, had somehow come around to the realisation that the most direct means of securing my admiration was to make me laugh. And as we continued what he called our ceaseless flirtation, we laughed a great deal indeed.

But we also had the privacy to revert to rather more ardent expressions of our regard, and we continued the exploration of desires that had flared up in the darkened doorways of Brighton.

The journey to Pemberley is long, yet we were very well occupied and utterly immune to the days as a result, and before I knew what had happened, we were surrounded on both sides by the chalk hills.

“I remember once riding through this cut after a most dreadful night, thinking that I would not die of love. Yet, I now know that I had never really lived without it,” he said reflectively.

“Hush,” I replied in a whisper, kissing his bare knuckles. “You overwhelm me.”

“Do I? Perhaps I should raise your spirits and tell you I have a strong feeling Mrs Jennings will recognise you today.”

“No, how could she? I have been away for several months. She will have no greater recollection of me than she did of Mrs Burke, who was a mere stranger to her.”

“I shall wager you a guinea I am right,” he said mysteriously.

“Done. Now explain why you are so certain?”

“She will greet you as Mrs Darcy, Mrs Darcy,” he said with a chuckle.

I laughed and lamented the loss of my bet all in one jumble of happiness, for the notion of being greeted by Auntie as Mrs Darcy genuinely thrilled me.

And then we were suddenly flying down the valley and past the lake in my husband’s elegant coach, pulled by a matched team of Newmarket’s finest. And since Keller was in the habit of showing away his skill with the ribbons, we came to a flashing stop, scattering a bit of gravel behind the wheels, in the circular drive at Pemberley.

“We are home,” Mr Darcy said with sweet relief.

“We are home,” I echoed with a deep sigh of contentment, stepping out and blinking in the brilliant light of summer.

There, lining the steps and spilling out in all directions stood the entire household to welcome me, with Auntie also blinking in the sunlight and beaming her innocent smile of incomprehension.

Keller, Sam, and the grooms save one to hold the horses, jumped down and took their places in the crowd.

I had never dreamt of such a royal welcome, and I stood stock-still to meet their smiles—so many were now dear to me already.

And then Mr Wood, the kennel master, came forwards, and I once again broke into tears when Queenie, overjoyed to see me, flew into my arms.