Page 19 of The Winter of Our Discontent (Pride and Prejudice Variations #1)

While the conflict that roiled my inner world threatened to constantly break through and show itself in some act of frustrated rage on my part, the matter of Mrs Travers required my attention.

Almost two weeks had progressed without a suitable lead on a new doctor to replace Waverley, who had quite inconveniently leapt at the chance to retire on Pemberley’s grounds.

He claimed to be bone weary and had his eye on a comely widow in Lambton to bring comfort to his twilight years.

As a result, Pemberley, Lambton, and the surrounding area were currently without a regular doctor, though Waverley would likely rouse himself to attend an emergency.

I shifted my attention from my abstracted thoughts to the note that lay beside my plate of ham and eggs.

Mrs Darcy did not take breakfast with me—thank heaven for small mercies.

She reportedly took tea and toast at five in the morning before storming around the grounds at dawn like a plague of locusts, then she sat down to break her fast with my sister and her companion .

I read the note again while drinking the last of my tea.

Mr Darcy –

I know you have made enquiries, and no candidates have come forward, but I grow anxious that nothing has been done for poor Mrs Travers.

I intend to take her to Derby to see the doctor there so that at least something can be prescribed for her relief.

I expect you will point out that this expedition would be extremely curious to Pemberley’s people, and I have thought long and hard as to how to manage it.

My plan is to ask that Mrs Travers accompany me to Derby’s Wednesday market to educate me on the local poultry.

To that end, I have made an effort to learn what I can about the cultivation of domestic birds so my interest will not be so greatly remarked upon and scrutinised.

I will make an effort to then single out the other prominent tenant wives for attention, and hopefully, we can quietly move on while Mrs Travers can begin to heal.

Meanwhile, with regard to a physician, I have read that these kinds of complaints are rampant in the Royal Navy.

Perhaps a naval doctor who is currently land-bound might be discovered and interviewed?

I hope you do not take this suggestion as encroaching.

No doubt you have already thought of it.

EMD

I stared ahead into space. No, I had not thought of it, and she was perfectly correct.

But really! What business had she to know the frequency of these sordid outbreaks in the Navy, the canny witch.

I had no choice but to fall in with her every move.

I had forced Waverley’s retirement at her suggestion, and now I wrote every day to my contacts far and wide enquiring as to a suitable replacement.

I rubbed my jaw. It was clenched with the continuous effort of biting back my growls.

Her note went straight into the fire in my study. I always felt a grim, adolescent satisfaction to burn paper with her marks on it. Then, with an air of resignation, I picked up my pen and wrote an express to my cousin.

Dear Richard,

Forgive me. I have been a poor correspondent of late as you pointed out in your most recent letter.

To answer your question, yes, I am still in what you call a ‘quiet fury’.

The initial shock has not worn off. In fact, it may be even worse since I now suffer unrelenting anxiety as I strive to make this unworkable union somehow work.

I am a man, not unlike yourself, who has had power and control all my life.

I might by now have overcome the sudden stripping of all choice in the matter, but to have been made the victim of a scheme is a blow that staggers me still.

To answer your kind offer of assistance during this dreadful passage, I find I must ask for a particular favour.

Our doctor is nearing his dotage, has retired, and we are in urgent need of a replacement.

In particular I wish to find a naval man, since he would have experience with a pervasive complaint common to seamen of every rank.

I hope this favour is within your capacity, though I do not expect you to relish rubbing your red elbows up against blue ones.

Darc y

I began to write a note to my wife, but after pulling forward a clean sheet of paper, I looked at the clock.

Our daily appointment in the library was not so many hours away.

This business of writing was more taxing than I expected, and I admonished myself to once and for all conquer my aversion to speaking to her.

I decided to fill the time by riding to the south entrance bridge, taking my exercise and overseeing progress at the same time.

Pemberley was demanding enough to require every efficiency of which I could conceive, and I congratulated myself on my great good sense.

I rode hard, spotting Mrs Darcy being led out by Carl for her thrice weekly expeditions on Georgiana’s ageing Thistle.

I will be damned to hell if I buy that woman her own horse , I said to myself, spurring my newest hack into an even more furious pace.

I justified this unnatural extreme as a means of putting the recently acquired chestnut stallion to the test. The beast was not averse to a full gallop but tired half a mile sooner than I expected.

Was my life to devolve into one disappointment after another?

I arrived at the bridge, badgered my engineer with unreasonable demands for completion, stared down my nose at the brigade of hired hands, asked obnoxious questions about matters that did not involve me, and left the site much unhappier than it had been when I arrived.

I returned to Pemberley in a state of tightly controlled annoyance.

“Well, sir? What did you make of him?” Keller, my stablemaster, had come out to take the reins as I dismounted.

“I have decided on a new name for him.”

“What is that, Mr Darcy?”

“Sluggard. He does not have nearly the wind I had hoped for with such a chest. ”

“Ah well,” he replied philosophically, “he is a youngster, after all. He has to grow into his capacity, as do we all. In time, he will be your favourite stud, I make no doubt. Come along Ormond,” he said, patting the horse’s neck reassuringly, “you did well for yourself today, my boy.”

I momentarily felt all of twelve years old.

Keller had been stablemaster since that time and had regularly put my adolescent pretensions down half a dozen notches.

I huffed inwardly and marched up the stairs, and after a wash and change of clothing, marched back down again to the library.

The room, which used to be my own personal haven, now reeked of Mrs Darcy’s lavender soap.

I no longer felt I entered a refuge, but instead, dreaded the daily ritual of meeting my wife as I would dread a trial at court.

“Mrs Darcy,” I said, approaching her at a business-like pace. I stopped where she sat at a table and bowed, glancing at what she worked on so diligently. She had stood upon hearing my greeting and curtseyed.

“Sir,” she said in that provokingly calm tone she habitually used with me.

“In regards to your note of the morning, I acquiesce to your plans for Mrs Travers and have written to my cousin to search out a naval doctor. Does that conclude our business for the present?” I really wished I, too, could use a provokingly soothing tone with her, but she stood looking at me intently as if trying to see into me and read all my private thoughts, and this brazen examination unnerved me.

“I thank you,” she said evenly. “I hope someone arrives soon, as Mrs Pirtle has also taken me aside and spoken to me.”

“Mrs Pirtle! Of what does she complain?”

“Of somewhat similar symptoms, I am afraid. ”

“Good Lord! Are we to have an epidemic?” I cried, hurling words at her as though this was her doing.

“We may have to brace for one if your farmers cannot refrain from taking their pleasure outside of marriage,” she said coldly. “I realise I am a messenger with unwelcome news, but I am hardly to blame for what has occurred here.”

I turned abruptly away from her, rubbing the back of my aching neck as I paced to the far end of the room. Once there, I whirled to face her. “You have the gall to blame me , madam?”

“I do not blame you.”

“You do indeed! By all your looks of righteous reproach, your tone, your unconcealed disgust of the male sex, you throw blame upon me.”

“Forgive me if I have done so through some unconscious judgment,” she said, as if by rote, while continuing to examine me with her gimlet eye.

She asked too much. I could forgive her nothing—ever. I merely did what any gentleman would do. I executed a crisp bow and turned to my chair where I sat on the boil for half an hour. When I had cooled sufficiently to see anything but red, I began to closely examine my wife.

She sat in great concentration over an illustrated atlas of naval history.

She was writing or drawing something referenced in that valuable book.

Her intellectual pursuits struck me as wholly unflattering.

Yes, I would prefer an intelligent, well-read woman, but I did not like a woman who felt free to study anything without the guidance of a lettered man.

Her independent study galled me. In fact, it was the independence of her nature that rankled.

My study was interrupted. Mrs Reynolds gently knocked on the door and called my wife to answer some trifling question regarding afternoon callers arrived too early.

I watched her cross the room. At least her dresses were no longer milkmaid rags. The rust-coloured silk of her bodice and sleeves, I noted with a critical eye, lessened the brownness of her skin and made her appear almost cream-complexioned.

“Is Miss Darcy with them?” she asked quietly.

“She is, ma’am, but Mrs Annesley is in bed with the headache at the moment.”

“That will never do. I will join her directly. Thank you.”

She left the room. I stood and ambled in a posture of innocence towards the table where her work remained in its interrupted state.

Glancing once at the closed door, I leant over the table and examined a drawing she had made from one of the more ornate, hand-coloured pages—a copy of the battle of Portland of 1653.

She had painstakingly reproduced the flanking ships and was now apparently at work on the patterned flourishes which indicated the currents of the English Channel.

A letter sat to the right of this work. I knew I should not read it, but my eyes took it in nonetheless.

Dear Papa,

I am well and hope you are in health. Mr Darcy’s library must be the eighth wonder of the world.

I have come across the Annals of the Anglo-Dutch Wars, and I recall you often wished to possess the work after discovering it in your favourite London bookshop.

Having seen it firsthand, I now comprehend why it costs a small fortune.

I have reproduced the battle of Portland as best as my poor skill allows, since I know you were quite enamoured of Admiral Blake’s tactics when you were a boy.

I trust Mama is no longer keeping to her bed and that my younger sisters are benefiting from Mrs Dolby’s academy. Jane writes, of course, but not often. I believe Aunt Gardiner keeps her much occupied.

I will not distress you by writing of my feelings of estrangement from you, but then, I suppose I have just done what I said I would not do.

Forgive me, Papa. I love you always.

Estrangement! I shook my head and put half a room’s distance between myself and the table.

I could not account for Mr Bennet’s treatment of his second daughter.

Any other threadbare gentleman with a few acres and a tumble-down estate would delight in a daughter with sufficient acumen to snag Darcy of Pemberley in an inescapable trap.

By rights, her father should have lavished her with wedding clothes and a reticule full of pound notes when he sent her off newly married, suddenly rich, and most advantageously elevated in status.

Apparently, Mr Bennet was none too pleased with his daughter’s stunning achievement.

I could not remotely conceive of why. The knowledge was extremely insulting, in fact.

But having made a complete hash of a perfectly respectable day with my ungovernable, adolescent temper, I shrugged off this puzzle, summoned Harrison, and ordered my carriage.

Rather than cause one more regrettable scene at Pemberley, I intended to spend the evening in Derby gathering news of the grain markets.