Page 22 of The Winter of Our Discontent (Pride and Prejudice Variations #1)
ELIZABETH DARCY
I returned from my ride nearly blue with cold.
I had understood the north to be colder than Hertfordshire but was now beginning to experience this as more than an abstract idea.
How I would get the exercise my very soul required was a new anxiety for me.
If I were to be confined to this great, hulking, monstrously beautiful palace for months on end without some relief for my restless urges to move, I would go mad.
Above stairs, in the envelope of warmth and comfort that Wilson had somehow woven into my room, I rubbed my hands by the fire before I went through the ritual of washing and changing for my morning pursuits.
“Mr Darcy’s cousin has arrived, ma’am,” Wilson said as she brought out my gown from the dressing room.
“Has he? I did not know we expected him.” Oh dear! This might be the same cousin who had stood by Mr Darcy during our wedding with a posture and expression radiating his dearest wish to murder me .
“Mrs Reynolds did not seem to have expected him and sent three maids at a run to see to a room.”
“Is he in the parlour?”
“He may be now, ma’am, but when he first arrived, he and Mr Darcy remained closeted in the master’s study, as I was told.”
When I was fully turned out in a double silk gown in a shade of blown glass with an emerald ribbon expertly twisted through my dark curls, I sighed at my reflection. “I am not sure how you manage it, but I am too immodest not to admit I look the veritable fashion plate today.”
Wilson replied with a look tinged with affection. “You know very well, ma’am, that I work with what I am given. You are what I call a natural beauty.”
“That sounds dreadful, as if I have sticks and leaves in my hair, which is very likely on any given morning after my walk. Well, I suppose I can delay no longer and must go and greet Mr Darcy’s guest.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam stood at the end of the room with Mr Darcy. Georgiana and Mrs Annesley sat closer to the door on a settee, and when I walked into the parlour, Georgiana jumped up and came to me.
“Elizabeth, my cousin has come!” she said in a voice of pure pleasure.
“I am sure you will like him very much,” she added, placing her arm around my waist and taking me towards the colonel.
Once there, she spoke in a proprietary tone.
“Richard, I have the pleasure of making you known to Mrs Elizabeth Darcy. She is so delightful, as I have told you in my letters.”
Unsure whether to act as though I had never met the colonel or correct Georgiana’s mistaken assumption, I curtseyed and murmured a greeting before looking up in anticipation of his response.
“Mrs Darcy,” he said, executing a crisp, military salute, “my little cousin has sung your praises to the sky.” Apparently, we would neither pretend to be unknown to one another nor show outwardly this was not our first meeting.
“Has she?” I replied, squeezing Georgiana’s hand.
“That is hardly fair, sir. I have not had the opportunity to sing her praises to anyone except in letters to my sister Jane. Shall I tell you, Colonel, that Miss Darcy plays like a virtuoso, rides like a zephyr, cares deeply for the comfort of everyone, and that she cheats at dots and boxes?”
“Elizabeth!”
He replied with a wink, “Come now, Porge. Everyone who has ever played dots and boxes with you knows your little tricks.”
She gasped. “I do not cheat!”
“My dear Georgiana,” I said with a laugh, “you should be glad we were diverted from the subject of your many accomplishments and endearing qualities. No one as modest as you, who possesses so many endowments of temper and mind, could endure our many compliments.” I turned to our guest, striving not to notice that Mr Darcy stood to one side in close observation of my performance.
“But, Colonel, you must enlighten me as to one thing regarding Miss Darcy.”
“What is that, madam?”
“I must know how she got the pet name of Porge , for this is one subject upon which she has been close as a clam.”
The colonel was also observing my performance and perhaps doing so just as critically as Mr Darcy. He was, however, more adept than my husband at concealing his critique while engaging in civilities for the sake of the young girl who stood in wide-eyed admiration of him.
“She came by it honestly, being a chubby little cherub who loved her porridge.”
“Of course such a name would stick to a girl,” I said in playful sympathy, turning back to Georgiana and hoping to be released from this encounter.
“How do you enjoy Pemberley, Mrs Darcy?” the colonel then asked, skilfully transitioning the conversation from my control to his with a trick question.
But my father did much the same with a far sharper wit, and I had learnt how to respond to such baiting well before I took up long skirts.
“Do you ask how much I enjoy it or how I go about enjoying it? For if it is the latter, I can tell you that I have communed with at least a hundred trees that I would call my friends, that the peewits that call in the tall grasses when I stand still at the edge of the meadow have enchanted me, and that the shimmer of light on the lake is bright as diamonds, and I doubt I will ever take in all its many moods.”
“Now you can see why I love her so,” Georgiana said. “I cannot tell you how much I anticipate taking her to the limestone hills when she is a proficient rider.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam’s scrutiny did not abate even after he expertly extracted himself from conversing with me.
I noted, however, the subtle sense within of having nothing left to lose, and I felt myself on firm ground because of it.
Besides, I reflected, catching the glance of the under butler as he stood at the sideboard, I was so used to scrutiny I was becoming inured to it.
“You never did tell me what brings you to Pemberley, Richard,” Georgiana remarked later at dinner after the soup course was cleared. “I had not hoped to see you before Christmas.”
“Your brother wrote to me enquiring about a doctor, and having found a promising man, I brought him up. I understand Waverley has retired.”
I looked up from the end of the table where I sat as hostess, and my eyes encountered Mr Darcy’s as he, too, looked up from his end where he sat as host. I understood his look to be a request for silence, so I listened as the conversation progressed.
“Who is the new doctor to be?” Georgiana asked.
“He has yet to be retained,” Mr Darcy said.
“But surely, if he came all this way you will do so?”
“If he suits, and if he is amenable, yes.”
Georgiana paused long enough to eat several bites, and I thought perhaps the subject was closed, but on noting my sister-in-law’s slightly furrowed brow, I wondered what the girl was thinking.
“And if he meets all these requirements, then what is he like?” she persisted.
“I see we are to be badgered to death. He is a gentleman, third son of Cardle of Thomasville, trained in London, experienced in the fleet, and recommended to me by my friend Captain Mayweather. To what do we owe this burning curiosity over a doctor, my love?”
Georgiana blushed to the roots of her hair, and Mrs Annesley put her hand on the young lady’s arm in reassurance before I came to the rescue.
“I believe Georgiana is anxious for her companion to get some relief for her persistent headaches.”
“Waverley did not help you, ma’am?” Mr Darcy asked Mrs Annesley directly .
“He most certainly did not,” muttered Georgiana.
“I thought he prescribed for Mrs Annesley,” her brother replied a little tersely.
His tone must have nettled his sister because she replied without her usual hesitation. “Oh, he did. He prescribed a composer as though she was angling for a little attention.”
“Did you feel as though he patted you on the head, ma’am?” I asked.
Georgiana again replied hotly for her companion. “That is precisely what I thought, Elizabeth. I, for one, am glad he is no longer travelling around Pemberley administering to women as though we are all suffering complaints of our imaginations.”
Mr Darcy and his cousin looked uncomfortably guilty, condemned as offending males right along with the principal misogynist, while the women at the table swelled up in righteous indignation. I strove to look only at my plate, lest I say ‘ I told you so’ to Mr Darcy with my eyes.
After a moment of this collective misery, however, I relented and spoke directly to my husband in my most conversational tone. “I shall have a room made up if you care to invite Mr Yardley to Pemberley upon speaking to him.”
“I intend to do so if I find him respectable and capable. Richard and I are for Lambton this evening to wait upon him.”