Page 55 of The Winter of Our Discontent (Pride and Prejudice Variations #1)
FITZWILLIAM DARCY
Dear Mr Gardiner,
Elizabeth slowly recovers, though she is still in a weakened state and requires much care. Her physician says that when she has regained a little more of her strength, she will be allowed to walk in the garden, and we hope that in time, she will be ambling through the park as she always did.
Miss Bennet has settled comfortably here and is a balm to Elizabeth’s spirits.
My sister, Georgiana, is enamoured of your eldest niece’s gentleness and refinement, and they are becoming as close as sisters.
My wife and I would like to invite Miss Bennet to live with us if you can part with her.
She is of age, of course, and does not necessarily need her father’s permission, but your blessing will no doubt be required should she wish to stay.
Naturally, you will want to satisfy yourself as to the well-being of both your nieces.
If your business permits, I would consider it a great privilege to host you and your family here at Pemberley.
Meanwhile, as the matter of my wife’s other sisters remains unresolved, I hope you have made some progress with their father.
Since I first wrote to Mr Gardiner in London to beg him to send Jane to Pemberley, I had continued to correspond with him.
The frostiness of our relations had thawed.
I was no longer labouring under my unstinting resentment and superiority, and he no longer seemed so disgusted by my arrogance.
Much had been written between us. At times we had even been painfully candid with one another.
We were now, however, well on the way to being friends, and we had lately embarked on a particular mission.
Some weeks after this letter was written, the ground was still soggy and the morning mist dreadfully cold, but there were green shoots in the fields, and we were in expectation of lambs any day.
I had unbent and requisitioned the closed carriage so my wife and I could be driven around the estate like two doddering elders.
She was on the verge of strong disagreement about this plan, but I had a certain way with her, such that when I was determined, I would not be gainsaid, and she sensed the futility of argument.
“How stubborn you are,” she said, snuggling down into the heap of blankets I had piled on her, and looking quite deliciously comfortable. “You know, the fresh air would only do me good.”
“On a short turn about the lake, I agree. But the rain has kept you indoors so long you are positively unbearable, and I mean to have you out for hours and hours. Besides, there is something in particular I wish to show you. ”
Soon enough we arrived at the site of what would have been the widow and orphan’s cottage.
Winter had been impossible for building, and construction in early spring, with its unpredictable weather, was fraught with difficulty.
But throughout my wife’s sickness, I insisted that stones be quarried and carted and that a wooden shelter be erected where all the planks, beams, lime, and glazing would be safely stored and at the ready.
Every single reasonable day had been used, and walls were beginning to come up out of the ground.
The masons all looked upon Mrs Darcy with great respect.
No longer remembered as an Irish sympathiser, she was treated more as the patroness of their prosperity, for work in winter was scarce, and I had made it known this project was of her making.
As they pulled off their hats and saluted her, I could not wonder at their sudden solemnity.
By all rights she should have died. Abe Travers did, as did his wife, two of their children, and a handful of cottagers outside Lambton.
Yardley had said theirs had been an illness that took the susceptible.
My wife, ordinarily so vital, had worked herself into a vulnerable state.
Courage and a savage will to live must be acknowledged, but her struggle to survive what others did not was the only subject talked of for many weeks.
Her recovery had been so thoroughly embellished, it was widely considered a miracle, particularly after young John from the stables, who had been inconsolable and refused to sleep, had claimed to have seen a white light all around her window.
I am a rational man, and though I did not discount the intervention of angels, I believed it was my wife’s youth and physical advantages that saved her while the Travers and the others had no such benefits. Still, she was no less my heroine than she was my people’s.
After Elizabeth had admired every feature pointed out to her by the workers and commended their skill, I walked her back towards the waiting carriage.
“Who will live here since Mr Travers’ sister has taken in his surviving children?”
“You are regretting the suggestion that we need such a place?”
“You were very silly to obey me.”
“What my lady-wife wants, my lady-wife gets.”
She jeered at me. I had spoken only half in jest because what I had said was surprisingly true, but she would never believe me.
So I very casually said, “Perhaps you would believe that I have decided Mr Roger’s new school would fit very well here.
We can make a section for the girls, which is long overdue, and if your sister Mary has the slightest interest in helping us, she should come. ”
My wife’s gentle ambling came to an abrupt standstill. Even with her back to me, I knew she was remembering that horrible day when we stood on this same ground, and with such trepidation, she put forward her plan to rescue poor Mary from despair.
I own my failures now, and I no longer writhe in agony over my sins.
Elizabeth will not let me, claiming my apologies are both exhausting and uselessly distressing.
In every instance, she has asked, Plato-like, if what I did was not in some way understandable, given my belief about what had happened.
Save for the rare intrusion of certain memories, such as the one that had momentarily silenced us, those days of wretched misery hardly seemed relevant when we held hands and spoke freely to one another of anything and everything .
“But how?” she asked, turning to search my face for answers. “How could she come to us?”
“I have been granted guardianship of all your sisters, save Lydia. Forgive me, love, but I am not so good I will take her on. Your uncle Gardiner will take her, and I believe he intends to marry her off to a sturdy man in need of a dowry which he has taken upon himself to fund.”
“But how?” she asked more urgently as I helped her into the carriage.
“Oh well. That is a long and complicated tale. When the rain keeps us locked in the house, and you are cross as crabs that I have beaten you at chess again, I will entertain you with all the details. But you have not told me whether you wish for Mary and Kitty to come. I believe they could be useful in helping you with the tenants and with the household accounts. You can no longer be the mother of the world, you know, and someone must be able to read the figures in a ledger. Do you not know that if you are constantly squinting, you will develop a permanent frown?”
“I see. This is entirely about you. You do not want to see a wrinkled crone staring across the breakfast table at you, so you have devised this plan.”
“Yes. Now, if we make a separate school, I think we should name it after my former steward, The Raymond Johnson School for Girls.” I framed my hands as if to point out an enormous sign in the air over what would be the left wing of the building.
“Because he was such a champion of female causes? Yes, of course.” She looked back at the site with a critical eye. “Is that building big enough, do you think?”
“Lord, Elizabeth. Let us at least wait until next year before we break ground on an academy of arts and sciences, shall we?”
She smiled at me so adoringly I took her hand to my lips, and as Carl then drove the carriage all around the estate, we spoke contentedly of the arrival of her sisters.
We stopped at a few of the tenants along the way so Elizabeth could dispense baskets of bread, jam, cheeses, and dried plums, but eventually, I sensed her fatigue, and we headed for the house, passing the stone cottages where Yardley lived.
His horse was not in his shed, so we did not stop.
“Mr Darcy, do you think our doctor will stay at Pemberley, or will he sail with Mayweather come July?”
I smiled at how she still called me Mr Darcy, even though I protested. “Hmm? Oh, I believe he is in a great quandary at present. Our neighbourhood has recently improved a great deal, though he has not quite arrived at why the thought of leaving is not so compelling as it was.”
Yardley was madly in love with Jane Bennet, but he had not yet surrendered to his feelings and very likely only slept at night by repeatedly convincing himself he was temporarily bedazzled by her face.
“But how can he live? A stone cottage is sufficient for a furlough, but to build a life, he would want more, do you not think?”
“He has no prospects from his father’s estate. I believe he must marry a woman with a tidy sum settled on her.”
My wife’s brow furrowed lightly upon having her assumptions confirmed, for she wished her penniless sister much happiness and thought the doctor would provide it if only he could afford to wed.
I again brought her hand to my lips. “Have you no faith in your husband? Do you not remember that Jane is my sister too?”
She turned sharply to stare at me. “You will settle funds on her?”
“Well, we do need a doctor here. But I suppose I could beg old Waverley to come out of retirement.”
Not for the first time since her recovery, my wife crawled into my arms and looked imploringly up at my face.
“Elizabeth,” I growled, “I will not kiss you, and you know it.”
“You are determined to be disagreeable then,” she pouted, slumping down against my shoulder.
“One kiss, I grant you, is harmless. But there is no such thing as just one kiss, and I am determined you will be strong again before I put a child in you. Do you think, my love, I enjoyed standing at your bedside watching you die?”
She pursed her lips into a tiny pout, and I pulled her closer than ever. Life, in this place where everything dies, was precious beyond bearing, and lest I become maudlin, I began to tickle her out of her sulks for the simple joy of hearing her laugh.