Chapter 10 #2
“I think we will have to take the Danconias out to dinner instead,” she said, trying to be lively.
“No, we’ll order something again and eat downstairs in the dining room. The park is open longer, but the house closes at five.”
“I think this quarter the table is set with an elaborate Edwardian tea service.”
“It’s still our dining room and our dishes. We can serve curry takeaway on anything.”
Elizabeth tore her gaze from the mess to look at Georgiana, who looked so stricken that she gave her a hug. “Have you not eaten since yesterday because of…all this?”
“No, I breakfasted this morning, the nursery food Sandra makes. And last night your servant, I mean employee, Mr Roland, came to enquire about my health. I was too embarrassed to let him in to see what I had done. I mentioned having trouble with the stove, and he invited me to dinner at his home with his—” She broke off with a fierce blush.
Elizabeth looked at Darcy for a nineteenth-century explanation, but he shrugged in confusion. “Who did you have dinner with?”
“I would never have joined them in my time, but Mr Roland seemed sincere, and he of course knew why I was struggling. And I was hungry, and he was kind and I did enjoy her company, but did I cause a scandal?” she asked in a frantic rush.
“Why would it be a scandal? Who else dined with you?” he insisted.
She hissed in a whisper into her brother’s ear that Elizabeth couldn’t hear.
Darcy held back a laugh. He composed himself and said, “The relationships between single men and women are a little different now. It’s more like they are not betrothed yet, but they are getting to know one another to decide if they want to marry.
Almost like a courtship. Their connection is perfectly respectable, according to the current values. ”
Nodding in understanding, Elizabeth added, “We all like Sheryl. She volunteers to give house tours because she lives in Lambton and is a history buff. An enthusiast,” she corrected.
“When I mentioned performing next week, she told me all she knew about the music room. I did not correct her about when the pianoforte came to the house.” She looked bashful.
“I hardly said anything. I was so worried about giving away my secret to Mr Roland’s—” Georgiana turned red.
“They were patient with my shyness, and she seemed respectable. There was nothing shameful about the way she spoke, or acted, or dressed, at least compared to the other modern people I have seen. I was just shocked that they were so open about—about where she would sleep that night,” she finished in a horrified whisper.
Elizabeth realised what Georgiana had assumed.
“Does she think Roland’s girlfriend Sheryl is a prostitute?
” she muttered to Darcy. She immediately regretted the question.
Darcy looked too incredulous to answer. His eyes darted around the kitchen, ceiling to floor, and then at Georgiana in complete bewilderment at what his sister had done.
Elizabeth hadn’t fully appreciated how truly remarkable Darcy’s adjustment to the twenty-first century was.
While the washing machine may have entranced him, in a week he had learnt how to use it.
Although it was unprecedented in his time, he had not baulked at women owning property, voting, and earning an equal wage.
He was clever and confident and could navigate a conversation where the words used no longer meant what they had meant in the nineteenth century.
He had been right: Darcy could thrive here in a way she never could have in his time.
She patted him on the arm. “Pick up Sandra and ask Frank and Gwen to come to dinner at six. Take Sandra with you and go to the Indian place on Bridge Street and order plenty for leftovers, because we might not be cooking in here for a while. Georgiana and I…” She sighed heavily. “We’ll start cleaning this. Somehow.”
Sandra giggled endlessly at the kitchen’s appearance, and only by using a serious tone Darcy rarely had to employ did he convince her not to embarrass her aunt and mention the disaster to Frank and Gwen.
Nothing was funnier to a seven-and-a-half-year-old than an adult making a terrible mess.
Still, they had an energetic and comfortable evening, and only Charlotte and her daughter Mary were missing to make it a complete family party.
Between their friends, Sandra being overstimulated from her lively weekend and the “huge mess,” and Georgiana trying to help Elizabeth repair the damage she had done, Sunday evening was loud, chaotic, and too late for any meaningful conversation.
Darcy took Sandra to the school bus Monday morning after sharing a few emphatic looks, head tilts, and facial expressions with Elizabeth where he silently promised he would talk to his sister in the course of the day.
When Georgiana left their rooms, Elizabeth said to him while Sandra got her schoolbag, “She’s practising for her vocal performance. You should talk with her after.”
“In the meantime, I am going to find Tom Roland and thank him for checking on my sister.”
They could say no more because Sandra ran in, threw her arms around her mother and said goodbye, and tugged his hand to lead him out the door.
When Darcy returned from Lambton, he set to finding Roland, and went into the house to find Sheryl to ask her.
Elizabeth would have just texted Roland, but his instinct was a holdover from time past. His natural action was to find someone who could answer his question or simply go to the place where that person was likely to be and wait.
Of course, texting was faster and easier, and he often did that. But, for all his reserve, he supposed he still preferred the human interaction.
Sheryl was by the guest services desk, waiting for her first tour group of the day.
She was a little younger than Roland and had a full-time job in Bakewell, but preferred her volunteer work here.
After greeting her, he asked after Roland, noting the new ring on her left hand.
Sheryl turned it to watch the stone catch the light.
“Tommy? He said something about visiting a property today to look at grading and water drainage for a meeting with you and the tenant. But he should still be home now.”
Her eyes kept dropping to the ring with a soft smile on her face. He knew what the enormous diamond meant. Elizabeth had been exceedingly satisfied with the acrostic dearest ring he had brought for her, but nowadays rings with a diamond were the expected practice when getting engaged.
“Do you have happy news?” he asked, giving the ring a heavy glance.
Sheryl gave a shy laugh and held it out, as though assuming he had wanted to admire it. “Yes, he asked me last week!”
After congratulating her, what followed was a torrent of information he did not ask for, but seemed to be centred on how many guests Roland’s mother wanted to invite and where her mother wanted the ceremony to be and how much the hall would cost and when could they rent one.
He still could not relate to the spectacle that wedding ceremonies had become in the last two hundred years.
“It is all so overwhelming, Mr Darcy,” she cried. Then, perhaps realising she had talked about herself for a long while, she asked, “How long did it take to plan your wedding?”
“We were more interested in being married than the wedding,” he said, remembering their eagerness.
“I asked her in March, and we were married in June after her visas and residency were established. Mrs Darcy and I married in the Bakewell registration office with three people in attendance, although we had a party here months later, after Pemberley opened.” He thought about what Sheryl had said about finding a hall.
“Rather than rent a hall, why do you not use our ballroom?”
She gaped at him. “But that’s for conventions and events. And what if someone spills something? Or breaks something? I would feel guilty forever.”
Darcy held back a smile. To everyone else, Pemberley was a place in history, a relic to be admired and studied.
For him, it was still a home. “It’s also a space the Pemberley family uses, and that includes you if you are marrying Roland.
If you want to marry at the church and then have a…
” What was the word? It was no longer “wedding breakfast.” “Your reception here, you need only say.”
“We couldn’t impose.”
“It is not an imposition if I offered.”
Sheryl looked like she might cry or hug him, and he did not want to manage either reaction. He would let Elizabeth tell her about offering her a permanent paid position. She would definitely hug him if he mentioned that now.
He and Sheryl noticed people gathering to wait for Sheryl to take them through the house. He heard their murmurs of “Is that the owner?” and “That’s Mr Darcy!”
Sheryl caught his eye and shrugged an apology at the whispers, but he did not mind.
That response might have happened in the past too.
Pemberley was open to tourists on a smaller scale even then.
He could never begrudge the visitors, not when their time and money allowed them to keep the house and bring so much support to Lambton and the surrounding community.
He bid her goodbye and found Roland outside his house, throwing a ball to his dog.
How strange to keep dogs purely for the sake of entertainment and affection.
When he lived in the nineteenth century, dogs were working animals.
Some had lapdogs as a status symbol, but all the dogs he once had at Pemberley performed a task.
A terrier to control pests, a spaniel for shooting, a mastiff for guarding, a collie to herd sheep.
The ball rolled near, and Darcy picked it up and tossed it. Roland’s companion dog eagerly chased after it. He was uncertain what type of dog it was, only that it was desperate to fetch and did not perform a single task regarding defence, hunting, or herding.