Chapter Nineteen
More Glass Than Wall
Only the Misses Bennet and the Bingley ladies attended the excursion, as his stepmother decided she had no desire to see Hardwick again and she did not wish Georgiana to miss two days schooling, despite Miss Bingley’s winsome pleading.
The ladies would travel in the comfort of the light coach, the entire party’s overnight baggage piled into the imperial strapped to its roof.
The gentlemen chose to ride. Hugh, George and Darcy had their usual mounts, and the Pemberley stables housed enough good horseflesh for Bingley and Hurst to take their pick.
At the last moment, George’s father took a turn, as George phrased it, and he decided he had better remain at home until the old man was calm and tractable again. Darcy would miss his cheery presence, charm, and ready wit.
Reid decided to take George’s place. He did not ask permission. Darcy gave way, after remarking how odd it was that he had thought himself master at Pemberley but had evidently quite mistaken the matter.
“Aye, a sore trial, to be sure. But until I am comfortable in my own mind the fire was an accident, you will find me watchful.” Reid proved it by keeping one eye on the grooms preparing the horses in the stable yard. “Mr Wickham harbours suspicions.”
“George is seeing phantasms. I cannot credit it.”
“It may be Abel could not credit it, either. I canna say. I will say the young master, as some still call him, has a discontented look about him.”
“A lean and hungry look,” said Darcy, before he could stop himself. He slapped his riding crop against the side of his leg, half in anger, half frustration.
John Coachman heaved himself into his seat, the final pair of carriage horses buckled into their place, and started the coach out of the stable yard.
It passed within a few feet, the horses’ breath steaming on the air as they responded to his familiar voice and the words they’d heard all their working lives.
“Up, Tandy! Up, Bill! Up Birdie and Blackie!”
“He has a yen for Miss Bennet. Miss Jane, I mean.” Reid’s attention seemed fixed on the coach.
“I do not think it reciprocated.” Darcy nodded back when the coachman touched his hat as he passed them. Who had given his carriage horses such workaday names?
“No, but to be able to offer Pemberley would sway many a lady in his favour. I dinna think the Bennet ladies would pay it much mind, though. Not the eldest three, at any rate.” Reid pursed his lips, and his eyes narrowed, an expression Darcy had seen more than once in the old days when Reid had hefted his long gun to his shoulder and considered whether the shot would carry the distance needed to dislodge a threatening enemy.
“I cannot believe it of him.”
“I hope it isn’t so. But we will be canny and cautious, and I will be going with you this day.” Reid pulled his watch from its pocket. “Almost half-past seven. The ladies will be at the front door.”
Darcy sighed, loud enough to be sure Reid heard him, and shook his head as though to dislodge the effects of overactive imaginations.
He had not suspected Reid of such until now.
Darcy slapped the riding crop against his leg again, as some outlet for his feelings.
“I do not understand why I am permitting this. I would not allow anyone else to interfere in such a manner and make conjectures about my family.”
Reid looked him in the eyes and smiled. “I hope it’s because you trust me, sir.”
Darcy let his mouth twist. “I do, damn you. With my life, and everything I own. I am out of charity with you at this moment, John Reid, because you are managing me!”
“No different to Bengal.”
“I knew my enemies there. Are you armed, John?”
“Both saddle and pocket pistols, of course. And since we will be travelling in the dusk tonight, all you gentlemen should be armed to protect the ladies.”
“We discussed it, and we all have pistols. The coachman and footmen, also.”
“Then we are set.” Reid glanced over Darcy’s shoulder. “Here are the other gentlemen.”
Bingley, Hurst, and Hugh. It had been barely a half-hour since Darcy had seen them at the breakfast table, and he found himself viewing Hugh in a more suspicious light. Could Hugh hate and despise him so much? He came to himself as Reid nudged him and handed over Ram’s reins.
He grimaced, and mounted, swallowed a sigh, and with as much cheer as he could manage, gestured to the yard gates. “Let us join the ladies. We have a fair distance to travel today.”
He said nothing when Reid took up position at his side. Nothing at all.
The road to Hardwick Hall curved around Chatsworth at too great a distance for anyone to see the house.
John Coachman had sent ahead four of their carriage horses to Rawsley, the hamlet a mile or two south of Chatsworth’s gates, where he planned a change and to leave the first four to rest before reversing the change the following day on their way home.
Rawsley boasted naught but the inn, where they stopped for a half hour to allow the ladies some refreshment and to rest the riding horses.
The inn stood more than halfway to Hardwick, Darcy reckoned, taking his watch from his pocket.
Less than three hours. A surprisingly good time for the October roads, but the going was sound underfoot.
“If we can maintain this pace, we will reach Hardwick not much after noon,” he told Miss Elizabeth, whom he was quite treating as his aide-de-camp in matters of practical administration.
“Plenty of time before dark, then, to see the house and grounds. Chesterfield, too, is not far north of Hardwick, I believe.”
“No. If we leave at around five of the clock, we should reach our accommodations before full dark falls. In the event we do not, I had the coachman pack link-lights in the boot of the coach, and we will beg a tinderbox from the Hardwick housekeeper. If needs be, we riders will light your way.”
“Oh, very gallant!”
She was laughing at him, but at the same time she nodded.
He hoped she approved of his plan. He half-turned to watch as the other ladies were helped up into the coach to resume their journey.
“Three or four hours will suffice, I hope, to look around the house and explore the grounds. The duke’s man wrote to warn the housekeeper and to ensure refreshments are provided. ”
“It is kind of the steward to take so much trouble on our behalf. And the duke, of course.”
Darcy escorted her to the waiting coach. “I doubt the duke has any notion of it! Still, I will be sure to send grateful thanks.”
His calculations were borne out. They arrived at Hardwick thirty minutes after noon. The horses would enjoy a long rest at the inn at the Hall’s gates before the ten miles to Chesterfield.
Hardwick stood on a prominent rise, the slopes of the hill covered in dense woodland, with a narrow lane winding up the hillside.
The coach halted in the lane between the New Hall and its counterpart, the now ruinous Old Hall—both misnomers, as there were but a few years between them.
The inside of the Old Hall, roofless now, was a garden.
The ruins were encased in wooden trestles and scaffolding, and both the sound of voices and the tap of hammers confirmed that masons were at work.
The gentlemen leapt to see the ladies safely alight from the coach. Bingley was quickest and helped down Miss Bennet, much to Hugh’s disgust if his disgruntled expression were anything to judge by. Darcy himself handed down Mrs Hurst, leaving Miss Bingley to Hurst.
Hugh, to his credit, mastered his disappointment long enough to offer his hand to Miss Elizabeth with a “Here you are, Lizzy! And here we are, at last.”
They stood in a small group, looking through the gates and across the gardens to the great house beyond.
Hardwick Hall was magnificent, if hardly in the current fashionable taste.
Palladio would have held up his hands in horror at its lack of classical proportions, but yet it inspired awe and admiration. A prodigy house, indeed.
Miss Elizabeth laughed aloud. “Oh Jane! How Papa would have loved to see it!”
Miss Bennet smiled, and nodded, reaching for her sister’s hand. A glimmer in her eyes spoke of amusement underlaid with some other, sadder emotion.
“Miss Elizabeth?” Darcy questioned.
She offered a smile as ambivalent as her sister’s. “Oh, it is nothing, sir. A promise I made my father.”
“Will you share it?”
“Do, please, Miss Eliza!” Miss Bingley sidled up to Darcy and took his arm, uninvited. “I am sure it is most interesting.”
He stiffened, but it would be ungentlemanly to cast her off.
Miss Elizabeth’s smile was unwavering, though underpinned with evident grief.
“It is not at all exciting, I am sorry to say. My father was a great devotee of the art of architecture, and his library at Longbourn—our estate in Hertfordshire, Miss Bingley… well, he had many architect’s portfolios, and etchings, and draughtsman’s plans.
The Hardwick portfolio was a favourite of his, and he would have been delighted to see the house for himself, that is all.
” Her voice wavered a trifle. “I promised him I would look at these great houses for him.”
“I take it Longbourn has passed out of your family’s hands?” Miss Bingley tightened her hold on Darcy’s arm.
“Yes, Miss Bingley. As many estates do, it passed through the male line. My parents had no son.”
“How unfortunate.”
“Yes, but we are very fortunate in our wider family.”
Miss Bingley inclined her head. She clung to his arm with more tenacity than a barnacle to a rock. “It seems so. Mrs Darcy is very kind.”
“Indeed, she is.”
What a perplexing woman Miss Bingley was!
What was she about? Her manners were fashionable, of course, and it seemed à la mode to speak with iron beneath one’s words, to perpetually grapple with one’s company for supremacy over them, to seek always to display to what was perceived as one’s own advantage.
She had shown the same sharp talent for subtle denigration and condescension when she spoke of the people they had met at the concert at the Argyll rooms or praised Catalani’s singing in order to point up her hosts’ rustication in the county.
It was as though every word, every gesture, was precisely calculated to reinforce her idea of the relative standing of each person in the conversation.
Nor was Miss Bingley singular in this regard.
He had noticed the same behaviour with the Standleys, several weeks earlier, and those he had met in London before travelling north.
Society was a constant jostling for position, for advantage, to poke one’s head above the crowd, to be seen and acknowledged as higher and better.
He should probably eschew society and remain at Pemberley. At least there the game was— Well. He cast a glance at Hugh, who vied with Bingley to be the cynosure of Miss Bennet’s beaux yeux. Perhaps the game was not so different, after all, and was still a jostling for position.
Miss Elizabeth’s composure was admirable, but a gentleman should ensure it was not put to the test in such a manner.
Darcy scraped off the barnacle with a murmured excuse and a bow.
He asked Hugh to go ahead and alert the housekeeper to their arrival, and shepherded the party in Hugh’s wake along the long paved path to the door.
Mr Bennet was not there to see to his daughters’ comfort in a place that, from Miss Elizabeth’s story, held a significance both sweet and bitter. It behoved Darcy, as host, to take Mr Bennet’s place in that regard. It was a responsibility he was surprised to find he did not resent.