Chapter 15 #2
“My father would have, but he was too ill—dying, in fact. The task fell to me, but as soon as she was set atop that old pony, Georgiana did not so much as tremble. She sat well, when she was healthy enough for the exercise, that is.” To his surprise, it was more of a relief to speak of his sister rather than something that gave him pain. “Do you ride, Mrs Darcy?”
“We had one mare at Longbourn, and she was often wanted for work on the farm. There were five daughters of near the same age needing to learn, and between its work and us needing to take turns, I never learnt how to go faster than a foot’s pace.
I grew tired of waiting for lessons and decided that my own two feet would get me farther much faster. ”
She took the blue riding habit from him and laid it across her lap, admiring the fabric as she spoke, her fingers touching the frogs ornamenting the front.
“Should you like to resume riding? I can have you properly seated if you like.” He did not have a horse here that could carry a woman, but he could have a mare at the lodge within a week.
“I would have enjoyed riding if ever I had learnt, but stabling another horse is a terrible expense, to say nothing of another horse for the servant to ride to accompany me.”
“I would readily teach you and ride with—”
“It is a foolish expense for a woman who will be dead by September.”
“I would give you any happiness I could in your time left to you.” He meant it, more deeply than he had ever before considered. She was going to die, and if he could not love her, he would fulfil the rest of the wedding vows: to comfort her, honour her, and keep her, and forsake all others.
He could not describe the look she gave him. It was not quite disbelief, yet it was far from sad. “That is generous, but I am not well enough for the exercise. It would tax my heart, and we both know I cannot dance even two sets without suffering a painful episode.”
Darcy bowed his head. Her death might be at any moment, and it would not be without suffering.
“Mr Darcy, would you mind at all if I had a gown made from Georgiana’s riding habit?”
“Of course not. Would you like it dyed black, or grey for half-mourning?” It was not impossible that Mrs Darcy might live long enough for grey or lavender.
She ran her fingertips slowly over the pale merino. “No, I like the celestial blue, and Georgiana selected it, and you were kind enough to buy it for her. I want you to bury me in it.”
Mrs Darcy looked at him with the determination in her eyes that only someone resigned to their own death could possess.
He had seen that calm resignation in his mother’s eyes, his father’s, and his sister’s.
He could do nothing but agree, and she smiled her thanks.
He then remembered why he had sought her out.
“In looking at Georgiana’s papers, I found some memorandums, amongst which she desires that one of her gold chains be given to you, and a lock of hair to be set for you.
Would you be so good as to say whether you prefer a brooch or a ring?
I have my own commission to be sent to the jeweller in town through Fitzwilliam, and will see to them both in the same order. ”
“I would not have you waste the money or a lock of Georgiana’s hair on someone who—”
“A brooch or a ring, Mrs Darcy,” he said firmly, “to honour your sister’s memory?”
“A brooch, if you insist.”
“Georgiana insisted.”
Mrs Darcy nodded, and he would have then left if she had not called him back. “What shall we do about your friends and relations? In a month or six weeks, you would be expected to be home from Madeira after burying Georgiana.”
“I had thought to stay in Hertfordshire for the present. We need not decide—”
“You will stay until I die? To save yourself from explaining how you found a wife in Madeira or from having to say you married a woman you met as soon as your ship reached Portsmouth?” Darcy was unnerved by her perception.
She shook her head and stood. “You need not look stricken. It is a perfectly reasonable idea, and I am reasonable enough to accept it.”
“I thought you might also be made happy by our staying here. You need not leave Miss Lucas or Miss Bennet, and your elder sister and her family intend to come in September.”
“If I live that long.” She gave him a weak smile. “You remind me that I must make my own will and bequests. I know I can trust you to see them carried out.”
Darcy realised a week after the funeral how Mrs Darcy was spending her time now that Georgiana was gone.
While he was shut up in his study writing letters, Mrs Darcy spent the mornings engaged in the housework he wished she would leave to the servants he hired for the tasks.
She hastened to make new curtains to better furnish the parlour.
She attempted to salvage the strawberry beds.
The day after the woman came in to do washing, Mrs Darcy got the clothes dried, and on the third she helped to finish the ironing.
He supposed she would in another month of practice have the tasks not only done, but done well.
At least she has stayed out of the kitchen.
It distressed him that the wife of Mr Darcy was engaged in servants’ tasks, but he could not admonish her.
As a woman, she was isolated from most society while in mourning.
Steady, active employment—even if she was not good at it—was a distraction from grief.
He wished the hours he spent in correspondence eased his own heartache.
I ought to pass more time with my wife.
Darcy knew that while he got on with Mrs Darcy, he ought to make better work of engaging her and comforting her. They both needed to mourn, and it was best done together, but he suspected the grief would linger if they had no conversation beyond his sister’s memory.
He found his wife in the dining room writing letters. The small lodge did not have a proper breakfast room, nor did her bedroom have a writing table, and Mrs Darcy clearly refused to use the one that was in Georgiana’s room.
“Did you need me?” She held the sealing wax over the candle. “As you can see, I have finished.”
“No, I only wondered where you had gone. I did not realise I spent so many hours writing today.”
“You are an industrious letter writer for a man. Was there a lengthy discussion of field sports between you and your gentlemen friends?”
“Letters of business.”
She nodded, and when she looked up, she seemed surprised that he was still there.
“I had not written to my aunt and uncle since I announced our marriage, and I had not told them about Georgiana. I have kept silent on telling Jane much, at least until you are at liberty to tell all the world that you are returned from Madeira, but the Gardiners are too far away for the details to matter.”
Darcy sat at the other side of the table. “This is your mother’s brother, who is a tradesman in Cheapside?”
Mrs Darcy sealed her letter and gave him a flat look.
“You sound as though it is beneath you to have a wife whose relations live in Gracechurch Street and are engaged in a respectable line of trade. I had no idea you were so abominably proud. My uncle Gardiner is a gentlemanlike man who has an income of two thousand pounds a year.”
Darcy repressed a sigh as he remembered he was supposed to be a man on the edge of gentility.
“I have my pride, the same as any man, but I was not brought up so high that I cannot befriend someone of the middling ranks. One’s manner and conduct are as important to me as rank or whether one’s income comes from genteel means.
” Upon further reflection, he supposed that the former might be more important to him than the latter.
“I still say that you sound as though you think you might be demeaned by a connexion to trade.”
“You have sketched my character incorrectly. I have had a steady friendship with a man whose fortune was acquired through trade. He inherited property worth one hundred thousand pounds and has yet to purchase an estate.” Mrs Darcy now looked at him with less annoyance and more interest. “In fact, it was his intention to purchase that led me to Meryton. He cannot make up his mind as to what county to settle in, and was tempted by recommendation to lease Netherfield House last autumn. Bingley has the highest opinion of my judgement. However, I never made the time to encourage him to look at it because I was occupied in seeing what treatment could be had for Georgiana.”
Darcy thought of those months last autumn that he despairingly spent trying to find a cure for his consumptive sister, and cursing both the man who put her in a distressing situation as well as the innocent evidence of that liaison.
How I want Wickham to suffer! The wrath he felt deep in his angry heart burned anew, despite his best intentions to suppress it.
“And you remembered Netherfield when you intended to retire in isolation with your sister during her confinement?”
Darcy started. Mrs Darcy was looking at him intently, but he could not tell if she was prompting him to hear the story, or because she inferred his dark thoughts and hoped to draw him out. He was surprised by how he hoped that she wanted to be a comfort to him.
“Aside from London, I have no acquaintance for fifty miles, and its location near to town suited me, but the great house was—the lodge suited my purpose. Fortunately, Bingley has many friends who are eager to show him hospitality, and he never pursued Netherfield.”
“That would be quite a meeting at the next assembly if your friend saw you passing through the set when he thought you to be in Madeira.”