Chapter 10 Wilful Misunderstandings #6
“Not at all. She was certainly severe on me.” She wrapped her arm about him and nestled closer. After a moment’s consideration, she enquired, “Was I uncivil to Lady Ashby?”
“Indeed not! Quite the reverse. Why?”
“Jane thought I was.”
He made no response though he adjusted his shoulders restlessly. His silent agitation spoke volumes.
“Pray, be not angry with her. I believe—I hope—it was only concern that made her speak thus. She is anxious I should not be disliked by my new family.” She thought it unwise to add that Jane feared for the longevity of his affections in the face of any prolonged antagonism.
He gave a sardonic huff. “I should not like it if my sister married and suffered the same scorn from her new family as you have received from mine, but if she did, I should not blame her.”
Elizabeth raised herself onto her elbow and looked down at him.
“I can tolerate your family’s disdain with perfect indifference, but I am less willing to see them despise you because they cannot like me.
Clearly, I must make some effort.” She kissed him lightly on the tip of his nose.
“And you never know—in ten or twenty years, I might even persuade a few of them to like me.”
He lifted her hand from where it lay on his chest and kissed her fingers.
“Lady Catherine already likes you. It is why she despises you so violently. It is exceedingly inconvenient to her that she should esteem the person responsible for ruining all her plans. And I wish you would not waste a moment more of your time on my cousin’s ridiculous wife.
We can live very well without Lady Ashby’s good opinion. ”
Elizabeth let out a long sigh. “Both our families seem determined to make us pay for our happiness. How long ere we leave? I would go home!”
In answer, he wrapped his arms around her and rolled her onto her back, gazing at her fiercely with eyes cast jet-black by shadows—or fervour, she knew not which. Then he stretched over her to the nightstand and snubbed out the candle, surrendering them to the intimate secrets of the darkness.
Wednesday 22 July 1812, Derbyshire
Mrs Reynolds waited in a vanguard of staff on Pemberley’s front steps and watched the approaching carriage with trepidation.
She had been employed at Pemberley for four-and-twenty years and had never been given cause for complaint.
Yet, whomever Mr Darcy had chosen as his wife had the potential to affect her own life and work significantly, and she wished, at her age, that neither would be too grievously disrupted.
On either side of her were Mr Barnaby and Mr Maltravers, neither of whose thoughts on the master’s marriage was known to her.
As steward and butler respectively, both men were of such assiduous loyalty as all but prevented either of them having an opinion on the matter, which left her alone in her nervousness.
Fortunately, her first impressions were favourable.
Though very young, Mrs Darcy seemed friendly, unaffected and quaintly handsome.
The master certainly appeared vastly taken with her, his manner well pleased as he introduced her to the household.
In short order, the presentation was complete, the majority of the staff dismissed, and their party removed within doors.
“Would it please you if dinner was served at six, Mrs Darcy?” Mrs Reynolds enquired.
“It would please me better if it were served at five,” Mr Darcy replied. “Our breakfast was abysmal.”
Mrs Darcy regarded her husband with obvious amusement, but he either did not notice or chose to ignore it, turning instead to speak to Mr Barnaby and Mr Maltravers. Miss Darcy excused herself to change, and Mrs Annesley went with her, leaving Mrs Reynolds alone with the new mistress.
“We have been here but a few minutes, and already we are making more work for you,” said the latter. “You will wish us gone again by morning.”
“Oh, no, ma’am. We are all hopeful Mr Darcy will choose to be here more often now. Pemberley is never quite the same when he is away from home.”
“He is well liked, then?”
“Oh, yes! The best landlord, the best master that ever lived.”
Mrs Darcy’s eyes flashed with something Mrs Reynolds did not recognise but which rendered the young lady uncommonly pretty. “I understand you have known him for many years.”
“Aye, ma’am, since he was four.”
“And never had a cross word from him in your life, I imagine?”
“Never!” she answered proudly. “But then, I have always observed that they who are good-natured when children are good-natured when they grow up.”
This further animated Mrs Darcy’s countenance. “Was he good-natured as a boy?”
The master cast his wife a rather suspicious look then, but he continued in his conversation with the men, so Mrs Reynolds continued hers with the mistress. “He was, ma’am. The sweetest-tempered, most generous-hearted boy in the world.”
Mrs Darcy broke into a dazzling smile and even laughed a little. “It is as much to your credit as his that you speak so highly of him, Mrs Reynolds.”
“I say no more than the truth,” she demurred, feeling suddenly foolish to be recommending the lady’s own husband to her.
“Indeed, and the truth often bears repeating,” Mrs Darcy replied with an enigmatic smile.
“If you are ready, then?”
The housekeeper jumped slightly at Mr Darcy’s interruption, though the mistress seemed not in the least startled and answered very equably that she was.
She took his arm, and as one, they turned to ascend the grand staircase, so easy together that they looked for all the world as though they had done it every day of their lives thus far.
“Slow down! You are going too fast for me to see anything!” Elizabeth said, laughing as Darcy all but dragged her through a maze of splendid rooms.
He did not reply. She began to think he might be displeased in some way when he abruptly pulled her sideways through a door.
She had barely time to deduce the room must be his bedchamber before he had torn off his coat, plucked her from her feet, thrown her onto his bed and planted himself firmly atop her.
“What are you about?” she cried.
“I could ask the same of you,” he replied, leaning to kiss her neck. “You cannot pretend ignorance with me, wife. I well know how you look when you are being sly.” He peppered kisses across her breastbone. “What mischief were you up to just now?”
Elizabeth bit her lip, chagrined to have been discovered teasing the housekeeper and too distracted by Darcy’s wandering tongue to think of how she might explain it in a favourable light.
He lifted his head to look at her. “You will not tell me?”
His eyes danced with a playfulness she had never seen there before, and the slight curl of his lips gave him such an appearance of rakishness she wondered with some relish how he intended to extract her secret from her. She gave him a smirk of her own. “I think not.”
He raised an eyebrow. Unhurriedly, he lifted her arms above her head and pinned them there with one hand then smoothed the other down her side.
His head he lowered until their lips almost touched—then he took her utterly and completely by surprise by digging his fingers into her side and mercilessly tickling her.
She shrieked and bucked beneath him, laughing in astonishment.
The illustrious and stately Mr Darcy surely did not tickle people! She implored him to stop.
“Not until you share your joke.”
He moved his excruciating touch to under her arm, provoking her to squeal and writhe anew.
“Very well! I yield! It was Mr Bingley’s fault! Pray, desist!”
He did and squinted at her dubiously. “Bingley?”
“Aye! He was telling me about Mrs Reynolds and did a little impersonation of her. It transpires it was an uncommonly good one.”
“And wherefore were you discussing my housekeeper with Bingley?”
She wrinkled her nose, feeling a little embarrassed. “Because we were speaking of you.”
He looked momentarily surprised, then insufferably smug.
She attempted to tug her hands from his grasp that she might tickle him, but he was having none of it.
Still pinning her arms in place, he wrapped his other hand beneath her and brought his lips to hers for a blistering kiss, banishing all thoughts of retribution from her mind.
She signalled her surrender with a groan of pleasure, and he promptly tickled her other side, making her yelp against his lips.
“What has come over you?”
He pulled away and smirked at her, his countenance, if possible, even more handsome than usual for his present liveliness. “I am home,” he said simply, as though informing her of nothing less obvious than that day broke when the sun rose.
Noises from beyond a door caught both their attention.
He rolled his eyes, kissed her forehead and removed from the bed, tugging his attire straight, then strode purposefully to the door to speak with whoever was without.
She watched enthralled as her adoring and playful husband of moments before reverted effortlessly to the commanding, dignified and extraordinarily alluring master of Pemberley.
“As am I,” she whispered, full in the belief she was the most fortunate woman alive.
Wednesday 29 July 1812, Derbyshire
Elizabeth’s delight with her new home knew no bounds, though perhaps most precious to her was the fondness with which Darcy introduced her to every part of it.
A full week had not been enough for her to learn all its passageways and rooms, but the orangery and the woods around the lake were already settled as two of her favourite places in all of Pemberley.
This morning, at her request, breakfast had been laid out on the veranda outside one and overlooking the other.
“What news from Grosvenor Street?”
Darcy ceased scowling at his letter and looked up. “I believe Bingley is taking your sister to visit his family, but it is high Dutch for the most part.”