Chapter Thirteen
Darcy told her at breakfast, looking up from a letter he had just opened.
“My uncle and aunt Matlock propose to come to us on Thursday for a visit of some few weeks, if it is convenient.”
“Of course,” Elizabeth said, because what else could she say?
The Matlocks were Darcy’s closest family.
Lord Matlock was his mother’s brother, Lady Matlock the woman who had tried to be a mother to Georgiana after Lady Anne died.
They had every right to visit. Darcy clearly wanted them here.
Elizabeth could not explain that the prospect of houseguests filled her with a dread that had nothing to do with the housekeeping and everything to do with the fact that two more sharp-eyed observers in the house meant two more people she would have to hide from.
Georgiana brightened visibly. “Aunt Margaret! Oh, I am so glad. She will want to hear about the renovations of the rose garden, and my music studies, and... everything.” She looked at Elizabeth, looked away again quickly.
“She will want to hear about everything regardless of whether we wish to tell her,” Darcy said, but he was smiling.
Kitty caught Elizabeth’s eye across the table. The look was brief, but it said everything: more people, less room.
Elizabeth spent the three days before their arrival with Mrs Reynolds, going through the household preparations with the thoroughness that Pemberley expected and that Elizabeth was learning to provide.
It had become the best part of her day, these morning sessions in the housekeeper’s sitting room.
Mrs Reynolds had a way of making the vast machinery of Pemberley’s household seem manageable, breaking it down into decisions that Elizabeth could weigh and approve and, increasingly, make on her own.
The menus for the week had been planned already, but Mrs Reynolds walked her through the adjustments that must be made because of the expected visitors: Lord Matlock preferred his beef underdone and could not abide turnips; Lady Matlock drank only bohea tea and took it without sugar; both were accustomed to a fire in their dressing room regardless of the season.
“You know them well,” Elizabeth said.
“They have been visiting Pemberley since Lady Anne married the old master, ma’am.
Lord Matlock came for the shooting every autumn, and Lady Matlock came whenever Lady Anne needed her, which was often.
They were as close as sisters.” Mrs Reynolds paused in her counting of the silver, and her face softened in the way it often did when she spoke of the past. “It will be good to have them here again. The house is better when the family gathers.”
Elizabeth thought about what that phrase meant in a house where half the family was dead, and said nothing.
The truth was that she had come to rely on Mrs Reynolds in ways she had not anticipated.
Not merely for the practical running of the household, though that would have been enough, but for the steadiness the woman offered, the unflappable competence that was slowly turning Elizabeth from an imposter playing at being mistress of a great estate into a woman who might, in time, actually become one.
Mrs Reynolds never patronised her. She never implied that Elizabeth was out of her depth, even when Elizabeth clearly was.
She simply presented the information, offered her opinion when asked, and trusted Elizabeth to make the right decision.
What Mrs Reynolds did not know, and what Elizabeth could never tell her, was that she had a silent partner in the business of running Pemberley.
Nana had opinions about everything from the rotation of bed linens to the arrangement of flowers in the front hall, and she communicated them to Elizabeth with a directness that Mrs Reynolds’s sensitivity could only approximate.
The result was that Elizabeth often arrived at her morning meetings already knowing which rooms needed attention, which servants were unhappy, and which supplier was overcharging for candles, information she presented as her own observations and which Mrs Reynolds received with quiet, growing respect.
It was dishonest, in its way. Another deception layered onto the ones Elizabeth was already maintaining.
But it was also, she had to admit, remarkably effective.
Between Nana’s centuries of household management and Mrs Reynolds’s thirty years of practical experience, Pemberley ran like a clock, and Elizabeth was learning to read its workings faster than anyone could reasonably have expected of a country gentleman’s daughter married barely a month.
“I believe we are ready, ma’am,” Mrs Reynolds said, tucking her lists away with a satisfied smile.
“Thank you, Mrs Reynolds. I could not manage any of this without you.”
“You could, ma’am. You would simply manage it differently.
” Mrs Reynolds hesitated, then added, carefully, as she always was with personal observations, “Lady Anne used to say that a house does not need a perfect mistress. It needs one who pays attention. You pay attention, Mrs Darcy. The house knows it.”
Elizabeth thanked her for the immense compliment, went upstairs to change, found Nana already stationed at her parlour window. The Matlocks’ carriage had been spotted on the Lambton road, and Nana had no intention of missing the arrival.
“Half past three,” Nana said, checking the mantel clock.
“She is punctual, I will give her that.” This was, according to Nana, exactly the time Lady Matlock preferred to arrive anywhere, because it allowed her to assess the household’s afternoon arrangements, pass judgement on the state of the tea, and still have time to dress for dinner.
“She has been doing it for thirty years,” Nana said, watching from the parlour window.
She had been watching arrivals at Pemberley for considerably longer than that.
“The first time she visited, she was newly married and trying desperately to be impressive. She wore a silk gown entirely unsuitable for the country and spent the first evening picking burrs from her hem. I liked her immediately. Anyone who tries that hard and fails that thoroughly has character.”
Elizabeth said, “You will behave while they are here.”
“I always behave.”
“You will not stand behind Lady Matlock making faces. You will not rearrange things in their bedroom. You will not do whatever it is you did to the dining-room curtains, which Mrs Reynolds has now rehung twice.”
Nana drew herself up. “The curtains were wrong. They are still wrong. I’ve been trying to communicate this to Mrs Reynolds for a fortnight, and the woman is being uncharacteristically obtuse about it.”
“The curtains are fine.”
“The curtains are an affront to the memory of everyone who has ever lived in this house, and I include the ones who are still living in it. But very well. I shall restrain myself. For the duration of the visit.” She paused. “The curtains, however, will be addressed afterward.”
Elizabeth left Nana to her grievances and went down to the front hall, where Darcy was already waiting, Georgiana beside him looking excited, Kitty a step behind them in her best afternoon dress, standing rigidly straight.
Mr Graves had also positioned himself near the door, Elizabeth noticed; he stood at attention with the solemn dignity of a butler who had never quite accepted that the household could receive visitors without his supervision.
The carriage drew up. A footman opened the door. And Lady Matlock descended as though Pemberley had been built specifically to receive her.
She was tall, fair-haired, handsome in a way that owed more to the force of her personality than to the arrangement of her features.
She wore a travelling dress of deep blue that managed to look elegant despite the dust of the road, and she took in the front of Pemberley with one swift, comprehensive glance. It appeared to pass.
“Fitzwilliam,” she said, kissing Darcy on both cheeks with brisk affection.
“You look well. Marriage agrees with you; I said it would, and I was right, as I invariably am. Georgiana, my darling girl, you have grown again; I shall have to speak to someone about it.” She turned to Elizabeth, and the assessment in her eyes was thorough but not unkind.
“Mrs Darcy. How good it is to see you again.” She stepped forward, took Elizabeth’s hand in hers, squeezed gently, a slight smile curving her lips.
“You look well. I think Pemberley agrees with you.”
“How could anyone not be happy at Pemberley?” Elizabeth said, quite earnestly, earning a wider smile from Lady Matlock.
Lord Matlock emerged from the carriage behind his wife, unhurried. He had long since accepted that his entrances would be overshadowed by hers, and seemed perfectly content with the arrangement. His face was pleasant and shrewd. He listened more than he spoke, and he remembered everything he heard.
“Darcy,” he said, shaking his nephew’s hand with genuine warmth. “The place looks well. Better than well, in fact. What have you done to the grounds?”
“Elizabeth has been working with the gardeners on the south border,” Darcy said, and the pride in his voice was quiet but unmistakable.
“Has she? Good. It needed doing.” Lord Matlock turned to Elizabeth and bowed, and his eyes were kind. “Mrs Darcy. A pleasure to see you again. I hope we do not alarm you by descending on you with little notice. We can, I fear, appear quite alarming, but I promise we are not.”
“I heard that,” Lady Matlock said, already walking toward the house with Georgiana’s arm through hers. “And I absolutely contradict it. We are exactly as alarming as we appear. It is one of our better qualities.”