Chapter 8 Ides of March #2
“It would be my greatest pleasure, and I am aware Mrs Reynolds has already made a good start.”
Happy to have something to do, waste of time or not, she said, “Could you ask Mrs Reynolds to join us in the library so we may get started?”
“Shall we say an hour, madam?”
“That would be lovely.”
The rest of March and April went by quickly as the weather continued to improve. Mrs Darcy now had things to tutor her students upon, which had expanded beyond Noah and Molly to include two more maids and two footmen, with the butler and housekeeper’s permission, and things of her own to learn.
The first order of business was to learn to ride better.
She had the basics of course, but Longbourn only had three horses.
Jane liked riding much more than she did, so Elizabeth had never bothered much.
Jennings assured her that riding was an essential skill for a mistress, especially in the rugged landscape they occupied, and it was something Mr Darcy had specifically spelled out that she could do as much as she liked.
This turned out to be the most pleasurable part of her week, because after she had been instructed for a fortnight, she could wander about the estate at her leisure, so long as she was accompanied by a groom.
She could not take Molly or Noah, but the stablemaster, who thought Jennings a newcomer, seemed to enjoy her company.
Mr Longman was happy to explain anything and everything she wanted to know about the estate, so long as it was out of doors.
He freely admitted that after over thirty years in the employ of the Darcys, he could not find his way to a room any farther inside the house than the kitchen on a bet, though Mrs Darcy suspected he was teasing her.
She also spent considerable time with Mr Bartlet, since he was the only person she could really discuss literature with.
With his aid, she even found a young pianoforte master who thought that boasting of instructing Mrs Darcy would be good enough for his business that he offered her deep discounts, so long as he was allowed to teach her on the new pianoforte Mr Darcy bought for his sister.
Elizabeth thought it a shame that said sister had never even seen it, let alone played it, but since none of that was her fault, she did not worry.
She asked Mrs Reynolds about the sister, and learned she was Kitty’s age, and staying with relatives until her brother returned.
Mrs Reynolds seemed ready to praise the younger lady to the skies, but Mrs Darcy was not particularly interested in second-hand impressions.
She thought she could form her own opinions, should the brother deign to introduce them.
The rest of her instruction turned out to be both anticlimactic and frustrating at the same time.
On the anticlimactic front, she found that household accounts were household accounts.
Except for the amounts, Mrs Reynolds’ record keeping was indistinguishable from what she learned at Longbourn, which was done the same as it had been for five generations.
She ruefully reflected that she did not have a dowry because her mother routinely overspent her allowance, but Mrs Bennet did not do so accidentally.
In truth, her mother had a full grasp on the amounts, and she overspent because she could.
She already knew the mistress would ordinarily visit tenants, but once again, a tenant visit was a tenant visit.
She and Jane had been visiting Longbourn’s since Jane came out at fifteen, so Elizabeth had already been visiting tenants for more than six years.
She knew what was expected when a woman was with child, someone died, a roof leaked, a barn burned, a child was born or died, or any of the other things that happened in life.
Pemberley was noticeably more generous than Longbourn, and had considerably more tenants, but otherwise, all was about the same.
There was not much Mrs Reynolds could tell her except the specifics of who was who.
There was no way Elizabeth would be able to remember all of that without meeting the tenants in person, so, other than learning about the general layout of the farms and other holdings, there was not much new.
Derbyshire was colder than Hertfordshire, and they had more sheep than she was accustomed to, but as far as the mistress was concerned, none of that mattered.
A Derbyshire sheep was little different from a Hertfordshire sheep, after all; and much the same could be said for cows and pigs.
Under Mrs Reynolds’ watchful eye, Elizabeth learned the specifics of the house and saw more than one room that the former Mrs Darcy had left decorated in a manner that practically gave her hives. Other than that, she knew about all Mrs Reynolds could teach her by Mayday.
Her lessons about what a mistress, or even the master, should do in such a large house, given by Mr Jennings, turned out to be as easy as the others.
Like any mistress, she had to understand the dynamics of the surrounding families, but unfortunately, Jennings was unable (or more likely unwilling) to be explicit.
The estate was vast, but geography dictated that their social interactions were mostly limited to the estates close to Pemberley, and in the end, the families numbered only about thirty, which was slightly more than Elizabeth had known in Hertfordshire.
She learned the basics about the families, but without meeting and evaluating each, she knew little more than which ones to be wary of. Since she was already wary of everyone, that did not change her outlook appreciably.
All of that was the anticlimactic part, and she was happy to have learned it all with so little effort.
She had a very slight and short-lived bit of pride when she discovered that her mother was not entirely silly, but that feeling only lasted until she remembered the six weeks of the Bingley party’s visit to Netherfield, and especially how it ended.
No feelings of pride survived those recollections.
Surprisingly enough, the real lessons about the neighbourhood came from Mr Bartlet, and those were the frustrating parts. Mr Bartlet had no qualms about describing the families in detail. That was useful, but again, hard to remember without connecting faces to names.
What he did teach her that was frustrating though, was the one requirement for the mistress of a grand estate that she could not fudge.
The mistress was supposed to bring fortune and connexions, to increase the family’s consequence.
She had neither. A mistress should know how to entertain, which was no more complicated than calling on tenants, but she had to know who to invite and how to deal with them.
A true mistress came from a long line of similar ladies.
Every interaction might carry a shadow of similar interactions from generations past. Every person she met would evaluate her for dress, comportment, wealth, and connexions—and find her wanting.
There was just no way she would ever be able to boast of the type of lineage that was the only coin of the realm in the ton.
She would be considered, at best, a young hoyden who had done well in snagging the Master of Pemberley, but otherwise of no importance.
Worse yet, Mr Bartlet said that all the ladies passed over, or their parents, might have a vindictive streak.
He assumed there were already rumours flying in town and in the local drawing rooms about her, and it would not take much to fan those embers into flames.
Elizabeth dearly wished she had understood that before her marriage. There was not much she could have done to avoid her fate, but she might have at least understood her husband’s reluctance better.
Over time, Elizabeth became close to Mr Bartlet, a widower for twenty years, and between them, she learned an enormous amount.
Once she could ride well, she made her way into Lambton every other day, and she found it to be more like home than Pemberley ever would be.
She was not explicit about the status of her mourning.
It had been long enough she could have gone into half-mourning if she had any dresses she could dye in grey colours.
She did not, so she kept her blacks, but decided visiting the shops not to be a terrible problem, and she even thought up some ways she might do some business with the bookseller.