Chapter 3
PLAGUED WITH QUESTIONS
F erguson’s dining-parlour was always dingy.
More so presently with the light leaching out of the day.
The gloom rendered dinner muted, colourless.
It was at least cool. Blessed relief after standing about all afternoon in the August sun, staring fruitlessly at the ominous black fracture in Pemberley’s wall.
“I trust your mother is keeping well,” Darcy said to Mrs Ferguson.
“Remarkably well, all things considered. And Miss Darcy? I hope she is in good health.”
“Excellent health, thank you.”
“Did she have the opportunity to go to the seaside again this year—Ramsgate, was it?”
“No, she has been in town these past six months.” He felt no alarm at the mention of his sister’s summer activities.
That was new. Then again, a whole year had passed, and Georgiana’s brush with ruin remained a secret.
From all but one. And she had not shunned the acquaintance in revulsion.
“She may well go next summer, though. The sea air is far superior to London’s,” he added.
Dull words, but anything sufficed that would tame the churning of his mind.
“I should like to see the sea one day,” Mrs Ferguson mused. “’Tis difficult to imagine—a person must set eyes on it to comprehend, I suspect.”
“It is unlikely we shall be setting eyes on the sea any day soon, my dear,” her husband remarked. “Not with the work that’s needed at Pemberley now.”
Pemberley. Darcy shifted restlessly in his seat as Mrs Ferguson announced her leave-taking. He caught the tail end of a look between husband and wife. What it signified he knew not.
Once a servant had cleared the table and lit some candles, Ferguson poured two glasses of port and came to the point with gratifying brevity. “Were you satisfied with Mr Jacobs, sir? There are several other architects of sound reputation I could approach if you would prefer.”
“No, no—he will do. You have been very thorough in checking his references. And I have heard excellent reports of him amongst my own acquaintances. Would that he had proved inept. I should much rather he was wrong.”
Ferguson grimaced. “We can only hope one of his less troubling prognoses is found to be the cause. Indeed, he seemed disinclined to attribute the problem to the foundations. He remarked more than once on the area’s geology making movement in the ground unlikely.
To which I would add that Pemberley has stood on that spot for well over a hundred years without incident. ”
Darcy swirled the liquid in his glass and stared into it.
One-hundred-and-forty-eight years to be precise.
Six generations of Darcys. Six masters of Pemberley.
And only under his superintendence were the walls crumbling.
“There was an earthquake in 1795 that caused damage to buildings across the county. We thought Pemberley had escaped unscathed. I wonder now whether it did not.”
“Surely, if the foundations were compromised seventeen years ago, it would have caused problems before now.”
Darcy finished the last of his port and deposited the glass heavily on the table. “There is no profit in speculating. We shall have to wait and see what the investigations turn up. Have we enough labourers available for the work, or do you anticipate having to hire extra?”
“Trenches of the size Mr Jacobs was talking about will only take a few men to dig, a few more to cart away the spoil. Mr Howes ought to be able to spare enough of his gardeners. I shall have to hire a stonemason to work on revealing the lintels, though. And they will want scaffolding.”
“You have informed Matthis and Mrs Reynolds that no one is to enter that part of the house?”
“I have, and alternative rooms are being readied for those guests who would have been in that wing.”
Darcy nodded absently. Pemberley did not want for bedrooms, although some of the finest were in the east wing.
Those which, when not in use, were kept made up to exhibit to visitors.
Visitors such as those Mrs Reynolds had shown around earlier.
“The embargo applies to the servants as well, not just my guests.”
“Some of the footmen will need access, sir. To clear space for the workmen.”
“Granted, but in general, admittance should be kept to a minimum,” Darcy insisted.
“Of course. On the subject of your guests, should you prefer to postpone the work until they have left?”
His guests. Fifteen friends invited for the purpose of disguising the absence of one.
One who, against every expectation and all likelihood, was not absent at all.
“Let us see how disruptive it all proves once it has begun. Perhaps I shall curtail the gathering.” He found himself tapping his fingertips on the table and stopped.
“I ought to be going, Ferguson. The light is almost gone.”
His steward graciously agreed and, after wishing Mrs Ferguson goodnight and thanking them both for dinner, Darcy left.
They waved him off at the door. He walked to the end of the path and turned to touch his hat, then rounded the hedge and set off down the lane.
Twenty yards along it, he stopped walking, doubled over with his hands on his knees, and expelled all the air from his lungs in one forceful breath.
Elizabeth was here!
Maintaining his composure for the interminable hours since they parted had proved taxing to the point of bewilderment.
His mind had not ceased roiling, attempting over and again to dwell upon every detail of their encounter, yet he had not had a private moment to reflect on it from that instant to this.
Rather, he had been obliged to pore over complex architectural drawings, listen to Mr Jacobs’s catalogue of dire prognostications, and scrutinise, from every conceivable angle, the shocking fissure splintering Pemberley’s stonework.
Nevertheless, it was little more than half an hour after he had seen her—half an hour of pitiful distraction and soaring hope—before Darcy understood that he still loved her.
Regardless of what he had attempted to convince himself these past months, there was no refuting Elizabeth’s power to render him light of heart even as he received news of a potentially catastrophic structural failure at his ancestral home.
Light as his heart was, it was nevertheless plagued with questions—and he, wild with the need for answers.
Why had she come? What thought she of Pemberley?
Was it too much to hope that she had forgiven him?
He began walking again, his steps rapidly gaining pace as he passed the home farm and crossed the bridge.
They were on their travels, her uncle had said, visiting her aunt’s friends in Lambton.
Elizabeth had been emphatic in her assertions that she had been assured of his absence before agreeing to come.
She need not have taken such pains to convince him of it; he had known she was not expecting to see him the instant their eyes met.
Darcy huffed a small laugh of sympathy for her upon comprehending that she may not have been able to avoid the visit; her relations had likely wished it.
She had come under sufferance, then, and only after ascertaining he would not be there.
This he might have taken as proof that she despised him still, except he had never seen her so abashed.
Impertinent, yes; vexed, certainly—even embarrassed, but never humbled, never meek.
Darcy knew from painful experience that if Elizabeth remained angry with him, she would not have struggled to meet his eye.
She would have regarded him directly with the same undisguised resentment as during their last encounters in Kent.
He all but vaulted the stile before him on the path, a kernel of certainty unfurling in his mind that Elizabeth’s earlier discomfiture, rather than being founded on her ill opinion of him , instead signified a wish that he not think ill of her for coming.
A notion so ridiculous he almost laughed aloud.
There had been no choice but for him to relinquish all hope of marrying her after his disastrous proposal, for she had spurned any possibility of an alliance.
Yet the regard in which he held her had not diminished, for neither had any of her fine qualities.
In coming to Pemberley, she had given him yet more to admire, for none of her previous enmity had been in evidence that afternoon.
Unlike him—and the implacable resentment to which he had so arrogantly professed at Netherfield—Elizabeth was not above clemency.
How anyone could forgive the vilification of their family, situation, and worth was beyond him.
Such, to his eternal shame, he had inflicted upon her.
And such she had apparently forgiven, at least enough to greet him with civility, to converse without bitterness, and to consent to be introduced to his sister.
Darcy bounded up the steps to the lawn and strode towards the house, his mind leaping erratically from imagining Georgiana’s delight, to calculating what time she would arrive the next day, to envisioning how the interview might go, to revelling in the possibilities such an introduction must portend.
He had felt sad for so long that such unbridled anticipation was dizzying.
He wondered what Elizabeth was thinking at that moment, and whether she was as unsettled as he by their chance encounter.
He hoped at the very least that she was not dismayed by it.
The tentative smile she had bestowed upon him as her carriage departed gave him reason to hope not.
It was unlike any she had directed at him before—sincere, with neither teasing nor challenge.
The desire to secure that cordiality, to permanently remedy her ill opinion of him—perchance to nurture a still warmer sentiment—manifested as a fire in his belly that demanded action.
If he thought she would receive him, he would have turned on his heel and walked all the way to Lambton that instant.
He was obliged to satisfy himself with musing how soon Georgiana might be persuaded to go there after she arrived home.
And whether she might be better placed than he to extend an invitation to dinner, for he would be bitterly disappointed if Elizabeth refused as she had done his earlier offer of refreshments.
There were few scenarios he had imagined more times than welcoming Elizabeth to Pemberley.
He wished the privilege of showing her the house had been his.
Interrogating the housekeeper was out of the question, but Darcy longed to know what Elizabeth had said, how she had looked, and which rooms had pleased her best as she was shown around.
In the fleeting second before she noticed him on the lawn, she had been staring pensively at the building, as though attempting to make out its character.
Just as she did every person she met. Darcy stopped walking and regarded it also, attempting to guess what conclusions she had drawn.
The sun had long since dipped below the horizon, and the moon was barely out.
All the windows of this newly deserted part of the house were black.
In the gloom, the fault that criss-crossed the wall was not visible; night had plunged the whole elevation into complete darkness.
All Darcy could see was a vast black void, as though the entire east wing were missing.
He shivered slightly and walked indoors to begin making plans for the morrow.