Chapter 41
UNWELCOME HOUSEGUESTS
E lizabeth was sorely tempted to laugh but thought better of it. Darcy looked about as amused as a man just arrived at the gallows. This served her right for complaining that Branxcombe Court had been too quiet!
“Georgiana, perhaps you ought to let your brother and me deal with this. Why do not you run upstairs and change?”
Georgiana required no convincing and all but ran across the hall.
Darcy waited only until she reached the stairs before he began to rage. “Of all the insolent, presumptuous—Who in their right minds turns up uninvited to the house of a newly married couple in the midst of a major building restoration without sending word?”
“Lady Catherine did not invent the notion of unwelcome houseguests. She may claim the honour of being our first, but I doubt she will be our last. You may rest assured that the only reason my father has not yet shown his face is because he knows your library is packed away into crates.”
Darcy was unmoved. “I shall tell her to leave.”
“Let us at least find out why she has come. She did help me secure Mrs Lovell after all. She may be more tractable than she was in Hertfordshire.”
She did laugh at the look Darcy gave her in response to that. He really was proficient at exuding disdain. “Come. We shall get nowhere standing about trying to guess at her purpose. Let us ask her why she is here.”
Lady Catherine did not mince her words. “To judge for myself exactly how terrible a mistake my nephew has made.”
“Might I suggest that you would have more time to make your assessment if you did not immediately provoke him into evicting you from the house?” Elizabeth replied with cool composure.
“You have lost none of your impertinence I see!”
“ Your ladyship would speak of impertinence?” Darcy replied incredulously.
Elizabeth placed a hand on his arm and tried to disarm him with a look, but she could see straight away it had not worked. He continued to seethe as she spoke. “Lady Catherine, you have travelled a long way. Can I offer you some refreshments?”
Her ladyship reluctantly conceded that she would accept some tea, adding unhelpfully, “Since your servants did not see fit to offer me any such courtesy while I waited for you.”
Elizabeth rang the bell then turned to Lady Catherine. “We are in a period of upheaval. I know your ladyship is sensible enough to comprehend that there may be the odd interruption to the smooth running of things.”
“That is a sanguine evaluation of the situation, Mrs Darcy. ‘Upheaval’ implies a temporary inconvenience, not one that lasts until death do you part.”
Darcy’s countenance had darkened alarmingly. “You know perfectly well Elizabeth was referring to the problems with the house.”
“Do I?” his aunt retorted. “It seems to me that your wife has more foresight than you, Darcy. She is at least aware of the turmoil surrounding her. You seem blind to every dire consequence of this scandalous alliance.”
“I am painfully aware of the turmoil surrounding us. I do not need it pointed out to me.”
Elizabeth listened to them rail at each other, her mind racing to think of a way to prevent an all-out war, when the door opened, and James poked his head into the room.
She hastened to him and whispered, urgently, “Please have some tea sent up. Ask Mrs Lovell to come too. But first, find Mr Ferguson, and tell him to invent an emergency. I do not care what it is, but it must require Mr Darcy’s immediate presence. Do you understand?”
He nodded and hastened away.
“And what do you propose by coming here?” Darcy was saying when she turned back to the room. “Do you think you can somehow undo my marriage?”
“Would that were possible! Alas, I cannot work miracles.”
“I see. I must conclude, then, that your design is to burn every bridge that exists between us to ensure we need never speak again?”
“It would be better if we could all remain reasonable,” Elizabeth tried, to no avail. She only drew Lady Catherine’s ire back upon herself.
“Oh, but I was reasonable while I accounted to my friend the Marchioness of Shrewsbury, why my nephew had overlooked my daughter in favour of a penniless nobody from Hertfordshire. I was the epitome of reason when Lady Alcroft uninvited me from her soiree.”
“Lady Shrewsbury, who slighted Anne at court?” Darcy replied angrily. “Lady Alcroft whose husband could not trouble himself to attend Sir Lewis’s funeral? These are not your friends, madam. Are you truly more concerned with appeasing them than looking to my happiness?”
James cleared his throat from the doorway. “Pardon the intrusion, Mr Darcy. Mr Ferguson has requested that you join him at the dig site.”
“Tell him I shall come presently,” Darcy snapped.
James glanced fretfully at Elizabeth.
“Did he say it was urgent?” she asked him. James nodded feverishly, making her feel bad for having embroiled him in the first place. To her husband, she said, “I think you ought to go. I can manage things here.”
Darcy did not move immediately, but at length he muttered what Elizabeth did not doubt was an imprecation and took a step towards his aunt.
“Do not allow it to slip your mind in my absence that Elizabeth is the mistress of this house. If I hear that you have caused her more insult, I will personally see you turned out.” Then he left, and it felt for a moment as though he had taken all the air from the room with him.
Lady Catherine recovered first. “A few weeks of marriage to you and he has become a savage! Never have I heard such language from him.”
“I think it fair to say that he was equally dismayed by your behaviour. It was hardly civil.” Mindful of her aunt Wallis’s recent advice to make an ally of her ladyship if she could, Elizabeth forced herself to adopt a more collected tone.
“I can see his anger has surprised you. Perhaps you thought he would tolerate your unashamed invective against his wife, and indeed, he might have done had he married a woman for whom he felt nothing. But you must know that is not the case.”
“I cannot deny that he is completely under your spell. Do you care what injury you have done to my relationship with him?”
That Lady Catherine thought anybody other than herself was responsible for the schism with her nephew only demonstrated the magnitude of the conceit Elizabeth was battling. Nevertheless, she persevered.
“Please, let us sit.” When they were both seated—something that took longer than it needed to thanks to her ladyship’s stubbornness—she continued.
“It goes without saying that Darcy holds you in extremely high regard. If he did not, we would not be having this discussion. He would have dropped the acquaintance after what transpired at Longbourn.”
“Do not remind me! His behaviour towards me that day was unpardonable!”
“And what was yours to him? You came, hoping to persuade me—or scold me, or scare me—into forsaking him. I wished at the time that he had not discovered you there, for it hurt him deeply to know that was your object. Yet even then, I doubt he would have spoken so intemperately if your attempt to separate us had been the first. But Mrs Reynolds had already tried—and almost succeeded. Coming so soon after her betrayal, yours was all the more painful.”
“Are you comparing me to a housekeeper in my nephew’s affections?”
“No, not at all.” Elizabeth sincerely doubted that Lady Catherine would ever have allowed Darcy to keep an injured kitten in her sitting room.
“But the fact remains that both of you have peopled his life since he was a child. He trusted you both, and you both schemed to destroy his happiness. He is not made of stone, madam. You cannot use him ill and expect that it will not distress him.”
“You have a nerve, preaching to me about using people ill. You who stole my daughter’s husband.”
The chances of preserving Lady Catherine as even a passing acquaintance, let alone an ally, felt to be vanishing into the farthest distance.
Elizabeth took a deep breath. “There is no point revisiting that matter. Your ladyship wished that your nephew would marry your daughter, but he chose otherwise. It is done. Darcy and I are married. Therefore, let us be frank. There is nothing to be achieved by your coming here other than to decide whether or not you will condone his choice. That is the only power you have remaining. And if your decision is to cut ties with him, then you will be no better in his estimation than the housekeeper who also abandoned him, and it will be for no reason but to satisfy your own pride.”
“It will be because you made it impossible for me to do otherwise!”
“We must both hope, then, that your observations do not bring you to any such conclusion.”
Elizabeth breathed a sigh of relief when the door opened, and Mrs Lovell arrived. Matthis entered behind her with a tray of refreshments, which he laid out on the table and, at Elizabeth’s signal, departed.
“You wished to see me, Mrs Darcy?” Mrs Lovell said, glancing anxiously at Lady Catherine.
“I did.” Elizabeth deliberately began preparing the tea to avoid having to meet her ladyship’s eye as she spoke. “Lady Catherine, might I introduce you to Mrs Lovell, whom you recently helped bring to work for us from Chisholm Park.”
She was obliged to look up eventually, for no answer was forthcoming.
Her ladyship was glaring at her sullenly, her expression a poor imitation of Darcy’s far more skilful contempt, and Elizabeth was in no way intimidated.
“Since you have expressed such a keen interest in observing the running of the house, I thought perhaps you might like to stay while I conduct my business with her?” It was a risk, but Elizabeth calculated that, if Lady Catherine were determined to find a reason to despise her, it would be better to get it done and send her on her way than have her loitering about the house making Darcy miserable while she made up her mind.