Chapter 42
THE PRAISE OF AN INTELLIGENT SERVANT
D arcy knew not which way Elizabeth had gone and therefore wasted half an hour searching in vain on the wooded north slope. He eventually spotted her from the top of the rise, walking back towards the house along the riverbank, and set off to intercept her at the bridge.
He was not concerned that there was any insurmountable disharmony between them, but he was dismayed to have vexed her.
His intention had been to lessen the demands on her time, not create yet more difficulties for her to overcome.
Either way, he was relieved that, when she saw him approaching, she did not strike off angrily in another direction.
“Will you allow your fool husband to walk with you?” he asked when he reached her.
She shook her head at him fondly. “You are not a fool. I know you were thinking of me. I ought not to have stormed off, but I needed some air.”
“I am a fool if I have made matters worse for you.” He reached to toy with the curls at her temple.
“I would give you the world, but all I seem able to do is make more problems for you.” When she looked as though she would argue, Darcy pulled her into his embrace and kissed her as he had wished to kiss her when he met her at this same spot in the summer—penitently, with all the tenderness of a man begging for forgiveness, and all the warmth of a man violently in love. “Am I pardoned?”
“A girl could pardon an awful lot for a kiss like that.” She wrapped her hands around his arm, setting them in the direction of the house. “I do wish you were less determined to dislike Mrs Lovell. She truly is an asset. Even your aunt approves, though she will never admit it.”
“How was my aunt?”
He knew it was unfair. He could see Elizabeth had hoped for more, but it would only distress her if he voiced his true opinion—that everything had run smoothly before, and if only everything could be managed properly again, she would not be required to superintend the havoc, and he would be able to rest easy, knowing she had the life she deserved.
Would that Mrs Lovell could be half as efficient at the business that Mrs Reynolds had made look elementary.
With a slight sigh, Elizabeth submitted to the change of subject.
“She was her usual delightful self. That said, she can surely only be here to reconcile with you. If she truly despised us, she would not have taken the trouble of coming so far. I think she only wishes to punish us for not doing as we were told.”
“Her presence here is ample punishment.”
“It will not be for long. She says she will not be frightened off by the noise, but she may not be so complacent after a few days of it.”
They emerged onto the lawn. From this angle, the shoring that leant at five-and-forty degrees to the end of the east wing was silhouetted against the low sun and made the house looked like a giant, ungainly grasshopper. Following his gaze, Elizabeth asked how things were progressing with the works.
“The new foundations seem to be holding at last. Which makes it all the more difficult to explain why the original crack is getting larger.”
“It was an emergency then?” Elizabeth asked, all alarm.
“Not as such—it has not happened suddenly. But it has widened by four sixteenths of an inch since it was last measured, when the underpinning ought to have ceased all movement.” Her distress made him regret telling her. “Ferguson has it well in hand.”
“I am sure he has. I am sorry—of all our silly little tribulations, Pemberley is the only one that truly matters.” In a lighter voice, she added, “But for heaven’s sake, do not tell your aunt. She would be seriously displeased to know she was not our utmost priority.”
* * *
Lady Catherine certainly tried to be their chief agitator, finding endless things about which to be displeased.
By noon on Saturday, she had twice insisted on being moved to a different bedroom, demanded food that was out of season at both dinners, accused Pemberley’s servants of bullying her lady’s maid, offended the stonemason, and picked a fight with Matthis.
When her derogatory comments about Georgiana’s pianoforte practice made his sister cry, the last of Darcy’s forbearance evaporated.
He ordered Georgiana and the footman out of the music room and rounded on his aunt.
“Since you have been dissatisfied with every aspect of your stay, I trust you will have no objection to my insistence that you leave.”
“Indeed, I do object! I have no wish to go.”
“What possible reason can you have to stay? You have demonstrated a total want of regard for every person in this house and have done nothing but cast malicious aspersions and make petty complaints since you arrived. And to what end? You cannot change anything. Has it all been done in some perverse attempt to vindicate your unfounded objections to my choice of wife?”
His aunt stiffened and her voice grew colder. “If you must know, I came with the hope of being proved wrong. It is a source of deep regret for me that the opposite has occurred. I am profoundly sorry for you, Nephew. Mrs Darcy is every bit the disaster I feared she would be.”
Darcy would have railed had not his fury been subsumed by incredulity. “Madam, what fictitious world have you been inhabiting these past two days that you have not seen what I can see? Elizabeth is the one thing holding this disaster together at the seams.”
“Never mind what I can see . What I know is that there would be no disaster if she were not your wife.”
“You blame her, do you, for Pemberley sinking into the ground?”
“Of course not. But the rest of it, the mismanagement of the servants, the disarray within the house, your discomposure, can all be laid squarely at her door. She was not born to this sphere and has no idea what she is doing.”
“It is not for Elizabeth to corral the servants. That duty ought to be the housekeeper’s, but Mrs Lovell, whom you so kindly foisted upon us, seems unable to fasten her own shoes without asking for help.”
“In blaming Mrs Lovell, you might as well blame your wife, for it was she who chose her! I did not review the woman’s application or interview her.
It was not I who decided she possessed the qualities Pemberley required of her.
You let your young, inexperienced wife do that.
If she has chosen unwisely, then you must see it is only further proof of her ineptitude, not Mrs Lovell’s!
” She stopped and frowned at him before continuing more composedly.
“I am sorry if you are distressed, but it is about time you heard these hard truths.”
Darcy felt unpleasantly ill at ease. His aunt was right.
Not about most of the drivel she was spouting, but on one, salient point.
In disapproving of the housekeeper, he was, essentially, distrusting his wife’s judgment.
It pained him to think that Elizabeth might have perceived his misgivings as having anything to do with her.
He tried but could not, in that moment, recall the basis on which his objections to Mrs Lovell were formed, and that pointed to a lapse of reason that he found abhorrent.
He had used to pride himself on never allowing his feelings to influence his decisions, but he had fallen foul of that moral before, when he separated Bingley from Jane.
The prospect that he had done so a second time, and yet again to Elizabeth’s detriment, was disagreeable, to say the least.
“Do you think Anne would have had the strength of character to endure all this—to help me endure it as Elizabeth is doing?” he demanded.
In a more agitated tone, he added, “Do you think I do not need help? That I could wake up every day and face this alone? Never mind that Elizabeth is holding Pemberley together—for God’s sake, she is holding me together.
If you cannot be civil to her, you must leave. I need her. I do not need you.”
He walked with purpose towards the servants’ quarters, through a house of closed-off rooms stacked high with mouse-chewed heirlooms and priceless artifacts shoved into cupboards.
The doors to all those rooms, however, were all neatly closed.
In truth, nothing could be seen of the disarray.
Everything that was not packed away was pristine—dusted and polished to perfection.
The fires in all the principal rooms were lit.
The windows all shone in the late afternoon sun, with not a streak to be seen on any of them.
Even the sound of workmen was absent from this part of the house.
Odd, that he had not noticed order restoring itself.
It was a very different picture on the other side of the service door.
Raised voices reached his ears immediately and grew louder as he made his way farther along the passage.
There was some manner of disturbance occurring in the servants’ hall, it seemed; he kept to the shadows of the doorway to observe it.
Mrs Lovell was standing with Matthis at her side and a gaggle of wide-eyed maids and hall boys surrounding her.
A housemaid whose name Darcy did not know stood red-faced and defiant on the other side of the table.
“This in’t fair! Why are you accusing me not her?” she demanded, pointing at another maid.
“Because Martha does not fly into a rage every time I mention the account books,” Mrs Lovell answered calmly.
“Neither do I!”
“That is precisely what you do, Edna. You have frustrated my attempts to unravel the housekeeping payments at every turn.”
“Prove it!”