Chapter 46
HEART-WARMING DEDICATION
I t was not an exaggeration to say that the people of Lambton were astonished to see their party enter the assembly rooms. Darcy was recognised instantly, and Georgiana and Fitzwilliam not long after, but it soon became clear that Elizabeth was the true object of interest. Every woman seemed desperate to glimpse the new mistress of Pemberley—and every man desperate to dance with her.
On a promise to exert himself, Darcy consented to be introduced to everyone who asked for the privilege, danced with two of Mrs Gardiner’s friends, and spoke to the master of ceremonies for a full ten minutes.
He enjoyed the rest of his evening better, not least the final set with Elizabeth.
She danced in the same way she played the pianoforte—the same way, indeed, that she did most things—with such captivating élan that any imperfections only served to render the whole more pleasing.
She teased him as they danced, her eyes alight with mirth, her countenance radiant with exercise, and he was so utterly bewitched that he quite forgot his troubles.
“I congratulate you, Darcy,” said his cousin afterwards.
“No other woman of our acquaintance would have looked that dazzlingly happy to have been mistress of Pemberley for less than two months before half of the house collapsed, the other half was condemned, and she was taken for a spin at a public assembly in consolation.”
Somebody behind them gasped at the mention of the collapse, which served only to exacerbate Darcy’s consternation. “Thank you, Fitzwilliam. I am obliged to you. I was in danger of forgetting that my house is in ruins.”
He knew his cousin had meant only to compliment Elizabeth, but he did not need reminding of how wonderful his wife was; he was well aware of that already.
What he needed was to forget about the threat of demolition to his ancestral home.
To go but one hour without the remembrance of his father’s austere instruction—repeated almost daily while he was alive—never to allow Pemberley to fall into debt or decay.
For, now, one had happened and the other was inevitable, and he was sick to his core with guilt and grief.
It did not help that in the course of the evening, he had met more and more people who relied on Pemberley, either completely or in large part, for their livelihoods.
He watched them all dancing merrily and was hard pressed not to dwell on how they would pay for a subscription to the next season’s assemblies, or indeed anything else, if their chief source of income was extinguished overnight.
Elizabeth and Georgiana’s exuberant and profuse thanks on the way home went a long way to restoring his good humour.
It was impossible not to be buoyed by such cheerfulness, nor the gratification of finally giving Elizabeth something about which to smile.
Nevertheless, when morning came, he found he did not wish to face the day.
Given a choice between remaining where he was, with Elizabeth in his arms, and getting up to spend another day in painful deliberation about the future of Pemberley, he was unsurprisingly reluctant to push back the covers.
When Vaughan sidled discreetly up to the side of his bed and quietly informed him that his presence was required at the east wing, Darcy groaned and told him to go away.
The last thing he wanted was to look upon the wreckage—even more devastating in daylight than it had seemed when it happened.
His despair upon first viewing it, the morning after the collapse, was something he would never forget.
Shattered glazing, still caught in its twisted lead beading, had hung limply from shattered mullions.
Irreplaceable marble fireplaces had lain in pieces amid the rubble, and the remains of the roof had been left swinging precariously over the whole of it like the skin of a congealed custard, dripping from the lip of a jug.
If he was never required to set eyes on it again, he would be happy.
“I beg your pardon,” Vaughan persisted, “but I think you ought to see this.”
Elizabeth, hiding under the covers at Darcy’s side, mumbled that perhaps he ought to go.
Vaughan cleared his throat. “If I may, sir, I believe Mrs Darcy might also wish to see.”
With a vast sigh, Darcy conceded; he and Elizabeth dressed as quickly as they could.
They said nothing to each other as they walked through the house, and he did not doubt that, like him, she was rather too jaded by recent events to be provoked to any great anxiety by the prospect of another problem.
Her only concession before they passed through the door to outside was to cast him a small, tender smile of encouragement.
Darcy could not immediately comprehend what he was looking at as they approached the site, but the heaving mass before them was slowly revealed to be a line of people.
Indeed, more than one line of dozens of people.
The closer he got, the more faces he recognised.
Almost every one of his tenants was here, even old Mr Mason, who had been caught poaching in the summer.
Sheldon, with all the gamekeepers; Howes, with his gardeners; and Regis, with a handful of his pitmen.
All three of the rectors whose preferments were in Pemberley’s gift.
Both teachers and a group of children from the Shepsbrook schoolhouse.
The innkeeper of the Plough and Horseshoe.
Many others Darcy could not name or did not know.
Every single one of them was moving bits of rubble, varying in size from pebbles in the hands of children, to great slabs carried between strong men, away from the site of the collapse to neat piles, or barrows and carts, under the careful direction of a still-bandaged Ferguson.
Fitzwilliam turned as Darcy and Elizabeth approached, an expression of deep appreciation on his countenance. “This is quite something, is it not?”
Darcy was moved beyond words. There was a moment when he might have summoned something vaguely articulate to say, but then Vaughan walked past him and joined the line of workers, and he was silenced completely.
Elizabeth’s voice, when she spoke, was soft with wonder. “Now do you believe me when I say that Pemberley is more than stones and mortar? We shall find a way. We cannot fail with so many people willing us to succeed.”
Though he could not conceive of how they might achieve it, for the first time, Darcy felt a glimmer of hope that she might be right. He nodded and let out a breath that it felt as though he had been holding for a very, very long time.
“I am feeling moved to shift a rock or two myself,” Fitzwilliam announced and, without waiting for a reply, set off towards the workers, removing his coat as he went.
“You had better join him,” Elizabeth said, still sounding greatly affected. “I shall see whether Chef can rustle up enough refreshments for them all.”
After the upheaval of the last few days, Darcy did not much feel like exerting himself, but in the end, he was required to do nothing more than talk to people.
It was not the sort of conversation he despised—the sort that passed around dinner tables and ballrooms and obliged a person to appear interested in the concerns of strangers.
On the contrary, every person to whom he spoke had a memory of Pemberley to share with him, and that was a topic on which he could happily converse indefinitely.
After Elizabeth’s show of sentiment for the turn-out, it struck Darcy as odd that she did not come back to join him in talking to everyone when the maids brought out the refreshments.
When she still had not appeared over half an hour later, he thanked the volunteers sincerely for their hard work and dedication to Pemberley and went in search of her.
“An express arrived about an hour ago, sir,” Matthis informed him. “I understand Mrs Darcy went into the park to read it in private.”
“An express? Do you know where from?”
“I do not, sir, but Mrs Darcy seemed rather agitated by the receipt of it.”
Darcy clenched his teeth. Could they go no more than an hour without more bad news? He thanked Matthis and asked him to direct Elizabeth to the saloon when she returned, then went there to await her. “And send some coffee.”
Elizabeth arrived before the coffee did, and she was, as Matthis had warned, all agitation. He went to her directly. “Is everything well? Matthis said you received an express.”
“Nothing is wrong . But there is something I need to tell you about. Can we sit down?”
No sooner had they done so than Elizabeth was back on her feet, pacing nervously before him. Matthis appeared with the coffee, and Darcy waited impatiently for him to serve it and go away again before reaching for Elizabeth’s hand and pulling her down next to him. “Just tell me.”
She took a deep breath and nodded. “Do you remember, just before the wall collapsed, I was running to see you?”
“I am not ever likely to forget it.”
“I had just made a discovery. That is, Mrs Lovell had. She found a stash of old letters in her room that belonged to Mrs Reynolds. I almost threw them away until I realised they had all been written by my aunt Wallis.”
“They knew each other?”
“They have known each other since they were children, apparently. I was concerned at first that it meant my aunt was party to Mrs Reynolds’s attempts to separate us, but she was not, because she did not know—well, neither of them knew—that we were who they were writing to each other about.
It sounds ridiculous, but they did not know that we were us. ”
“Ridiculous is one word for it.”
“It is almost impossible to explain, but that is hardly the point anymore. What matters is what else I have found out. After everything that happened with the house, I decided against telling you until I had written to my aunt for an explanation. Well, she has written back, and…Mrs Reynolds is with her .”