Chapter 47 #2
He put her down and pierced her with a look that made her breathless. “You. Not for one minute did you doubt a happy outcome, did you?”
“I do not know about that. I had faith that your family’s legacy would prevail. I was not quite so sanguine about the walls. Thank goodness for that drawing.”
“What you mean to say is thank goodness for Mrs Reynolds.” Darcy loosened his hold and stepped back. “I heard your defence of her.”
“I know you asked me not to talk about her, but your aunt was nettling me, and I—”
“It is evident that she has given you many reasons to be thankful. And we may add my gratitude for this to your extensive list,” he added, pointing at the plan on the table. “But I cannot reconcile myself to her interference. I know you think otherwise, but it was worse than Lady Catherine’s.”
“How so?”
“Because it came so much closer to working. Because she was so much more intimately involved in this house and therefore my business than my aunt has ever been.”
Because you cared more about her than your aunt! Elizabeth longed to say, but knew he was not ready to hear it. “Would you like to know why she did it?”
“Not really.”
Elizabeth inclined her head and set about repacking the crates from the library. She did not have to wait long before she heard Darcy exhale sharply and say, “But if you are going to punish me with your silence until I have heard it, you had better get it out of the way.”
She wanted to laugh at his petulance but thought it best not to waste the opportunity. “I gather her main objection was born of an older concern—what happened at Ramsgate.”
“What does she know of that?”
“No details, I understand, but what you do not know, and what my aunt has told me, is the lengths to which Mrs Reynolds went to extinguish the gossip it caused amongst your servants. Or her sadness at seeing you so affected by it. Or the guilt she felt for not having reported to you her misgivings about Mrs Younge’s character.
It was her wish not to allow a repeat of any of that which apparently motivated her to protect you from me. ”
“How could she ever think you like Mrs Younge?”
“More easily than you would think when you hear the objections laid out.
On my first visit to Pemberley, I committed the capital offence of appearing surprised when Mrs Reynolds spoke in your favour.
It made her think I did not like you. My aunt Gardiner compounded the matter by letting slip that we were acquainted with Wickham—and because I had not told her what I learnt from you about his character, she referred to him as a friend.
“Then Miss Bingley’s maid had some rather unflattering opinions to share about me when she arrived, for which I do not entirely blame either her or her mistress.
My behaviour to you in Hertfordshire was always bordering on the uncivil, and I never spoke to you without rather wishing to give you pain than not.
I cannot justly say that their ill opinion was unfounded.
Then there was my uninvited foray into the library, which Mrs Reynolds did not know was orchestrated by Miss Bingley.
” Elizabeth stopped putting books away and stood up to face Darcy.
“To be sure, she knew no actual good of me—only that I was trouble, and you were too smitten to see it.”
“That did not give her the right to interfere.”
“Is it truly any worse than your interference in Jane and Bingley’s affairs?”
“Much worse. Bingley is my friend. Mrs Reynolds had no claim to such familiarity.”
“It does not mean she was not motivated by affection. You would see, if you read her letters, that she was all too aware of her position. That she could not so much as hug you if you cut your knee, because she had not the right to play nursemaid, even.”
He frowned and mumbled, “She did actually.”
“Did what?”
“When I was a boy. She used to hug me if I hurt myself.”
“There you are, then.”
He stood silently for a moment or two longer then said, quietly, “Very well. I shall read the blasted letters if it will please you.”
She did laugh then. “I do not want you to read them to please me. I am very grateful to Mrs Reynolds, but it was not me she doted on for four-and-twenty years.”
“Why are you so determined to convince me of her esteem?”
She smiled tenderly and took his hands. “I could not prevent your house from crumbling. I know not how to organise a renovation. Apparently, I cannot even be mistress without significant assistance. But I can, and I do, understand you. I can see quite clearly that Mrs Reynolds’s actions distressed you, and it pleases me that I can do something to ease your pain. ”
“I did not marry you because I wanted you to fix things for me, despite everything I have brought to this marriage being in need of repair.”
“All I have brought to this marriage is my dreaded compassion. Will you not let me put it to some better use than vexing your aunt?”
He rolled his eyes but allowed her to lead him to her bedroom and station him on her chaise longue while she retrieved the correspondence from her drawer and began explaining to him her aunt Wallis’s strange method of naming things.
Much the same as when she first read it all, they both ended up on the floor with open letters strewn about them.
“I would never have believed Wickham would settle for so little.” Darcy was leaning against the chaise, reading Mrs Wallis’s most recent express. He looked up sharply and added, “No offence to your sister.”
“None of us could understand why he married her, either. I am sure if his debts had not been quite so pressing, and had a mysterious benefactor not appeared just at that moment offering immediate relief, he might have waited for a more lucrative match.”
“Impatience always was his greatest weakness, after greed.”
“And Mrs Reynolds had apparently saved hundreds of pounds. It was a good offer. Although, it seems to have been the goldsmith’s idea that some of the money was given by way of a down payment on their rent, to prevent Wickham gambling it.”
“And the licence bond?”
“There cannot have been one, but they must have known my father would never contest the marriage. In truth, it was a remarkably cunning scheme.”
“Yet you approve of her?”
“I could not but approve of anyone who thought so highly of you that they would make themselves destitute in your defence. But I am probably biased.”
He smiled and reached for her hand, tugging her closer so he could kiss it.
Unbalanced, Elizabeth squawked and fell sideways, her eyes alighting on one of her aunt’s more diverting letters as she did.
She held it out for him and had sat up and turned to search for another when he exclaimed, “I was ‘Starch?’”
She snorted inelegantly with laughter. “’Tis better than being named for a dairy cow.”
“Is it?”
“Would you hate me if I told you I came up with that name?”
He regarded her for a moment before reaching to grab her waist and slide her back towards him. “No,” he said against her lips. “As long as you never stop smiling at me like that.” He kissed her until she admonished him to attend to the task.
Snatching up the first letter her hand touched, Elizabeth lay back on the floor parallel to his legs and crossed her ankles on the chaise behind him.
“This one says ‘Agnes, you must stop feeding The Cherub biscuits or he will get fat, and there is nothing worse than a fat little lord, taking tithes from hungry villagers’. Mrs Reynolds spoiled you rotten! No wonder you disliked Mrs Lovell at first. She did not give you any biscuits.”
“Mrs Wallis has a way with words,” he said dryly.
Elizabeth agreed with a laugh and picked up another letter. “What is this about you not being in your own portrait?”
Darcy smirked, though he looked very much as though he was trying not to. “I hated the thought of sitting for it. The artist was a swaggering fop. I told Wickham I would settle his debts if he dressed as me and sat for it in my place. It was two weeks before anyone noticed.”
“I thought disguise of every sort was your abhorrence!”
“Youth must be my defence—I was but sixteen.”
“Anyway, it was not two weeks before anyone noticed. It says here, ‘You ought to tell someone what he is up to, Agnes, for it will only make his punishment worse if it goes on too long. It does not matter how ill he likes being looked at—he had better get used to it if he is turning out as handsome as you say’.”
Darcy looked vaguely disgusted, which diverted her, then interrupted her mirth by reading his own letter.
“‘Dot has fallen out with the Termagant again and tried to run away to me here in Ilfracombe. Her father caught up with her in the village and took her home. She is refusing to eat in protest.’”
“Refusing to eat! I said no to one meal, then cried and cried until Jane snuck down to the kitchen to get me some bread.”
“And how old were you?”
“I do not know. I think I tried to run away at least once every year from the age of about two.” Darcy looked less amused by this than she was expecting. She sat up and rested her hands and chin on his bent knee. “I have stopped running now.”
He did not respond except to smile her favourite, enigmatic smile, and stroke her cheek.
“Come. One more letter each, and then we must find Georgiana and give her the good news about the house. We are cruel to have made her wait this long.” She picked one at random and gave it to Darcy, then crawled away, collecting the letters back into a pile as she searched for one that looked interesting.
She dropped them all in fright when Darcy cried, loudly, “Collins proposed to you?”
That set her off laughing again. “He did. The day after Bingley’s ball.”
Darcy tossed his letter aside and lunged across the floor to kiss her possessively.
She submitted to it willingly, utterly light of heart to be enjoying such an unguarded, playful half an hour with him, lounging on the floor, exchanging memories as readily as kisses.
It was an intimacy she cherished profoundly.
No one else ever saw him thus; this was her Darcy. And Elizabeth loved him completely.
“You are right of course,” he said abruptly.
“About what?”
“We must ask her to come home. I am not sure why I said no.”
She smiled broadly and cupped his face with both her hands. “Because you are Starchy.”
He gave a wry chuckle. “I am not as good at this as you. I am still learning.”
“So, you admit you do need me to fix something .”
“I need every bit of you, all the time.”
And since they had all the time in the world, they took some more of it for themselves, and made Georgiana wait a little longer to hear that her house was not going to be demolished and her former housekeeper would soon be coming home.