Chapter 7
The carriage appeared at the end of the lane just as the afternoon light began to fail.
Elizabeth watched from the morning room window, her needlework abandoned in her lap, as the vehicle made its slow progress towards Longbourn.
Beside her, Malcolm stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his customary ease quite vanished.
Looking uncharacteristically nervous, he shifted his weight and cleared his throat.
“She will be tired from the journey,” he said at last, though whether to Elizabeth or to himself, she could not determine.
“Days in a carriage with only great-aunt Fraser and her nursemaid Mrs Douglas for company. Moira is not accustomed to sitting still for so long. I suppose it is only natural for a nine-year-old girl to be restless after such a long journey.”
Elizabeth set aside her embroidery and rose, Mrs Hill following suit. “Then we shall not keep your daughter waiting.”
The wind cut sharply as they stepped onto the gravel drive, carrying with it the scent of damp earth and wood smoke from the tenant cottages.
Elizabeth drew her woollen shawl closer about her shoulders.
The carriage slowed to a halt, the horses blowing great clouds of breath into the cold air.
Malcolm was already at the door before the wheels had fully stopped, his hand upon the latch, every line of him taut as a bowstring.
The door swung open. An elderly woman emerged first, her movements stiff from travel, her face weathered but shrewd beneath a widow's cap of starched white linen.
Mrs Fraser, Elizabeth surmised, the great-aunt who had raised Moira these past years whilst Malcolm pursued whatever business kept him from his daughter's side.
Behind her came another middle-aged woman with the practical countenance of one accustomed to managing difficult situations.
And then, at last, a small figure in a travelling cloak of heavy grey wool, far too large for her slight frame.
Moira MacKinnon was not what Elizabeth had anticipated.
She had imagined, perhaps foolishly, a child softened by grief and circumstance, one who might cling to her father and regard Elizabeth with the cautious hope of the lonely.
Instead, the girl who descended from the carriage possessed an assessing gaze that seemed far older than her nine years.
Unlike her father, she had dark eyes and fair hair pulled back in a plain arrangement that had come loose during the journey, wisps escaping to frame a pale, pointed face.
Her chin, even as she surveyed Longbourn with studied indifference, jutted forward in a manner Elizabeth recognised.
She had seen that same stubborn set in her own looking glass often enough.
“A mhuirninn,” Malcolm said, dropping to one knee before his daughter. “My darling girl.”
Moira permitted herself to be embraced, though she held herself stiffly, her small hands patting his back twice, precisely, before she stepped away.
“The roads were verra bad after Grantham,” she said. Her voice was clear and surprisingly strong, her English precise but overlaid with a lilt that transformed the familiar syllables into something foreign. “Mrs Douglas was ill twice. Great-Aunt Fraser said words I am not to repeat.”
The fluency of the child's speech startled Elizabeth. She had supposed, given Malcolm's accounts of Skye, that his Gaelic-speaking daughter might struggle with English, or speak it haltingly as a second tongue. But Moira's command of the language was remarkable, her accent notwithstanding.
Malcolm laughed, though the sound caught in his throat. “Did she now?”
“Aye.” Moira's gaze moved past her father and settled upon Elizabeth with the directness of a hawk marking movement below. “You'll be her, then.”
“Moira,” Malcolm began, but Elizabeth raised a hand.
“I am Miss Elizabeth Bennet, you may call me Elizabeth or Lizzy if you like,” she said. “Welcome to Longbourn, Miss MacKinnon. I hope your journey was not too terribly uncomfortable.”
Moira merely continued her scrutiny, her dark eyes moving from Elizabeth's face to her gown of brown cambric to her worn half-boots and back again. The examination was thorough and entirely without embarrassment.
“You're bonnier than I thought you would be,” she said at last. “Father's letters made you sound plain.”
“Moira!” Malcolm's face coloured.
Elizabeth pressed her lips together. “I assure you, your father was being kind. I am the acknowledged plain sister. My elder sister Jane holds the family claim to beauty.”
“There's more than one of you?” Moira's voice held a note of dismay.
“Five, altogether. You shall meet them at dinner.”
Mrs Fraser had approached during this exchange, leaning heavily upon Mrs Douglas's arm. She was a towering woman who carried herself with the authority of one who had spent a lifetime commanding households and brooking no nonsense from anyone, least of all children.
“You'll be wanting us inside before we catch our deaths, I expect,” she said to Elizabeth. Her accent was thicker than Moira's, her words sharpened by decades of Highland wind. “The bairn needs warming and feeding. In that order.”
“Of course.” Elizabeth gestured towards the house.
“Please, come in. Mr MacKinnon has been staying in one of the cottages, but he has moved into the house yesterday, given there was no room in the cottage for everyone. Thus, Hill has prepared the blue room for Miss MacKinnon and the adjoining chamber for Mrs Douglas. Mrs Fraser, you are in the room at the end of the corridor, where the morning light is best.”
The old woman studied her for a long moment, then gave a single sharp nod. “You've a sensible head, Miss. That's something, at least.”
It was not quite a compliment, but Elizabeth chose to receive it as one.
***
Dinner proved an exercise in careful navigation.
Mrs Bennet, determined to make a good impression despite their period of mourning, had ordered Cook to prepare a meal of such abundance that Elizabeth feared for the household accounts.
Roast chicken. Boiled mutton. A fish course that had required a special trip to market.
Vegetables dressed in butter. Three separate puddings.
The table groaned beneath the weight of her mother's ambition, candlelight glinting off the best china and the silver that only emerged for important occasions.
Moira sat between her father and Mrs Fraser, her spine straight as a poker, her fork moving with mechanical precision through each course. She ate sparingly, selecting plain dishes and leaving the richer offerings untouched upon her plate.
She spoke only when directly addressed, and then in monosyllables that conveyed nothing beyond bare civility.
Lydia's attempts to engage her in conversation about ribbons and officers met with blank incomprehension.
Kitty fared no better with enquiries about Scottish dancing.
Mary's observation regarding the moral improvement to be found in scripture earned a look of such withering disdain that Elizabeth was obliged to disguise her laugh as a cough.
“The child speaks English remarkably well,” Mrs Bennet observed to Mrs Fraser, in a tone that suggested she had anticipated grunts and wild gesticulations. “I had understood the Scottish Highlanders to be rather... primitive in their speech.”
Elizabeth's fingers tightened upon her napkin. Mrs Fraser, however, merely fixed her mother with a look of steady patience.
“Moira attends the parish school in Broadford,” the old woman said.
“The minister's wife teaches the children English with firm kindness.
She'll not have them going out into the world unable to make themselves understood.” Her gaze did not waver from Mrs Bennet's face.
“The Gaelic is Moira's mother tongue, and she speaks it at home. But she has her English when she needs it, as you see.”
“How very... industrious,” Mrs Bennet managed, and reached for her water glass.
Only Jane seemed capable of drawing any genuine response from the child. When she asked, gently, whether Moira had brought any books from Scotland, something shifted in the girl's countenance.
“I have my mother's copy of the Ossian poems,” Moira said. “And my Latin primer. Great-Aunt Fraser says a lady should ken Latin, even if she cannae speak it to anyone but herself.”
“Our father held the same view,” Elizabeth said. “Though I confess my Latin has grown rather rusty from disuse. Perhaps you might help me remember my declensions.”
Moira turned to look at her directly. “You read Latin?”
“After a fashion. I was never as devoted a student as my father wished.”
“Father says you're clever.” The words seemed dragged from Moira against her will. “He says ye have more wit than most men of his acquaintance.”
Elizabeth glanced at Malcolm, who had the grace to look embarrassed. “Your father is generous in his assessment.”
“Father is many things,” Moira said, and there was something in her tone that gave Elizabeth pause. A warning, perhaps. Or a challenge.
Mrs Fraser cleared her throat. “The bairn is tired,” she announced, in a tone that brooked no argument. “She'll be wanting her bed.”
Moira's mouth thinned, but she rose obediently enough and followed her great-aunt from the room. At the door, she paused and looked back at Elizabeth.
“Good night, Miss Elizabeth.”
“Good night, Miss MacKinnon.”
The formality sat oddly between a woman of one and twenty and a child of nine, but Elizabeth understood its purpose. Moira was drawing lines. She would not be won over easily, and she wished that understood.
Later that evening, after Malcolm had retired to the study with a glass of port and Mrs Bennet had taken herself off to bed with complaints of her nerves, Elizabeth found Jane waiting for her in the sitting room.
“You have been quiet all evening,” Jane said, as Elizabeth settled into the chair opposite. “What occupies your thoughts?”