Darcy #2
With that, he bowed, and left me to my own devices.
I decided I at least needed a bit of time to clear my head, and going home seemed a good way to do it.
I could lock myself in a drawing room with Maria, Lydia, Kitty, Mrs Bennet, and Mrs Phillips, and wait for insanity to put me in a worse state than the colonel.
That would be diverting, and my future course should be well set by simply doing anything I could to escape their company.
And thus, I found myself in Hatfield, fifteen miles from Meryton, climbing yet another cliff while the Bingleys baited the horses and probably engaged in matters I preferred not to know.
Salina was resting, so I had time to sit at the top of a cliff and think.
Of course, cliff may be overstating the case, since it was all a dozen feet high, sitting at the top of a small hill like Oakham Mount.
It was definitely not the breathtaking peaks of Derbyshire, but it would have to do for the moment.
I, who had never had any good chance of success in life, now seemed to have a world of choices.
Mr Darcy seemed determined to ease me into a life of luxury, enjoyment, and purpose.
He proposed I have my own home, my own children, a respectable place in the world, and everything I had ever wanted from girlhood.
The general offered me a life of excitement, danger, travel, thrills, and the satisfaction of making a real difference in the world…
and to be honest, that idea had much appeal as well, so long as it was an officer with some means.
Would I ever be able to go back to a gentle life with a man who had never faced anything more difficult than choosing a wife, escaping matchmakers, and maybe the occasional argument with his steward or housekeeper?
The old saying that you can never go back suddenly made more sense than ever.
I sat up there for a full two hours, staring at the knuckles on the back of my hands and my fingers that had done so much over the past few years.
My right hand had a few small pricks in the index finger from a bit of carelessness doing embroidery to pass the time.
They were the mark of a gentlewoman, fulfilling gentle pursuits, and would disappear in a few days, leaving no more lasting mark than whatever I had been embroidering.
I would put my embroidery skills near the top of everyone I knew, except for Jane of course, but it would not alter the world.
My left hand had a scar from the knuckle of the index finger all the way across to the edge.
It was healing, and in time would fade, but it would never entirely vanish—neither the scar, nor the experience that created it.
This was a nurse’s scar, the mark of a woman who had done what was necessary when it had to be done.
A corporal had made it by dragging a carelessly placed scalpel across it in a screaming fit as the surgeon took off his leg and I tried to hold him still.
I had made sure nobody ever told the poor man what happened, as it was not his fault, nor his burden to carry.
Nurse Agnes doused the wound in spirits, scrubbed it clean with fire, then stitched it up with a hand better than any gentlewoman ever applied to embroidery or dressmaking.
I would never tell my future husband that I had learnt the other fine arts of needlepoint the hard way, or that I had learned to stitch up men, and had even applied myself to the task more than once.
After an hour or so of this reflection, I became certain of one thing.
Nothing about determining my future would be enhanced by the presence of the ladies I knew in Meryton.
Even including my own mother, I did not believe I really knew any of them anymore.
My earlier self would recoil in horror at the thoughts of my current self, but that worthy believed it was time to return to more substantial people, and more substantial pursuits, whatever they might be.
Maria, Lydia, and the silly girls; Mother, Mrs Bennet, and the silly matrons; they were doing well without me, and I did not think I could abide their company even for a week, let alone expose Salina to them.
The poor girl already had a toothache, and clenching her jaw for hours at a time would hardly be conducive to proper healing.
It also seemed like tempting fate to allow Mrs Bennet to call me ‘plain’ within Barrow’s hearing. Nothing good could come of that.
My decision made, I jumped up and practically ran down the hill.
I was beginning to appreciate some of Lizzy’s earlier delight in the outdoors, and running in particular before she lost her sight.
It was quite pleasant to be moving quickly through nature; or at least it was when you were not cursing like a drunken sailor and looking for someone to kill.
It took me hours to convince the Bingleys to return me the thirty-five miles we had just traversed to Rosings, but through implacable stubbornness I managed to prevail.
HA! As if the two of them would not do anything I asked as soon as I asked it; or as if I could surpass Jane Bingley in stubbornness if she decided to put her foot down! HA INDEED!
Richard
Blacksmiths! I had spent my life in a blasted blacksmith’s shop. How had it come to this? The heat of the forge and ringing of the hammer had become the bane my existence.
First, there was my bloody, cocksure cousin Darcy!
It was bad enough for the elegant females of the world to forgive my many and myriad offences, but now the man who had done only one sensible thing in his life—beat me halfway to death—decided not only to forgive me, but to make me master of a damned, blasted, bloody, poxed, estate!
It was insupportable, or inconceivable, or irredeemable, or perhaps some other bloody “in-” adjective I could not bother to determine.
Once Darcy made up his mind on my fate, he went at it with the relentless abandon of a true fanatic. He beat a lifetime’s worth of estate management lessons into my head in a month—my head, in this analogy, being either the anvil or the horseshoe, and his insufferable, relentless voice, the hammer.
Then there were the two ladies connected with my most recent debacle.
Lord, speak of two formidable creatures…
well, perhaps I could devise a more apt description one day.
Miss Lucas and Mrs Bingley could act as hammer and anvil anytime they liked.
Mrs Bingley… well, what could I say? I was only happy she ended as Mrs Bingley instead of Mrs Fitzwilliam, because she possessed the sweetest demeanour and disposition, and would smile demurely and offer a sweetmeat while she cut one’s throat with kindness.
I would win every argument, but she would always get her way.
I would be like the general who wins every battle but loses every war.
She would have eaten me alive sooner or later had she accepted my proposal.
Miss Lucas, on the other hand… Damn, what a woman!
Now, an ordinary man might dispute the claim, but I must assert that any woman who could knock me unconscious with a workbox was a woman after my own heart.
Send me after a cannon or a cavalryman any day, for she was quite frightening when she was in a temper, and only slightly less frightening when she was not.
Between the workbox incident and the whole episode with the bosoms and the lullabies—not to mention her conspiring with the Bingley Valkyrie to deprive me of the set-down I deserved, and actually desired—I was a bit out of sorts.
It was really too bad Miss Lucas was much too good for the likes of me, even if she had not known the many defects of my character; she could, naturally, catalogue my faults with precision and in detail.
I suspected Darcy was playing the elder brother and would establish her with a worthy estate owner.
I was secretly both glad he took it upon himself, and unhappy that she would within the year be well beyond my reach.
I had to admit that, despite the relentless hammering, and to continue the analogy, my cousin’s application of fire, coals, and bellows, in an attempt to resurrect my honour was probably a worthwhile endeavour.
I imagined there would be a few worms that might beg to differ, and maybe a Frenchman or two, but all in all, I mostly preferred the sunlight, activity, and even Darcy’s lectures and ledgers to being dead in a hole in the ground.
Military men universally believed in God, an afterlife, and a better place, when the shot was flying and the horses were charging; but were mostly indifferent when cleaning up the aftermath.
For my own case, I had finally come to the opinion that there was no particular hurry to see what happened after death, since I would find out sooner or later anyway.
My suppositions were proven right one day when Darcy closeted with Charlotte (very well, Miss Lucas), a week or so before his departure.
She later took her leave of me with the utmost courtesy, and I hoped her expression said she might eventually look on me with some favour and not as a burden.
I returned the sentiments, too shy to do more than politely wish her a good journey, while simultaneously remembering some of the horrible things I had said to her.
Despite Mrs Bingley’s admonitions, our association ended with me tongue-tied and making a thorough examination of my boots.
I wanted to ask her to stay, or thank her again, or… or… something; but in the end, I wished her a pleasant journey and her family’s good health, and all the other things politeness required. She climbed into Bingley’s coach, leaving me with a profound sense of regret.
I doubted I would ever meet her equal!
Lizzy