CHAPTER TEN
Northward
The Gardiners delayed their journey by three weeks after Wickham's arrest. Sir Thomas would not allow Elizabeth to leave while statements were taken, Georgiana remained unsettled, and the newspapers threatened to turn every rumor concerning an officer into scandal.
In the end, Wickham's prosecution proceeded under charges of forged drafts, attempted extortion against an unnamed family, and possession of a weapon during flight.
Colonel Forster removed him from the militia rolls.
Mrs Younge, traced through one of the accounts, agreed to testify in exchange for leniency.
At that stage, Georgiana's name did not appear publicly.
Darcy stayed at Netherfield for six days.
He spent most of them with Georgiana or Sir Thomas. He spoke to Elizabeth when company brought them together but never sought privacy. His restraint was consistent enough to cease feeling like a performance.
On his final morning, Mary and Georgiana played the duet interrupted by the letter. Darcy turned pages. Elizabeth sat with Lady Bennet near the window.
"He means to go," Lady Bennet whispered, loudly enough that the footman at the door could have confirmed it.
"He has an estate to manage."
"So does your father. He does not flee to Derbyshire every time a woman refuses him."
Elizabeth's head turned sharply. "Mama."
Lady Bennet adjusted her work. "I am loud, Lizzy. I am not blind."
"How could you know?"
"Mr Darcy looked at you before Kent as a starving man looks at dinner. After Kent he looked as if someone had removed the plate."
Elizabeth pressed her lips together. Her mother's metaphors lacked delicacy and possessed accuracy.
"I refused him for good reasons."
"Then keep them until they are no longer good. But do not invent new ones because changing your mind embarrasses you."
Lady Bennet rose to praise the music before Elizabeth recovered.
Darcy departed that afternoon. He bowed over Elizabeth's hand in the hall.
"I hope your journey north is pleasant."
"You know of it?"
"Your aunt mentioned the Lakes."
"We may not travel so far. My uncle's business delayed us."
"Derbyshire offers some tolerable views if the Lakes prove impossible."
The word tolerable passed between them. This time both smiled.
"So I have heard," Elizabeth said.
He released her hand. "Goodbye, Miss Elizabeth."
That afternoon he left for Pemberley with Georgiana and Mrs Annesley. Their two carriages travelled by measured stages, stopping for two nights on the northward road. Darcy sent word from each inn so Sir Thomas and Mary would know Georgiana remained well.
After a fortnight at Pemberley, Georgiana and Mrs Annesley went to the Matlocks' Derbyshire seat for a short visit. Darcy remained at Pemberley; his sister was expected home the following day.
In late July, Elizabeth travelled to Gracechurch Street to join her aunt and uncle.
The Gardiner carriage left London the following morning.
Jane was to marry in October, and Elizabeth welcomed weeks in which no lace, breakfast china, or seating plan required judgment.
They travelled through Oxford and Warwickshire, visited Blenheim, endured rain near Kenilworth, and reached Lambton beneath a clear evening sky.
Mrs Gardiner had spent part of her youth there. She greeted streets, shops, and distant hills like old acquaintances who had aged well.
"Pemberley lies five miles away," she said over supper at the inn. "We might tour it tomorrow. The housekeeper admits visitors when the family is absent."
Elizabeth's spoon paused.
Mr Gardiner noticed. "We need not."
"Mr Darcy is home," Elizabeth said. "Or was expected to be."
Her aunt's eyes sharpened with affectionate interest. "Then we shall not intrude."
Elizabeth looked toward the window. Darcy had said Derbyshire offered tolerable views. Had it been invitation or ordinary courtesy? He had promised not to intrude, not demanded that she avoid his county.
"I should like to see it," she said. "If visitors are admitted."
Mrs Gardiner did not smile, which was how Elizabeth knew she wished to.
The next morning a servant at the inn confirmed that Pemberley's master was away visiting a tenant near Matlock and not expected until evening.
Elizabeth dressed with unreasonable care and disliked herself for noticing.
The road entered the estate gradually. Woods rose on either side, old and richly varied. Then the carriage climbed, turned, and Pemberley appeared across the valley.
The house stood upon rising ground, neither formal nor ostentatious. A stream widened before it, crossed by a stone bridge. The banks had been shaped without appearing forced. Trees framed rather than concealed the building.
Elizabeth leaned forward.
She had expected magnificence. She had not expected harmony.
"It is beautiful," Mrs Gardiner said.
"Yes."
Elizabeth imagined Darcy growing among these hills, learning that order could coexist with wildness. She thought of Netherfield's improvements under her father and understood how an estate might be both duty and expression.
Mrs Reynolds received them in the hall. She was a respectable woman of sixty whose pride in Pemberley required no embellishment.
When she learned Elizabeth's name, recognition warmed her face.
"Sir Thomas Bennet's daughter? Mr Darcy wrote that your family gave Miss Darcy every kindness during a most distressing circumstance."
Elizabeth had not known he wrote of them.
"Miss Darcy is dear to my sister Mary."
"She has spoken of Miss Mary in every letter."
Mrs Reynolds led them through rooms filled with good art and furniture chosen across generations. She described Darcy's parents without tragedy and Darcy himself without flattery.
"He was always the best landlord and master," she said. "Never an unkind word to a servant. The tenants know he will hear a complaint even when he cannot grant the request."
Elizabeth remembered Hunsford: You do not explain. You pronounce. Perhaps he had learned differently at Pemberley long before he learned to apply it in intimacy.
In the portrait gallery, she stopped before a painting of Darcy at twenty-four. The artist had caught the private curve at one corner of his mouth—the expression Elizabeth had seen when Mary teased him or Georgiana laughed.
"A very fine likeness," Mrs Reynolds said.
Elizabeth stepped closer.
Outside, hoofbeats sounded upon the gravel.
Mrs Reynolds turned toward the window. "Why, that must be the master. He was not expected until dinner."
Elizabeth's heart seemed to fall and rise at once.
Darcy entered the gallery still wearing riding clothes.
He stopped.
For several seconds, Pemberley's master and the woman who had refused him could only stare.
* * *
Darcy recovered first, though not completely.
"Miss Elizabeth."
Elizabeth curtsied. "Mr Darcy. We were told you would be away."
"I returned earlier than planned."
"If we are intruding—"
"You are not."
The answer came too quickly. He looked toward the Gardiners and mastered himself.
Elizabeth introduced them. Darcy greeted Mr Gardiner without hesitation, asked after their journey, and offered refreshment.
He did not look embarrassed by their connection to trade.
He did not perform excessive warmth to prove the absence of embarrassment.
He simply treated them as intelligent, welcome guests.
Mrs Gardiner asked about the stream's management. Darcy answered in detail. Mr Gardiner admired the trout. Within minutes they were discussing leases, mills, and whether a proposed weir would damage downstream farms.
Elizabeth watched, ashamed of how surprised she was.
Darcy caught her expression once. Something like understanding passed through his eyes, but he made no claim upon it.
They walked onto the terrace. The valley opened beneath them, green and sunlit after days of rain.
"Your father would find fault with the northern drainage," Darcy said to Elizabeth when the Gardiners moved ahead.
"Papa finds fault as a form of affection."
"Then he would love it deeply."
She laughed. The sound startled both of them.
"How is Miss Darcy?" Elizabeth asked.
"Better. She and Mrs Annesley arrive tomorrow. She insisted upon returning to Pemberley rather than allowing Wickham to make any place unsafe."
"That is brave."
"It is. I nearly argued."
"Nearly?"
"I asked what she wanted and then attempted to listen to the answer."
The admission came without any invitation to praise him.
"Papa says listening is harder than running toward danger. Danger ends more quickly."
"Sir Thomas is correct about an alarming number of things."
"Do not tell him."
At the carriage, Darcy invited the Gardiners to dine two days later, after Georgiana's arrival.
"My sister would be disappointed to learn Miss Elizabeth had been near Pemberley and not remained."
Elizabeth knew he meant her as well as Mary. He did not say it.
Mr Gardiner accepted with pleasure. Mrs Gardiner accepted after one glance at Elizabeth.
As the carriage descended the drive, Elizabeth looked back. Darcy remained upon the steps.
"He is very different from the man described in Hertfordshire," Mrs Gardiner said.
"He is at home."
"A man's home often shows the portion of him society conceals."
Mr Gardiner smiled. "Your aunt means that his servants like him and he looked at you as if the house were less surprising than your presence in it."
"Uncle."
"I prefer clarity."
They spent the next day in Lambton. Elizabeth visited shops with her aunt, wrote to Jane, and attempted not to measure time until the Pemberley dinner.
Near noon, Darcy entered the bookshop.
He appeared equally surprised and pleased. Mr Gardiner had gone to meet an old business acquaintance; Mrs Gardiner was speaking with the proprietor's wife in the adjoining room.
"Do you require another agricultural report?" Elizabeth asked.
"I was sent for music Georgiana requested."
"Then we are both acting for sisters. Mary asked me to find a collection of Scottish airs."
They searched the shelves together. The bookshop was narrow, forcing occasional nearness. When Elizabeth reached for a folio above her head, Darcy took it at the same moment. His arm passed beside hers. Neither moved for one suspended second.
He withdrew and handed her the book.
"Thank you."
"You are welcome."
The proprietor returned with a parcel and mentioned a disturbance outside. A cart had overturned near the market cross. Darcy went at once.
Elizabeth followed to the doorway.
A wheel had broken. Apples rolled across the street. The carter, an elderly man, sat stunned against the curb while a frightened horse kicked at tangled traces.
Darcy approached slowly, speaking to the animal. He removed his coat, covered the horse's eyes, and directed two men to cut the strap rather than pull it. Once the animal was freed, he knelt beside the carter and sent for a surgeon.
No one called him master. No audience of consequence observed him. He simply acted because action was needed.
Elizabeth thought of her father crossing the assembly room ten years earlier. Courage did not always arrive with a sword at one's throat. Sometimes it knelt in mud while apples rolled beneath passing feet.
Darcy looked up and found her watching.
His expression changed—not pride in being observed, but concern that she might have seen too much of what he preferred to do privately.
The carter had broken no bones. Darcy paid for the horse to be stabled and the cart removed, then returned to the bookshop with mud on one knee.
"You are practiced," Elizabeth said.
"At overturned carts?"
"At acting while others decide whether intervention is dignified."
He looked toward the street. "My father taught me that an estate is full of emergencies which do not wait for rank."
"A valuable education."
"Incomplete in other respects."
They stood near the shop window, sheltered from the curious looks outside.
"Mr Darcy," Elizabeth said, "I owe you an apology."
He became still.
"Not for refusing you."
"No."
"But I believed Wickham because his account suited my first opinion. I questioned details and congratulated myself upon caution, yet I wanted him to be right. I was unjust."
Darcy's face softened with pain. "I gave you reason to think me capable of selfishness."
"Not of what he claimed."
"You did not know the truth."
"I knew I lacked it."
He accepted this in silence.
"I am sorry," she said.
"Thank you."
There was no immediate absolution, no attempt to convert her apology into renewed hope. Elizabeth valued him for letting discomfort remain honest.
Mrs Gardiner returned. Darcy escorted them to the inn and bowed at the door.
That evening, Elizabeth opened Darcy's letter from Hunsford again.
The paper was softened at the folds.
She read the final lines, then took up her pen to answer Jane.
I have seen Pemberley, she wrote. It is beautiful, but not because it is grand. Everything appears cared for without being forced. I begin to understand its master in the same manner.
She stared at the sentence, then left it on the page.