CHAPTER ELEVEN
Pemberley's Master
Georgiana met Elizabeth in Pemberley's hall with a cry of pleasure and none of her former hesitation.
"You came. William said you might, but he would not allow me to send to the inn twice in one morning."
Darcy stood behind her. "Once seemed sufficient."
"The first note only confirmed dinner. The second would have expressed welcome."
"I expressed welcome in the first."
"In six words."
Elizabeth looked between them. "I felt welcomed with remarkable efficiency."
Georgiana laughed and took her arm.
The dinner party was small: the Gardiners, a neighboring couple named Mr and Mrs Harcourt, Georgiana, Mrs Annesley, Darcy, and Elizabeth. No relation of rank had been assembled to make the invitation respectable. No apology was made for Mr Gardiner's profession.
Darcy placed him near Mr Harcourt, who shared his interest in fishing and knew enough of warehouses to ask intelligent questions. Mrs Gardiner sat beside Georgiana. Elizabeth was seated at Darcy's right.
"Did you arrange the table?" she asked when the first course was served.
"Mrs Reynolds did."
"Then I shall credit her with diplomacy."
"And me with nothing?"
"You approved it, I suppose. That is almost exertion."
His smile appeared fully now. "I was warned your opinion might improve at Pemberley. I did not expect my labor to increase with it."
"A favorable opinion must be maintained."
"Then I shall apply to your father for agricultural instruction."
Their ease startled Elizabeth. At Netherfield they had sparred to test one another. At Pemberley the same wit carried trust beneath it. Darcy no longer defended every jest. Elizabeth no longer shaped each observation into a challenge.
After dinner Georgiana and Elizabeth walked through the portrait gallery. Georgiana paused before the likeness of her father.
"William resembles him when he is troubled," she said. "Papa became very quiet. I used to think quiet meant disappointment."
"And now?"
"Sometimes it means William is trying very hard not to speak first."
Elizabeth glanced at her.
Georgiana smiled faintly. "He told me you were honest with him at Hunsford. Not everything."
"He should not place responsibility for his change upon me."
"He does not. He says you made it impossible for him to ignore himself."
They continued to Darcy's portrait.
"He was pleased you came," Georgiana said.
"He was surprised."
"He was both."
Elizabeth looked at the painted smile. "And what do you wish?"
Georgiana considered the question seriously. "I wish he would laugh more. I wish you were here when he does. But I do not wish you to marry him because I am lonely."
The maturity of the answer moved Elizabeth.
"You are not the frightened girl Wickham deceived."
"I am sometimes. Then Mary writes something sensible and I remember fear is not my whole character."
They embraced before returning to the drawing room.
Georgiana and Elizabeth played Mary's Scottish airs as a duet. Darcy turned pages. At one passage Elizabeth missed a note and stopped.
"Mary would be appalled," she said.
"Mary would make you practice the left hand for a month," Georgiana replied.
Darcy leaned nearer to find the place. His shoulder brushed Elizabeth's.
Neither spoke.
The music resumed more softly.
The next morning Darcy invited Mr Gardiner to fish. Mrs Gardiner and Elizabeth joined Georgiana for a drive through the park. They passed tenant farms, a small school, and cottages newly roofed after a winter storm.
At one farm a girl of seven ran to the carriage waving a bunch of crushed flowers.
"For Mr Darcy's sister," she said.
Georgiana accepted them with grave thanks and knew the child's name. "Her mother was ill last year. William sent the physician from Lambton every week."
"He never mentions such things," Mrs Gardiner observed.
"He thinks doing one's duty is not a subject for praise."
Elizabeth remembered Darcy's objections at Hunsford. Duty had been the frame through which he saw every relationship. Love required something more flexible: generosity without account, trust without proof in advance, vulnerability that could not be managed like land.
He was learning. So was she.
When the fishermen returned, Mr Gardiner carried two trout and enthusiasm for Pemberley's master.
"He asked my advice about a mill lease," he told Elizabeth privately. "Not politely and then ignored. He listened."
"Mr Darcy is capable of it."
Her uncle smiled. "You sound pleased."
Elizabeth looked across the lawn where Darcy walked beside Georgiana. "I am."
That afternoon a letter arrived from Sir Thomas.
Wickham had been committed for trial. The forged drafts carried enough evidence that Georgiana would not be called.
Lydia had composed a heroic account of her attic observation and been required by Miss Harwood to remove three invented shots and a rope ladder.
Darcy read the letter twice, then handed it to Georgiana.
She sat in silence.
"It is over," he said.
"Not entirely. But it no longer waits outside every door."
He knelt before her chair. "What do you need?"
Georgiana put both arms around his neck.
Elizabeth left the room with Mrs Annesley, giving them privacy. In the corridor she met Mrs Reynolds.
"He has carried that worry a long while," the housekeeper said.
"So has she."
"They may put it down now."
Elizabeth hoped they could. She wondered whether Darcy had also put down the hope he once held for her—and whether she had arrived at Pemberley too late to ask him to lift it again.
* * *
Rain kept the party indoors on the Gardiners' final day.
Pemberley did not feel confined. The library offered long windows, deep chairs, and shelves whose contents bore evidence of use.
The door stood open to the breakfast room, where Mrs Gardiner could be heard speaking with Mrs Reynolds.
Elizabeth found Darcy there before breakfast, writing at the great desk.
"Am I intruding?"
He rose. "No. I was answering your father."
"That can occupy an entire morning if he asks about drainage."
"Wickham, the trial, and Georgiana. The drainage is confined to a postscript."
She wandered toward the shelves. "Your library is magnificent."
"It is the work of generations."
"And you add to it?"
"Constantly."
"Miss Bingley once implied you purchase books principally to improve the collection's reputation."
"Miss Bingley purchases books to improve the appearance of her table."
Elizabeth laughed. Darcy looked pleased with himself.
She selected a volume and discovered it was a treatise on estate drainage.
"Papa has corrupted Pemberley already."
"That arrived before I knew him."
"Then you were destined to agree."
Silence settled, comfortable at first. Rain traced the panes.
Darcy came around the desk. "May I ask you something?"
"Yes."
"Did my presence make your visit difficult?"
Elizabeth considered evasion and refused it. "At first. I believed you absent. When you entered the gallery, I wished to disappear and remain simultaneously."
His breath changed.
"And now?"
"Now I am glad you returned early."
Hope appeared so openly that Elizabeth had to look down at the book.
Darcy did not advance. "I meant what I said at Netherfield. I will not renew an address that caused you pain."
"You have not caused me pain at Pemberley."
"That is not permission."
She looked up. "No. It is truth."
The distance between them seemed filled with everything unspoken.
Darcy rested one hand on the back of a chair. "At Hunsford I believed love justified asking you to enter a life whose terms I had already written. I spoke of family expectations as though you should be grateful I would endure them. I cannot undo it."
"No."
"But I would have you know that I no longer think of marriage as an addition to Pemberley. It would change Pemberley. It should change me."
Elizabeth's throat tightened. "And if the change is difficult?"
"Then difficulty is not evidence of error."
The answer reached the place where his first proposal had wounded her.
"I was not fair in everything I said," she replied. "I was right about Jane and wrong to use Wickham's story after Papa's evidence had already made me doubt it. I accused you because anger wanted every charge available."
"You were under no obligation to make refusal gentle."
"No. But I wish I had been just."
Darcy's fingers tightened on the chair. "If I asked whether your feelings remain what they were in April, would that be a renewed address?"
Elizabeth's heart beat painfully.
"It would be a question."
"Then may I ask?"
Footsteps sounded in the corridor.
Georgiana entered carrying music, saw their faces, and stopped. "I beg your pardon."
The moment broke. Elizabeth nearly laughed at the absurdity and nearly wept for it.
"You need not," Darcy said, though his voice was unsteady.
Georgiana retreated anyway.
Elizabeth closed the drainage book. "My feelings are not what they were in April."
Darcy went very still.
"I cannot say more while my aunt is waiting for breakfast," she continued, and a smile escaped. "But I would not have you believe silence means indifference."
He understood the echo of Jane and Bingley. "I shall not make that error twice."
They joined the family.
The rain continued through afternoon. Darcy read aloud while the ladies worked. Mr Gardiner and Georgiana played chess. Elizabeth felt Darcy's awareness across the room without anxiety.
After dinner the clouds lifted. A band of gold opened above the western hills. Georgiana proposed a walk to the small temple overlooking the stream.
Mrs Gardiner declared herself tired. Mr Gardiner had letters. Mrs Annesley found a reason to remain with Georgiana near the rose garden, leaving Darcy and Elizabeth to continue along the path in sight but beyond hearing.
"Our families have become very poor at accidental arrangements," Elizabeth said.
"Georgiana has never been subtle."
"She is your sister."
"An unanswerable charge."
At the temple, they stood above the water. The wet landscape held the last light.
Darcy did not ask the question again.
Elizabeth realized she trusted him to wait.
"When we return to Hertfordshire," she said, "Jane's wedding will consume the household. Lady Catherine may hear rumors. Papa will ask you difficult questions if you approach him. Mama will ask easier questions more loudly."
"I have faced Sir Thomas's correspondence and Lady Bennet's supper conversation. I know the hazards."
"And still?"
He turned toward her. "Still."
The word carried no list of objections, no triumph over resistance. Only constancy.
Elizabeth placed her hand upon his arm.
It was the first touch she initiated.
Darcy covered her fingers with his hand, gently enough that she could withdraw. She did not.
They stood that way until Georgiana called that the path was growing dark.