CHAPTER FOUR
THE TENANT WALK
Elizabeth had suffered many indignities at the high hand of Fitzwilliam Darcy, but being conscripted as tour guide for the future master of Longbourn was a fresh torment.
Yet there she stood, wrapped in her oldest pelisse, boots that had seen better seasons, and a brown bonnet selected expressly for its ability to facilitate a discreet retreat behind any frostbitten hedge at a moment’s notice.
“You’ll want Lizzy,” her father had recommended over the breakfast table when she had descended expecting nothing more than Mamma’s additions to the Eligible Gentlemen of Hertfordshire field guide, which consisted of more scratched-out names than actual entries.
“She knows where all the bodies are buried—metaphorically speaking, of course. The drainage ditches, the troublesome fences, and the tenants who require… delicate handling.”
And here, her genial father had smirked and gestured at his second daughter. “Ah, there you are, Lizzy, flush from your Commerce winnings.”
“I am certain Mr. Darcy requires no escort from me, Papa.” She refused to look his direction.
“A gentleman of his refinement does not require my delicate steps to escort him across a muddy pasture. He can inspect a rutted lane quite well on his own, or else his professional horror is entirely for show.”
Mr. Bennet merely chuckled, waving a butter knife lazily. “Nonsense, my dear. You care far too much for the tenantry to let him trample over them without supervision. They might panic and assume we had sent the bailiffs at last.”
“He will not be here long, Papa,” she said, still not acknowledging Darcy’s presence. “A week, perhaps two, before the novelty of leaking roofs and insufficient drainage sends him back to Derbyshire.”
“Then humor him while his purse strings are loose.” Mr. Bennet folded his newspaper with the air of a man who had already won. “Do try not to push Mr. Darcy into any ditches, Lizzy. The drainage is already troublesome enough without adding a body.”
Elizabeth bit her tongue. She would walk through fire before letting any of the tenants face this man’s scrutiny without someone to shield them from the worst of his condescension.
And so, Elizabeth swallowed her coffee in great haste, burning the tip of her tongue, chewed on a crust of bread, and donned her brownest bonnet to trek alongside a man wearing superfine trousers, a navy blue coat with gleaming brass buttons, and tall Hessian boots as if visiting Hertfordshire tenants were a stroll through Mayfair.
She half-expected a diamond-encrusted walking stick to appear as they strode over the threshold and down a frosted path. And she stubbornly kept her mouth shut the same way he did at the Netherfield ball.
Darcy walked beside her, his jaw set against the morning chill and his boots picking their way through the muck with fastidious irritation.
“If your father imagined this excursion would serve as an agreeable morning stroll, he profoundly underestimated your capacity for silent martyrdom, Miss Elizabeth.”
“My martyrdom would be considerably more vocal if you were not breathing down my neck like an over-inspected bailiff,” she snapped back, not slowing her pace by a fraction. “You disapprove of my handling the estate accounts.”
“I did not say—”
“You did not need to say. Your face, sir, is remarkably eloquent for a man who prides himself on reserve.” She turned to look at him, walking backward now, which was reckless but satisfying.
“I told you I read faces, and yours is flared with indignation at having to tour the estate with a delicate young lady, as if my father had committed some grievous breach of gentlemanly conduct.”
“A gentleman does not abandon his responsibilities to his daughter. It is severely unfair to your sensibilities.”
“I am touched by your concern; however, I assure you, it changes nothing.” Elizabeth turned forward again, narrowly avoiding a frozen rut.
“The gentleman is in his library, the daughter in the fields, and the future heir trails behind her like a well-dressed shadow, taking notes on her inadequacies.”
“I am not—” he cut off his retort behind a snap of his teeth.
“You are composing a mental inventory of every failing you observe. Do not trouble yourself to deny it; I can hear the scratching of your internal quill from here.” She gestured toward the farmhouse now visible ahead.
“However, if we must endure this farce for the sake of the tenantry, let us at least agree on one thing: whatever private war we are waging, we present a companionable front.”
Darcy stopped walking. Elizabeth, several paces ahead, was forced to turn back.
“You wish us to appear companionable,” he said, his gaze sweeping over her as if her appearance was anything but. “Perhaps I shall warn you, Miss Elizabeth—I am an excellent performer. You may find it difficult to remember where the front ends and the substance begins.”
How dare he? Elizabeth bristled, pulling her hedge-sparrow bonnet firmly against the wind.
“The Turners are first. Mr. Turner holds the largest parcel—forty acres including the lower meadow. His rent is eight pounds per quarter. He has paid on time for six years, except this summer when the hay crop failed, and I allowed him to defer a portion.”
“You allowed him?”
“Someone had to make the decision, Mr. Darcy. My father was occupied with a particularly demanding volume of Herodotus.”
She heard, beside her, a choked sound. Not a laugh—Darcy did not laugh—but the ghost of one, strangled at birth by good breeding. Elizabeth refused to find this gratifying and walked faster.
The Turners received Mr. Darcy with the wary hospitality of tenants confronted with bailiffs. Mrs. Turner curtsied deeply; Mr. Turner removed his cap; the three older Turner children stared.
“Miss Lizzy!” The smallest Turner, a girl with a missing front tooth and an unidentifiable smear on her chin, broke from her mother’s side and flung herself at Elizabeth’s knees. “Miss Lizzy, you’ve come! Have you brought the peppermint?”
“Molly Turner, where are your manners?” Mrs. Turner looked mortified. “You must curtsy to the gentleman.”
“It’s quite all right.” Elizabeth extracted a small paper twist from her pocket and handed it to Molly, who received it with a shriek of delight. “I always bring peppermints, Mrs. Turner. You know I do.”
“You spoil them, miss.”
“It is one of my few pleasures.” She distributed the rest to the older children.
Darcy observed from the sidelines, no doubt inwardly disapproving of landlords who distributed sweets to tenant children.
“Mr. Darcy is the heir to Longbourn,” she said, turning to include him. “He has come to introduce himself.”
“Heir?” Mr. Turner’s face went carefully blank. “We’d heard something of that, miss. After Mr. Collins, God rest him.”
“Mr. Darcy is an even more distant cousin. He will inherit the estate when my father—” Elizabeth stopped, the words suddenly difficult. “When the time comes.”
“A pleasure to meet you, sir.” Mr. Turner’s bow was stiff. “We’re grateful to Miss Lizzy, sir. She’s been good to us. Better than—” He stopped, glancing at his wife.
“Better than we had any right to expect,” Mrs. Turner finished smoothly. “We have the rent that is due.”
Elizabeth recorded the payment in her pocket ledger while Darcy asked about the lower meadow’s drainage and how it affected the hay yield and made plans come spring to dig new channels.
He also pointed to a corner of the roof where the thatch had thinned, and said, “This will not last the winter. I shall send a thatcher before the new year.”
He attended to every detail, asked sensible questions, and made promises with the easy confidence of a man who had never wondered whether he could afford to keep them.
Elizabeth could not have imagined Collins so practical, as he would not have been able to resist comparing the tenant cottages to those at Rosings and how the great Lady Catherine managed her estate.
As they departed, Molly’s cheeks round with peppermint, Elizabeth reminded herself that Mr. Darcy was meant to disapprove of her management, perhaps to censure or even berate her for some imagined neglect. He was merely performing a companionable courtesy—not actually practicing it.
“The widow Pratt,” Elizabeth said, because silence between them felt more dangerous than conversation.
“She holds a cottage and a quarter-acre garden. Her husband died two years ago. She cannot pay this quarter. She has not been able to pay since Lady Day, and I have carried the balance in the ledger rather than press her.”
“You have been funding the shortfall yourself?”
“I have been deferring it as I do not possess the means to fund anything, Mr. Darcy. I possess only the authority to decide when a debt becomes cruelty.”
The wind cut across the field, sharp with the promise of frost, and Elizabeth pulled her pelisse tighter and did not look at him.
“That is a remarkably precise definition of stewardship,” he said.
“I manage as circumstances permit.” She heard the stiffness in her voice. “The ledger is not a work of art, Mr. Darcy. It is a record of compromises.”
He did not reply, and his silence, whether assent or dissent, was considered by Elizabeth a victory, however small.
Mrs. Pratt’s cottage was small, cold, and immaculately clean. She met them at the door with a wary dignity, wringing her hands as she stared at the ledger.
“Mrs. Pratt, this is Mr. Darcy. He is my father’s cousin and the new heir of Longbourn.”
“Sir.” Mrs. Pratt curtsied, her cheeks red and her lips cracked. “Miss Lizzy, I have not the full amount, but I have put aside what I could, and if I might be allowed until—”
“Mrs. Pratt.” Darcy’s voice was even. “What is the amount in arrears?”
Elizabeth opened her mouth to intervene. What business was it of Darcy’s? She opened the ledger and cleared her throat, prepared to bring the balance forward.