24. Names Inherited
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
NAMES INHERITED
Darcy’s mind was racing as he and Bingley turned their mounts toward the boundary stream between Longbourn and Netherfield Park.
His friend was back in Hertfordshire and seriously considering the purchase of the neighboring estate—that and eventual marriage to Jane Bennet.
He had never stopped loving Miss Bennet, but had been persuaded that Miss Bennet and her family regarded him no higher than a trained toad.
As for Darcy, he maintained—at least to himself—that his return was prompted by friendship and fraternal duty, the introduction of his sister, and nothing so disorderly as personal inclination.
Yet Miss Elizabeth’s altered manner, her answers punctuated by blushes and, on occasion, kisses, had left him every bit as impatient as Bingley to seek an audience with Mr. Bennet.
Except, of course, Mr. Bennet was unlikely to greet him with open arms or a ready blessing.
He would be all arch wit and raised brows, perfectly aware of Elizabeth’s former distaste.
Nor would he be satisfied with tales of wassailing triumphs; a single evening crowned in cider and song could hardly be mistaken for a proper courtship.
“You are too quiet,” Bingley observed, bringing his grey alongside Darcy’s bay. “I have known you fifteen years, and I can distinguish between your thinking silence and your brooding silence. This is the latter.”
Darcy clutched the reins and pressed forward. “I am not brooding, only considering.”
“You are absolutely brooding.” Bingley patted his horse’s neck, walking it abreast so they could speak.
“What troubles you? You ought to be in excellent spirits. Miss Elizabeth looked at you last night as though you were the only man in the room—which, I grant you, is precisely how Miss Bennet looks at me, so I recognize the symptoms.”
Darcy, for his part, was not so easily buoyed as Bingley, who rode beside him with the unconcerned cheer of a lark serenading its own good fortune.
As the lane narrowed and the horses fell into single file, Darcy allowed his friend to take the lead, troubled less by Elizabeth’s kisses than by questions he could not yet persuade into order.
What, precisely, was he to do next—and would she truly wish for the life he could offer?
He had spent the dawn hours composing a list of everything he must do before he could consider himself worthy of the woman who had run to his carriage and said yes.
Speak to Mr. Bennet. Court her properly—morning calls, carefully chaperoned walks, conversations held in the full view of her family.
Prove to her father, to Hertfordshire, to the world at large, that his intentions were honorable and his character reformed.
The list was long, carefully composed, and entirely unequal to the tumult beneath it.
Still, it was the sort of occupation a gentleman might pursue when the only alternative was to appear at Longbourn at sunrise, and declare himself beneath her window like the hero of one of those alarming novels Georgiana smuggled into the library.
The lane widened again, and Bingley fell back beside him.
“Well? Have the bare, prickly hedgerows granted you clemency?”
“I am prepared to court Miss Elizabeth,” Darcy deliberated, more to himself than to his voluble friend. “But I do not know what happens if I am successful.”
“What happens?” Bingley laughed, a sound so bright it startled a crow from a nearby branch.
“You walk into the church, you say the words, and then you spend the rest of your life trying to convince her you were worth the trouble. It is the simplest thing in the world, Darcy! A wedding breakfast, a carriage ride, and then you bring her home to Pemberley.”
“And then? I am thinking of what comes after.”
Bingley reined his horse in, his expression shifting from carefree to curious. “You mean after the honeymoon? I should think that is the best part. Waking up to her every morning. Having her across the breakfast table. Knowing she is finally, irrevocably yours. Why complicate everything?”
“She has never seen Pemberley,” Darcy said.
“Nor anything approaching its scale. For a young lady accustomed to a house with no wings and a handful of servants who remember her childhood escapades, Pemberley may prove rather more than she bargained for. Mrs. Reynolds governs the household, and tradition governs the rest.”
“Darcy, you are tying yourself into knots. Elizabeth will adapt and be happy about living on ten thousand a year. Why fret over stones that are not yet stuck in your boots when you could be basking in the lady’s favor?”
“Because I would be inviting her into a veritable den of dragons—my two aunts, with their formal dinners and endless London seasons.”
“You will manage,” Bingley said, his tone light and dismissive.
“They did not exactly throw open the gates for the Bingleys, the sons of a wool fortune, nor for the Hursts—minor, impoverished gentry living on credit. Besides, I have it on good authority that Elizabeth Bennet holds her own against snooty aristocrats. I witnessed her during those first months in Hertfordshire; she treated you with the same razor-sharp disdain when you were at your most arrogant. If she did not tremble before your pride, I daresay she shall not falter before Lady Catherine’s pronouncements. ”
Darcy exhaled, a brief sound of reluctant agreement.
For all his artless optimism, Bingley was not wrong.
Elizabeth had faced him down at his most intimidating posture; a pair of aunts, however enamored of their ancestry and wealth, were unlikely to unseat her. Still, the old, stubborn fear lingered.
“It is not merely a matter of standing one’s ground, Charles,” Darcy replied, his gaze fixed on the grey, frozen ruts of the track ahead.
“It is the daily weight of it. To live one’s life under the constant scrutiny of people who believe themselves one’s betters…
I wish to offer her a paradise, not a cage. ”
“Then stop building the bars yourself!” Bingley laughed, urging his horse into a trot. “You are so busy preparing for the siege that you have forgotten to walk through the front door. Tell me, are you preparing your appeal to Mr. Bennet? Or shall I bear the cost of preceding you?”
Darcy’s bay stumbled on a frozen rut, and he spent a moment steadying the animal—hands firm on the reins, weight shifting, the competence of horsemanship standing in for the composure he could not summon by other means.
“You should speak to Mr. Bennet first,” he said, when the horse was settled. “You have been in love with his daughter longer, and he will expect it.”
Bingley brought his grey around to face Darcy, almost blocking the path. “I rather thought we both fell at the same time when I asked Miss Bennet to dance, and you refused to dance with Miss Elizabeth.”
Darcy felt the heat rise in his cheeks but saw no profit in disputing the point.
“Come, let me show you the stream as it ought to be seen—where Longbourn ends and Netherfield begins. The estate is Mr. Bennet’s for now, and Miss Bennet’s in time.
” He dismounted, boots crunching the frozen ground.
“I thought you might wish to see it for yourself.”
Bingley joined him, leading his horse as Darcy surveyed the damage of the storm that had chased him from Hertfordshire to Derbyshire before subsiding. A tree had come down across the half-frozen stream, its root plate torn from the frozen earth and its crown tangled in the branches on the far bank.
“It will need clearing before the thaw.” Darcy surveyed the damage with a practiced eye.
“If the ice breaks with the tree still blocking the flow, the flooding will spread to the tenant fields downstream. The Henderson’s older boy is looking for work, and Mr. Foster has a brother who is staying with him. Perhaps—”
Bingley was looking at him with a question in his eyes.
“I shall mention it to Miss Elizabeth,” Darcy conceded. “And Miss Bennet or Mr. Bennet.”
Strange how he had come to take ownership when his tenure as heir was so short-lived, when he had the vast acreage of Pemberley and its concerns—except he had a competent steward attending to his estate. Longbourn had… Elizabeth and now, Jane, her apprentice.
They had walked perhaps another quarter-mile when a figure approached from near the boundary marker—a middle-aged man mending a fence. He looked up as they approached and touched his cap.
“Mr. Darcy, sir, I am Mr. Hodge, a farmer of these northern fields. Are you perhaps inspecting the drainage? When the spring thaws come, this portion floods reliably.”
“Good morning to you,” Darcy said. “Allow me to introduce Mr. Bingley, of Netherfield.”
“Mr. Bingley, sir, have you seen the tree over the stream out yonder? I believe the roots are on your side of the boundary.”
“Indeed, I have surveyed it,” Bingley said.
“I did not wish to bother Mr. Bennet, as he never ventures this far out, but the flow will need to be redirected.”
“We shall have the tree cleared before the spring thaw,” Darcy promised.
“Ah.” Hodge absorbed this with a brief nod. “I wish to thank you for guiding Miss Elizabeth on the work already done. The roof repairs, the fallen stiles, and the negotiations with the millwright. Before you came, some of the work was neglected.”
“The rent had to be collected before funds could be made available.”
“Yes, yes, of course. I did not mean anything, other than the young ladies should hire a steward, Mr. Darcy, as I hear you are no longer the heir.”
“I am not.”
Hodge seemed to consider this, nodding. “Well, good day to you, Mr. Darcy, Mr. Bingley.”
He touched his cap again and returned to his fence, leaving Darcy with the uncomfortable awareness that he had just promised to clear a tree on an estate he had given away, for tenants who still treated him as though he was the heir they wanted.