To Teach the Admiring Multitude

by Eleanor Wilton

  “Darcy,” he cried as soon as they were at a good distance from the doors. “I feel such a fool! I have been so entirely distracted with my own interests that I had not noticed Lord Enfield’s interest in your sister or I should have warned you. Thankfully he has just shared that he departs in the morning.”

  Darcy felt a chill run through him, and turning to his friend intoned with some urgency, “I am completely at a loss to your meaning.”

  “Earlier today I was in the garden and overheard Miss Bennet strongly recommending your sister discuss Lord Enfield’s unwelcomed attentions with you. I felt such a damned fool. I thought his attentions towards her only those owed to her as your sister, truly; she is not like the women he is known to admire. I had not noticed at all, thought him a rival for Miss Bingley’s attentions.”

  “You must be more explicit, Hamish! Such anxiety is entirely unlike you,” Darcy replied, disconcerted.

  “You have not sanctioned his attentions I trust. It never occurred to me that was the business that brought him here. I have been a terrible friend. I thought you knew. Darcy, Lord Enfield has many lovers. He is exceedingly discreet, but no less a libertine for his discretion. What is more, it is understood that he has a child living on the continent, a son.”

  “Oh good God!” Darcy groaned.

  “Darcy, I am not late with this information, I trust?”

  “No, no. I have fortunately made clear to him that his attentions had become marked and were not welcomed.”

  “Right! Then there is no harm,” Sir Hamish replied, placing a hand on Darcy’s shoulder amicably. He saw his friend was uncommonly distressed.

  “No, none,” Darcy replied.

  Yet that night, when Elizabeth entered into their chambers, she found him standing at the large window in the master’s chamber looking rather more disturbed than not. His arm was raised above his head and resting against the window frame, but his hand was clutched and his position strained as he gazed fixedly into the night. As she quietly approached him she noted how his robe fell against his figure and flattered his attractive frame. She recalled the first time she had seen him thus attired and her subsequent embarrassed, blushing admiration. Now she knew that figure intimately and she could see from his bearing that it was infused with tension.

  She walked to the window, leaned against the opposite side of the frame and looked up at him. His features were set in an expression easily mistaken for aloofness, but which she had come to recognize as that which settled upon him when he was battling some unwelcome emotion or thought.

  “Darling? Something is troubling you.”

  He turned to her for a moment. His brow furrowed and his expression clouded. He felt he could not hold her searching gaze and turned his own back to the night. She saw the muscles of his clenched jaw twitch in agitation.

  “Darling?” she repeated, laying her hand softly upon his arm.

  He closed his eyes and with a deep sigh confessed his anxiety. “You warned me that I should regret allowing Lord Enfield’s visit.”

  “It has not been a coincidence, Georgiana’s indisposition this evening and Lord Enfield’s departure tomorrow?”

  “No,” he replied, and quietly explained Georgiana’s distress, his subsequent conversations with both Lord Enfield and Sir Hamish. He walked across the room, paced uneasily until he stopped in front of the mantel and faced Elizabeth.

  “You will of course recall that evening at Grosvenor Square, a few days after my cousin’s wedding, when we exchanged brief but unhappy words concerning the Marquess. You thought Lady Edith absurd when she declared with such enthusiasm that there had been no duke, no duchess, no one of any such elevated rank in either the Fitzwilliam or Darcy line and that the Marquess’ interest in my sister was an opportunity not to be misspent. I spoke to you as I did that evening because I did not think her absurd. I cannot deny that I was invigorated by the possibility of my sister a duchess. I had thought myself cured of such improper pride, such empty vanity, and yet you see what I have permitted without question or pause. I encouraged that man—who I now know to be a libertine—to come into our home to examine my sister’s worthiness. I would have never permitted such insolence in another; I allowed it in him for no other reason than she might have the opportunity to be the wife of a duke. What does it suggest about my character that I should put my sister in such an indefensible, disgraceful position in her own home, in satisfaction of nothing but my own vanity and ambition? I have prided myself on being a good and kind brother, and yet at the first opportunity I have acted towards her in the same disgraceful manner that so disgusted me when ambitious mothers and fathers paraded their daughters before me for consideration.”

  He turned away, grasped the mantel and lowered his head in undisguised shame. Elizabeth’s heart was racing. To see her strong and honourable husband broken-hearted with mortification was acutely painful; nevertheless, she rejoiced that he was permitting her to be what she had once begged him to allow her to be: his true, faithful companion. She walked across the room to his side, rested her hand upon his back.

  “My noble-hearted husband, none of us can expect to be always without fault. You did not callously seek to discomfort your sister. You made an error in judgement and allowed yourself to be excessively influenced by ambition. Fortunately no harm has come from it. Lord Enfield came to me and in front of the entire gathered party announced his departure, declared his father had unexpectedly called him to Alderdale. Whatever he may be elsewhere, his behaviour in this house has been correct and discreet. He has compromised neither Georgiana nor you.”

  “I understand that, Elizabeth, but Georgiana. I wilfully placed her in this unseemly position and when I saw her discomfort, when I saw her displeasure, I did nothing. Until she came to me in tears I allowed, encouraged the continuation of a situation I knew pained her.”

  “Then you must go to her and seek her forgiveness with forthrightness and humility. She is no longer a little girl you must shield with gentle care. Show her the contrition in your heart and in the end between you will be a greater respect and confidence. There is no shame in mistakes and blunders, there is only shame if we do nothing to rectify and wilfully continue in our error.”

  Darcy lifted his gaze to Elizabeth’s and saw the compassion and affection in her expression that he had heard so clearly in her tone. “It is good to no longer be alone in my thoughts,” he replied softly.

  “Indeed,” she whispered.

  Darcy went to Georgiana as soon as Lord Enfield’s carriage pulled away. “The Marquess’ visit has shown me that I must no longer consider you a child. You begin to know your own mind and it is time that I allow you more discretion and autonomy. I make a promise to you; no decision that involves your well-being, your preferences, and most certainly your future prospects, will ever again be made without your full knowledge and consent. Had I but come to you when I learned of Lord Enfield’s intentions, we would have avoided this situation entirely.”

  Georgiana lifted her large blue eyes to her brother, and they were unmistakably bright. “Now you make me grateful for his visit. Though I have made grave blunders, I have learnt from them. I am seventeen now, brother. But fear not, I have no rebellious spirit.”

  “Thankfully no rebellious spirit, but a young woman in full. After all, I must remember that our own mother was not yet nineteen when she married our father.”

  “Am I at all like her?”

  “You have the same eyes, the same quiet way about you. Yet I must confess, I often wonder if the images that dwell in my mind are perhaps unreliable dreams. What is indisputable is that our parents would be very proud of the young lady you have become, as am I.”

  “If I am a young lady worthy of such admiration it is only because I have striven to be as good and noble as you. You have been such a kind and forbearing brother; I should not be as I am had I not your guidance, had I not your character to pattern.”

  “I have far more faults than you have hitherto
recognised, my dear sister. I have striven to always conduct myself in such a manner that you can judge me a worthy model of honour and propriety, of loyalty and discretion. Yet do not mistake the matter. Your gentleness, your kind and affectionate heart, your delicacy and grace, that is all your own, my darling girl, and I deserve no credit for the same.”

  “My dear brother,” she replied, and leaning forward she kissed him upon the cheek. “Such a strange feeling I have within my heart.”

  “What is that?”

  Georgiana struggled to communicate what it was she was feeling. Her home was at last at her brother’s side, and in his wife she had found the sisterly companionship for which her affectionate heart had continually yearned. She was filled with a happiness and surety once unfamiliar to her.

  “I feel,” she said at last, “every bit a Darcy, every bit a young lady of worth.”

  “And so you are, Georgiana.”

  “And so I am,” she replied with a bright, confident smile.

  Chapter 30

  Unexpected calls

  As the sun finished rising over the peaks and the sky turned a clear blue, Darcy and Elizabeth began to make their way back to the house. Since that first December morning at Pemberley when Darcy had taken Elizabeth to see the sunrise, they would occasionally rise early and walk out to a particular hilltop mount where they would sit against an ideally situated rock and watch the magnificent sight of dawn breaking over the peaks. As they came around a bend in the lane, before them stood Pemberley House, the early morning light endowing the entire structure with a warm, golden light and the dew deepening the green hues of the blooming park. They paused and contemplated the prospect before them.

  “How do you become accustomed to such a sight?” Elizabeth inquired softly.

  “I could not tell you; I never have. When I was just a boy, I thought nothing of it of course, but I still recall returning home from school the spring of my sixteenth year. The carriage came up the hill outside the woods where you first see the house and I stopped the driver and stepped out of the carriage. It was late afternoon and the shadows were long and the light bursting with deep red hues. I stood there, struck for the first time by the grandeur of the house, backed so beautifully by the high woody hills. It was an actual physical reaction; like a strong blow that left me short of breath. I have never since lost that visceral admiration for the house or the park.”

  He stepped forward and continued to look upon the house in silence until he turned to Elizabeth and spoke with conviction. “It has been too quiet, too closed off for too long. It is time for Pemberley to be Pemberley again.”

  “Pray explain, what do you mean?”

  “Of late I have been reflecting on the desirability of recuperating past traditions. When my parents both lived there was an annual ball. Large dinners were hosted for the more prominent Derbyshire families with regularity. My father abandoned these traditions after my mother passed; when the period of mourning ended, he had neither the energy nor the desire to renew them. I think now is the time to recuperate those traditions. Pemberley has a mistress again and, God willing, in late autumn will be blessed with an heir. Since inheriting Pemberley I have been only an intermittent presence and have lived here not half the year; we have been perhaps insufficient in our entertainments to our neighbours since returning for Easter. It is past time we take our proper place.”

  Elizabeth stepped close to Darcy, grasped his arm gently and leaned her head against his shoulder as she gazed at the house, a strange feeling of passing melancholy filling her heart. When they had been in London there had certainly been trying and tedious moments when she had been so untiringly and unceremoniously measured for worth it seemed at every turn, but these first months of marriage had been lovely, untroubled months dedicated to each other and in which they had grown ever more intimate. She had been just a young, doting wife; she understood he was asking her to truly become the mistress of this great estate. Lady Edith Norbury, that difficult woman Darcy so admired, came to mind; Elizabeth suspected that she would have never required such a gentle reminder of her place and obligations. “So it is time for our little private idyllic to end,” Elizabeth replied quietly.

  Darcy laughed softly. “You need not be so dramatic, dearest. It will hardly be such an enormous change. We have had a house full of guests and none have any intention of departing for at least another fortnight. Where is this private idyllic I am so cruelly bringing to an end with my suggestion?”

  “Right here, right now. The morning light, the morning dew, a gentle breeze, my hand in yours,” she said, slipping her hand into his.

  “How does what I have suggested change any of this?”

  “I suppose it is that all this time I have not truly thought of myself as ‘the mistress of Pemberley’ and all it implies of grandeur and influence. I have been simply your wife, simply a woman discovering what it is to love a man.”

  “My dearest Elizabeth,” he replied, his heart suddenly winged as though she had never before declared herself. He brought her into his arms. “Never stop being just so, I beg you. I have never known anything so sweet, so profoundly affecting as your warm affection.”

  “If I were a fatalist such an abundance of happiness and good fortune should frighten me. It is too much.”

  “Fortunately you are not inclined towards pessimism. Do not begrudge our happiness, Eliza. The time will no doubt come when we will look to these blessed days for sustenance from some grief or anxiety. We must hope that such times will be distant and few in our lives.”

  “Then let us vow to never squander a single moment of delight, that we may have a reservoir of blessings to sustain us through sorrows and follies.”

  They tarried awhile longer in the dew-covered morning before returning to the house; they were not at present inclined towards other company.

  They returned at length, tardy to their customary time, the last to sit for breakfast. As they entered into the room there was something in their manner that immediately arrested Mrs. Thorney’s attention. They paused at the threshold, as though taking a moment to put away a private concern. They stood side by side and Darcy’s hand lingered at Elizabeth’s waist as she swayed against him before he dropped his hand and moved to take his seat.

  Mrs. Thorney was suddenly awash with an unfamiliar wistfulness. She turned and looked at her husband. He was a plain-faced gentleman with an honest, forthright gaze and was in possession of a sporty manner and agile figure she had always found pleasing. She touched his arm. He turned to her with brow raised. “Yes, Anne?”

  Leaning towards him she spoke quietly. “Do you recall when we were first married? We would go out together of a morning as well and ride out to the ash grove. It was the loveliest of summers.”

  He was startled by her declaration, and his teacup hung inches from his lips, untouched. He was profoundly moved by her unanticipated recollection of those poignant, sweet first days of matrimony when everything between them had been promising and untainted by the acerbity and cynicism of congregations of small disappointments and differences. “How could I forget?”

  “Will you ride with me this morning? I don’t believe we have done so since before James was born.”

  “I should like that, Anne; very much.” They smiled together with sincere, hopeful sympathy. Thorney immediately turned to Darcy and inquired which of the horses in the stable would best suit his wife’s daring riding style. “She has not ridden much of late, but she could master even your magnificent Trajan,” he professed with unexpected pride.

  At length Matthews entered with the morning correspondence and handed the silver tray upon which it sat to Mr. Darcy. Elizabeth had been standing at the sideboard when Matthews entered. She came and stood at her husband’s side. One hand resting on his shoulder, with the other she shuffled through the pile of letters.

  “There is a great deal of correspondence today,” she remarked as she passed along the letters to their intended recipients. She pause
d when she reached the bottom of the pile, pursed her lips in anticipation. “At last,” she whispered as she handed the letter to Darcy and took her seat.

  Darcy hesitated an instant before opening the letter. It was a brief, surprisingly satisfactory piece of correspondence. He folded the letter and placed it in his breast pocket, raised his eyes and looked around the table. It seemed there was no more opportune moment for the correspondence to have arrived. He was perfectly aware of the rumours spread in London when he and Elizabeth were first married and he was pleased to have the opportunity to finally begin to lay it all properly to rest.

  He cleared his throat. “Elizabeth, my dear,” he spoke in a voice intended to draw attention. “We will have some additional guests forthwith. Lady Catherine and her daughter will be able to attend upon us after all. They expect to arrive in less than a fortnight’s time.”

  She turned to him and smiled. “That is good.”

  “Indeed it is,” he replied quietly.

  ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

  The following afternoon some of the party was gathered together in the cool yellow parlour amiably chatting as they collected round the table where sat the beautiful pyramids of grapes, nectarines, and peaches of the season. Mr. Darcy came into the room. He approached Elizabeth and whispered quietly to her that he wished to speak with her privately. They walked out to the garden.

  “I have just received an express from Lady Richmond that is most peculiar and it has made me quite anxious. She and my uncle have not departed for Covingford Abbey as is customary and she is asking me to go to her in London, without delay. But she is not explicit.”

  He pulled the letter from his breast pocket and gave it to Elizabeth to read. It was a brief correspondence in which Lady Richmond expressed herself without any of her accustomed sophisticated dispassion. I am depending upon you, dear nephew, it concluded almost plaintively. Elizabeth folded the letter and handed it back to Darcy.