The contents of the note (and that it was no more than a note) were quite perplexing to her. Less than a se’nnight after her nephew’s mortifying call, here arrived an announcement from him of the most censurable nature.
She gripped the vellum announcing the baptism with such ferocity that the script was all but strangled upon the page.
11
A Horse of a Different Colour
All events, calamitous and merely annoying, Darcy withstood with no small grace. Upon one issue, however, he was absolutely intolerant. Indeed, he was all but immoveable in his resistance. Surprisingly, the issue that caused such agitation and distress involved not a matter of the family—at least not their human family—but of one much loved all the same.
To understand compleatly one would have to know that of the many traits upon which Mr. Darcy prided himself, one he felt with particular keenness was his judgement of horseflesh.
He was put upon a horse’s back for the first time when he was but three years old. This early introduction to the saddle set precedent for all time. The sheer magnificence of the seventy-odd horses that were kept in his stables reflected the priority he saw in their care and their lineage. His interest was not, however, merely administrational. Although he partook of the hunt, he did so only because it was expected of him—he had hunters that were bred for that purpose. He rode for the sheer pleasure of it. Blackjack had been his favourite mount for a decade. As a stallion, Blackjack was a high-spirited and challenging mount, not a characteristic that Mr. Darcy avoided. Indeed, he never once considered having him gelded. He had obtained him as a colt and schooled him personally. In the days before he and Elizabeth married, there was no diversion he enjoyed more than sitting astride that horse as he took the trails beyond the park and woodlands to the surrounding leas across his vast estate. He was quite happy to take these excursions unaccompanied. If he was to be accompanied, he favoured the companionship of his cousin and friend, Colonel Fitzwilliam.
Darcy had always understood it was his duty to take a wife, but it had never occurred to him that he would eventually want to share this solitary pleasure with her. It was not a particularly feminine pastime. The few young ladies who rode to hunt were in the mould of dear Lady Millhouse, whose robust visage was not the same image in which he had cast his future bride. Any young woman of his acquaintance who admitted an inclination to take fresh air was not much of a mind to enjoy it upon horseback, but to be drawn in a carriage. He thought no more of it. Nor did he remind himself that he had inherited his love of horses from his own mother.
Once his marriage to Elizabeth was in place, however, he had a compleat alteration of opinion. It was then his wish that his wife join him whilst he inspected every lovely vista to which a day’s ride would take them. That Elizabeth rode but little was of no impediment. He taught her to ride. (This tutorial was not the most favourite of those upon which he initiated her, but was the single one that he did not eschew speaking of in company.) The only thing lacking had been an animal worthy to carry Mrs. Darcy. Elizabeth was excessively pleased when she beheld Darcy’s selection, for it was a fine-looking dusky-coloured mare. The horse was marked with a star on her forehead and white stockings up to her knees. Her name had been Dulcinea, but in what could only be called a fit of whimsy, Elizabeth renamed her “Boots.” At the time, it had been supposed by the gentlemen that the mare had been named for her white feet. After the Darcys engaged in an extended thank-you session that, at her particular request, required his costume to entail nothing more than his tall riding boots, he bethought the matter. Regardless of from whence it sprang, the horse’s name remained Boots and the affection Elizabeth held for the animal increased with time.
Due to both the vastness of his stables and the particular regard he held for the lineage of his horses, Mr. Darcy always deliberated with grave intensity upon their bloodlines. He plotted mare and sire with no less diligence than Wellington had for engaging Napoleon. He had long desired and planned for his Elizabeth’s mare (for reasons of propriety, he refused to call her by her sobriquet, “Boots”) to be bred by his own horse, Blackjack. It would have been a melding of the finest points and characteristics of two immaculate lines.
However, upon this intention, Mr. Darcy was thwarted.
After his return, when the onslaught of precipitating events had gradually waned, his attention finally turned to matters of the estate. In his first inspection of his stables, it came to his notice that his wife’s mare was with foal. Although he had not dared to take Blackjack with him across the water, he had given no such order in his absence for Elizabeth’s mare to be bred. Indeed, he had left no orders for any breeding whatsoever. This, as in all things equine, he trusted no one to execute without his personal direction. Yet before him stood poor besmirched Boots bearing the unmistakable signs that she was to foal. With this single turn of events, Mr. Darcy erupted into a display of displeasure heretofore unseen in him—if one discounts the other single instance of a loss of temper by Mr. Darcy in front of his men.
That first of several unsettling events had occasioned upon the very evening that Darcy presented Elizabeth’s horse. They had been still admiring the animal when all first heard, then caught sight of one of the footmen, the ignominious Tom Reed, whipping a horse. Mr. Darcy reacted before Colonel Fitzwilliam or Elizabeth had quite ascertained what was coming to pass. He raced to the scene (the first occasion on which Elizabeth had seen him move so swiftly), took the whip, and then laid it across Reed’s back before banishing him from his service. The story did not end then and there, but so rich in the memory of all who witnessed Mr. Darcy thrashing the hulking Reed, it still provoked within them a distinct disinclination ever to incur Mr. Darcy’s wrath. Hence, upon this occasion whilst he ranted, as only Mr. Darcy could (with a kind of peculiarly reserved fury), any grooms and stable boys about became unusually industrious lest they draw his unhappy attention.
Darcy’s man at the stables was Edward Hardin. He had been in the Darcys’ service in some capacity all his life (and had been there to witness that event some years before). Moreover, Edward Hardin personally discharged all of Mr. Darcy’s instructions pertaining to his horses. Indeed, if any problems arose within the confines of the stables, Edward Hardin answered for them. Had not Mr. Darcy by chance seen Reed first that evening, Edward Hardin would have taken after Reed himself. He may not have laid a whip across him, for Reed was a brutish sort, having near a foot in height and several stone in weight advantage over the wiry Hardin. But Hardin would not have hesitated in having Reed run compleatly out of the county.
Edward Hardin believed he knew Mr. Darcy as well as most anyone, excepting Mrs. Darcy. He respected his master implicitly, but he did not truly fear him. Yet the sheer rarity of any overt display of temper by Mr. Darcy was, like the man himself, to be respected. He knew well what Mr. Darcy’s design had been for Mrs. Darcy’s favourite horse. He knew the master intended to have that fine-configured saddle horse, Blackjack, as sire for Boots. Therefore, his horror had grown at the exact pace as Boots’s belly swelled.
As neither Mr. nor Mrs. Darcy had been to the horses of late, as they were much engaged with their own new little ones, it fell to poor Edward Hardin to share this odious state of affairs with his employer when first he visited the stables. Hardin did not exactly quake at the thought, but it was a consideration. Whilst he reported it, the hands in which he wrung his hat shook just a bit. They did not exactly steady themselves when he learnt that Mr. Darcy had already observed Boots’s condition and was most decidedly displeased. Even decrepit old Cressida cupped her tail and made for a nearby waggon, under which to cower until her master’s displeasure abated.
This inadvertent breeding certainly should not have been an ordeal at all, much less one so disproportionately ill-taken. For although the care Mr. Darcy took with the lineage of all the horses in his stable was of legend, in the grand scheme of things, it did not seem the greatest
of evils. Mr. Darcy’s travails of late certainly should have reminded him of that, but this seemingly niggling matter inexplicably vexed the man to distraction. For despite great deliberation and careful watch, it was unmistakeable that the mare had fallen prey to an interloper, the identity of which was impalpable to him.
“I simply will not have it!” announced Mr. Darcy.
It was a demand as unyielding as it was unreasonable. Nonetheless, at this outburst Cressida whimpered and tucked her nose even farther beneath her haunch.
His pique was too strongly felt to register his dog’s disconcertion. He was far too caught in the throes of information that he abhorred. For Hardin said that in all probability (only couched in this manner because Edward Hardin was convinced that the lack of an absolute would be a brief comfort) that the sire had to be Colonel Fitzwilliam’s handsome mount, Scimitar. Edward Hardin recalled the night and the particulars well, for it foretold momentous events. Whilst doing his level best to avoid looking directly unto his master’s unhappy countenance, he related that the breeding undoubtedly occurred the night Colonel Fitzwilliam had visited Pemberley before he left with his regiment for France. Hardin particularly recalled the colonel remarking that, because of the impending war, it was apt to be a late night. As was the colonel’s habit when his visit was to be lengthy, he removed his own saddle and had Scimitar turned into a paddock to await his return in comfort. As it happened, Mrs. Darcy had taken out Boots that afternoon. The horse was behaving more unruly than usual and she was turned into an adjoining paddock to cool down. Regrettably, the horse’s behaviour indicated that she was coming into season—something the boy who had seen to her had not detected. At this point in his recitation, Hardin paused for a deep breath.
Thereupon to the scene came Elizabeth, who, having heard about Boots’s condition and the ensuing commotion, had made her way down the short path to the stables with the intention of enlisting a bit of reason with her husband. She stopt short of the conversing men, listening intently.
“He went and jumped the fence—five boards it was—who would have thought it? Our best hunters would have needed more lead to take that fence,” Hardin shook his head in wonder of the feat. “The boys got ’im right out but ’twas too late, of course.”
Elizabeth had been standing slightly to the side during this exchange and Cressida felt reassured enough by her presence to come and lie at her feet. Elizabeth, however, reached out and pulled at Darcy’s sleeve, having the good sense to ask her question out of the hearing of Hardin.
“I am certain I witnessed this event,” she said in a low voice.
Cressida heaved herself back to her feet and trotted back to her sanctuary beneath the waggon.
“Did you, indeed?” Darcy replied giving his wife his full attention.
“I am happy to assure you that nothing could have possibly occurred in the nature of what you fear for Scimitar only scuffled with Boots briefly—the merest of moments. I had only feared that she might have received a nip on her shoulder, but there was nothing. All was well.”
She stood back in all happiness to be able to reassure her husband that his fears were unfounded. If Boots was to foal, if it was not by Blackjack, it was by another of their own horses.
“A mere scuffle, say you?” inquired Darcy.
If she was not mistaken, she believed that enquiry to be a trifle contumelious. Hers in return encompassed as much resentment as one word could possibly convey.
“Yes.”
He closed his eyes and briefly pursed his lips. He then slowly shook his head.
“Lizzy…” he began, before apparently remembering himself by saying, “We shall speak of this later.”
She narrowed her eyes, but realised that the entire subject of just what horse did what to another horse and how long it took to do it was not a subject that should be broached in company. Hence, glancing at Edward Hardin (who was doing his best not to hear their discourse), she acquiesced. She did not acquiesce with great generosity, but she did acquiesce—but only upon that one point.
With all due reasonableness, she offered, “Is it as abhorrent as all that? I mean to say, Scimitar is a beautiful horse—and of the same line as many of Pemberley’s horses.”
Poor Hardin stood in nodding agreement with the good sense of Mrs. Darcy’s words. He had believed the learning that such a fine animal as Scimitar was the culprit would have appeased Mr. Darcy. For some unfathomable reason, that information had only inflamed his ire. Elizabeth’s interjection did nothing to soothe Darcy, and he stomped about unhappily to such an extent it frightened the grooms to head for the safety of the nearest byre. His pique nearly moved Hardin to do the unthinkable of tugging upon Mr. Darcy’s sleeve to bring him back to his senses—for clearly he had left them behind. Of the same mind, Elizabeth actually did so.
Quietly, she asked, “Pray, what is the matter? Certainly it cannot be this alone.”
He did not answer her directly, continuing to put forth the inadvertent breeding by Scimitar from whence his displeasure sprang. For the first time, he called the horse by its actual name.
“Scimitar was a fine battle horse. I simply cannot bear to have Boots’s lineage sullied by the inferior blood of a horse that clearly…” (here he struggled to think of some fault of that particularly handsome specimen of a horse) “…short-coupled. Yes, Scimitar was a U-necked, short-coupled nag!”
It was unthinkable. It would not do.
Elizabeth discreetly took her husband’s hand. It was an unusual thing for her to do when others were there to see. He took hers briefly in return—an even more remarkable act. He ran his thumb across her knuckles before placing her hand in a more sedate posture upon his forearm and allowing himself to be led up the path to return to the house. As he watched them take their leave, Edward Hardin placed his hat firmly back upon his head. He did not notice that the abuse the hat had taken revealed itself by an absurd crimp in the brim. Had he, he might have thought it fitting—his sensibilities felt a little interfered with themselves.
12
The Private Struggle of Mr. Darcy
Although he appeared to all the world entirely unaware of the ridiculousness of his obstinacy, Darcy was aware. He was aware to a vexatious degree. He should have been pleased, for his wife’s mare to have a foal by Scimitar. Despite his disputatious remarks to the contrary, Darcy knew that he was a fine animal—well-bred and stout of heart. He knew too that Fitzwilliam would forever regret his horse’s loss in battle. Perhaps he might even second-guess his decision to take such a fine horse with him to Belgium and into what was to be the gates of hell. Regardless, that was what he did and it was Scimitar, not he, who had died a noble death on the blood-drenched field near Quatre Bas. He had lamented that loss through the haze of laudanum and the clarity of wakefulness. Indeed, during bouts of delirium, Fitzwilliam cursed himself for that judgement. Even when his mind returned to reason, he could not quite make himself quit the subject. He told again and again how it was Scimitar who bore the brunt of the blast that delivered his own horrific wounds. His horse had been courageous, loyal, and true. A hero of the British Empire.
That was quite the opposite in all respects of Major George Wickham.
Yes, Wickham. For Darcy, all other botherations paled in comparison to the sordid realisation of the entirety of that. The very repugnance of the name Wickham, much less the heinousness of his deeds, was so abhorrent that Darcy could not bear to think of it. If there were a God, Wickham lay dead in some unmarked grave near Bruxelles. He prayed that was true. After his return, he had discreetly discharged emissaries to sort out the matter of whether or not George Wickham was indeed dead or alive, but their findings had been inconclusive. Although Wickham’s name was affixed to the list of those who were lost in battle, the resting place for his corpse remained unidentified. That question lying unanswered did nothing to alleviate Darcy’s general pique. It only kept it
redirected.
As time went on without his wife’s amorous embrace to console him (or at least relieve his agitation), Darcy’s temper was so compromised that had he been of a less imperturbable spirit, he might have accused himself of despondency. But he would not. For all the vexations he faced, there was much to celebrate. He was a father, Elizabeth was well, his sister was to be married, and Elizabeth’s mare was in foal. All things in his life were in order and right. He insisted that to himself repeatedly.
His life was indeed altered, but all for the better—even his love for Elizabeth.
Beyond the gift of an heir, the birth of his children had delivered unto him a renewed appreciation of the woman: his wife and now their mother. He had long thought of her as quite indomitable. Her spiritedness was what had first drawn him to her. He had prided himself upon being the husband to her that he believed she deserved. There was nothing that he would not do, no lengths to which he would not go, no place he would not travel, and no person he would allow to stand between him and her absolute happiness. He had drawn blood in her honour and would do so again in a heartbeat. Being her champion was what defined his manhood. When he learnt that he was away when she needed him most, it grieved him to his soul. That she managed to weather the entirety of a pregnancy and birth with little help (save for Jane catching the infants as they were expelled) was well and good. Indeed, it was all most fortunate. In his heart, however, feelings of relief and happiness conflicted with those of niggling resentment that she had, indeed, done it all without him. Hence, her enduring such an arduous birth, in a coach lumbering at top speed on the road to Pemberley, left him feeling both aggrieved on her behalf and miffed upon his own.
These feelings remained deep within his breast, uninvestigated and largely ignored. Upon those rare occasions those thoughts attempted to invade his consciousness, he rebuked himself. He believed such selfish sentiments were unconscionable. But because they lay nameless, when those sentiments provoked strange attitudes about matters quite intimate in nature, they lay free to grow into inclinations that were most unexpected.
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