He awaited the song’s completion, then announced himself thusly, “I have taken the precaution, my good wife, of locking all the doors, lest you be so daunted by the weight of your obligations that you plan to flee.”
“You cannot rid yourself of me all that easily, Husband.”
Georgiana looked somewhat aghast at this playful exchange. However, Elizabeth and Darcy were unwitting of it, for he was busy explaining to his wife a convoluted version of why he had aborted the circumnavigation of his land.
So little did he like the weaving of tales, he abruptly altered the subject, “Pray, shall we picnic?”
So bright and pleasant the day for the season, Elizabeth needed no meditation to think it a grand idea and tactfully bade Georgiana to join them. Georgiana, in tactful reciprocity, declined.
On the presumption of Elizabeth’s agreement to the outing (his own wishes still considered a divine right) Darcy had designed to have a fully laden basket at the ready. Yet, when he simply took up the basket in one hand and, with no more than a wave of his hand and a deferring step back, allowed her to precede him out the door, her countenance betrayed no little amazement.
She turned about and looked over her shoulder, “We are a party of two alone?”
Even at Longbourn an outdoor excursion with a meal would have been complemented by every servant Mrs. Bennet could muster to provide all the attendant pomp one could garner from so lowly an undertaking. Mr. and Mrs. Darcy appeared to be unescorted even by the dogs (for exhausted from their jaunt, Troilus and Cressida lay curled up asleep upon the sofa). Darcy assured her they were, indeed, to go unattended (for, to his mind, what other reason was there to go?).
If she thought it curious, she remarked of it not. “I ask no other to be of our party. I only feared we should be trailed by a contingent of servants carrying candlesticks, linen, and silver.”
“If you would find favour with a grander occasion, it can be arranged.”
“I doubt that not at all. But, no, I would not favour something more grand.”
Once beyond the deliberately averted eyes of servants, he caught her hand. As he did, she looked demurely away, but an expression of barely contained delight overspread her countenance.
As they struck out upon their walk, her conversation returned to the quite serious matter of her new and numerous responsibilities as Mistress of the House. It was a sad lament, indeed.
“How am I ever to learn all that I must? I am not entirely certain I can find my way from our bedchamber to the morning-parlour without you to guide me.”
“Be happy you have not married a duke, for at least you will not have to entertain foreign sovereigns,” he laughed.
“A consolation,” she laughed, for so it was (even though he had not absolutely excluded sovereigns domestic). “But I might have favoured marrying Duke Darcy. It has a pretty ring to it, does it not?”
“I would be known as duke of something, perhaps Pemberley, and you would call me Pemberley instead of Darcy,” he reminded her.
“Pemberley, oh, Pemberley!” she effected a breathy scenario, then shook her head. “No, that does not excite my esteem. I believe I favour Darcy.”
*
After a quarter-hour stroll past the pleasure grounds, through oaks and Spanish chestnut trees, they reached the appointed picnic spot that Darcy had, with all due deliberation, preselected. It was in a wood bosky enough for seclusion, but spare enough for the sun to warm. He spread the blanket, doffed his jacket, and tugged at his cravat as if readying for a feast (the nature of which she dared not conjecture). Rather, she took out the still-warm partridges, tore the bread, and pared the fruit. Whilst she laboured thusly, she hummed, endeavouring to be unmindful of the likelihood that she would never serve him from her own hand again.
It was a leisurely sup. Eventually his head found a comfortable nestle in her lap and she found occupation drawing lazy, tickling circles with a bit of grass upon his brow. Perhaps it was not their true design, but intimacy as tantalizing as this did invite affection to take its course.
Suddenly into this scene of pastoral serenity appeared a scruffy-looking man. He bore an ominously large gun, one whose menace to them was becalmed only by the sight of two scent-hounds thrashing about his heels.
For a man whose attention was seriously compromised, Mr. Darcy was to his feet with the utmost rapidity. In that instant, he put himself betwixt the man and Elizabeth (who had to be content with her view of the proceedings from between her tall husband’s knees).
The poor man recognised upon whom he had blundered, and he was terrified to be caught poaching so close to Pemberley Hall by the master himself.
Darcy’s initial alarm was quieted forthwith of ascertaining that the gun the man carried, ancient and rusting, was a fowling piece, one for small game and probably used to feed his family. Still, he glared at him quite relentlessly.
The unfortunate hunter upon whom this severe gaze rested just as expeditiously made not one, but two reckonings. Firstly, considering the disarray of their garb, Mr. Darcy was having a quiet tryst with a woman who was most likely his new wife, and secondly, that Mr. Darcy had not come here to look for poachers.
He backed away in hasty, nodding genuflection.
As Darcy stood watching him leave, Elizabeth subtly tossed aside the paring-knife she had taken into her hand. Not for a moment did she think her husband either unwilling or unable to protect them both. Taking the knife to her side had been quite involuntary. Still, as their marriage was young, she thought it best to disguise from her husband that she did not scruple sacrificing her gentility in the face of danger.
As he found his seat, Mr. Darcy was a bit vexed. It was not lost on him what assumptions that hunter had made. He groused to himself that the incident would only give more fodder to the Kympton inn gossips.
Quite unaware of her own humbling, Elizabeth lay back in blissful, fetching ignorance. Her spirits aflutter still from the fright, she lay gazing up through the tree limbs and endeavoured to ease her heaving chest.
Her husband was well aware of her heaving bosom, but in far less hurry for her to reclaim her breath. Indeed, in that dappled copse, it was easy for him to forget there were transgressions against their privacy.
It was at least eight hours since he had had her last. An improvement, was it not?
*
The poacher had feared no mantraps set, for the Darcy family turned a blind eye on what game was pilfered from their property as long as the privilege was not abused. However, as this foiled poacher moved away from Mr. Darcy as hastily and quietly as he could, he came in great intrusion, eyes to chin, upon one of the house footmen. For the second time in less than five minutes the poor nimrod was confronted by two separate men of great height and little humour.
This encounter would not end so benignly as the first.
Howbeit Mr. Darcy had looked quite forbidding, the man before him then looked not unlike Beelzebub himself. Not an entirely inapt analogy, for the footman hit the hunter full in the chest with the flat of his hand, knocking him to the ground. This most likely oft-practised manoeuvre was one of economy for the thug, for he seized the gun from his victim’s hand as he fell to ground in utter loss of breath and with no means of retaliation.
Standing over the man as he gasped for air, the foul thief said, “Run if ye know what’s good for ye and donno’ cry for yer weapon, be happy wi’ yer life.”
In no position not to heed that advice save lacking the means, the poacher lunged away upon all four limbs until he finally struggled to his feet. Once upright, he called to his dogs to follow. As the dogs’ instinct for self-preservation was at least as keen as their owner’s, both had already started after him. But as they passed their tormentor, he took a wild swing with the gun-butt, it glancing off the rump of the one who had the misfortune to trail the first. That poor pup then yelped loud enough to startle them both to join their owner’s headlong race for safety.
The footman was none other t
han the nefarious Thomas Reed.
Others who rode upon the Pemberley coach might harbour enough officious sanguinity to find pleasure in frightening the bejeezus out of a harmless trespasser. Few, however, would receive the sadistic thrill Reed did. Regrettably, his predilection for cruelty was hardly sated by an encounter that was fruitless of bloodshed. Had he not been so intent upon other prey, Reed might have pursued the hapless hunter.
As it was, he just laughed and inspected the gun he had appropriated. Finding it a deplorable excuse of a weapon, Reed cursed the man for being so impoverished. He grumbled a few minutes, then remembered why he was in the wood in the first place: the fair Mrs. Darcy, that beauteous bounty of woman-flesh.
*
Tom Reed had never been in love. Until he first set eyes upon Elizabeth, Reed’s definition of “in love” was to rut a woman and not have to pay her. Amorous flame, as Reed knew it, lasted only as long as his erection. Moreover, not shelling out a copper to mount a woman did not take into consideration the nicety of consent. Those Covent Garden jack-whores were far too treacherous to cadge (and the French pox was a constant threat), but he could usually find a piece of work like Abigail Christie, jaded (or drunk) enough not to put up much of a fight. Admittedly, Reed did not mind a good, amorous tussle. (His only scruple was to make certain that if he was to take sick with the foul disease, he did not pay good money to become infected.)
Reed raised his nose and took an uncannily feral whiff as if to sniff out the scent of quimsy. Thereupon, head low, he strove on against the underbrush. His quarry was not difficult to locate. Although they were laughing and talking in low tones, they lay in a small glade in perfect view if someone chose to pry.
If given the choice of peeping or participating, Reed would have chosen the latter. As this ruling was not in his hands, he snooped.
The particular delectation of this pursuit had only come to him as recently as his employment on the Darcy coach. More precisely, it overcame him on his ensuing journey to Netherfield in the soon-to-be nuptial coach. There were a fair number of unplucked damsels about that Longbourn house, but none so succulent of plump dairies as was the dark-haired Miss Bennet.
Reed spent the entire return trip to London daydreaming of that alabaster damsel’s pretty, harrumping like a lord that he would not be the one to dock her.
Like many a man of mean understanding, Reed had always held the opinion that most rich men were not much more than eunuchs or else they foined their servants, with nothing left for their wives. As for the rich men’s wives, why would anyone want to diddle such harping shrews? The new Mrs. Darcy, however, was an entirely different matter. He would happily have his way with her if Mr. Darcy chose not.
This was not an entirely outrageous notion. For tall and handsome as they often were, it was not unknown for footmen to gratify an occasional gentlewoman. Reed had heard such stories, and now knew himself a footman. But his considerable conceit had not allowed him to consider that he could not, even by the most generous opinion, be called handsome. Never one to give up a notion on the merit of absurdity, he harboured the exceedingly improbable hope that Mrs. Darcy might some day favour him with her attentions.
At least he harboured it until he had heard from the other servants in the London house of what bechanced at some length in the Darcy bedchamber. Well, perhaps that comely minx would tire of Mr. Darcy and him of her. Patience has its rewards. Reed would wait.
Await he did, silently, upon the grounds of Pemberley.
*
Fortune had veiled the wildlife from the poacher within the slight canopy of leaves still clinging to the trees. The slow dance of foliage, brought from their limbs by the light breeze, that shrouded Reed then, also obscured his view.
Reed strained to see that which was concealed to him. The obfuscated scene he could make out did not quench his thirst for scrutiny. However, the twigs beneath his feet were already dry enough to crackle. Reed knew his quarry was already aware of intrusion and he was afraid to venture closer. He simply sat in silence, implying to his imagination what his eyes could not reveal and found lascivious pleasure enough in what he heard.
14
Notwithstanding her methodical commitment to collecting dirty mugs in the far corner of the tavern, the unexpected ingress of two gentlemen stole Abigail’s attention.
By virtue of the nature of its business, the place was dim. The only light was a blinding glare from the doorway behind them. Hence, other than ascertaining that neither was a habitué of their low establishment, immediate identification of the duo was not forthcoming. She continued to eye the pair long enough to eliminate constable and debt-collector from the possibilities. Her interest was piqued, however, by the deference shown them by Turnpenny and his companions.
Once they escaped the harsh back-light of the doorway, she could see the man who led the way was middle-aged, plump, and a bit rumpled. The other stood slightly aloof, unsuccessfully masking a look of extreme repugnance at the fetor emanating from his malodorous surroundings. The disdainful gentleman was younger than the first, tall, immaculately tailored, and of exceedingly handsome figure.
Indeed, maturity had strengthened his jaw and broadened his chest, but he had altered but little. Had she not recognised his countenance, Abigail would not have mistaken the hauteur.
She had known it was possible that Darcy would come personally to settle his bill. Yet, to see him actually standing so before her in the shabby tavern took her aback. She, however, was the only ruffled party.
Not unexpectedly, he looked neither right nor left. He kept his imperious gaze upon the business at hand. Had he glanced in her direction, instinct would have bid her turn away. If there was any chance that he remembered her at all, she wanted it to be as a pretty sylph of a girl, not the daggle-tailed slattern she had become.
Abigail had traded upon the prestige of her long past employment at Pemberley to obtain a situation with the Fox and Hogget (albeit she had abused a portion of that goodwill by boasting about her past connexion with that estate). As talk was prolific at any tavern, case and canard were tossed about indiscriminately. Hence, Abigail found ample audience for her oft-repeated rendering of her tenure in that grand house. Although she omitted her dalliance with Wickham (for he was regarded as a truckling toff), her intrigue with Master Darcy had prospered with numerous retellings from tryst to affaire d’amour.
Interest was keen, for until Abigail volunteered her recollections, there had been a veritable dearth of information about young Mr. Darcy’s amours. His comportment, as far as anyone could fathom, was entirely circumspect. He was known as a kindly landlord, but no one thought him a hail-fellow-well-met sort of likeness of his father. Although there was a consensus that a man of his obvious vigour must have succumbed upon occasion, not a single soul could cite an instance of indiscretion.
As nothing sends female hearts aflutter and tongues a-wagging quite so readily as a handsome yet distant countenance, that bailiwick was a hotbed of speculation about young Mr. Darcy by the time he finally became engaged. Talk blazed furiously, expanding into an absolute maelstrom by the time he arrived in Derbyshire with his new wife. She was known to be quite pretty, in a fresh-faced wholesome kind of way, not at all the sophisticate that would have been expected to become the Mistress of Pemberley. In light of her family’s questionable connexions and Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s displeasure at the match, the cauldron of local gossip had very nearly burbled over by epiphany. For what else are country-folk to do in the idleness of winter but smoke pork, stoke a pipe, and chew upon the doings of the rich?
*
Betwixt the initiation of Mr. Darcy’s engagement and the culmination of his wedding, Abigail arrived at Kympton sans husband, sans two of her children, and very pregnant. As was her plan, she had fled back to her home county from London abandoning the bantlings begat of an extended left-handed alliance with a seaman named Archibald Arbuthnot.
No mother discards her offspring without remorse. N
evertheless, that regret was somewhat mitigated due to the nature of the older girl.
Poor Sally Frances had been a bit of a beleaguerment, having the misfortune to bear a striking resemblance to her father (red face and large ears) and an inexplicably obstinate nature. Indeed, when expatriated from her mother’s milk upon the appearance of another babe, the lass had stubbornly refused to speak. From age two years to four and a half, she was silent. Abigail was flummoxed at this bit of intractability. It was obvious to everyone but Sally Frances that although her mother had two teats, she had but one lap. Abigail held steadfastly to the position that a child had to learn sometime that there was a time to stand one’s ground and a time to accept defeat.
Owing to her mother’s unrelenting disapproval, Sally sucked her thumb and clung to her half-brother, John, who dandled her about whenever he thought his mother did not see him.
“Belay that! Yer turnin’ that gerl into a pampered little cosset, boy. Leave ’er be!”
Abigail’s compunction over having forsaken her daughters was not overly employed in that she had wiped their faces and left them upon the stoop of Archie’s mother’s house. Mrs. Arbuthnot had a tedious but steady mending business. She would not forsake her grandchildren. John, however, was Abigail’s alone and would have been consigned to the workhouse. That would be a waste, for at thirteen, he was a strong and able boy. Was he to labour, Abigail did not want it to be for naught.
The entire contretemps of decampment came about by virtue of a nautical calamity that did not occur. For although Cape Horn was an unforgiving promontory, the ship that boasted Seaman Third Class Arbuthnot had rounded it without incident. Abigail learned the Galatea was due back upon the upcoming Friday. She and John shed London Wednesday morn.
Although Archie was a bit dim, Abigail did not doubt that even he would determine that a year at sea and a wife half-term with child did not add up to marital devotion. Retribution by strop would be swift. Such was his history.
John was nimble enough to stay out of Archie’s reach before his liberated pants worked their way down about his knees, thus restricting his manoeuvrability. However, Abigail knew herself to be not so quick. The only possible positive of the situation was that Archie and her bed-mate of late, Tom Reed, might draw the iron to each other and both end up dead. That outcome, however, was indefensibly optimistic. Hence, she took what she believed was her only recourse—to flee.
Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife Page 12