“Aunt Catherine is in no better humor now, I’m afraid. No. Quite the contrary, as it happens. I was telling Darcy earlier that both your names evoke a tirade of abuse and the most fanciful accusations. Evidently, in her twisted mind, it was your use of feminine wiles, Elizabeth, that caused mankind’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and then, of course, Darcy’s arrogance initiated the Flood.”
Darcy’s hand suddenly rammed angrily into a bowl of fruit and grasped an innocent, unsuspecting orange. “Enough. The woman is demented. Our marriage is simply something to which she must become adjusted. She insulted Elizabeth and her family, and in so doing, she insulted me.” With an expression as black as pitch, Darcy commenced to vivisecting the orange. By the time he finished with said orange, it was completely dead, thoroughly dead, with no semblance remaining of its prior orange existence.
“That’s all well and good for you to say, old man, but now she’s so desperate that she has turned to me for management advice and help. I mean, really! She would have a better chance shooting an arrow into the ocean and impaling a carp than my comprehending all that gibberish.” As he spoke, he snatched the knife from Darcy’s clenched fist. “Come, Cousin, you know she loves you best. You were always her golden child, the second coming, her beau bebe garçon.”
Elizabeth sadly watched her husband as months of emotional breakthroughs and insights shattered like so much glass. He became more withdrawn, more aloof by the second, his face a cold mask of sobriety.
Suddenly, Darcy threw his napkin upon the table and stood. “Shall we go into the family salon for some brandy and cakes? I believe those chairs will be much more comfortable for Elizabeth than these hard ones.”
“I am in no discomfort here, William.” Elizabeth’s voice was very soft as she and Darcy shared a tense glance.
“Come on, Cousin, can’t you thaw a little? Seriously, Catherine is having real concerns with those tenants in the…” The look in Darcy’s eyes told him he needn’t finish.
“Richard, this is the last time I wish to talk about Lady Catherine. She has chosen her course, and I have chosen mine. Now let us go into the parlor and have no more discussion about it.” Darcy quickly left the room.
Elizabeth looked at Fitzwilliam in amazement. “I had hoped that the proud Mr. Darcy I met at Netherfield Hall had mellowed a bit. It appears, however, that we have regressed.”
“Damnation—excuse me, Elizabeth—you know, for both their sakes, I hope they find common ground soon,” he said gently. “This is hurting them.”
Fitzwilliam rose as the footman pulled back Elizabeth’s chair. “You know as well as I how stubborn he can be,” Elizabeth said. “It would appear that any attempt at reconciliation may well have to generate from Lady Catherine herself.”
“And from whom do you think he learned this damnable Fitzwilliam pride and stubbornness?” Richard smiled sadly and gave Elizabeth his arm as they followed Darcy into the parlor.
Chapter 4
The end of the year came quickly, with private balls, public assemblies, house parties, and concerts. Elizabeth’s sister Jane and her husband, Charles Bingley, one of Darcy’s closest friends, arrived at Pemberley a month before Christmas, followed two weeks later by Mr. and Mrs. Bennet and Kitty and Mary, the remainder of Elizabeth’s family. It was the first real opportunity for Darcy to socialize with Mr. Bennet, a gentleman for whom he discovered he had a great deal of empathy, especially after experiencing the constant attentions and fawning of Mrs. Bennet.
As rude and insulting as she had been to Darcy before his marriage to her daughter, she was now the complete reverse, hanging on his every word. (Reason and Mrs. Bennet never resided in the same location for very long.) She followed him constantly, all worshipful eyes and servile admiration. She murmured, she whispered, she gasped.
“See how he stands? A spine like a pitchfork, straight and true. He’s like a Roman statue, I’m sure: a true aristocrat!”
“Look how he butters his toast. Watch and learn!” she would remonstrate in all seriousness. “Watch and learn!”
Of course everyone had their particular favorite of her observations. Jane’s was, “You can always tell a gentleman’s character by how he eats his chicken.”
Charles’s was, “See how large his feet are? You know what that indicates, do you not?” Charles nearly choked at the dinner table the night that remark was made and glanced toward a red-faced Darcy.
When Lizzy’s mother nodded to one and all and explained, “The mark of a great mind,” they both exhaled loudly with relief.
When he sat to read, she would sit as near him as possible, somewhere behind, always in the great man’s shadow, near enough to worship, not near enough to intrude. If he looked up, she was at his side in a moment, inquiring if he needed anything—tea, wine, pillow, quill, ink—and she very shrilly castigated Elizabeth if she did not exhibit the same zeal in anticipating his wants.
He remembered how odd he had found Mr. Bennet’s behavior the first time he had sought him out at Longbourn when asking for Lizzy’s hand. The man could evaporate into thin air, would disappear into his library, sometimes walking off in the very midst of a conversation. Darcy now thoroughly shared his father-in-law’s literary fixation. That his own Pemberley library would be his only escape was obvious, and that had been within the first few minutes.
In fact, Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bennet were embarrassed to find they had both scrambled to the library independently of each other the second night. They competed fiercely for first hand on the knob then slipped inside, waiting in the dark for several moments before lighting the candles. Charles Bingley, as always trying to be kindhearted, charming, and obliging, attempted to step up as host in Darcy’s absence, only to end up with the other men a mere half hour later.
It was still, though, a very pleasant family time, a precious and happy holiday marred only by the two or three angry chair-throwing free-for-alls most families experience during this holiest of seasons. On Boxing Day, Jane and Charles announced their expectancy to squeals and flutters and spasms. Sisterly confidences were exchanged and unlooked-for motherly advice loudly dispensed. Darcy and Bingley rode to freedom almost daily, and Mr. Bennet napped whenever possible. Days began to drag into weeks that felt like months, and finally, with a sigh of relief, the Darcys waved good-bye to her sisters and parents and settled into what would become a fateful new year.
It was the beginning of the year of our Lord, 1817. Winter had come to Pemberley.
Chapter 5
At Easter, Fitzwilliam returned home from Spain to find the whole county stricken with some sort of fever, both his father and his aunt among them, Catherine attended by no less than three physicians who attempted in vain to keep her quiet and secluded. A tenuous truce between Richard and his older brother, Regis, held only for the length of time it took for their father to be on the mend.
He missed teasing Catherine and even missed her constant nonsensical lectures, the hours and hours of bizarre and unlooked-for advice on health and happiness that she felt obliged to provide as matriarch of the family.
Fitzwilliam stayed longer than his usual visit, sending word to the War Office, extending his leave, and left only when assured the two old lions were improving. By early May, he arrived at Pemberley for a shortened visit, happy to spend his last two weeks with the Darcys before returning to his regiment.