For a moment, I was confused as to his meaning. And then I felt a flush spread over my cheeks. “Please, sir, forgive my ungoverned tongue. It is all to be forgotten.”
For a long minute, he said nothing, and I hoped the subject closed. But it was not.
“I, however, have remembered that moment often over the years,” he said, much to my surprise. “It was badly done. It must have given you a poor opinion of my character.”
Had it? Perhaps it had set the stage, so to speak, for my ill opinion of him at the time. But most of the seeds of that opinion had been sown by George Wickham. That blackguard had managed to secure my hatred in its entirety, with none left over for any other.
“I suppose I was not overfond of your remark at the time, but I can assure you—truthfully—I had not even remembered, not for many years, not until the very moment I said it, and ’twas only my absurd idea of a joke.”
This time, he seemed to accept my reassurance, and the silence stretched between us. More as a wish to show that I took no thought for past insults than for any desire to continue conversing, I thought of a neutral subject. “The countess speaks highly of Pemberley. It is in the Peaks, I think she said? We—that is, my aunt and uncle and I—always wished to tour the area, but were never able, although my aunt lives in a village—Lambton—in Derbyshire now. Perhaps someday yet I will visit.”
This turned out to be a brilliant conversational gambit. On the subject of the beauty of the Peaks and his home estate, he was never at a loss. In fact, he made great word-pictures of them, so that I could almost see snow-tipped mountains scraping indigo skies and a white-stoned, sparkling Pemberley majestically placed at the jewelled tip of its woods and fields. I peered sideways at his face, and it was almost startling, the transformation. Instead of the grim gentleman I was accustomed to seeing, he wore an almost lightness of expression, enthusiasm, even reverence within it.
This is the face of a man in love, I thought to myself. Too bad it was for a place, and a pile of stones.
* * *
The countess was still indisposed the following day, and it went very much as the previous one. Mr Darcy greeted me sombrely over the breakfast table; we ate in silence, and then separated. Despite inclement weather, I had no intention of remaining within the house. I took my basket of threads with me—and an umbrella—as I went out of doors, heading this time for the little hermitage.
It was a round stone building with a narrow door, but largish windows let in the sun—had there been any—from every side. It boasted padded benches and I meant to sort my threads and look upon the beauty of the garden while I did so. It might grow too chilly to stay long, but I was warmly dressed and hoped for at least an hour of fresh air.
To my near-dismay, Mr Darcy joined me as soon as I was within the garden walls—almost as if he had waited for me. I stifled my sigh, reminding myself of the need to be gracious.
“I intended to sit in the hermitage for a bit—it appears as though it may be a wet morning,” I said, somewhat unnecessarily, for he, too, carried an umbrella. He only nodded.
We walked in silence, and I sped up as the hermitage came within sight along with the first drops of rain. He followed me inside, and suddenly, the building seemed excessively small. I seated myself on one bench, and he placed himself upon the opposite one, although he still seemed quite close, his long legs stretched in front of him, nearly to my toes.
But he did nothing at all alarming, only stared out into the garden. The rain showered and splashed beyond the doorway, which he had left ajar—a nod to propriety, I supposed, but which left a frosty breeze to inhabit the room with us. I opened my basket and sorted amongst my threads for a time, organising them into the colours I wanted.
“You are sewing something?”
“I have already sewn it—a dress for the advent of a new niece or nephew. But I will add something pretty to the hems. Leaves, I think. Of course, Jane has plenty of clothing what with the three who preceded it, but I think a new baby ought to have some new things.”
He nodded. “What are their names—her children?”
I smiled, because I adored—and was adored by—my nephews. “Harry, John—whom we call Jack—and James.”
“Three boys. I wonder that Tilney can write his sermons, with such a troop underfoot.”
I glanced at him sharply, but his face held a hint of something close to a smile, and I wondered, suddenly—did he know Mr Tilney? I had not thought of it before, that if the earl was his cousin, it was likely he had visited. Jane surely would have mentioned it though, had the Tilneys dined with Mr Darcy. Would she not? The earl, who was, evidently, a perfectly jovial fellow when not coping with his maternal parent, had them up to the Court often when there were guests.
“Do you know Mr Tilney?” I asked, curious.
It was like watching a curtain fall, a shuttered expression closing his face. “I was at school with him. Long ago.”
“Really,” I said, fascinated. I could not imagine Mr Darcy as a schoolboy, any more than I could imagine calling him ‘Willsy’. “We met him while living with my relations in Gracechurch Street. He held the curacy in their parish at the time, and apparently had a tendre for Janey rather quickly, though he was so proper, we did not know it, and of course she was in mourning in the beginning. There was no chance for marriage, due to his circumstance. But once he discovered he was to get the living at Matlock Court, he began wooing her in earnest.”
I did not tell him of the weeks of uncertainty Jane experienced—the fear that if she gave her heart, it would be broken again. Still, it is a very different thing to be courted properly than to rely upon a few dances or the opinions of a neighbourhood, and especially by one of such good character as Mr Tilney. Jane, too, had learned to show more of her feelings than was comfortable for her. They had managed the business rather well, and what was better, Mr Tilney had no sisters. I did not say that, either.
“He was always a good man,” Mr Darcy said. “Steady.”
It seemed we had exhausted the topic, but my hands were busy and I felt no need to chatter. If he wished to speak, he was welcome to do so, but I would not make an effort to draw him out. Several minutes passed with only the sound of the rain on the roof between us.
“I am sorry,” he said suddenly, “that Lady Matlock is so demanding upon you.”
I was immediately embarrassed. “It is hardly your fault if she is,” I said stiffly.
“She is my aunt.”
“She is also your cousin’s mother, but rather than cope with her temper, he doubles her allowance if she stays in this property, as far from himself as he can send her.” It was none of my business, and most of the time I could not blame anyone for not wanting the countess nearby on a daily basis. But let him take his apologies to the earl, if he had any.
He had no reply to this, and once again, I regretted my hasty tongue. In a gentler voice, I added, “One evening, when I had been here a few months, Lady Matlock overindulged in her sherry. It was the anniversary of her marriage, fifty years to the day, she said. She told me of the old earl’s final illness, and of the other children she had buried. And that there was no one alive who cared enough to notice or remember any longer.” I hesitated. “I try to remember that night, on days that are hard.”
“When I was young, I used to spend summers at Matlock Court with my mother,” he said, after a long pause. “While the countess did not come much into the nursery, she was never unkind, and was patient with my shyness. One could never tell whether she and the earl had a…close connexion, but I suppose they must have. There is little to be learnt from outward appearances, I know.”
Once again, the idea of him as a child in the nursery was a foreign concept. In outward appearances, he was ever the prosperous, prideful gentleman from Derbyshire, unchanged—excepting the silvering hair—from the Mr Darcy of my memories of eight years ago. But we were none of us our exterior, were we? Inside of me still lived the proud twenty-year-old girl, the grief-stricken daughter, the hopeful young woman of Gracechurch Street, and so forth.
Suddenly, I realised that to all outward appearances, I was an unchaperoned, unwed female in a darkened hermitage with a handsome, eligible widower. “You are so very correct,” I replied, laughing aloud.
He glanced at me curiously, but I did not explain the joke.