“Most particular,” Uncle Gardiner repeated with a small smile. “I shall order the carriage for tomorrow morning when I walk to the post, then. Shall I post your letter to Lydia, Lizzy?”
Why she bothered writing when Lydia was visiting Brighton and would not bother to write her back, Elizabeth did not know. She hoped Lydia was behaving herself. She nodded. “Thank you, Uncle.”
That was all the conversation they were to have for a while. Aunt Gardiner read a book, Uncle Gardiner worked on his letter, and neither said anything more.
Elizabeth took the chair nearest the window, accepted that she was to be observed for the rest of the evening—perhaps the rest of their time in Derbyshire—and gazed down into the inn yard. There was nothing there but the ostler, a post-chaise, and a very ordinary stretch of road, and yet, by some defect in her imagination, it still managed to lead directly back to Pemberley.
The evening passed more quietly than Elizabeth expected. Aunt Gardiner spoke of Miss Darcy with warm approbation, Uncle Gardiner contributed several particulars about his time at the river, the weather, and the joys of fishing. Yet Elizabeth, who had formerly prided herself upon having an answer ready for every subject, found herself unequal even to this simple conversation.
She ate her supper, agreed when agreement was required,and once gave an opinion on the road to Matlock when the subject under discussion had been the merits of Miss Darcy’s interest in Italian airs.
This, naturally, did not escape Aunt Gardiner.
“Tomorrow,” she said at last, “we shall breakfast early, if you have no objection.”
“No, I have no objection,” Elizabeth said.
It was a very simple sentence and ought not to have produced any sensation whatever. But at once she was back at Pemberley with Miss Darcy shyly anxious to please, Mrs. Annesley kind and sensible, Miss Bingley with her excellent posture and false civility, and Mrs. Hurst, elegant and composed, whose contribution lay chiefly in proving how nearly a lady might resemble the sofa she occupied.
And then there was Mr. Darcy.
Uncle Gardiner, who had been reading a book, looked up with an innocent expression. “I hope you will not find the early hour too difficult, Lizzy.”
They all chuckled at that, for while her uncle rose with the sun each day to see to business matters, Elizabeth awoke not long after.
She was not fooled. Her aunt and uncle were forming certain opinions. Elizabeth could have laughed at open teasing. But affection, quietly observant and gently amused, was a very serious enemy.
At length, pleading fatigue from the day’s excursion, she retired.
As she prepared for sleep with the help of the inn’s maid, she found herself watching the long evening light still soft upon the distant hills.
“You had fine weather for Pemberley today, miss,” said the girl, taking down Elizabeth’s hair.
Elizabeth glanced over. “We were fortunate. It has been a cool summer.”
“It is a grand place, is it not?”
“Very grand.”
The maid smiled. “They say Mr. Darcy has returned now?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “We have seen him, in fact.”
The maid smiled. “My mother shall be glad to hear it. It is a different town when the family is at home.”
“How so?” Her curiosity was unseemly, and yet the maid did not seem to mind.
The girl gathered up Elizabeth’s hair pins as she spoke. “Even in the years when the harvest is poor, Mr. Darcy makes certain his tenants are cared for and the tradesmen are paid. Half of Lambton would have a rather thin winter this year without Pemberley’s custom.” She put the pins away. “Will there be anything else, miss?”
“No. Thank you.”
The girl bobbed a curtsy and withdrew, the door closing softly behind her, leaving Elizabeth alone with her thoughts. She stood where she was for several moments, listening to the ordinary sounds of the inn below—the murmur of voices, a footstep on the stair, the faint chatter of the guests in the common room—in the hope they might dissuade her from her current observations. But they did not.
Elizabeth had been wrong before. She had been partially wrong about Mr. Darcy, completely wrong about Mr. Wickham, and sadly wrong about her own supposedly excellent judgement. It was uncomfortable indeed to discover that one’s powers of discernment might be little more than vanity.
Mr. Darcy had told her hard truths. He had told them badly at first, with all the arrogance of a man accustomed to being believed even when he deserved to be contradicted—but thenhis letter had followed. The letter had been a little heated but also exact and dreadful. In it, he had confessed to separating Mr. Bingley from Jane for which he had offered no apology, had, in fact, confirmed his belief that it had been right. He described the Bennet family’s impropriety with a plainness that had burned when she first read it. It burned still, but not because of him. Mr. Darcy had defended himself against Mr. Wickham with facts so wretchedly convincing that she had been forced, line by line, to watch her own opinions crumble.
She had hated him for that letter.