Chapter One — A Proper Reception
By eleven o'clock, Elizabeth Darcy had inspected three bedrooms, approved two fires, altered one chair, and asked Mrs. Reynolds six questions which, in another woman’s mouth and with another degree of consequence, might have sounded very like an inquisition.
Mrs. Reynolds, who had presided over Pemberley through illnesses, homecomings, christenings, tenants' dinners, family deaths, and a master's marriage, received each question with the same composed attention. She neither smiled at Elizabeth's care nor encouraged it into anxiety. If the blue room had been aired, it had been aired; if the sheets had been warmed, they had been warmed; if Lady Catherine de Bourgh had requested that Miss de Bourgh should not be put where there was any possibility of damp, draft, noise, over-exertion, too much morning light, too little afternoon light, or any other circumstance by which a constitution already unequal to the common demands of life might be further tried, Mrs. Reynolds had found a way to acknowledge the instruction without allowing it to become the government of Pemberley.
“The fire has been laid, ma’am,” she said, as they stood in the doorway of the blue room, “but not lighted. I thought you might prefer the room fresh until Miss de Bourgh is brought up.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “Quite right.”
She had occupied this room on her first visit to Pemberley. She had liked it then, though she had not known she liked it — had only known that after the first terror of entering Pemberley, after the first impossibility of believing herself under Mr. Darcy's roof, here had been a room which did not press upon her.
For Miss de Bourgh, it might do the same.
Or, if Lady Catherine was to be believed, it might be insufficiently warm, insufficiently near, insufficiently elevated, insufficiently screened from all the common offenses of air and light by which the world had apparently been trying Miss de Bourgh for her eight-and-twenty years.
Elizabeth crossed to the writing table and moved the inkstand half an inch to the left.
"She is not to be overwhelmed," Elizabeth said.
“No, ma’am.”
“And yet I would not have the room look as though we expected her to be ill the moment she entered it.”
“No, ma’am.”
It was possible, Elizabeth thought, that she had married not only a man and an estate, but an institution for the preservation of composure. She had been mistress of Pemberley for barely a month, and already she had learned that Mrs. Reynolds could say yes, ma’am in at least eight distinct meanings, three of them corrective, two sympathetic, one amused, and two beyond Elizabeth’s present powers of classification.
Lady Catherine's apartments were in the south wing, a full staircase and two turnings removed from the blue room. Mrs. Reynolds had chosen them: the principal guest suite, with a bedchamber, dressing room, and a sitting room whose windows looked out over the formal garden, furnished with writing materials, a good lamp, and a bell within easy reach of every chair. It was the suite kept for visitors whose rank required both space and the appearance of having been expected. Here, none of the blue room's quiet restraint was wanted.
The bedchamber was grand, because Lady Catherine would expect grandeur; warm, because Lady Catherine would object to chill; not too warm, because she would object to excess; and supplied with every proper comfort except the one thing Pemberley could not provide, which was Rosings.
Elizabeth looked about it and found nothing wanting. Which meant only that Lady Catherine would have to invent something.
"She will find the chimney draws incorrectly," she said.
Mrs. Reynolds's gaze traveled to the grate with professional gravity. "It does not, ma'am."
"No. But that won't stop her from saying it does."
A footman passed in the corridor below. Somewhere far off, a latch turned and caught. Pemberley did not bustle when guests came. It arranged. It knew how many servants were required before the need appeared; it knew which coal burned cleanest in which grate; it knew how to make a guest feel honored without seeming to have exerted itself. Elizabeth had once been received by that knowledge and had mistaken it, at first, for grandeur. She knew better now. Grandeur stood still and waited to be admired. A household worked.
She was beginning, cautiously, to love the work.
That happiness had come upon her less like a sunrise than like the discovery, made day by day, that some door she had expected to find locked was standing open. At Longbourn, she had been a daughter among five, laughing in corners, defending her family in public and accusing them in private, and knowing exactly how much disorder a room might contain before her father retired to the library. At Pemberley she was Mrs. Darcy. The name still startled her at moments: on a letter, in a servant’s mouth, in Darcy’s voice across a room. Yet it no longer felt impossible. It was a garment still new in the shoulders, perhaps, but made for her measure after all.
Though there were moments when she wondered whether Pemberley required a softer hand than hers. Jane, at Netherfield, had received all of Bingley's family with such warmth that even Miss Bingley had found no fair objection. But Jane's gift was gentleness without edges. Elizabeth's was something sharper, and she was not always certain, in the silence between rooms, that sharpness would serve a hostess as well as gentleness did.
The wedding had helped. Or rather, the wedding had not prevented it, which, considering the number of Bennets and near-Bennets assembled under one roof, was no small recommendation. Mrs. Bennet had wept, triumphed, prophesied, and revived herself at intervals with such regularity that Mr. Bennet had observed she was becoming almost dependable. Mary had pronounced marriage a solemn institution and had been prevailed upon not to elaborate before breakfast.
Lady Catherine had not attended.
Darcy had felt it more deeply than he had said; she had seen that in the way he folded the letter, once, twice, and then again, until the paper's edges no longer quite met. But for herself — selfish, insufficiently awed creature that she was — Elizabeth had been relieved. There had been no towering aunt to inspect the church, the breakfast, the Gardiners, the cut of Elizabeth's gown, and the moral decay represented by a bride who could laugh with her uncle before entering her husband's carriage.
Lady Catherine had not come to the wedding.
Lady Catherine was coming now.
Her letter had arrived two weeks after the Darcys returned to Pemberley, three pages of family civility, family correction, and family inevitability, with a fourth enclosed from Mrs. Jenkinson concerning Miss de Bourgh’s arrangements. Lady Catherine had declined, in terms of formidable moderation, to let the marriage remain unacknowledged by a formal visit. She would come to Pemberley for three nights. She would bring Anne. She would see Darcy established. She would, though she did not write the words, determine whether Pemberley had survived the installation of its new mistress.
Elizabeth had read the letter twice, laughed once, and then looked across the breakfast table at her husband.
Darcy had said, “It is better that she comes.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth had replied. “That is precisely what I was trying to persuade myself.”
He had looked grave for three seconds and then not grave enough. That was marriage, Elizabeth was discovering: not the end of astonishment, but the beginning of being astonished in company.
As they descended the stairs, Elizabeth reviewed Lady Catherine's instructions once more, ticking off her preparations as a good hostess ought.
A chair by the fire.
Tea ready at once.
No expectation Anne would join the younger ladies if she were tired.
At the foot of the stairs, they met Darcy.
He was crossing the hall with a letter in one hand, moving with that studied air of purpose which would have deceived anyone who did not know him intimately, and very few who did. He was properly dressed for the occasion — she could not have faulted his coat, his cravat, or his air of having been ready since breakfast — which made the letter, and the direction in which he was walking, all the more transparent. In private he was William, by his own request; in the hall, with Mrs. Reynolds a step behind her and two footmen stationed at the door, he remained Mr. Darcy.
"Mr. Darcy," Elizabeth said, stopping.
He stopped also. “Mrs. Darcy.”
Mrs. Reynolds, with perfect discretion, discovered an urgent need to speak to the senior footman.
Elizabeth looked at the letter. "You have business elsewhere?"
"The estate office."
“Ah. How fortunate that it has chosen this morning to require you.”
“It’s Stony Close. The lower culvert has failed again, and Hardwick thinks the last rain has done more damage than we supposed.”
“A very inconsiderate culvert,” Elizabeth said. “It might have waited until your aunt had been in the house half an hour.”
Darcy’s mouth betrayed him slightly at the corner. “I do not believe culverts are governed by my aunt’s convenience.”
“No. That is perhaps why she has so little patience with them.”
His smile nearly appeared, then was suppressed by duty, family feeling, and the recollection that Lady Catherine would be at his door in a matter of minutes. Elizabeth liked him best in these moments: not because he was easy, but because ease, when it came, was still a gift he seemed surprised to have made.
“Everything is ready?” he asked.
“To be sure.”
Darcy’s levity fell away. “My aunt will be particular.”
“Your aunt,” Elizabeth replied, “has never given me reason to expect otherwise.”
This time the smile did come, briefly. “Elizabeth.”
The name, still private enough to warm her, softened the warning.
“I shall be civil,” she said.
“I never doubted your civility.”
“Then I shall be obedient.”
“I have often doubted that.”
She laughed, and he took her hand — briefly, as a husband may in his own hall, his thumb warm against her fingers.
“Three nights,” he said.
“Four days,” she corrected. “You must not rob me of any portion of my trial.”
“We shall survive it.”
“Spoken like a man escaping to the estate office.”
“I am not escaping.”
“No. You are attending to a culvert.”
“Precisely.”
The younger footman at the door stiffened. Mrs. Reynolds turned.
Darcy looked toward the door.
Elizabeth looked at Darcy.
“Providence,” Elizabeth said, “has discovered you.”
“Then we receive them,” he said.
By the time Elizabeth and Darcy stepped to the now-open front door, the household had already put itself into motion: the two footmen at the carriage, a groom near the horses, another servant ready for the traveling cases, Mrs. Reynolds just inside the hall where she could see everything and appear to direct nothing.
Cold autumn air washed in, clean and edged with damp leaves, carrying with it the smell of leather, horses, and wet earth.
The traveling carriage was large, dark, well-kept, and unmistakably consequential; not ostentatious enough to be vulgar, and not plain enough to be modest. The carriage of a woman who would consider its grandeur not display but propriety.
A footman let down the steps.
Lady Catherine emerged first.
She did not so much descend as permit Derbyshire to receive her. Her pelisse was arranged against the air with military precision, her gloves spotless after two days’ travel, and her eye, before it had settled upon either nephew or niece, had already observed the front elevation, the sweep, the servants, the open door, the angle at which the carriage had drawn up, and very probably the moral character of the gravel.
“Nephew,” she said.
He bowed. “Lady Catherine.”
“Mrs. Darcy.”
Elizabeth curtsied. “Lady Catherine. Welcome to Pemberley.”
“Hm.” Lady Catherine gave her hand as if bestowing upon Elizabeth the opportunity to behave properly. “You are well, I see.”
“Very well, thank you.”
“You have had time enough to be settled, I suppose. Though young women, upon first coming into houses of consequence, are often apt to mistake novelty for improvement.”
Elizabeth, who had been Mrs. Darcy for twenty-seven days and mistress enough of herself for several years more, smiled. “Then I am fortunate to have Mrs. Reynolds to prevent my improving too much at once.”
Lady Catherine’s gaze moved to Mrs. Reynolds, who curtsied with the exact depth appropriate to Lady Catherine’s consequence and Pemberley’s dignity.
“You remain,” Lady Catherine said.
“I do, my lady.”
“That is well. Old servants are not always to be replaced merely because a young mistress wishes to make herself felt.”
“No one at Pemberley has wished it,” Darcy said.
It was mild. It was perfectly respectful. It also closed the subject so completely that Elizabeth loved him for it and feared, with equal sincerity, that Lady Catherine would punish her for having been defended.
Lady Catherine turned back to the carriage. “Anne must not be kept in the air. Mrs. Jenkinson, attend to the rug. No, not that one—the other. Anne, wait until they have set the step properly. You are not to exert yourself.”
There was movement inside the carriage: a smaller form, a gray cloak. Mrs. Jenkinson, a soft, round woman of middle years, had emerged already busy with rug, reticule, and solicitude, her whole person arranged around the act of attending to someone else. Mrs. Jenkinson offered one arm; the footman offered the other.
Miss de Bourgh descended.
Pale, certainly — pale in a way that made the autumn air seem to pass through her rather than over her. Thin, though not girlishly so; there was nothing of youth’s softness in the lines of her face. Her eyes were reddened at the rims, either from travel or fatigue, and her mouth had the compressed look of a person who had borne discomfort long enough for patience to become indistinguishable from displeasure. She did not look at Pemberley first. She looked at the open door.
Then her eyes found Elizabeth.
Elizabeth stepped forward. “Miss de Bourgh. I am very glad to welcome you.”
Miss de Bourgh curtsied, a small motion, controlled and economical. Mrs. Jenkinson's hand moved at once toward her elbow, though Miss de Bourgh had already recovered herself.
Darcy bowed. "Anne."
She looked at him, briefly, and did not speak.
"Miss de Bourgh is fatigued," Mrs. Jenkinson said softly. “The last stage was a little trying.”
“The road beyond Lambton is not what it ought to be,” Lady Catherine said. “I observed it particularly. Darcy, you must speak to someone. I cannot conceive why such approaches are permitted to remain in a state so unworthy of Pemberley.”
“I shall inquire,” Darcy said.
Elizabeth suspected he had inquired into the roads within ten miles of Pemberley more often than Lady Catherine had inquired into the happiness of anyone beneath her roof; but this was not a thought suited to the front steps.
“Please, come in,” she said instead. “You must be glad of the fire.”
Miss de Bourgh said nothing.
Mrs. Jenkinson said, “Yes, indeed, ma’am, she is always better when she is kept from chill after traveling.”
Miss de Bourgh’s eyes lowered.
The hall received them as Pemberley received everyone: with space enough for consequence and warmth enough to put consequence at its ease. Servants moved without haste. The luggage disappeared toward its proper destination. Lady Catherine looked up, down, and across, as if the hall had presented itself for examination and would be marked accordingly.
“I do not remember that table being there,” she said.
“It was moved after the summer,” Darcy replied.
“By whose advice?”
“Mine.”
This did not please her, but it did deprive her of a more satisfying target. Her eyes turned to Elizabeth all the same. “Young people are very fond of moving furniture. They believe motion to be improvement.”
Elizabeth had the strongest temptation to agree and say she had already moved three chairs that morning, but she had promised civility, if not obedience.
“Pemberley gives one very little excuse for alteration,” she said.
“A proper answer,” Lady Catherine said, in a tone implying that proper answers were rare flowers and unlikely to survive poor cultivation. “We shall see whether the practice bears it out.”
Darcy’s hand, behind Lady Catherine’s line of sight, brushed Elizabeth’s sleeve once and was gone.
Georgiana and Kitty were waiting in the drawing room. They had been placed there by Elizabeth’s design and Mrs. Reynolds’s execution, dressed, composed, and outwardly prepared for Lady Catherine. Georgiana stood with the quiet composure of a young woman who had received her aunt often enough to know what was expected; Kitty looked calm by means of great effort.
Both curtsied as Lady Catherine entered. Lady Catherine went to Georgiana first.
"My dear," she said, kissing her cheek with more approval than tenderness. "You are taller."
"Yes, ma'am."
"That is not an accomplishment. I hope your practicing has not suffered."
"No, ma'am."
"Mrs. Annesley writes that you continue diligent. Diligence is very well, where taste is guided. You must play for me presently."
Georgiana's gaze darted toward Elizabeth for a fraction of a second. Elizabeth gave her the smallest smile she could.
Lady Catherine’s regard descended upon Kitty. "Miss Catherine Bennet."
"Lady Catherine.” She paused, then remembered. “I am honored."
Lady Catherine did not wait for her to finish. "You remain at Pemberley."
Kitty delivered the rehearsed answer, word for word. "Mr. and Mrs. Darcy have been very kind."
“Kindness requires judgment. Young women are not improved by idleness merely because it is pleasantly offered. Are you continuing your studies?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And your reading?”
Kitty hesitated. “Yes, ma’am.”
“What are you reading?”
A cruel question. Kitty’s mind emptied itself at once of every book she had ever opened, every title she had ever heard, and quite possibly the alphabet.
"Fordyce," Elizabeth said gravely.
Darcy made no sound. Georgiana’s lips pressed together. Kitty looked at Elizabeth with the terrified gratitude of a person whose reprieve had arrived in a language she did not speak.
Lady Catherine’s eyes sharpened. “Fordyce’s Sermons?”
“Not continuously,” Elizabeth said. “We are not so ambitious.”
“Hm.”
Not approval. Not defeat. A postponement.
Miss de Bourgh had been led to a chair by the fire.
Elizabeth had arranged the chair herself. It stood at a comfortable angle, near enough for warmth, far enough from the blaze not to be oppressive, with a small table at hand and a screen ready should it be needed. A cushion had appeared behind her back. Mrs. Jenkinson had taken the neighboring chair—not sitting fully at ease, but perched in the posture of a woman prepared to rise at the first suggestion of need. Her reticule was open. A vial, a folded handkerchief, and what appeared to be a small paper of lozenges had just come out of it and lay ready on the table.
Miss de Bourgh seemed not merely tired from travel; that was too simple. Exhausted by arrival, by attention, by the necessity of being considered in company. Her hands, ungloved now, rested lightly together, the fingers thin and cold-looking. The fire had put a little color in her face, but it did not make her look stronger. It made her look more breakable. Her breathing was shallow, and once, briefly, she turned her face from the fire as if the warmth pressed upon her rather than eased her.
Poor Miss de Bourgh. Elizabeth had disliked Lady Catherine too heartily to pity her daughter properly before. At Rosings, Miss de Bourgh had seemed part of the furniture of command: the pale consequence seated by her mother, the silent future which Lady Catherine had once meant to impose upon Darcy, the woman whose existence had been used as an argument against Elizabeth's happiness. It was difficult to pity a person one had been meant to make way for.
But here, in Pemberley’s drawing room, with the cold journey still upon her and Mrs. Jenkinson hovering as if any independent movement might be fatal, Miss de Bourgh looked less like an argument than a woman who had never been allowed to occupy even her own fatigue without assistance.
Elizabeth softened toward her at once, with a compassion so natural and so sure of itself that she did not think to question its shape.
Tea came. Or rather, tea was ordered, questioned, corrected, and then permitted to come.
Lady Catherine took the largest chair as if it had been placed for her by natural law. Darcy stood near the mantel, dutiful, grave, and so exactly the nephew Lady Catherine expected that Elizabeth, knowing what it cost him, forgave him every appearance of severity. Georgiana and Kitty sat together on the sofa, Kitty’s hands folded with exemplary uselessness. Elizabeth took the chair which allowed her to attend to Lady Catherine, observe Miss de Bourgh, rescue Kitty, encourage Georgiana, and not look as though she were doing any of those things.
It was a demanding chair.
“The room is altered,” Lady Catherine said.
“Only a little,” Elizabeth replied.
“Why?”
“Because the light is better with the small table nearer the window.”
“Light is not the only consideration.”
“No. But it is one.”
Lady Catherine looked at her. Elizabeth looked pleasantly back.
“And who advised it?”
“I did.”
Darcy’s eyes came to her. Not in alarm. In interest.
Lady Catherine set down her cup. “You have begun early.”
“With moving small tables? I fear so.”
“With making yourself felt.”
Elizabeth could have answered that to be mistress of a house and leave no trace upon its rooms seemed an unusual definition of duty; but she was not yet so lost to prudence. “I hope only where Pemberley is not injured by it.”
“My dear Mrs. Darcy, injury is not always apparent to those who inflict it.”
“Then I am fortunate in having many people ready to detect it.”
Darcy's mouth did nothing. It did nothing with great effort.
Lady Catherine's attention moved. "And your family, Mrs. Darcy? Your parents are well, I suppose."
"Very well, thank you."
"Your parents have visited, I suppose."
"My father came in August," Elizabeth said. "He found Pemberley's library very much to his liking."
"And your mother?"
"Not yet. She is still becoming accustomed to having a married daughter so near as Netherfield. It is only a short carriage ride from Longbourn."
"One married daughter at Netherfield, another at Pemberley." Lady Catherine's tone suggested that the Bennet family was conducting an invasion by matrimony.
Her mother would reach Pemberley eventually, but it did not have to be soon.
Mrs. Jenkinson leaned forward. "The fire is perhaps a little high for Miss de Bourgh, ma'am. She is sensitive to sudden warmth after traveling."
Elizabeth glanced at Miss de Bourgh. "Would you like it lowered, Miss de Bourgh?"
"Anne must be kept warm," Lady Catherine said. "She is always chilled after a journey. The fire is not to be touched."
Mrs. Jenkinson sat back at once. "No, my lady."
Miss de Bourgh did not speak. She gazed at the fire.
“There is a screen if the light tries her,” Mrs. Jenkinson added, already half-rising.
“No,” Miss de Bourgh said.
It was so quiet that Elizabeth might have mistaken it for the fire had every other person in the room not paused.
Lady Catherine resumed her survey.
“Georgiana, what are you practicing?”
Georgiana named a piece. Lady Catherine had heard it played better by a girl of no fortune but excellent instruction, did not approve of the manner in which young ladies were now taught to approach it, and supposed Georgiana's taste had not been allowed to grow fanciful.
“And Miss Bennet sings?”
Kitty looked betrayed by the universe.
“A little,” Elizabeth said.
“Everyone sings a little. It is one of the misfortunes of these new notions of education. Accomplishment is now measured by attempts.”
Kitty blushed. Georgiana, with a courage Elizabeth loved, said, “Kitty has a pleasant voice.”
“Pleasantness is not training,” Lady Catherine replied. “But it may be improved, if there is application. I should like to hear what you are all doing. Young women are never so well judged as at the instrument.”
This pronouncement had the effect of a command, though it had not taken the trouble to become one.
Georgiana rose. Kitty rose because Georgiana had risen. Darcy moved from the mantel. Elizabeth set down her cup.
Lady Catherine stood also. “We will go to the music room. I am always desirous of knowing how time is employed in a house where young women reside. Darcy, you must hear whether your sister has been neglected. Mrs. Darcy, I suppose you continue to play?”
“With more courage than justice,” Elizabeth said.
“That is often said by those who wish to be contradicted.”
“Then I shall try to bear the disappointment.”
This time Darcy turned away before his face could betray him.
Miss de Bourgh’s hand moved on the arm of her chair. Mrs. Jenkinson noticed it before Elizabeth had decided whether there was anything to notice. She leaned toward her, murmuring, “You are better where you are, my dear Miss de Bourgh.”
Lady Catherine’s head turned. “Anne, you had best remain by the fire. You have traveled quite enough for one day. Mrs. Jenkinson will stay with you.”
Miss de Bourgh’s hand went still.
Elizabeth smiled at her. “We shall not be long.”
Miss de Bourgh inclined her head.
Elizabeth followed the others. Lady Catherine took Darcy’s arm without asking for it. Georgiana and Kitty moved ahead together, both too well-bred to hurry and too young not to wish they might.
The door between the rooms stood open long enough for Elizabeth to hear Mrs. Jenkinson’s soft murmur, the fire settling in the grate, and the faint rustle of Miss de Bourgh’s gown as she remained where she had been placed.
