Nameless by Julie Cooper
Chapter Two
The next day I was not so fortunate in escaping Lady Matlock. She was at her worst, wanting a certain necklace, and then her ear bobs, a particular ‘favourite’ book—which I had certainly never seen her read—and then, that it be exchanged for a different one. She alternated between boasting to Mr Darcy of her various illnesses and claiming herself in the pink of health, and offering him the various potions and plasters which were responsible for the latter. One moment, she was excessively flattering; the next, she berated him for his neglect. She was such an ugly mixture of neediness and disapproval, I wondered how he endured it.
Of course, this was my life now. I forced myself to remember that she was a human being who grieved her husband’s loss and possessed not an ounce of charm with which to fill it. She only had me, and that because I required a roof over my head and meals to eat and a bit of money besides. In one way she was generous; upon her husband’s death, she had discarded most of her dresses in favour of black bombazine and crape. She had given me trunks full of discards to make over for myself, and even if in the most frightful colours, I could do something with them—all of my mother’s daughters were skilled with a needle. But I wondered why he put up with her, needing neither her home nor her clothing. He said little, but as the days crept by, I made a few little discoveries of his feelings.
When Lady Matlock uttered something mildly foolish, he flicked an imaginary speck of dust off his waistcoat or trousers. When her words were utterly, embarrassingly ridiculous, he smoothed his left brow with his left forefinger, as if preventing his eye from rolling upwards. Yet, he was polite; he gamely agreed with her nonsense, whether or not she deserved such consideration. But if she mentioned his dead wife, he turned to stone.
Even the oblivious dowager countess soon learned that unless she wished for her favoured guest to disappear or in some way turn his coveted attention away from her, the late Mrs Darcy was never to be mentioned.
I wondered how long he would bear with his aunt. I could admit that it was mildly embarrassing, knowing he watched me scampering about fulfilling her ladyship’s demands, especially when she was critical or accused me of disremembering when she reversed her instruction. Lady Matlock was only related to him by marriage, and it was kind of him to visit her. But I selfishly wished he might not stay a good deal longer; he saw too much.
A week after he had arrived, I entered the breakfast parlour to see him alone in it. This was unusual—Lady Matlock very much looked forward to her kippers each morning and was seldom late to the table.
I glanced at him—I suppose my surprise showed—for he said, “Apparently, my aunt is indisposed. The apothecary has been called, but she will not be down.”
“Oh. Perhaps I should order a tray be brought to me in her room, then.”
His brow furrowed in something like annoyance. “You are not her nurse, and she has her woman. Do have your breakfast.”
There was nothing wrong in his words, but I wondered at the irritation in them as I took a plate and studied the selection of food at the sideboard. Still, he had always been somewhat ill tempered, had he not? Unexpectedly I remembered that long-ago assembly, our first meeting, when Mr Bingley had begged him to dance with me. To this day, I do not know what made me say it.
“The hash is tolerable, I suppose, but not handsome enough to tempt me.” I put a poached egg on my plate and, suddenly embarrassed, seated myself as far away from him as possible. What might have been a humorous set-down had I still been a daughter of Longbourn was a ridiculous mortification from his aunt’s companion.
He did not acknowledge my silly remark, and I hoped he had not heard—I had spoken only in a murmur. It did not take me long to finish my egg.
“I suppose I will see whether Dawson has any news of her ladyship’s health, if you will excuse me,” I said, standing.
He stood as well, offering a shallow bow. Quickly I escaped the room.
* * *
Dawson relayed unfortunate news—the countess was genuinely sick, and not simply in an ill humour. Mr Burns gave it as his opinion that it was the grippe, though Dawson was not so sure. She, evidently, had nursed her sister’s family through the grippe and two children died from it; her ladyship did not seem nearly so sick as they.
“More than likely caught a chill from sleeping with the window open, though I’ve told her time and again it will be the death of her,” Dawson grumbled. “But the Quality cannot be brought low by so humble a complaint. It all must be life-threatening, or it will not do.”
I smiled. “We shall hope so. Were you up in the night with her? Have you had your breakfast?”
“Hetty brung me a tray. The mistress be too poorly to bother about me unless she wants her barley water. I’m dozing by her fire, as comfortable as may be, with sewing enough to last the week.”
“When shall I take my turn? I can sew and bring her barley water as needed.”
“You shan’t,” she replied with finality. “When she’s truly ill, she only wants me. There’s no help for it.”
“Oh, you cannot do it all yourself!”
Dawson only shrugged. “Dora will do the nights. Mistress been running us off our feet of late, and we could all use a rest. You more than some others, I’m thinking.”
I hesitated, torn between wanting to accept the proffered break in routine, and guilt at how much I wanted it. “You will tell me if I can do anything to assist you?”
“Go on with you,” she said, turning back to the countess’s chamber, and shutting me out of it. I stared only a moment at the solid oak in front of me and then hurried away.
I went to my room and fetched wrap and parasol, deciding upon the garden again as my destination. There was a village only a mile away, but then I would be required to make conversation and—since the apothecary had, no doubt, reported to all and sundry news of the illness—talk about it, and the countess, all morning. Rosings’s grounds were extensive, with a pretty little wilderness and hermitage, and plenty of quiet. I almost took my sewing with me, for the weather was clear, but decided that for today I would give myself up to the pleasures of idleness.
I had not been walking above a quarter hour, when, unexpectedly, I met Mr Darcy. I paused for an awkward greeting, but to my surprise, he fell into step beside me.
“You need not feel obliged to accompany me,” I said. “I have no direction to my ramble, and shall probably stay out of doors all morning.”
He only nodded solemnly, matching his steps to my shorter ones. After a few moments, he said, “It was untrue, and I ought not to have said it. I apologise, most sincerely, if belatedly.”
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.