Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice Sequel Bundle: 3 Reader Favorites (18 page)

As for herself, she fancied she had entered irrevocably the realm of wanton hussydom. Of all of her mother’s many admonishments of decorum, the most vehement had been for a lady to remember to keep her knees pressed firmly together at all times. Clearly, it had been at least thirty-six hours since Elizabeth remembered her knees to have had more than a nodding acquaintanceship with each other. Nevertheless, she was not truly penitent.

However she might have liked to revel in recollection, she tarried no longer in her bed once it was absent of her husband. The day would begin her instruction of her new position. The first order of business after breakfast was for the Mistress of Pemberley to ascertain how to find the rooms upon the ground floor of the huge house without a map.

At breakfast, Darcy had partaken of his meal with a gusto not usually seen of him. His zeal she attributed to being at home again, it not occurring to her that he was famished from physical depletion. Still, such an unusual display of enthusiasm was contagious and Elizabeth followed him out, ostensibly to bid him good-bye from the courtyard. In truth, she welcomed any opportunity to see him ride off astride his horse. Silly crotchet, she told herself. But watch she did until he rode out of sight.

When nothing was left of his figure but the memory, she reluctantly turned back to the house.

One would expect a hall that size to have a house steward, and butler, if not more. Evidently, no one other than Mrs. Reynolds was in charge. At her ready was a red leather folio, in it well-worn sheaths of vellum detailing the staggering number of duties that fell to Pemberley’s mistress. The handwriting was fair and flowing, apparently that of a cultured lady. Elizabeth was disposed to believe it had been written by Darcy’s mother.

Handed the book, she sank to a chair quite involuntarily, stunned by the sheer number of responsibilities now in her charge. Even having held such previous trepidation over what she was commissioned to undertake, she still was overwhelmed. Hence, it was with great deliberation and resolve that she looked upon the lists, unaware that Mrs. Reynolds noted this purposefulness with approval. It was then that Georgiana appeared, timing her entrance subsequent to Elizabeth’s receiving her duties.

“I must confess, Elizabeth, you see now the additional reason I was so frightfully happy for my brother to marry you. I can now sit and play my music all day without ill-conscience.”

Georgiana then blushed at her own forthrightness. This surprising unity of candidness and jest from timid Georgiana came almost as close to flabbergasting Elizabeth as had her newly acquired domestic obligations, albeit with Georgiana more a marvel than a shock.

After a rudimentary tour of the house, Elizabeth persuaded her new sister-in-law to play for her upon the pianoforte as she meticulously perused her lists. Darcy came upon this harmonious scene mid-song not three hours after he had left.

He awaited the song’s completion, then announced himself thusly, “I have taken the precaution, my good wife, of locking all the doors, lest you be so daunted by the weight of your obligations that you plan to flee.”

“You cannot rid yourself of me all that easily, Husband.”

Georgiana looked somewhat aghast at this playful exchange. However, Elizabeth and Darcy were unwitting of it, for he was busy explaining to his wife a convoluted version of why he had aborted the circumnavigation of his land.

So little did he like the weaving of tales, he abruptly altered the subject, “Pray, shall we picnic?”

So bright and pleasant the day for the season, Elizabeth needed no meditation to think it a grand idea and tactfully bade Georgiana to join them. Georgiana, in tactful reciprocity, declined.

On the presumption of Elizabeth’s agreement to the outing (his own wishes still considered a divine right) Darcy had designed to have a fully laden basket at the ready. Yet, when he simply took up the basket in one hand and, with no more than a wave of his hand and a deferring step back, allowed her to precede him out the door, her countenance betrayed no little amazement.

She turned about and looked over her shoulder, “We are a party of two alone?”

Even at Longbourn an outdoor excursion with a meal would have been complemented by every servant Mrs. Bennet could muster to provide all the attendant pomp one could garner from so lowly an undertaking. Mr. and Mrs. Darcy appeared to be unescorted even by the dogs (for exhausted from their jaunt, Troilus and Cressida lay
curled up asleep upon the sofa). Darcy assured her they were, indeed, to go unattended (for, to his mind, what other reason was there to go?).

If she thought it curious, she remarked of it not. “I ask no other to be of our party. I only feared we should be trailed by a contingent of servants carrying candlesticks, linen, and silver.”

“If you would find favour with a grander occasion, it can be arranged.”

“I doubt that not at all. But, no, I would not favour something more grand.”

Once beyond the deliberately averted eyes of servants, he caught her hand. As he did, she looked demurely away, but an expression of barely contained delight overspread her countenance.

As they struck out upon their walk, her conversation returned to the quite serious matter of her new and numerous responsibilities as Mistress of the House. It was a sad lament, indeed.

“How am I ever to learn all that I must? I am not entirely certain I can find my way from our bedchamber to the morning-parlour without you to guide me.”

“Be happy you have not married a duke, for at least you will not have to entertain foreign sovereigns,” he laughed.

“A consolation,” she laughed, for so it was (even though he had not absolutely excluded sovereigns domestic). “But I might have favoured marrying Duke Darcy. It has a pretty ring to it, does it not?”

“I would be known as duke of something, perhaps Pemberley, and you would call me Pemberley instead of Darcy,” he reminded her.

“Pemberley, oh, Pemberley!” she effected a breathy scenario, then shook her head. “No, that does not excite my esteem. I believe I favour Darcy.”

After a quarter-hour stroll past the pleasure grounds, through oaks and Spanish chestnut trees, they reached the appointed picnic spot that Darcy had, with all due deliberation, preselected. It was in a wood bosky enough for seclusion, but spare enough for the sun to warm. He spread the blanket, doffed his jacket, and tugged at his cravat as if readying for a feast (the nature of which she dared not conjecture). Rather, she took out the still-warm partridges, tore the bread, and pared the fruit. Whilst she laboured thusly, she hummed, endeavouring to be unmindful of the likelihood that she would never serve him from her own hand again.

It was a leisurely sup. Eventually his head found a comfortable nestle in her lap and she found occupation drawing lazy, tickling circles with a bit of grass upon his brow. Perhaps it was not their true design, but intimacy as tantalizing as this did invite affection to take its course.

Suddenly into this scene of pastoral serenity appeared a scruffy-looking man. He bore an ominously large gun, one whose menace to them was becalmed only by the sight of two scent-hounds thrashing about his heels.

For a man whose attention was seriously compromised, Mr. Darcy was to his feet with the utmost rapidity. In that instant, he put himself betwixt the man and Elizabeth (who had to be content with her view of the proceedings from between her tall husband’s knees).

The poor man recognised upon whom he had blundered, and he was terrified to be caught poaching so close to Pemberley Hall by the master himself.

Darcy’s initial alarm was quieted forthwith of ascertaining that the gun the man carried, ancient and rusting, was a fowling piece, one for small game and probably used to feed his family. Still, he glared at him quite relentlessly.

The unfortunate hunter upon whom this severe gaze rested just as expeditiously made not one, but two reckonings. Firstly, considering the disarray of their garb, Mr. Darcy was having a quiet tryst with a woman who was most likely his new wife, and secondly, that Mr. Darcy had not come here to look for poachers.

He backed away in hasty, nodding genuflection.

As Darcy stood watching him leave, Elizabeth subtly tossed aside the paring-knife she had taken into her hand. Not for a moment did she think her husband either unwilling or unable to protect them both. Taking the knife to her side had been quite involuntary. Still, as their marriage was young, she thought it best to disguise from her husband that she did not scruple sacrificing her gentility in the face of danger.

As he found his seat, Mr. Darcy was a bit vexed. It was not lost on him what assumptions that hunter had made. He groused to himself that the incident would only give more fodder to the Kympton inn gossips.

Quite unaware of her own humbling, Elizabeth lay back in blissful, fetching ignorance. Her spirits aflutter still from the fright, she lay gazing up through the tree limbs and endeavoured to ease her heaving chest.

Her husband was well aware of her heaving bosom, but in far less hurry for her to reclaim her breath. Indeed, in that dappled copse, it was easy for him to forget there were transgressions against their privacy.

It was at least eight hours since he had had her last. An improvement, was it not?

The poacher had feared no mantraps set, for the Darcy family turned a blind eye on what game was pilfered from their property as long as the privilege was not abused. However, as this foiled poacher moved away from Mr. Darcy as hastily and quietly as he could, he came in great intrusion, eyes to chin, upon one of the house footmen. For the second time in less than five minutes the poor nimrod was confronted by two separate men of great height and little humour.

This encounter would not end so benignly as the first.

Howbeit Mr. Darcy had looked quite forbidding, the man before him then looked not unlike Beelzebub himself. Not an entirely inapt analogy, for the footman hit the hunter full in the chest with the flat of his hand, knocking him to the ground. This most likely oft-practised manoeuvre was one of economy for the thug, for he seized the gun from his victim’s hand as he fell to ground in utter loss of breath and with no means of retaliation.

Standing over the man as he gasped for air, the foul thief said, “Run if ye know what’s good for ye and donno’ cry for yer weapon, be happy wi’ yer life.”

In no position not to heed that advice save lacking the means, the poacher lunged away upon all four limbs until he finally struggled to his feet. Once upright, he called to his dogs to follow. As the dogs’ instinct for self-preservation was at least as keen as
their owner’s, both had already started after him. But as they passed their tormentor, he took a wild swing with the gun-butt, it glancing off the rump of the one who had the misfortune to trail the first. That poor pup then yelped loud enough to startle them both to join their owner’s headlong race for safety.

The footman was none other than the nefarious Thomas Reed.

Others who rode upon the Pemberley coach might harbour enough officious sanguinity to find pleasure in frightening the bejeezus out of a harmless trespasser. Few, however, would receive the sadistic thrill Reed did. Regrettably, his predilection for cruelty was hardly sated by an encounter that was fruitless of bloodshed. Had he not been so intent upon other prey, Reed might have pursued the hapless hunter.

As it was, he just laughed and inspected the gun he had appropriated. Finding it a deplorable excuse of a weapon, Reed cursed the man for being so impoverished. He grumbled a few minutes, then remembered why he was in the wood in the first place: the fair Mrs. Darcy, that beauteous bounty of woman-flesh.