Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice Sequel Bundle: 3 Reader Favorites (42 page)

Normally quite placid, Farley always jumped about nervously when Reed approached. Having been given the employment of driving Mrs. Reynolds to Lambton that day, Reed was in his usual ill-humour. Like most of the other servants, he feared her. Yet, unlike them, he despised her as well. His hate exceeded his fear by half. She bade him sit up straight and not mutter curses under his breath, rapping him across the knuckles with a switch (one that she carried when he drove her just for that purpose) upon an expletive. Hence, when the horse that reminded Mrs. Reynolds of herself would not behave, Reed’s pugnacious temperament exploded.

For fate to allow Mr. Darcy to hear the welter was not just propitious, for the horses it was providential. Indeed, had John not been so ungoverned as to drop the lead rope to Mrs. Darcy’s new horse and follow, he might have missed the entire rumpus. Witnessing Reed’s comeuppance at the stinging end of a carriage whip and by the hand of none other than Mr. Darcy was the single event for which John would have risked his employment.

John did not read, but he had heard of books that portrayed fearless figures performing heroic deeds. When Reed suffered the bastinado, John was convinced that was what he was witnessing. Weaponless, the valiant Mr. Darcy saved the horse and turned Reed out. Out of Pemberley he fled, tail betwixt his legs, like the feisting cur he was. Mr. Darcy was a noble warrior. He was just. He was courageous and he had the most beautiful and kind lady at his side. It was difficult not to become giddy with admiration of the man as well as the deed.

The entire valorous episode had lasted less than a minute. Reed was struck and banished. Quick as that. Struck and banished. Reed was gone and with his departure, John breathed a considerable sigh of relief. Yet, it amazed him how such a momentous event to him seemed not to alter anything else. Another man harnessed another horse to the gig in Farley’s place. Mrs. Reynolds came and another man drove her to Lambton. Everyone dispersed. Poor, shuddering Farley was led back to his own stall. John returned Mrs. Darcy’s new horse as well, whistling as he did.

After supper, everyone, including Frank Reed, sat tranquilly about the stove in the stable room, warming their feet against the cool night air, no one quite ready to retire. One man whittled, another beat some tune out on his knee with a spoon. Mr. Hardin came in and got a flame to light his pipe. Gradually, the men stretched, claimed weariness, and admired the thought of their beds.

John, however, was not ready for sleep. He was still beside himself with excitement over the afternoon’s altercation. Such was his relish, he wanted to savour it a little longer. He found a shrivelled crab apple at the bottom of a barrel. Tossing it in the air, he determined that it was still good and took it to poor Farley. At the stall, he stepped up on the gate to lean out with the apple, talking quietly to the horse. He spoke in a soothing voice, not unlike that he had once used with his sisters.

“Did that man hurt yer, Farley? ’e got his due, din’t ’e? ’e got what’s comin’. Yer’ll be fine, now. Yer’ll be fine.”

From behind, a hard hand gripped John just above his Adam’s apple, lifting him back off the rail and hard against the wall. Instinctively Farley backed away, stamping his feet nervously, whirling, and looking for escape. John would have liked to find escape himself, but his feet could not achieve the ground. Using both hands, he frantically
sought to pry loose Reed’s hold on his neck.

Hysterically gasping for air, John squeaked out, “Mr. Darcy ran yer off! He’ll see yer ’ere and do it agin!”

“Mr. Darcy! Mr. Darcy! That bastard’s not gonna get ’is ’ands dirty. Save yer breath to cool yer porridge!” said Reed, using a strangely benign circumlocution.

“Yes ’e will! Yes ’e will!” squeaked John.

John struggled, wanting to believe it. Reed let him drop. John fell to the ground soundly with a loud “Uuh” as he landed. Reed laughed.

“Yer too stupid t’even know, do yer? Do yer?”

He kicked John in the knee and John looked back, uncomprehending.

“That rich bastard’s the one whot poked yer ma. She tol’ me. She tol’ everybody. ’e’s your pa and ’e don’ even speak to yer! Does ’e? Well, does ’e?”

He kicked him again. John shook his head dumbly. Reed grabbed him up and yanked him so hard it rattled his teeth. More than life itself, he wanted to fight him, but his senses were far too compromised. He felt beaten, but not by Reed. Quite vociferously, Reed threatened that if he told anyone he had seen him, he would steal back and kill him. That seemed less a threat than a promise.

Unexpectedly, Reed relaxed his grip, allowing the boy to fall to the ground again.

Scrambling to his feet, John ran, not looking back. He ran hard and for a long time. Stumbling into the woods, he fell to the ground flat out. Then he sat up, out of breath, his mind unable to catch up with his thoughts. He put his head in his hands. All he could hear was his own chest heaving and Reed’s words still echoing in his ears.

John shook his head as if to expel Reed from his mind. Yet the words remained, contributing more to the lump in his throat than the grip Reed had inflicted about his neck. Because he could not dislodge Reed’s words, John gingerly examined them again, for he knew his mother had left Pemberley with child. He had but once asked her who his father was.

She had answered absently, “A man that ’as no use for either of us.”

But she had been drunk and feeling sorrier than usual for her circumstance. Hence John never asked her again.

If what Reed said was true, and somehow John thought it was, Mr. Darcy was that man. For the past few hours, John had thought Mr. Darcy a courageous hero. Momentarily, he was elated. He was of Mr. Darcy’s blood?

Hastily, reality abused elation.

Did Mr. Darcy acknowledge him? Even speak to him? Mr. Darcy spoke to Mr. Rhymes, Mr. Rhymes to Edward Hardin, and Edward Hardin to him. Mr. Darcy did not even speak to Edward Hardin. Did Mr. Darcy know John was Abigail Christie’s boy, fathered by him? Reed did. Did anyone else? Did it matter?

Apparently not. His mother told him the man who fathered him did not want him or her. They were cast out. Rich men fathered bastards every day. Perchance, he was begat of Mr. Darcy, but John knew he was more truly the son of a whore.

John considered that for a moment, and for the first time thought of his mother’s circumstances before she was a whore. No one was born a fallen woman. Perhaps her disposition had a predilection to be a bit light-heeled, but there certainly were more than a few feminine occupants of high station who could be accused of the same
crime. When at Pemberley his mother was a respectable chambermaid. Ergo, she was seduced, cast out, and rendered a whore. By Mr. Darcy.

A rich and illustrious father was nothing of which to be proud. Particularly not one who was a seducer of innocent girls.

John reconsidered his position on the merit of Mr. Darcy’s character.

“He’s not so brave,” he muttered, “just used to gettin’ his own way. Like all rich men.”

In the dark, John sat in sullen contemplation of rich men’s ill-deeds until he heard yelling and saw the glow and ashes from the fire rise above the treetops. Duty called.

Reluctantly he stood and started back to Pemberley at a slow, deliberately unhurried pace. He began to run only when he heard the horses scream.

T
he gallery of Pemberley was undeniably august. Its majesty traversed the length of the house, halving it much like the spine of an open book. The preponderance of what was essentially a portrait hall in relation to the size of the great house itself was indicative of the importance of that room. Indeed, the Darcy antecedents’ upon display there were revered with no less obeisance than the king himself.

Though not necessarily with reverence, Elizabeth did like to take the length of that hall and study the ancestral faces that paint had rendered unto perpetuity. If she fancied it was possible to draw from her husband’s fore-fathers some family trait her own children might carry, she was to be disappointed. There were well-nigh as many distinct features as personages presented. Excepting for Darcy and his father, who favoured each other both in swarthiness and in stature, no two shared a duality. That is, of course, if one discounted the predisposition to adiposity, vibrissa, and wattles (those inclinations hardly peculiar but to the illustrious).

There stood Elizabeth, pondering those dissimilarities, when her husband bechanced upon her.

Up the wide staircase came a small procession. His party consisted of Mrs. Reynolds, who carried her ever-present red folio, and two burly footmen. All bore expressions of purposefulness.

“Elizabeth,” Darcy said, announcing the obvious. “There you are.”

So great was the length of the hall that, by the time they reached her, his words affected a slight echo. As his voice was more commanding than was hers, she did not attempt to return his greeting across the vastness of the hall. With well-rehearsed economy, she waited to speak until she met him midmost in the narrow room. Even when she did speak to him, he did not actually acknowledge it. He looked at her distractedly and thereupon to the portrait-laden walls. Without explanation, he turned back to Mrs. Reynolds and began issuing terse instructions upon the rearrangement of the massive portraits.

This upheaval was discombobulating to Elizabeth for no other reason than that the paintings appeared affixed to the house with much the same permanence as the windows and doors. What engendered such a disruption of kindred she could not fathom. Her sentiments upon the issue, however, were unbidden and she dutifully stepped back, watching raptly what was to unfold. It was obvious her husband intended for her to witness his endeavours. She studied what alterations were made intently (should she be quizzed upon it at a later time).

“I have just begun to know these people. You are not to move them now?”

Obviously, he was. And because that was obvious, he ignored, not his wife, but his wife’s question. There was a great deal of shuffling about and disturbing of furniture
as the footmen moved taboret, chiffonier, and benches. As they committed these sins of rearrangement, Mr. Darcy consulted what appeared to be a diagram.

Thereupon, he pointed to several paintings, directing their relocation; one he (gasp!) ordered to be removed entirely.

Such unceremonious disposal of an ancient painting bade Elizabeth wonder if the man depicted was the perpetrator of some newly discovered disgrace. If this was the case, his offence must have been heinous indeed, for by the outlandishness of the wig he wore, his portrait must have been hanging there since the War of the Roses. Elizabeth could not remember his history, only that Mrs. Reynolds told her he was the second duke of something-or-other. Hence, she watched dispassionately as Duke Something-or-Other’s vainglorious countenance was carted from the room.

Compleatly baffled, she finally bid, “Pray, what are you doing?”

“I am making way for a new portrait,” he said. “Yours.”

“But, I have no…” she began.

She stood thenceforward in open-mouthed stupefaction upon the revelation of his plan. Had he concluded she came to this hall longing to have her own likeness amongst the others?

Hence, she countered a little defensively, “Do not suppose that I visit this room to beg for my own portrait.”

“Of course not. However, in consequence of your birthday, I shall have it. As it happens, this painting is not for you. It is for me.”

Yes. The compulsory portrait.

Elizabeth knew she should have anticipated this obligation, for howbeit Georgiana’s portrait hung, fittingly, in the music room, every other member of the Darcys’ last five generations hung in the gallery. As the co-procreator of the sixth, hers was to join them. Elizabeth realised all this rearranging exposed a large expanse of bare wall next to his own portrait.

He pointed to the space and said, “Yours shall hang here next to mine for all time.”

The very stoutness of the walls of Pemberley announced that the paintings just might remain there well unto eternity.

“Yes,” she said, “that is, until our descendants decide they favour other countenances and we are consigned to the farthest heights of the library to gather dust.”