Page 17 of Till Death Us Do Part: Book 2
“The purse?”
“Ah yes, the purse,” Bates said, looking slightly uncomfortable. “I found it among the master’s things. He seems to have forgotten it entirely. Since it has your former initials, I thought it might belong to you.”
“It does.”
She examined the purse, looking exactly as it had when she handed it to Mr Baker in front of Longbourn after her first escape attempt. Her father must have decided she at least deserved to have her own purse back, though she would have to dye it black if she wished to use it. Elizabeth wanted to open it in private, since she strongly suspected her father had done something disagreeable. “I thank you for returning it. I will examine it later.”
“Very good, madam.”
Before he walked out, Bates turned back. “I will leave in two days, Mrs Darcy. If you like, I would be happy to show you some of Pemberley’s secrets before I go.”
Elizabeth laughed a bit. “Do you assert that Mrs Reynolds might withhold something?”
“I make no such claim. You may draw your own conclusions. I just suspect there are certain sorts of access you may wish to acquaint yourself with. Mrs Reynolds would not dream of withholding the information, but she might consider it, shall we say, of lesser importance.”
“I thank you. Perhaps you might return after luncheon?”
“It would be my pleasure, and if I may say so without being impertinent, it is lovely to meet you. I have hoped for a mistress for quite some time.”
Elizabeth sighed, unwilling to disappoint the man by telling him that she was not a real mistress, and seemed unlikely to ever be.
“It is lovely to meet you as well. I hope your grandchildren are mischievous.”
Bates bowed, and left Elizabeth to her breakfast and her thoughts, one of which was far more enjoyable than the other.
At length, she opened the purse and found the exact coins she had given Mr Baker. Two were distinct because of damaging marks, so she was certain it was her money. She saw a small, folded paper and opened it to find a note that lacked all the usual parts of a letter.
I know you are angry with your entire
family right now. I will not opine whether
it is justified or not. I simply suggest
you remember yourpromiseto give your
situation six months ofbesteffort. Perhaps
it will become something better than it presently
appears, but it certainly will not if you
do not bend a bit andtry.
Have some faith. That is all I ask.
Elizabeth looked at the note for quite some time and walked over to the fire to burn it a dozen times—but in the end she just stuffed it back in the purse and put it in a hidden corner of her dressing table for a rainy day.
Taking marital advice from her father seemed akin to engaging a fox to guard her chickens.
Twelfth Night came and went without ceremony. Elizabeth was accustomed to a large, boisterous family gathering, engaging in all the traditional activities including games, punch, wassailing, and small exchanges of gifts.
At Pemberley, snow fell heavily during the day, so nobody was leaving the estate for any reason, and Elizabeth would not have known where to go or what to do anyway. She was still in false mourning, so nothing much was expected of her, and she wondered if she would be doing anything the next year or not.
It was difficult being in Limbo, or Purgatory, or whatever this in-between state was called. She vacillated between hating her husband, being afraid of him, and wondering if she was being too harsh or too generous. She occasionally thought he was a better man than he appeared, and she had not caught him at his best. She would occasionally sit in the library, particularly after she had read a novel with a likeable male character, and imagine it was all explainable. He was distraught in the first assembly because… because… because something awful had happened in his family. He was awful the rest of the six weeks because he was hunted mercilessly by Caroline Bingley and annoyed by the matrons of Meryton. He was awful after the engagement because common sense suggested Elizabeth conspired with her mother to entrap him, and based on how men seemed to think, she had been flirting as outrageously as Miss Bingley the whole time, just with more subtlety.
When she encountered those thoughts, which were rare and hard to believe, she liked to imagine all the horrible things that might have led him to such behaviour. Maybe his sister had disgraced the family, or his uncle, or—well—she actually did not know a single thing about his family except that he had a younger sister, his uncle was the Earl of Matlock, and his aunt was Lady Catherine de Bourgh, the patron of her silly cousin Mr Collins—and that his mother’s taste in decoratingwas frightening. Her flights of fancy were at least entertaining, with everything from elopements to gambling to heavy debts to murder and duels. The more ridiculous the scenario, the better she liked it. Seductions between Mr Wickham and Miss Darcy, cousins in debt, pirates, privateers, estates lost to gambling—nothing was too outlandish for her imagination.
Of course, such thoughts were diverting, but all she had to do to contradict the idea that they were exculpatory was think of any random sentence he hadactually said, aftershe had told him inplain Englishthat she had nothing to do with the compromise. Her favourite way to rouse her anger, which was a pointless exercise but diverting, was to remember something like: ‘Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connexions? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?’
