Page 20 of Till Death Us Do Part: Book 2
She also spent considerable time with Mr Bartlet, since he was the only person she could really discuss literature with. With his aid, she even found a young pianoforte master who thought that boasting of instructing Mrs Darcy would be good enough for his business that he offered her deep discounts, so long as he was allowed to teach her on the new pianoforte Mr Darcy bought for his sister.
Elizabeth thought it a shame that said sister had never even seen it, let alone played it, but since none of that was her fault, she did not worry. She asked Mrs Reynolds about the sister, and learned she was Kitty’s age, and staying with relatives until her brother returned. Mrs Reynolds seemed ready to praise the younger lady to the skies, but Mrs Darcy was not particularly interested in second-hand impressions. She thought she could form her own opinions, should the brother deign to introduce them.
The rest of her instruction turned out to be both anticlimactic and frustrating at the same time.
On the anticlimactic front, she found that household accounts were household accounts. Except for the amounts, Mrs Reynolds’ record keeping was indistinguishable from what she learned at Longbourn, which was done the same as it had been for five generations. She ruefully reflected that she did not havea dowry because her mother routinely overspent her allowance, but Mrs Bennet did not do so accidentally. In truth, her mother had a full grasp on the amounts, and she overspent because shecould.
She already knew the mistress would ordinarily visit tenants, but once again, a tenant visit was a tenant visit. She and Jane had been visiting Longbourn’s since Jane came out at fifteen, so Elizabeth had already been visiting tenants for more than six years. She knew what was expected when a woman was with child, someone died, a roof leaked, a barn burned, a child was born or died, or any of the other things that happened in life. Pemberley was noticeably more generous than Longbourn, and had considerably more tenants, but otherwise, all was about the same. There was not much Mrs Reynolds could tell her except the specifics of who was who.
There was no way Elizabeth would be able to remember all of that without meeting the tenants in person, so, other than learning about the general layout of the farms and other holdings, there was not much new. Derbyshire was colder than Hertfordshire, and they had more sheep than she was accustomed to, but as far as the mistress was concerned, none of that mattered. A Derbyshire sheep was little different from a Hertfordshire sheep, after all; and much the same could be said for cows and pigs.
Under Mrs Reynolds’ watchful eye, Elizabeth learned the specifics of the house and saw more than one room that the former Mrs Darcy had left decorated in a manner that practically gave her hives. Other than that, she knew about all Mrs Reynolds could teach her by Mayday.
Her lessons about what a mistress, or even the master, should do in such a large house, given by Mr Jennings, turned out to be as easy as the others. Like any mistress, she had to understand the dynamics of the surrounding families, butunfortunately, Jennings was unable (or more likely unwilling) to be explicit. The estate was vast, but geography dictated that their social interactions were mostly limited to the estates close to Pemberley, and in the end, the families numbered only about thirty, which was slightly more than Elizabeth had known in Hertfordshire.
She learned the basics about the families, but without meeting and evaluating each, she knew little more than which ones to be wary of. Since she was already wary ofeveryone, that did not change her outlook appreciably.
All of that was the anticlimactic part, and she was happy to have learned it all with so little effort. She had a very slight and short-lived bit of pride when she discovered that her mother was notentirelysilly, but that feeling only lasted until she remembered the six weeks of the Bingley party’s visit to Netherfield, and especially how it ended. No feelings of pride survived those recollections.
Surprisingly enough, the real lessons about the neighbourhood came from Mr Bartlet, and those were the frustrating parts. Mr Bartlet had no qualms about describing the families in detail. That was useful, but again, hard to remember without connecting faces to names.
What he did teach her that was frustrating though, was theonerequirement for the mistress of a grand estate that she could not fudge. The mistress was supposed to bring fortune and connexions, to increase the family’s consequence. She had neither. A mistress should know how to entertain, which was no more complicated than calling on tenants, but she had to know who to invite and how to deal with them.
Atruemistress came from a long line of similar ladies. Every interaction might carry a shadow of similar interactions from generations past. Every person she met would evaluate her for dress, comportment, wealth, and connexions—and find herwanting. There was just no way she would ever be able to boast of the type of lineage that was the only coin of the realm in theton.
She would be considered, at best, a young hoyden who had done well in snagging the Master of Pemberley, but otherwise of no importance. Worse yet, Mr Bartlet said that all the ladies passed over, or their parents, might have a vindictive streak. He assumed there were already rumours flying in town and in the local drawing rooms about her, and it would not take much to fan those embers into flames.
Elizabeth dearly wished she had understood that before her marriage. There was not much she could have done to avoid her fate, but she might have at least understood her husband’s reluctance better.
Over time, Elizabeth became close to Mr Bartlet, a widower for twenty years, and between them, she learned an enormous amount. Once she could ride well, she made her way into Lambton every other day, and she found it to be more like home than Pemberley ever would be. She was not explicit about the status of her mourning. It had been long enough she could have gone into half-mourning if she had any dresses she could dye in grey colours. She did not, so she kept her blacks, but decided visiting the shops not to be a terrible problem, and she even thought up some ways she might do some business with the bookseller.
9.Noble Relations
Elizabeth’s vastly improved relationship with Mr Jennings notwithstanding, she still found it unnerving when he came into a room unexpectedly. The gravity the butler carried about his person always made her feel as if he represented impending doom, even though most of the time, it simply meant she had received some of her infrequent post, or there was something happening about the estate that he thought she should be aware of.
Her husband’s requirement that she pay her own post had made her extremely careful about who she corresponded with. She wrote to the postmaster in Meryton on New Year’s Day, when Mr Bates’ concoction had left her feeling half-human, but still blisteringly angry. She told him, in no uncertain terms, that Pemberley would not pay the postage onanyletters that arrived from Hertfordshire, and suggested he tell Mrs Bennet and Mrs Lucas about the prohibition. She assumed it would all be blamed on her husband, but she really did not care and would have done the same even if she did not have to pay for it.
She gave the same instructions to the postmaster in Lambton, so she had not received a single letter from her family but had no idea if they had tried or not. Her guess was that her father was done with her, but her mother would make every effort to trade on the Darcy name to throw the rest of her daughters in the paths of other rich men. She was not inclined to help the effort in the slightest—or at least, not before her husband returned. She was under no illusions about whether or not her mother would invade her house in town if she ever went there, but considered herself safe enough in Derbyshire.
She had carefully written to her aunt in Cheapside. Elizabeth was not especially close to Madeline Gardiner, but her aunt was from Lambton, and she still had a few connexions, including MrBartlet. Elizabeth had a strong suspicion that Mr Darcy would look down on her corresponding with an uncle who was actively in trade, and she did not want to cause either her aunt or herself any trouble.
Mr Gardiner was a successful tradesman, far more successful in life than Mr Bennet, but he sold luxury goods, so his trade depended on the whims of the upper gentry. Elizabeth was afraid of disrupting that with any rumours started about her, or any tarnishing of the Darcy reputation, so she only wrote occasionally, routed the letters through Mr Bartlet, and was very careful about what she said. She loved her aunt and uncle, but not enough to allow her new connexions to do them potential harm. She certainly did not tell them a single thing about her relationship with her husband. She suspected they would work it out, but it was best not to be explicit; and being explicit in writing would border on the suicidal.
The mistress did get some correspondence from neighbouring estates, but she replied with polite nothings, saying she was in mourning and would thus not be taking or receiving calls just yet. That stopped most, though she suspected the excuse would only work until her six months of false heavy mourning were over, at which point all bets were off.
Jennings said, “Lord Matlock is here, Mrs Darcy. He is your uncle.”
Elizabeth stopped just short of snorting.
“He ismy husband’suncle. That is a vastly different thing,” she added, mostly because she wanted to see if she could get a reaction out of the man. She could not.
“Whatever his relationship, he is in the Yellow Parlour.”
“Of course,” Elizabeth said, muttering under her breath that bad things usually happened in that room.
Jennings escorted her to the parlour himself and announced her with all the pomp that he might have employed if she were a legitimate mistress.
“The Earl and Countess of Matlock, madam.”
