Page 24 of Till Death Us Do Part: Book 2
“Absolutely not!” he gasped.
Elizabeth tried to smile, though it came out as more of a grimace. “You see my conundrum. I have clear and explicit instructions and competing suggestions about whether I should follow them or not.”
“You should use your common sense.”
Elizabeth sighed resignedly, tired to the bone of the conversation.
“My lord, my lady, pray, let me be clear. As I surmised and you verified, I am in considerable danger of being cast aside in some thoroughly unpleasant manner. There is little I can do to change the outcome, but what Icando, Iwill. My husband, should he ever return, may find me unhandsome, he may find me impertinent, he may find me a bluestocking, he may find me insufficiently accomplished. Any or all of these he may discover to his chagrin. What he willnotfind is that I have beendisobedient. If he wants to put me aside, it will be on his own head, not mine. I will followallhis instructionsto the letter, and I will not allowanyoneto disrupt that.”
Still reeling from her assertion, and unable to believe an insignificant mouse of a country girl was willing to stand up to him, the Earl asked, “How do you propose to learn what you need to know to be a good mistress?”
“I am already a good mistress, but should my husband find me deficient in any way, I will do as he suggests.”
Lady Matlock said, “I truly think you are mad, Mrs Darcy.”
Elizabeth shrugged. “I suppose, if Mr Darcy comes to the same conclusion, he may attempt to have me committed.”
“What do you mean ‘attempt’?”
“I will leave that to your imagination, my lord. I will not go quietly, if it comes to that. Now, if you need to rest before you return, I suggest you apply to Mrs Reynolds just like any other visitor. I will not be around to get in your way, but I repeat—I will not entertain you.”
Both noble relatives looked as if they wanted to argue some more, but Elizabeth saw no real point. The battle had been lost before it started.
“Good day, my lord, my lady.”
Then she gave a curtsey that was precisely what was due someone of their station, turned, and left the room without another word.
10.Vanity
Amazed that she could be even angrier atanyonethan she was at her husband, Elizabeth did her best not to stomp out of the house in a rage of blinding fury. Her best was not actually very good, and she could well have passed for a petulant ten-year-old Lydia. On the other hand, she knew all the hidden passageways, so she escaped the house with none the wiser, after asking a footman to discreetly pass messages to Molly and Mrs Reynolds. None of the servants witnessed the debacle with her noble relations in the parlour, thank goodness for small favours. Had they been present, Elizabeth had no idea what would have happened, but whatever it was would be bad.
As she stormed out of the house, thinking evil thoughts about the family she had somehow married into, she turned her mind to the legal tomes she had been poring over for the past month. The results were grim indeed. Within the framework of the law, she had no protection whatsoever—none. She was entirely at the mercy of her husband.
With that in mind, she knew that, in the end, it would make little difference if she was strictlyobedientor not. Her husband could just as well claim she had not obeyed, or change his mind about the terms of their agreement on a whim, and there was not a single thing she could do about it. On the one hand, that would make her dismissal of the Matlocks, people whom her husband probably held in some esteem, appear to be self-defeating; but in the larger game, she thought perhaps not. At the end of the day, she was entirely dependent on whether her husband was a man of his word or not. To date, aside from Mr Wickham’s tale, which she was beginning to doubt, she had no evidence that Mr Darcy was not trustworthy. His words were unpleasant and disagreeable nine times out of ten, but whatever they were, he appeared to live by them.
When he returned, he might be angry that she had not taken his aunt and uncle in and treated them like proper guests, but he would at least have to admit she stuck by her word and his explicit written instructions. For all she knew, he might despise his aunt and uncle and be angry for their officious interference in his business. She had no way to know. The only thing for certain was that she had agreed to live by his rules. Forced or not, she had agreed, and at least for the moment, she felt honour bound to stick to the terms of thecontract. She had an agreement with her father, and coerced or not, she had eventually given her word. That meant she was bound by two separate contracts, for lack of a better word, and to the best of her ability, she would live by them.
To try to distract herself from the grim reality of her legal and marital situation, she picked out her favourite new legal word,loophole, and decided to put it to good use. She so missed the carefree days of walking her father’s estate, blissfully unaware of just how precarious her position was. Her husband had decreed,once again in writing,that she was never to walk unaccompanied.Unfortunately for him, he was not a barrister and relied on common sense to fill in the details. With that in mind, she went to acquire a companion.
Maximilian was the oldest dog in the kennel, and possibly the oldest dog she had ever met, but he loved her company and was always game for whatever she was. He had been a hunter for many years and was mostly living a life of quiet retirement. She let him out, and her anger and frustration receded through the simple expedient of hugging and petting a dog. He naturally slobbered all over her dress, but what did she care? She had two black dresses, and plenty of laundresses who were probably bored out of their minds and worried about their positions if the mistress did not become more social.
With Max at her heels, which was obviously sufficient accompaniment for anyone, she took off through the least used path in the garden for a quarter mile until she was entirely out of sight of the house. Then, feeling a small burst of freedom, she ran like the wind until she nearly repaid the favour by drooling all over the dog, finally sitting on a small bench. The early May sun was shining brightly, and the smell of the fields felt like spring slowly turning to summer. She believed summer would be different in Derbyshire than it was in Hertfordshire, but it seemed as if it would be enjoyable.
After a quarter hour of rest, Elizabeth and Max continued up the hill until they reached an overlook where she could see Pemberley in all its pristine glory. Sometimes she wondered that she was the mistress of such an edifice, which was certainly grand enough for anyone. It was an extremely handsome building, quite impressive for anyone short of royalty, and even bested those with its simplicity and elegance.
As a visitor, Elizabeth would have been delighted. She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste. Someone in her husband’s ancestry had taste and good judgement, so they might have passed it down to her husband. Of course, it would have had to skip his mother, but such things were known to happen, so maybe all was not lost.
The house and grounds were indeed lovely beyond measure. However, as a mistress spending all her time in Limbo, waiting for the Sword of Damocles to fall, she mostly hated the place. She thought a prison should look like one.
Oh, to be certain, she understood she was being overly dramatic, and probably foolish. Most women would kill to have such a position, and she should be grateful for what she had; but still, she hated it. She despised the uncertainty. She hated not knowing whether she had just made a colossal mistake with theMatlocks that she would rue for decades, or stood her ground and possibly earned some future respect from her husband. She thought the former more likely, but whether it was or not, she had little need of respect from her husband if she had none for herself. She would not be spoken to like a disobedient child by a guest in her own home. She had her limits.
When Elizabeth reached the highest point of her planned walk, she once again sat down, this time on an old stump that was surprisingly comfortable, and Max curled around her feet for a nap.
She wondered about pride and tried to force herself to think rationally about her actions. There was a chance Lord and Lady Matlock had already left, but that seemed unlikely. They did not seem the type to give up easily, and it was certainly not too late to try to get on their good side. Long experience taught that Jane was always the favourite at first glance, but her own personality and intelligence were advantageous in the longer term. Jane had admirers, while Elizabeth had friends—or at least, she thought she had before. Charlotte turned out to be a disappointment, but she had no reason to doubt the constancy of the Lucas brothers, the Golding sisters, or any of the other friends she had once enjoyed in Meryton.
Elizabeth knew perfectly well that, with about a tenth of the manipulation she normally employed with her mother, she could have the Matlocks eating from the palm of her hand. That would almost certainly give her enormous advantage in society in general, and thetonin particular. So, what exactly about the couple made her reluctant to do it? Was it pride? Self-protection? Stubbornness? Lack of commitment to her marriage?
She pondered a conversation with her husband, back in the halcyon days of her unmarried youth when the idea of being married to Mr Darcy was only slightly less ludicrous than the idea of being elected to Parliament. She had asked him about pride and vanity.
