Darcy’s frown darkened. His hand convulsively gripped hers tighter. He looked out again at the well-kept fields. “But what do you know about Lambton?”
Now it was Elizabeth’s turn to flush. She knew her husband’s attitudes well enough to suspect that he would not like this. It had been a mistake to ask at all. “My aunt, the wife of my mother’s brother, grew up there. She gave me a few messages to deliver to her friends and old acquaintance.”
That again.
There was that expression, that sneering, disdainful,hatefulexpression. Even though the way he kissed and held her at night made her shiver, she must always remember that he despised her. He despised her, and her family, and everyone who did not happily bow deep enough to make it clear they expected nothing but generous condescension from his grandeur.
Darcy looked out at the sun glinting off the snow. The carriage turned up another hill, rising into a forested area away from the tenanted lands. “Another entanglement for the Darcy name with those towards whom we ought to have no obligation.”.
“Delivering a note from myauntto a person does not obligateyoutowards them.”
“When one deals with those of the lower orders, there is never anythingsimplein what you do. The nature of the relationship must always be made clear, and neither party can overstep those boundaries lest…”
The darkness in his expression deepened, and Elizabeth saw in his frown and eyes some memory of real pain. She became unwillingly sympathetic to him. “What are you frightened of?”
They stared at each other.
He rubbed his hand over his mouth, and Elizabeth looked down.
“I apologize,” she said. “That was not—”
“I am not frightened — ah, there—” He pointed to a fine church building half hidden by the woods. “That is the Kympton parish. You can see the parsonage a bit further down, with the church gardens surrounding it. We usually attend Sunday service there.”
Was this the church that Darcy had denied Mr. Wickham? His manner in speaking it betrayed no sense of wrongdoing, no sign of guilty conscience. But then if he passed the church often, long familiarity would have worn away any such thoughts.
“Do you go to service each week?” Elizabeth suppressed her urge to ask him about Wickham. There had been enough tension in the past ten minutes of their ride.
“It is my duty, and my desire.”
“Very upstanding of you.” Elizabeth smiled. “And you provide a proper gentlemanly example to the lower orders.”
“It is certain,” Darcy replied in a wholly serious manner, “that it would be impossible for them to act in an upright manner without my example.”
Elizabeth stared at him, and then his lips twitched and suddenly she found herself laughing.
He grinned at her. “I can tease you as well as you can me.”
And there was also this. He had an excellent sense of humor, even if it was often extremely dry. He liked to catch her unawares with a joke told in such a way.
Darcy added, “Though I am not so conceited as to think my example is so necessary, to provide itisa part of my duty. We now are in the grounds of Pemberley itself. I refer only to the park and the house as ‘Pemberley’, though the lands about which we have passed through belong to me.”
They passed by an artificial ruin in the style of a Grecian temple, made in white marble, with heavy granite benches that overlooked the fields. A young man in farmer’s clothes sat on one of the benches, carving slices off a sausage and eating it with torn bread.
Elizabeth half expected Darcy to leap into a rage at seeing an ornamental piece of his park in use by one of his tenants or servants, but the young man simply waved at the passing carriage, and Darcy made a small wave in return.
Still the generous lord.
“A deer!” Elizabeth exclaimed as several crossed the road before them as they went on the path through the forest. “How lovely! — I hope you do not keep them merely to hunt.”
Darcy laughed. “Merely to hunt? — Georgiana has your mind as well, that they are too pretty to kill and eat. But I like to have venison on the table from time to time. And the deer would ruin the whole of the park if allowed to breed as freely as they might wish.”
“Such lovely woods!”
Darcy smiled with no affectation. “The beauty ofourhome — but you must reserve a little delight for the building itself. We are coming up on the first view of it now.”
They reached the top of a high eminence, where the wood ceased at the top. The carriage pulled to a stop and Darcy gestured to Elizabeth to look out the window closer to himself. The carriage now overlooked a valley, with Pemberley House situated on the opposite side. The road wound below them going up to the entrance of the house, which was a large, handsome stone building, standing on the rising ground, with woody hills behind it. A lovely stream ran in front of it, and the whole made apicturesque.
“I’ve never seen natural beauty so little damaged by awkward taste,” Elizabeth murmured as she stared.
