The way that Mrs. Reynolds nodded said that she was pleased by that answer.
Then a long line of shaken hands, as she was told the name of every servant. She tried to commit them to memory, repeating their names after them each time. But it was useless. Besides, there were so many.
The whole had an air of ceremony, because it was a ceremonious occasion for the staff.
Her steps felt odd as they walked into the house.
Darcy seemed to see nothing of her unwonted mood. He cheerfully shook hands with the senior servants, greeted the junior ones by name, promised a two guineas to everyone in honor of his marriage, and asked the names and positions of the three young servants at the end of the line who had been taken on by the estate over the autumn while he was in the south.
“You must want to refresh yourself after the road,” Mrs. Reynolds said. “Your things will be brought up to your room, Mrs. Darcy — ah I see, is this your lady’s maid? Mary, I believe the name is?”
The second carriage had come up behind them, and Mary had gotten out and now stood by Elizabeth’s shoulder. Elizabeth was startled to see her there; she had not heard the footsteps.
Mary nodded, and there was something in her expression that showed her to be as intimidated by Pemberley as Elizabeth was. “I look forward to working with you — half an hour I think, and then we can give you a tour of the principal rooms of the house.”
“Yes, I look forward to that.”
Darcy led Elizabeth up the huge staircase in the front gallery, and down the hall, pointing out the portrait of his father, his grandfather, his great uncle the judge, and his Darcy grandmother. He did not, however, make any comment on his own very handsome portrait, which was as large as life, in a naturalistic style and delicate brushwork that exactly caught something of Darcy’s expression and character.
Miss Darcy trailed behind, and Elizabeth was sure that she was staring at her from the corner of her eyes, but the girl looked down and away every time Elizabeth directly glanced at her.
Mr. Wickham’s model of the girl seemed not quite right. Miss Darcy struck her as more shy than proud. Perhaps it was all the same in some important sense.
Face felt odd and prickly. Hands were not right sized.
The mistress’s room had a lovely soft yellow and pink wallpaper, and a grotesquely oversized four poster bed. The ceiling had another painted scene in the French style like the one at Darcy House. Darcy plopped on a chair in the room as soon as they entered and gestured towards a door. “The dressing room. The water closet is behind that. You’d not believe the trouble we had when they first installed it, it created a stink that covered this whole wing of the house. Do not worry aboutthatnow though. The maintenance is managed properly.”
Elizabeth went into the dressing room, and she stared at herself in the mirror.
Wide eyes. Too wide eyes.
She gripped the dresser that she thought had inlaid lines of gold leaf, and there were precious stones dotted into the frame around the mirror.
She might dissolve and fly away.
A hand on her shoulder. Elizabeth shrieked and jumped.
It was Darcy looking at her, slightly concerned. “I did not mean to scare you.”
Elizabeth laughed hysterically in reply. “I am well! Well! Perfectly well!”
She touched the wall and realized that rather than paper it was all covered in a silk hanging. Silk wall coverings, silk curtains, silk sheets, silk dresses, silk everything.
“Elizabeth, are you well?” Darcy’s eyes were concerned, and rather surprised.
“It is so big!” she exclaimed. “Too big for comfort.”
“Ahhh! That. Yes, I can imagine with your background it would be particularly intimidating and surprising to find yourself the mistress of all this.”
With my background.
Elizabeth tried to seize on that. To feel her familiar anger at Darcy again for the way he thought so little of her. But she couldn’t, the anxiety was growing in her throat and making it hard to breathe.
He took her in his arms. A squeezing tight hug. He pressed his lips against her hair and whispered, almost like when they joined together, “Lizzy, my dear Lizzy, my dear, dear Lizzy. You will be beyond comparison. You will be a better mistress for Pemberley than anyone else could possibly be. My dear Lizzy, you need not to worry.”
Even though that was quite the opposite of what he usually told her, the warmth of his embrace, and the sweet whispers of reassurance, murmuring to her almost as though she were a child with a skinned knee, slowly brought Elizabethback to herself.
It was in any casenotfear of the house and its size alone that had panicked her.
