“Very well, but please recall that you insisted upon this. Aunt, you ask what I am waiting for. Frankly, I am waiting to understand why anyone thinks Anne would be a good mistress for Pemberley.”
“What? She is the daughter of an earl!”
“She certainly is not,” Mr. Darcy replied. “Youare the daughter of an earl; Anne is thenieceof an earl. Moreover, even if she were the daughter of a Duke, that alone would not make her a proper mistress of an estate. She has not been trained for such a role, and I think I can safely lay that fault at your own door, Aunt Catherine. Has she been taught to keep accounts? Has she ever visited your tenants? Can she plan meals? Can she organise entertainments? These are all the things that my mother now does, Aunt Catherine, as the mistress of Pemberley. My wife must be prepared to take on these tasks, and if you expected me to marry your daughter, you should have trained her for the role.”
Lady Catherine was too outraged to speak, but her daughter said, “Darcy, I have spent my life waiting for you to propose to me! And now you are telling me that I am not good enough for you?”
Mr. Darcy looked agonised. “Anne, you are right; we should have had this discussion years ago. I suppose I hoped that it would be unnecessary.”
“Meaning what?” his cousin demanded. “That I would die, so you would not have to be discomfited? Or that I would choose to marry elsewhere, when you know full well that I meet no one? What had you in mind?”
“I hoped that everyone involved would realise the impossibility of such a match.”
“My mother, do you mean?”
“And my mother, yes.”
“So you waited, hoping for some sort of intervention; is that it?”
“It does not speak well of me, I fear,” Mr. Darcy allowed.
“It certainly does not. And I do not understand this, cousin. You are the master of an enormous estate. You make decisions all day, every day. I assume you have no difficulty in making your wants known under those circumstances?”
Mr. Darcy was astonished; he had never heard her speak so long and so decisively. But she certainly deserved an answer. “Anne, I beg you to understand. My mother has lost her husband. Her entire happiness rests on me. To disappoint her in such a way as this is almost more than I can bear.”
“You need not bear it – we can marry.”
“No, Anne. Not if it means that Pemberley will not have a capable mistress.”
The Colonel said, “Can we not all see that Darcy is caught between his mother’s desires and his own? Not to mention Pemberley’s needs?”
Mr. Darcy looked at the Colonel. “Richard, we will leave tomorrow.”
Lady Catherine had finally gathered her thoughts. “Do not decide now, Darcy. Spend more time here with us. Spend time with Anne.”
“That will not alter my decision, Aunt.”
“As a favour to me and to Anne, then. You have injured Anne most grievously; you owe her at least this much. I do not doubt that your mother would agree with me.”
Mr. Darcy sighed. “Very well; but I insist that you have no expectations of me.” Privately, he thought that the opportunity to see more of Miss Bennet would not go amiss.
Chapter Ten
The next day, Lady Catherine did her best to throw Mr. Darcy and her daughter together at every opportunity. When Mr. Darcy entered the breakfast room, he was told that he must wait until Anne arrived before food would be served; thus, he waited an hour for Anne to make her way downstairs, still yawning, before he was allowed so much as a slice of toast.
Then Lady Catherine insisted that the two of them go on a drive together. Mr. Darcy acquiesced, though he demanded that they be accompanied by a maid or a footman, so as to avoid any possibility of a compromise. Anne’s maid, Hilda, joined them. Despite Hilda’s presence, Mr. Darcy tried to speak with his cousin about their situation.
“Anne, why do you want to marry me?”
“My mother wants me to.”
“But do you want to?”
Anne shrugged. “I suppose I have to marry, so it may as well be you.”
“Is that a good enough reason to marry, Anne? Do you not wish for affection?”
She turned to him in exasperation. “Cousin, what would you have me do? My mother is insistent that I marry; I know no one, as we go nowhere and we have no visitors. You and I hold cousinly affection for one another; that will have to be enough.”
