Page 10 of The Longbourn Bloodline

“I did not say⁠—”

“You did not need to say. Your face, sir, is remarkably eloquent for a man who prides himself on reserve.” She turned to look at him, walking backward now, which was reckless but satisfying. “I told you I read faces, and yours is flared with indignation at having to tour the estate with a delicate young lady, as if my father had committed some grievous breach of gentlemanly conduct.”

“A gentleman does not abandon his responsibilities to his daughter. It is severely unfair to your sensibilities.”

“I am touched by your concern; however, I assure you, it changes nothing.” Elizabeth turned forward again, narrowly avoiding a frozen rut. “The gentleman is in his library, the daughter in the fields, and the future heir trails behind her like a well-dressed shadow, taking notes on her inadequacies.”

“I am not—” he cut off his retort behind a snap of his teeth.

“You are composing a mental inventory of every failing you observe. Do not trouble yourself to deny it; I can hear the scratching of your internal quill from here.” She gestured toward the farmhouse now visible ahead. “However, if we must endure this farce for the sake of the tenantry, let us at least agree on one thing: whatever private war we are waging, we present a companionable front.”

Darcy stopped walking. Elizabeth, several paces ahead, was forced to turn back.

“You wish us to appear companionable,” he said, his gaze sweeping over her as if her appearance was anything but. “Perhaps I shall warn you, Miss Elizabeth—I am an excellent performer. You may find it difficult to remember where the front ends and the substance begins.”

How dare he? Elizabeth bristled, pulling her hedge-sparrow bonnet firmly against the wind. “The Turners are first. Mr. Turner holds the largest parcel—forty acres including the lower meadow. His rent is eight pounds per quarter. He has paid on time for six years, except this summer when the hay crop failed, and I allowed him to defer a portion.”

“You allowed him?”

“Someone had to make the decision, Mr. Darcy. My father was occupied with a particularly demanding volume of Herodotus.”

She heard, beside her, a choked sound. Not a laugh—Darcy did not laugh—but the ghost of one, strangled at birth by good breeding. Elizabeth refused to find this gratifying and walked faster.

The Turners received Mr. Darcy with the wary hospitality of tenants confronted with bailiffs. Mrs. Turner curtsied deeply; Mr. Turner removed his cap; the three older Turner children stared.

“Miss Lizzy!” The smallest Turner, a girl with a missing front tooth and an unidentifiable smear on her chin, broke from her mother’s side and flung herself at Elizabeth’s knees. “Miss Lizzy, you’ve come! Have you brought the peppermint?”

“Molly Turner, where are your manners?” Mrs. Turner looked mortified. “You must curtsy to the gentleman.”

“It’s quite all right.” Elizabeth extracted a small paper twist from her pocket and handed it to Molly, who received it with a shriek of delight. “I always bring peppermints, Mrs. Turner. You know I do.”

“You spoil them, miss.”

“It is one of my few pleasures.” She distributed the rest to the older children.

Darcy observed from the sidelines, no doubt inwardly disapproving of landlords who distributed sweets to tenant children.

“Mr. Darcy is the heir to Longbourn,” she said, turning to include him. “He has come to introduce himself.”

“Heir?” Mr. Turner’s face went carefully blank. “We’d heard something of that, miss. After Mr. Collins, God rest him.”

“Mr. Darcy is an even more distant cousin. He will inherit the estate when my father—” Elizabeth stopped, the words suddenly difficult. “When the time comes.”

“A pleasure to meet you, sir.” Mr. Turner’s bow was stiff. “We’re grateful to Miss Lizzy, sir. She’s been good to us. Better than—” He stopped, glancing at his wife.

“Better than we had any right to expect,” Mrs. Turner finished smoothly. “We have the rent that is due.”

Elizabeth recorded the payment in her pocket ledger while Darcy asked about the lower meadow’s drainage and how it affected the hay yield and made plans come spring to dig new channels. He also pointed to a corner of the roof where the thatch had thinned, and said, “This will not last the winter. I shall send a thatcher before the new year.”

He attended to every detail, asked sensible questions, and made promises with the easy confidence of a man who had never wondered whether he could afford to keep them. Elizabeth could not have imagined Collins so practical, as he would not have been able to resist comparing the tenant cottages to those at Rosings and how the great Lady Catherine managed her estate.

As they departed, Molly’s cheeks round with peppermint, Elizabeth reminded herself that Mr. Darcy was meant to disapprove of her management, perhaps to censure or even berate her for some imagined neglect. He was merely performing a companionable courtesy—not actually practicing it.

“The widow Pratt,” Elizabeth said, because silence between them felt more dangerous than conversation. “She holds a cottage and a quarter-acre garden. Her husband died two years ago. She cannot pay this quarter. She has not been able to pay since Lady Day, and I have carried the balance in the ledger rather than press her.”

“You have been funding the shortfall yourself?”

“I have been deferring it as I do not possess the means to fund anything, Mr. Darcy. I possess only the authority to decide when a debt becomes cruelty.”