Page 111 of Regrets

“It was good of you to help.”

Mr. Rochester shrugged, embarrassed. “It is nothing.”

“It is hardly nothing! Come, let us get you upstairs and into a warm bath at once.”

With the help of Mr. Rochester’s valet, the master of the house was soon warm and dry, and sitting in front of the drawing room fire with a large mug of tea that just might have had a splash of brandy in it. He smiled warmly at his loving wife.

He is a good man, Mary thought. He will understand. “Robby,” she began.

“Hmmm?” He looked up from his mug.

“Robby, tell me honestly; does it distress you that I cannot speak knowledgeably about art?”

He considered this for a long minute, staring at his wife. “Well,” he said at last. “I had rather assumed that we had a shared interest in it.”

“What made you think that?” Mary asked. “I do not think I ever wrote about art in any of my letters.”

He thought back, cradling the mug in his hands. “No, you did not,” he confessed. “I suppose the wish was father to the thought.”

Mary took a deep breath. “I will learn about art, if you are willing to teach me.”

His eyes lit up and he leaned forward. “Oh, Mary! Nothing would make me happier!”

Mary hastened to add, “You must understand that I have my own duties to attend to. I am mistress of the house, you know. But I would be happy to spend an hour every day with you. Would that suit?”

“Perfectly!”

“One other thing, dearest,” Mary went on. “I get up a good deal earlier than you do, and as a result, I go to sleep earlier. I am a country girl and keep country hours. Does this disturb you?”

“It does not, no,” he said. “I understand that it is my hours that are not the norm here in Meryton. If anyone is to change, it should be me.”

Mary’s relief was so obvious that Mr. Rochester could not help laughing. “Oh, my poor Mary! Did you think I wanted to force you to stay up late and be a slug-a-bed every morning like your lazy husband?”

“Well…”

“Fear you not, my dear. We, each of us, have the habits of a lifetime. And I suppose everything will change once the children come. Now, then, let us begin at once! There are landscape artists and portrait artists…”

Chapter One Hundred

When the carriage finally pulled up at Pemberley, Mr. Darcy leapt out the moment it stopped. He took a deep breath – ah, there it was, the unique smell that belonged to Pemberley and nowhere else on earth! He was home! He handed Elizabeth out and then Georgiana. Elizabeth stared, first at the lake and the forest beyond it, then the gardens to the left and the right, and then, finally, she turned around to look at the house. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. She turned to her husband and shook her head, unable to form a coherent sentence.

The servants were lined up, from the butler to the lowest stable boy, from the housekeeper to the youngest laundry maid. Mr. Darcy presented each of them by name to Elizabeth. Elizabeth repeated the name at once, hoping to fix it in her mind, but she knew it would be some time before she knew all of them, and could only hope that they would forgive any lapses.

In truth, they would have forgiven a good deal more than a forgotten name, for everyone knew that Pemberley very much needed a mistress. Mrs. Reynolds had done her best, no doubt about it, but running an estate the size of Pemberley was no easy task, not even for someone as capable as she.

For Elizabeth’s part, she loved Pemberley at first sight. Who would not, in truth? For a young woman who loved to walk in nature, Pemberley was no less than an Eden. Her husband had told her that Pemberley had its own special scent, and as soon as she had taken her first deep breath on the front lawn, she knew exactly what he meant. It was a scent unlike any other, a smell redolent of the earth and the trees and the care that generations of Darcys had taken to nurture it. Doubtless once it was spring, there would be the smell of flowers as well!

She would have liked, very much, to walk for hours and hours every day, until she learnt every inch of the estate! And walk she did, in the first few weeks of her life at Pemberley, but soon there was not as much time to walk as she would have preferred, for the estate had been without a mistress for many years, and the demands on her time were extensive.

***

Mrs. Reynolds had opened her heart to Elizabeth at their first meeting. “I work from dawn to dusk, every day except the Sabbath, but I cannot recall the last time the linens were tallied, the stillroom is very much in need of new supplies, and I know not what else has fallen by the wayside! The house is too big, there is just too much to be done!”

“It is not your fault; you should have been given an assistant,” Elizabeth had said at once, putting a comforting hand on the housekeeper’s arm.

“Mr. Darcy would have certainly hired one, had I asked, but…well, I could not tell him that it was too much for me.” Mrs. Reynolds had bowed her head. “He has relied on me for so long, and I could bear to let him down.”

“You need not worry any longer,” Elizabeth had assured her, briskly. “I am here now, and between us, it will all get done.”