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And that is how I found myself viewing my bedchamber for the first time with my husband’s first wife’s mother. Awkward, thy name is Darcy, I thought.
I had followed her up the impressive staircase, her feet somehow making no noise on the marble floors. She flung the doors open to a cosy sitting room, beautifully furnished, and from thence to a bedchamber, its wide windows overlooking a carpet of lawn edged by the forests we’d driven through to get here.
“’Tis a beautiful view,” I assured her, although she had not asked how I liked it.
“It will have to do, I suppose,” she replied grimly. She walked to a door that was nearly hidden by the panelling. “Mr Darcy’s rooms are through here. You can lock it if you wish.” She pointed this out with little inflection, yet somehow, I knew she relished saying it. Perhaps she did not simply hate me, but Mr Darcy as well?
I noticed my things had been unpacked and my brushes laid out. “I shall need to see Mrs Reynolds about a maid,” I commented, wishing the older woman would go away instead of standing about like a great beady-eyed vulture, staring at me.
“I have lived here since the day my dear Anne came as his bride,” she announced, as if I had asked her a question regarding her length of residence. “She did not call me ‘Mama’, for she always said we were more like sisters than mother and daughter. We were ever celebrated for our entertainments. Anne always said that no one could match me for organising the best affairs.”
Idly, I wondered how Mr Darcy had looked upon the news that not only had he wed a diamond of the first water, but the diamond’s mother as well. Perhaps that was my main attraction—my orphan status. And she stood there and stood and stood, long past the point of awkwardness, for I had ceased speaking.
I probably ought not to have asked, but Mrs de Bourgh was waiting, her arms folded, the minutes ticking by. It seems silly now, to believe that I knew she wanted me to ask her, but somehow, I did, or thought I did. At the time, it simply seemed she would never go away unless I asked her the stupidly obvious question.
“How did your daughter die, Mrs de Bourgh?”
She glared at me sombrely, those narrowed eyes staring and staring, her querulous expression filled with malice, scorn, and pity. “As to that, madam, you will have to ask Mr Darcy. He is the only one who knows the answer.” And with that, she turned on her heel and left the room at last.
