Pemberley, he decided to break his journey and visit his mother’s old home and his Longbourn relations, whom he did not know. He had been only eight when he last stayed there with his grandfather, a crusty old man with an odd sense of humor. Fitz, the high stickler, already at Eton, had thought him eccentric, but young Henry had enjoyed the old man’s company, and spent hours with him in the library, Henry on his stomach on the rug, picking his way through a book of myths, maps, and monsters, and Mr. Bennet reading Addison, Swift, or John Donne. Henry was sorry when his grandfather died.
Since then the question of visiting Longbourn had never arisen. Henry knew the house had been inherited by a Mr. Collins, a distant relative, whose wife was a dear friend of his mother’s. Mrs. Collins had visited Pemberley on one occasion, without her husband. But this, he thought, was while the Collinses still lived near Cousin Anne at Rosings. Henry vaguely remembered a quiet pleasant woman, dressed in black (had she lost a child? he did not quite remember), not fashionable, with a manner that expected obedience from the young. But no one suggested paying a return visit to Cousin Collins.
It was late afternoon when Henry rode up the driveway at Longbourn. The day was fine, the sun shone low in the sky, a blackbird sang in the shrubbery. As he dismounted at the front door, and looked about for a groom, his eye was caught by the slight figure of a girl in a flounced muslin dress, seated on a swing beneath an oak tree. The dress was of white muslin with blue dots, the full skirt spreading gracefully round her. A book and a tabby cat rested on her knees, but her attention was on him.
A groom arrived and took the reins. Henry walked toward the girl, and bowed.
“Hallo,” she said, looking up at him and smiling. She saw before her a young man, handsome, eager. He was tall and dark, his face thin, his eyes very alive; his mouth, with something sweet in its curve, seemed ready to laugh. He reminded her of one of the miniatures on the wall in her father’s study. Yes, of course. It must be. “You have the look of my cousins, the Darcys. I am Eliza Collins.”
Her voice was clear and musical. Henry met her eyes and found himself unable to look away. He, the Oxford graduate, the self-possessed son of a notable country estate, stumbled in his response to this slip of a girl with laughing gray eyes. How astonishing, he thought, the very great pleasure a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow. Henry, in the past year at Oxford, had begun to write poetry; at this moment phrases, luminous phrases, began to stir in his mind.
“I am Henry Darcy,” he admitted. “But we have never met,” he said. “I should surely remember. How can— how do you know the way we look?”
“My father has copies of the miniatures at Rosings of all Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s relatives. They hang in his study.”
A green and yellow caterpillar descended on a silken thread from the oak leaves above. It settled on a muslin sleeve and began to crawl earnestly towards a fair and slender neck. Henry knew exactly how his sister, Juliet, would react to such a visitant. He bent forward.
“Forgive me,” he said. “An intruder.” He carefully picked the caterpillar from Eliza’s sleeve; he wished it were a dragon. She looked quickly down and his hand brushed her cheek. At once he was scarlet.
“Oh, just a caterpillar—an oak moth, I expect. Perhaps we should save it to frighten Catty.”
“C-C-Catty?” stammered Henry.
“My sister,” said Eliza gravely. “They terrify her.”
“They terrify mine, too.”
He pulled himself together, and offered her his arm as she pushed the reluctant cat from her knees, slid from the swing, and stood by his side. The cat wound itself round their legs in a figure of eight, mewed pitifully, and bounded suddenly away across the grass.
“Oh, what a beautiful horse,” said Eliza, as they walked down the drive, and he felt for a brief moment jealous that her attention should wander so easily from him.
“Do you ride? Should you like to try his paces? He is very gentle.”
“Oh yes, please! I should like it of all things. I have a mare, rather old, very quiet. A true lady’s horse, my father says. I have always wished to ride a horse... that was not.”
A small hand clutched his arm, and the gray eyes danced.
“That was not?” Henry was puzzled.
“Not suitable for a lady,” said Eliza.
“My saddle!” Henry was dismayed. “I fear that too is not suitable for a lady!”
“I expect we shall manage very well.”
The groom was still standing at the horse’s head. Henry bent his knee and offered his cupped hand to Eliza as a mounting block. For one giddy moment he felt the pressure of her small foot and the pleasing weight of her form as he tossed her into the saddle. The groom moved away, and Henry walked by Eliza’s side, somewhat gingerly holding her in his saddle (not, of course, a side-saddle), as she rode down the drive. He looked up at her and her eyes (those wide-set gray eyes), alight with pleasure, met his. He wished the moment might never end.
Only now, he thought, had he begun to understand the meaning of life.
Chapter Three
She began to comprehend that he was exactly the man, who,
in disposition and talents, would most suit her.
“But the wife of Mr. Darcy must have such extraordinary
sources of happiness...”
“My dearest Jane,” said Elizabeth Darcy to her favorite sister. “Love has broken out like the pox!”
“Lizzie! My dear! Such an expression,” said Jane.
Elizabeth blushed. “I blame it all on Fitz. He will use these cant sayings. I am always shocking Mr. Darcy. But in this case I can think of no other way to express it. The romantic attachments of one’s children are a constant distraction. Do not, I beg you, be surprised to hear me exclaim ‘Oh, my poor nerves—have you no compassion for my poor nerves?’”
The sisters were sitting in the conservatory at Pemberley, admiring the gardenias blooming under glass and also, as it was late June and the garden door was open to the warm summer breeze, the riot of cream and yellow roses that cascaded over the outside of the conservatory. The scent was dizzying.
“Here is poor Fitz, head-over-heels in love with your beautiful Amabel, and that is charming; we shall all be so happy if it comes to a betrothal. And Juliet has returned from town quite wild about young Churchill—not the heir, of course, Francis, that would be too much to ask; that would be tame. No, this is Gerard, such a handsome young man, quite delightful in his cavalry uniform. But a younger son and sadly wild—he has no prospects and, so they say, a mountain of debts! I fear he gambles. Most unsuitable! (His mother is an invalid, and his father does nothing to check him.) And Juliet is just at the stage where she declares that first love is all; she can never love again. She swears she will go straight into a decline, if she cannot marry Mr. Churchill—or elope—though with whom I am not sure. And now—my poor Mr. Darcy is quite without words—here is my fledgling, Henry—oh, it seems but a week ago he fell out of an apple tree, stealing pippins, and tore his pantaloons—well, here he is, barely down from Oxford, not even a full London season at his back, declaring himself in love with Eliza Collins!”
“Eliza Collins?”
“Yes, my dear. Charlotte’s youngest daughter, which is pleasant but, oh Jane, also the daughter of Mr. Collins.What is to be done?
“I blame it on the Queen,” Elizabeth went on. “A young Queen on the throne, crowned at eighteen, courted and newly married in the full glare of the public’s eye within two years. It is too much to bear. All of England is aflutter. Blushes, swoons, heartbreak, and decline are all the rage—though perhaps tight-lacing must bear its share
