“Thank you, Mama!” the other three chorused.
Holding the door, Owen allowed Elizabeth to precede him. She continued up the interminable corridor to a more imposing set of double doors, and once through them, he found himself in what the Darcys called the public parts of the house, apparently because they were open to inspection by strangers when the family was not home.
“You are wondering why so much of Pemberley is not kept up,” she said, leading the way to the blue-and-white Dutch Room, full of Vermeers and Bruegels, with two Rembrandts in proudest place, and, hidden by a screen, a Bosch.
“I-er-” He floundered, not knowing what to say.
“It will be refurbished after Cathy comes out-eight more years. Though it doesn’t look very nice, structurally it’s perfectly sound. What’s lacking is a new coat of paint, and some replaced balusters and stair treads. A Darcy of generations ago decreed that the non-public parts of the house should be refurbished no more often than every thirty years, and that has become an unwritten law. When Cathy leaves it will be twenty-seven years since the last time, but Fitz says that will be long enough. I confess I’m looking forward to it, and won’t let the colour be brown. So dark!”
“Does that include the servants’ rooms?” he asked.
“Oh, dear me, no! The permanent servants live two floors up. Their rooms are done at ten-year intervals, like all the public parts of the house. They’re cheerful and well-appointed-I always feel that servants should be made very comfortable. The married ones live in cottages in a small village only a walk away. People like my own maid, Hoskins, and Mr. Darcy’s valet, Meade, have suites.”
“You must consume a great deal of water, ma’am.”
“Yes, but we’re lucky. Our stream is absolutely pure, having no settlements on it between here and its source. There is a huge reservoir in the roof-it stands on iron pilings. That gives our water the power to flow through pipes all over the house. Now that water closets have been invented, I’ve persuaded Fitz to install them adjacent to every bedroom, with some in the servants’ quarters too. And now that powerful pumps are available, I want a supply of hot water to the kitchen and to some new, proper bathrooms. This is an exciting age to live in, Owen.”
“Indeed it is, Mrs. Darcy.” What he did not ask was where all this potential waste was to go, as he knew the answer: into the river below Pemberley, where the stream would not be pure anymore.
“Your daughters are delightful,” he said, sitting down.
“Yes, they are.”
“Have they no exposure to the outside world?”
“I am afraid not. But why do you ask?”
“Because they’re so starved for news. Why aren’t they allowed to read newspapers and journals? They know more about Alexander the Great than about Napoleon Bonaparte. And it seems a pity that they’re not permitted to meet men like Angus Sinclair. He would surely do them no harm.” He stopped, horrified. “Oh, I do beg your pardon! I must sound critical of your arrangements, and I don’t mean to.”
“You are absolutely right, sir. I agree with you wholeheartedly. Unfortunately Mr. Darcy does not. For which I have my own sisters to blame. My parents permitted us free rein from a very early age. It did Jane and me no harm, but Kitty and Lydia should have been curbed, and were not. They were more than hoydens, they were flirts, and in Lydia’s case, a tendency to associate unchaperoned with officers of a militia regiment led to shocking trouble. So when we had our own girls, Mr. Darcy decided that they would not be allowed to mix in the world until they officially came out at eighteen.”
“I see.”
“I hope that your heart is proof against the charms of, say, Georgie?” Elizabeth asked with a twinkle.
He laughed. “Well, the man who would inspect a filly’s teeth did she have half as many as ninety thousand pounds does not exist.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“That was how Georgie put her situation to me.”
“Oh, I despair of her! I cannot cure her indelicacy!”
“Don’t try. The world will do it for you. Under that brave front lies a great deal of vulnerability-she thinks she’s like her Aunt Mary, but in truth she’s more like Charlie.”
“And over-dowered. They all are, though Georgie is worst off in that respect. The others have a mere fifty thousand pounds each. It was not our doing, but Fitz’s father’s. The money was left in trust for any daughters Fitz might have. We fear fortune-hunters, of course. Some are so charming, so irresistible!”
“Well, I cannot see Georgie falling in love with a fortune-hunter-or Anne, for that matter. The most vulnerable is Susie. Cathy is more likely to dupe her seducer than run off with him.”
“You cheer me immensely, Owen.” The purple eyes gleamed at him as mischievously as Cathy’s. “It is tea time. Can you eat a second tea?”
“Easily,” he said.
“You are twenty-five, I believe?”
“Yes. Twenty-six in October.”
“Then you’re safe for at least another five or six years. After that, your figure won’t run to second teas. Gentlemen set in their early thirties, finish growing from calves to bulls.” M more and more as time went on. Now that her life was regular, she could mark off each interval between the delivery of fresh food as one day, though she could not be sure it really was. If it was, then at the end of thirty pencilled strokes on her wall (including those first estimated seven), she began to despair. Wherever her prison lay, no one had found it, though she was sure people would be looking for her.
Things had happened which caused a lump of terror to rise in her doughty breast; how much longer would Father Dominus bother to keep her alive? For all his talk about the Children of Jesus, she had seen no evidence of their existence beyond Brother Jerome, Brother Ignatius, and Sister Therese, all hovering on the brink of puberty, and though Ignatius and Therese spoke freely of their fellow Children, it seemed to Mary that there was an element of the unreal about what they said. Why, for instance, did no child attempt to run away, if they did indeed have the freedom to venture out of the caves? Human nature was adventurous, particularly in the young-what escapades she and Charlie used to get up to when he was a boy! Somewhere she thought that perhaps Martin Luther had said were he to be given a child until he turned seven, he would have the man. In which case, how young were the Children of Jesus when they were taken? Neither Ignatius nor Therese was prepared to confide in her fully; much of what she had pieced together came from what they refused to say. Yet the old man fed his disciples extremely well, clothed them, doctored them, allowed them considerable liberty. That they worked for him without being paid indicated that he exploited them, as did his neglect of their education.
At first she had hoped that the book he was dictating to her would answer some of these questions, but after thirteen sessions he was still absorbed with the conundrum of God and the evil of light. A pattern was emerging: of a circular progress through his riddles akin to what was said of people hopelessly lost-that they walked in circles and always wound up where they started. And so it was with Father Dominus’s book. He didn’t seem to know how to get off the track he wandered and go in a straighter line.
He had also curbed her contact with Ignatius and Therese. Now she walked to the underground river on her own, while Ignatius stood guard at the beginning of the tunnel and returned her to her cell when she emerged. Their communication dwindled to greetings and farewells; clearly he had been told not to say anything to her beyond those civilities. Removal of Therese was stranger. In her talks with Father Dominus not related to dictation Mary had realised that he despised the female sex, mature or immature. Affection would show in his face when he spoke of the boys, but the moment Mary introduced the girls into their conversation he would stiffen, the expression he wore would change to contempt, and he would brush her aside as if she were some noxious insect.
Then Mary’s courses began to flow, and she was obliged to ask Therese for rags, as well as come to some arrangement about soaking and boiling them after use. It seemed Therese had to request the fabric for these rags from Father Dominus, who beat her with a stick and called her unclean. The rags were forthcoming, handed over by a tearful Therese together with the story of the old man’s reaction, but that was to be her last contact with Therese. After it, Camille brought her daily necessities, and would not succumb to Mary’s blandishments, though the frightened blue eyes held yearning.
That tipped the scales in Mary’s attitude toward him. Until then her sense of self-preservation had prompted her to go softly, never to antagonise him, but such control was alien to Mary’s frank nature, and the bonds that tied her tongue were frail. When next he appeared to give dictation, she flew at him verbally, since the bars on her cage
