Page 18 of An Accidental Meeting
“But Mr. Darcy!” she exclaimed, reaching for her dressing gown and wrapping herself in it. “Unexpected guests!”
He shook his head and pointed at the bed. It was difficult to appear imposing with the woman who had known him since shortly after he was breeched, but she huffed with vexation and climbed back under the covers.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “How was dinner?”
Darcy shook his head. “You are entirely predictable, madam.”
Her eyes went to the maid. “Lucy, you may leave us.”
The girl rose, dipped a curtsy, and left the room.
“Mr. Darcy, you cannot fault me for wishing to hear that all went well.”
“That is not all you wish to hear.”
She pursed her lips before saying, “Miss Bennet is a lovely girl. And she seems quite taken with you.”
“She is a lovely woman, but I would not say she is taken with me.”
“You are too modest, sir. That has always been your way.”
This flagrant bias made Darcy laugh aloud. “Not always, I am afraid.”
“Who says so?” Mrs. Reynolds asked crossly.
“Miss Bennet says so. And she is right. Although I have some hopes that she is changing her mind.”
The housekeeper’s eyebrows rose in suspicion. “After seeing Pemberley?”
“After seeing that I am not the man she believed me to be.” He shrugged, and added, “I have not treated her as I should have, Mrs. Reynolds, but I intend to remedy that.”
Mrs. Reynolds considered him carefully but did not speak.
Darcy scratched the side of his head. He had not held a conversation about such private feelings with Mrs. Reynolds since he was a boy, but he had relied on her for years. After he prematurely became Pemberley’s master, they were always consulting on one thing or another. She was a servant, but she was more than that. She had been from the day his mother died.
He returned to his chair.
Darcy had not been able to remain in his mother's sickroom after she was gone. While his father still held his mother's hand, Darcy had stood, both his body and his emotions numb, and walked out the door as though nothing untoward had occurred.
Mrs. Reynolds had been hovering in the hall. She had seen him and read something in his face that had told her it was over. She had drawn up her shoulders and nodded, indicating he ought to follow her. He had fallen into step without question, and along the way, she had issued quiet but implacable orders. Menus for the cook, for they were certain to have many visitors in the coming days. Mourning drapery for the front door. Black attire.
“Miss Darcy is too young to require it,” she had said to a maid, “but both Mr. Darcy and Master Fitzwilliam will require bands for their arms and hats. You know where they are kept.”
Servants had nodded, then scattered. And Darcy had simply followed in Mrs. Reynolds’s wake.
When she reached the end of the hall, she took out her keys and selected one, fitting it in the lock of a door to a room he had never entered before.
“Your mother loved this room. She would sit here in the afternoons when she was first married,” Mrs. Reynolds had said. “She has not had the time to use it as much as she might like in the past few years.” Then she worked a second key off her chatelaine and handed it to him.
That was all she had said. Darcy had walked past her into the little reading room, fisting the key. A bookshelf had stood against one wall, a soft chair angled to capture the view, two wooden chairs near the window for light. Next to the larger chair was a little table where a candle might be placed if needed. It was warm and bright and cheerful.
Just as his mother had been.
Darcy had tucked the key carefully into a coat pocket, then lowered himself into the chair, looked out the window to the hills beyond the Spanish oaks on the lawn, and wept. He made no sound as the tears cascaded down his cheeks, for the tears themselves were weakness enough. But they were relieving too.
Mrs. Reynolds had never told a soul, though in the days that followed, she had always been nearby. When Darcy required rescue from a gathering that was becoming too solemn, or assistance with his father, whose grief was overpowering, Mrs. Reynolds cared for him and for Papa without ever calling attention to herself. And when he could not sleep on those long summer nights as everyone grieved, Darcy had let himself into the little room to sit in the chair his mother had sat in and to gaze out upon the view she had loved.
The housekeeper had met Darcy when he was four years old. But they had become friends when he was twelve.
