Page 38 of Pemberley's Imposter
“What are you making?”
“A bow and arrow.”
“Are you planning to stay here long?”
“No, but we need to eat while Ellie recovers her strength. I have no idea where we are or how far we are from Pemberley. It could be hours, days, or even weeks before we reach home on foot, and we have no money. The bow will come in handy for hunting purposes when we set out towards Pemberley.”
“We are not entirely destitute,” Elizabeth reluctantly admitted.
“No, I was implying no such thing, but we have no money with us,” Mr Darcy explained.
“Yes, we do,” Elizabeth countered. “I have five pounds and sixteen shillings sewn into my garments. One never knows when one might find oneself tossed out into the cold, nor how much one might be allowed to take with her.”
Mr Darcy bowed his head, it was to be hoped in shame, and continued to scrape off the bark with a pointed stone.
“What will you use for the string?” Elizabeth asked.
“I was hoping you or Ellie might have something.”
“I shall have to sacrifice my stays. It is the only lace that will suit.”
Elizabeth cooked the mushrooms over the flames, and they had plenty of dessert.
Once they had eaten, Elizabeth ordered Mr Darcy to turn away while she removed her stays in a darkened corner. She handed the lace to her husband, who went out to attach it to his bow. Elizabeth cut out the five pounds and twenty shillings she had sewn into the garment and used the fabric scraps as cloths. The cottage was in dire need of cleaning, and Elizabeth wanted to occupy herself. Ellie demanded her own rag and happily dusted alongside her mother, humming a tune she had often heard Elizabeth sing while working in their cottage.
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This picture of domestic felicity met Darcy upon his return. He proudly showed his ladies the two wood pigeons that would serve as dinner. He took them back out to skin and gut them. Usually, he would keep only the breasts, but with not much else to eat, he would have to use every edible part of the birds. Elizabeth joined him in removing feathers from the creatures. A fleeting image of the former Caroline Bingley performing the same task popped into his mind. He suppressed a chuckle, imagining the outrageous comments that surely would have followed.
He had likened his first visit to Hertfordshire to torture; how little he had known about true agony back then. Despitebeing familiar with grief from an early age, nothing compared to the last two and a half years. He lacked for nothing in the physical sense, yet his life had become a hollow existence. Sitting on a log, outside a hovel, doing something as tedious as skinning a bird, was the closest to complacency he had felt in years, and it was due to Elizabeth. She despised him; still nothing brought him more pleasure than to be of as much assistance to her as she would allow.
The colonel was a heinous monster, but Darcy was not much better than his cousin. He had thrown the woman he loved out of her home, to sustain herself in utter poverty, and had treated her abominably after forcing her to return. Why had he believed Richard? Because he could not fathom how Elizabeth could have mistaken the ogre for himself. They were so different in body and manners…
“Were you kept in a tomb as well?”
Elizabeth’s question jolted him out of his miserable contemplations.
“Yes,” he admitted, shuddering.
“The mausoleum is so overgrown with verdure that it was a cursed accident I even discovered it. It struck me as contrary to your nature to leave your ancestors’ resting place in such disarray…”
It pleased him that she thought of him as an orderly, respectful man. In truth, it had never struck him to change the old arrangement.
“It was my father who ordered the gardeners to allow the ivy to grow freely. The mausoleum was visible from the master’s chamber before it was covered, and he could not bear being reminded of his loss every time he looked out of the window.I sympathise with the sentiment and never contradicted his order.”
“Were you in the same tomb as me and Ellie?” Elizabeth wondered, sounding puzzled.
“Yes,” he affirmed in a clipped voice. He was trying to forget that part of their journey.
“I felt someone tremble and heard something panting, but I was afraid it could be one of your big mastiffs. I was scared witless and dared not investigate,” Elizabeth admitted, bowing her head in what he assumed was shame.
“It sounds like a good plan, but the dogs are not dangerous, and it was only me.”
Ellie sat on the ground by their feet, playing with the feathers, compelling him to be more honest than he had ever been with another human being, but Elizabeth deserved an explanation.
“I was once trapped under the floor at school. I have been uncomfortable with tight spaces ever since,” Darcy continued.
Elizabeth turned her fine eyes at him in astonishment, and he met her gaze briefly before he had to look away or risk disgracing himself by enfolding her in a tight embrace.
