When supplying Mr. Darcy with the direction of Mrs. Younge, he’d little idea that such information might be so vital to his master’s future happiness. If he had, the knowledge would surely have frozen his lips together with profound trepidation.
As it was, the results of his reluctant disclosure were not made immediately apparent. Mr. Darcy, still tense and preoccupied, did not confide any ensuing success or failure to him, and despite his personal curiosity, Preston could not fault him for it. The days following their “talk” passed, at least for the valet, with only slight variations to their master-servant routine.
Mr. Darcy continued to arise early, and other than reappearing for an occasional meal, returned only after many of the servants were already retired; excepting Preston, of course. And, once those evening needs had been attended to, he would fall into bed with no more than two words to his dutiful attendant.
This, Preston knew, was as it should be. Indeed, as it must be. Still, he would occasionally catch himself wondering how Mrs. Younge’s whereabouts might be of so much import to the imminent Mr. Darcy. The fact that he, Samuel Bard (his mother had held a certain sentimentality towards poetry at the time of his birth) Preston, an unassuming servant, could offer any help whatsoever in the case, had been purely coincidental, but afterward he’d been most grateful for such happy coincidence.
The facts of the matter were that the infamous Mrs. Younge, after being unceremoniously dismissed from the Darcy household, removed herself to her sister’s establishment in a less than impressive section of London. There, food, lodging, and even a particular type of female companionship were available (for a price) to idle sailors on shore leave.
Although Preston would never willingly patronise such a place, there was a woman of close acquaintance employed in the kitchen. She, a Miss Clara Foster, spent many a backbreaking hour cooking vast quantities of stew, kneading and fashioning endless mounds of dough into loaves of bread, and laundering the discarded linens from the abovestairs rooms.
How he came to be familiar with this humble individual, surprising as it would be to any who knew him, was not so very unusual. For, some years earlier, when both were yet between the ages of eight and eighteen, they had been quite good friends; sharing confidences as well as lessons in servitude from his own, dear parents. She was his cousin on his maternal side; six months his junior and specifically trained to be a lady’s maid in much the same as he was to be a valet.
But something had gone awry.
Following ten years of faithfully serving the elderly woman by whom she had initially been engaged, that lady suffered a seizure so severe as to render her no longer in need of such attention. Thereafter she was acquired by the woman’s nephew; an empty headed dandy whose youthful wife would not, or could not, be pleased. Three years of growing dissatisfaction on both sides led to Clara’s services finally being sold to a widow of questionable reputation; a Mrs. Bates. This, as it so happened, was Mrs. Younge’s elder sister.
Preston’s consternation at Clara retaining this lowly position was severe, but he had nothing better to offer her. There was no situation available at any of the Darcy estates, or at least nothing he could bring himself to request on his cousin’s behalf.
In the few hours each week when he was not needed by Mr. Darcy, he would sometimes visit her, using the back door of the place so as not to be noticed, and often sneaking a few shillings into her apron pocket despite her protests. It worried him to see how the work had aged her. Anyone meeting her would add at least five onto her thirty-two years and consider themselves as generous.
Yet, in spite of her red hands and care-worn complexion, she still retained the open, affectionate nature that had endeared her to him even as a child.
“Worry not for me, Sam,” she’d urge when he would scowl at Mrs. Bates’s shrill voice overheard from the front room; “I have prospects. Why, only yesterday, I heard a fellow mention a position in King’s Cross that might be available very soon.”
“Clara,” he returned, unmollified; “It’s always ‘some fellow says’ or ‘someone’s heard’. Meanwhile you’ve been here nigh on two years, and that’s far too long. You’re too fine a person for this.”
“Perhaps not,” she argued calmly. “Who can say what we’re put on this earth for? Maybe I can do more good working here than if I were waiting on the queen, herself.”
And so he would leave her; each occasion becoming a heavier burden upon his conscious. Until he could promise her something better, however, he was helpless to alleviate her present condition.
Mr. Darcy, after several weeks of almost frantic activity, at last settled down to a comparatively unconfined schedule. Unfortunately, this alleviation of urgency did not mean any complacency on his part. For some reason, he’d begun to relapse once more into the melancholia that succeeded in filling Preston’s heart with concern.
One morning after having been shaved, Mr. Darcy actually grimaced at his reflection in the mirror; an expression so rare as to cause his valet to scrutinise his master’s face worriedly.
“Is something wrong, sir?” he inquired when no wound could be found; “I did not effect discomfort, I hope.”
Ignoring the question, that gentleman announced grimly, “I shall require a formal coat today, Preston. I am to attend a wedding.”
“A wedding, sir?” the valet repeated, at once relieved that it was not he with whom Mr. Darcy was vexed; “A happy occasion, indeed.” Carefully he considered the array of frockcoats hanging in the wardrobe; “Perhaps the blue?”
“Happy occasion!” was the scornful reply; “That remains to be seen. Yes, the blue is fine. As a matter of fact, Preston, you are acquainted with one of the party.”
Pausing from brushing barely discernible lint from the coat, he questioned doubtfully, “Am I, sir?”
“I imagine you must recall Mr. George Wickham,” his master went on, his voice thick with disgust; “He is to be the happy, as you call it, bridegroom.”
“Indeed?” Moving to check the lay of the coattails, Preston kept his own voice inscrutable. “Should I recall the bride as well?”
At this, Mr. Darcy made a noise slightly resembling a laugh; “Not only have you never had the privilege of meeting her, Preston. It is very likely you never will.” Closing his eyes at some painful image he could not bear to face, he murmured; “God help me. By this single act I am linking his name with her family’s forever, but...there is truly nothing else to be done...”
Tactfully turning away under the pretence of collecting his master’s gloves, Preston was stung with an emotion that nonplussed him. He did not understand what Mr. Darcy was speaking of, and never, so long as he lived, would he ever dare speak the words aloud, but at that moment, he actually pitied this man whom he had always considered well above such a ponderous sentiment.
In the evening Mr. Darcy returned, his expression somewhat more relaxed than previously.
“I shall be dining out, Preston,” he stated, tugging at the neckcloth before the valet could do so.
“Yes, sir.”
Mumbling to himself, Mr. Darcy stood before the mirror trying to work through the stubborn knot placed there so many hours before. At last, he turned impatiently and allowed Preston to do his job.
“The Gardiners are fine, honourable people,” the gentleman remarked after a moment, causing the valet to pause, although only infinitesimally, in his task.
“I cannot understand how...” he continued with evident mystification; “although, I suppose it is hardly important. The Bennet sisters are all so very different themselves. The two eldest must have inherited their sense from someone...not their mother, surely. Their father...?” But here he stopped, pursing his lips thoughtfully.
The neckcloth conquered at last, Preston assisted him with the removal of his coat and shirt.
After splashing water on his face and drying it vigorously with the towel handed him, Mr. Darcy donned a clean shirt and waited while his servant tied a fresh neckcloth around the stiff collar.
“The question remains,” he pondered just as a black evening coat was brought to him; “where am I to go from here? I have seemingly solved one problem, which hardly improves the prospect of the other. She will never know the effort I’ve expended, nor do I wish her to. Yet...” Here he sighed deeply; “But, no, of all the sensibilities I would seek, it cannot be her gratitude. Dear God,” he breathed, “how she haunts me still...How is one to recover from such an illness?”
As the question lacked any possibility of an answer, Preston gave none, but stepped back so that Mr. Darcy could survey his image in the mirror, and either approve the result or not.
However, the gentleman’s attention was so engrossed on his own, private dilemma that he merely turned away dismissively. Picking his hat up from where it waited on the bureau, he hesitated long enough to muse aloud, “Perhaps, the irony of this is that if she should discover my part in sealing her sister’s fate, it may only encourage her to despise me further.”
With that he shook his head and quit the room with a despondency not lost on his valet.
Several weeks passed with little change in the household. Preston remained concerned for his master, but, of course, could offer no words of comfort. He had no idea what event must have occurred to check the blossoming relationship between Miss Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Obviously it had something to do with that scoundrel, Mr. Wickham, but what exactly, was never quite clear.
In spite of his studied avoidance of such weakness, he found himself listening (while pretending not to; a terribly difficult practice) as the other staff members exchanged idle gossip in the kitchen.
“I hear he compromised the young lady,” Tilly, one of the upstairs maids, asserted on one such afternoon, her eyes round with delight.
“I hear,” the cook, Mrs. Watson, returned in a conspiratorial whisper, “she was some wild thing who followed the militia around like a...well, you know what I mean.”
“No!” Hattie, the parlormaid, gasped; “Mr. Wickham forced to marry one of those? Oh, the poor man!”
“Poor girl, you mean,” Bert, the second footman, contradicted as he carried in a load of wood to stoke the fires; “That gentleman was bound to receive his just rewards sooner or later. After all of the unlucky servant girls he’s ruined...”
“Bert, watch yourself.” his wife, Jenny the laundress, stopped him with a sideways glance at Tilly who was only just sixteen.
“What I don’t understand,” Mrs. Watson puzzled, “is why Mr. Darcy saw the need to step in. I thought we’d washed our hands of Mr. Wickham long ago.”
“Maybe he felt sorry for the girl,” Hattie suggested; “Maybe he knows her family...”
“Well, he is such a good, unselfish man. I’m sure he had his reasons,” Jenny declared firmly.
But Mrs. Watson was far from satisfied. “Perhaps the father of the girl came to him for help,” she mused. “There has to be practical reason for it.” Turning to gaze upon Preston who was diligently polishing a pair of riding boots, she asked, “What do you think, Preston? You see more of him than the rest of us. Why would Mr. Darcy interfere in Mr. Wickham’s affairs in such a way?”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t confide in me, madam,” Preston answered, rubbing harder at a smudge on the left boot toe that simply would not disappear.
“I think I heard her name was Benton or something like that,” Hattie speculated as Jenny handed her a bundle of clean linens to fold.
“Well, it hardly matters what her name was,” put in Tilly brightly; “She is Mrs. Wickham now.”
“Imagine being Mrs. Wickham,” Jenny marvelled, applying a heated flatiron to a dampened shirt. “She’ll have to be pretty sharp to keep up with him.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” considered Hattie; “I always thought he was most handsome.”
“Even after what he did to poor Miss Georgiana?” Jenny chided her; “Why, the man’s incorrigible.”
Appearing to not know what such a word might mean, Hattie frowned. “What exactly did he do? I don’t recollect hearing any details...Just that he tried to take advantage of her position somehow...”
“And that is all any of us need to know,” Jenny said firmly as the pressed shirt was replaced with another. “Mr. Wickham’s always been out for whatever he can get, and fortunately, Mr. Darcy has called him on it.”
“Yet again,” Mrs. Watson chuckled as she stood up to peek beneath a towel concealing a rising mound of bread dough. “So long as Mr. Darcy’s around, Mr. Wickham doesn’t stand a chance. Bert,” she questioned, changing the subject and thus putting an abrupt end to the assemblage’s ruminations; “have you seen that lazy lout, Nigel? I need those hares cleaned and dressed for supper and he’s made himself plenty scarce.”
No, it was unlikely Preston would ever discover the details to the affair, but he could at least be satisfied that his master had been in the right of it.
As summer waned, he fully expected Mr. Darcy to remove himself and Miss Georgiana to Derbyshire, but no design of the sort was communicated. Instead, one afternoon, Preston was informed that a party of gentlemen were to be organised to accompany Mr. Bingley to Hertfordshire for the hunting in that neighbourhood, and that they should expect to remain for several weeks.
If he hoped Mr. Darcy to mention his intent of seeing Miss Bennet while in the country, he was disappointed. No hint was dropped, still Preston could not help feeling that there was more than a single motive for this excursion.
Netherfield appeared much as it had nearly a year before, although through the absence of Mr. Bingley’s sisters, far less inflexible in schedule.
Mr. Bingley’s valet, Roster, was some five or six years fewer than himself, but seemed a friendly young man who did not mind advice given from those of greater experience. On the other hand, Mr. Hurst’s (Mr. Bingley’s brother-in-law) valet, Underwood, was somewhat older, more close-mouthed in company, and definitely less willing to exchange even the most simple of pleasantries.
In the pursuit of sport, the gentlemen, Mr. Darcy, Mr. Bingley, and Mr. Hurst, fell into the habit of leaving the house each morning before full sun (accompanied by several baying hounds and enough servants to fetch the multiple kills attained between them), not to return until almost luncheon.
As well, on the very first afternoon of their being in Hertfordshire, Mr. Darcy reluctantly submitted to escorting Mr. Bingley as he paid the expected visits to several of his nearest neighbours. And, because those neighbours were so well pleased to have such distinguished guests, they were destined to take their leave only after partaking of a substantial evening meal followed by musical exhibitions given by any marriageable daughters of the household.
On the fourth day of this arrangement, Mr. Bingley must have suggested that they make their way to Longbourne, the Bennet home, for, as Preston assisted him in his usual morning routine, Mr. Darcy appeared to be in a state of no little distraction.
Several times he would begin to speak, then stop himself before the sentence could go anywhere. All the while, his eyes betrayed a penchant for staring out of the window upon nothing of particular interest.
Finally, just as he was handed his hat and gloves, he said aloud, “In spite of the sense that I am entering the lion’s den, every nerve, every thought is alive in anticipation of it.” Then, with a bemused lift of one eyebrow, he added in a voice almost intelligible, “There can be little doubt that I am the most shameless of frauds.” Turning away, he gave his head a slight shake; “yet, any remorse I ought to feel is overcome by feelings far more powerful than that. Whether I am prepared or not, today may very well be the end of everything for me.”
Later, Roster verified Preston’s supposition.
“Mr. Bingley has said that he is most anxious to renew his acquaintance with Mr. and Mrs. Bennet,” he supplied blithely.
“Oh?” Preston answered, looking up from where he was attempting to begin a book on Ancient Greece borrowed from the rather limited Netherfield library. “Then, that was their destination this afternoon?”
“Oh, yes,” replied the younger man; “in fact, so far as I am aware, the Bennet estate was to be their only object today.” He paused for a moment before confiding, “Mr. Bingley has also anticipated greatly meeting the eldest Miss Bennet again.”
Despite wanting, with the most scrupulous part of his brain, to change the subject, a tiny bit of him wished to be enlightened as to what Roster actually knew, as opposed to that which he might only surmise.
“Have you had the pleasure of seeing Miss Bennet yourself?” he inquired in the most nonchalant voice he could muster.
“Not near enough to address her, of course,” was the quick reply; “but only from a very great distance. I recollect the final occasion when I was able to admire their dancing together at the ball given here last November; from the servants’ gallery, of course...My master has excellent taste, if I do say it myself.”
“Have you any idea,” Preston inquired without committing his own feelings in the matter; “Why he did not make her an offer?”
“All I know is that we left the following morning in, what I thought at the time, rather unseemly haste. Yet,” he shrugged as he leafed with little interest through an ornately embossed volume of sonnets; “one does what is expected without comment...I had assumed, as taken with her as he appeared to be, he would return to Hertfordshire very soon to do that very thing.”
“Apparently,” rising from his chair, Preston tucked the book under his arm to read when he was alone; “Mr. Bingley had his reasons.” Offering a small formal bow of farewell to the younger man, he added, “These days, gentlemen who are fortunate enough to claim the impeccable credentials of Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy, surely must consider any and all circumstances before taking that final step into matrimony.”
“Meaning what, exactly?” Roster asked, looking surprised. “Which circumstances, pray?”
With a smile offering little, Preston turned from the doorway; “As gentlemen of those very gentlemen, my dear sir, we shall probably never really know.”
These last words would prove truer than even Preston realised.
When Mr. Darcy entered his apartment that evening, he said only, “We shall be returning to London tomorrow morning, Preston. I expect us to be gone by eight at the latest.”
“Yes, sir.” In spite of the impulse to inquire as to whether Mr. Darcy had again seen Miss Elizabeth Bennet (surely the event would have been inevitable; he’d spent the entire afternoon within the very walls of her home), Preston resisted, as he knew he must.
Instead, he commenced to packing the trunks that had only just been unpacked a few days earlier.
Two days following their arrival in town, Mr. Darcy received an express from Mr. Bingley. The only reason his valet knew of this was that Mr. Darcy happened to leave it lying opened on his bedside table. Pretending to be replacing a spent candle there, Preston’s eyes scanned the words with disgraceful curiosity.
My dear Darcy, it read;
I must solicit your immediate Congratulations!
I have made the offer for Miss Bennet’s hand and, by all that is most wonderful, she has accepted! What luck, what chance has deigned to favour me!
Her father, as well, proved himself to be a splendid gentleman and granted his consent with no argument and very little embarrassment!
Believe me when I say that I count myself as the most fortunate of men!
But, will you not consider joining me in the happy state of marriage, Darcy? Or, are you no longer infatuated with her sister as you were this summer? (Great God, I wish I could witness your expression as you read this, for I am certain you thought yourself totally inscrutable in the matter.)
Alas, forgive me if I am sounding like an addled schoolboy, but I fear I have suffered thus since my dearest Jane assured me of her own unwavering regard.
I shall see you very soon, probably within the next week, for I have much to arrange in town. One service I do have to entreat of you, my friend. Please do not mention this news to my sisters as yet. I wish, most anxiously, to take full pleasure in their reactions when I speak to them myself.
Until then,
May God be with you,
Charles Bingley
Carefully replacing this missive in the very position he had found it, Preston considered its contents as he continued in his daily tasks.
So, Mr. Bingley and the eldest Miss Bennet were now betrothed. Would Mr. Darcy, as his friend had so ecstatically suggested in the letter, soon follow suit?
As that week progressed into the next, however, no outward sign of his master’s spending even a solitary moment to ponder such advice was in evidence.
Each day passed much as the one before until one evening when the eminent Lady Catherine de Bourgh and her daughter, Miss Anne de Bourgh, came to call.
Preston heard of the details later in the staff dining hall when Sarah, the maid attending her ladyship, related the whole of it to the others.
“Apparently,” Sarah shared excitedly; “milady was not best pleased with someone...specifically a young lady by the name of Miss Elizabeth Bennet...Have you ever heard of her, Elsie?” she asked Mrs. Watson with breathless wonder.
As Mrs. Watson shook her head in the negative, Preston concentrated on his roast beef. Of course no one in town would be aware of Miss Bennet’s brief history with Mr. Darcy; only himself really. This realisation filled him with a deep satisfaction that surprised him.
“In any case,” Sarah was going on; “Lady Catherine was scolding...actually scolding Mr. Darcy to make him tell her what he obviously did not wish to. Lord, you should have seen his face. I think the man would have liked to bludgeon her with a poker.”
“Sarah!” cried Peg, a kitchen maid; “Have a care!”
“I’m only telling you what I saw,” she defended herself; “Do you want to hear or not?”
Since no one said anything, she continued; “Lady Catherine was carrying on something awful; saying things like, ‘this Bennet girl cannot be trusted’ and ‘poor breeding will always tell’, and all the while Mr. Darcy just sat and drunk his wine without answering back two words! Well, I don’t know who this Miss Bennet is, but it made me feel rather sorry for her just the same.”
“What happened next?” breathed Peg in anticipation.
“Well, Lady Catherine went on for quite a while in the same vein, until she said something that made Mr. Darcy look very different.”
“Different, how?” asked Mrs. Watson sceptically in the very same moment that Bess, yet another maid, chimed in with, “What did she say, Sarah? Tell us!”
“She said...” Carefully the girl knitted her brow as she worked on recalling every word; “She said that Miss Bennet refused, absolutely refused, to promise that she would not accept an offer from Mr. Darcy if he were to give it.”
“An offer from Mr. Darcy!” repeated several of her listeners in open disbelief; “Mr. Darcy?”
“But pray,” asked Peg, returning their attention to the former statement; “how do you think her saying such a thing would affect him?”
“Yes, Sarah,” frowned Mrs. Watson; “why do you say he looked different after that?”
“I was watching him, out of the corner of my eye, of course, and I swear by all that is holy, he almost seemed to light up.”
“Light up?”
“Yes...what I mean is, before, when she was speaking, he looked ...well, dreadful really, but, when she came to that point, he glanced at her real quick and I thought he nearly smiled...although to smile at such a time would be unthinkable, and so, of course he did not.”
“Sarah,” Mrs. Watson asked again; “are you sure? You would not be reading more into it than what really happened, would you?”
“I swear it to be so, Elsie,” replied Sarah, meeting the older woman’s eyes earnestly.
A few minutes of shocked silence followed, interrupted only when she added almost timidly; “So, what do you make of it? Do you think Mr. Darcy has intentions toward this Miss Bennet?”
“Obviously,” Mrs. Watson acknowledged as she pushed herself away from the table; “none of us will likely know for sure until we’ve either been ordered to prepare the wedding dinner,...or not.”
After such an enlightening discussion, Preston was not surprised when Mr. Darcy announced their imminent return to Hertfordshire on the following afternoon.
“Lady Catherine has gone back to Rosings without the satisfaction she was seeking, yet her visit proved most useful to me,” he mused aloud as Preston busied himself with laying out his evening clothes; “I only pray I am not acting prematurely...Do I stand a chance at last? Can her disinclination mean anything at all...? or, is she merely following the tenets of her own nature and refusing to be bullied. To consider the possibilities, only to have my hopes dashed once more would be truly unbearable. Still,...I must find out one way or the other, and that, I cannot do here.” Glancing at Preston, he added with an expression of self-mockery, “You’ll begin to believe me mad very soon, Preston. Indeed I half believe it myself these past months.”
“Oh no, sir,” Preston responded with practised impassivity. “Would you prefer the vermilion waistcoat this evening?”
A flicker of a smile played at one side of Mr. Darcy’s mouth before he answered, “The ‘vermilion’ will do...You are a study, Preston. Are you aware of that?”
“Sir?”
“In other words,” he elaborated; “I am convinced you are not as insensible as that smooth facade you have perfected, would wish me to accept.”
Avoiding his master’s gaze, Preston said only, “The wind has picked up, sir. Will you desire your greatcoat?”
And so, they returned again to Netherfield. Mr. Bingley, accompanied by his sisters, was there to meet Mr. Darcy at the top of the driveway, and as Preston supervised the unloading of the trunks from the carriage boot, he could not help but overhear the ladies fervent greetings.
“Mr. Darcy, welcome!” cried Miss Bingley in an overbright voice. “Have you heard the good news? My brother is to be married to Miss Bennet!”
“Of course he knows, Caroline,” Mr. Bingley interrupted as he stepped forward to shake his friend’s hand. “Why, Darcy had as much to do with the happy outcome as anyone.”
“What? What can you mean?” returned his sisters, both obviously astonished by this disclosure; “Mr. Darcy, pray, what does he mean?”
A moment of thick silence followed, during which the footmen conveying the trunks indoors were impatiently standing in wait for Preston to precede them, and so nothing more of the conversation could be gleaned.
During supper, as they were seated directly beside each other, he had the opportunity of questioning Roster without actually appearing to do so.
“The household will soon have a new mistress, I understand,” he remarked as he waited for his soup to cool.
Roster, suspecting nothing, replied with enthusiasm; “Yes. We are overjoyed at the prospect. No young man deserves to be so happy as does Mr. Bingley.”
“Why do you say that?”
Evidently surprised by the question, he answered, “Why, because it did not come easily to him; the engagement, I mean. There were several of his friends not convinced of the match being equally prudent.”
“Were there?”
“I cannot say who exactly, but Mr. Bingley, being a modest man himself, relied on these friends to guide him, and they refused to condone the union at first.”
“What changed their minds, would you suppose?” Breaking a piece of bread up into the soup, Preston pretended indifference to whatever the answer might be.
“I could not guess, other than perhaps the lady’s charm winning them over. She seems a very charming, pretty girl, after all.”
“So I’ve heard. Are his sisters overjoyed as well, would you say?”
Reddening, Roster glanced around the table to see if anyone was listening, then, ducking his head, he confessed, “They say they are to his face, but when they are by themselves, they put forth a very different view. It makes me feel rather bad for the lady. She can’t know the mischief they are planning.”
“What mischief?”
“I could not say exactly,” Roster frowned; “but I understand they intend to make the turning over of the household as disorderly as possible.”
Considering briefly the ramifications of such a scheme on a young bride, Preston pushed on; “Are Mr. Bingley’s sisters to remain in residence at Netherfield then?”
“For a time, I understand. Mr. and Mrs. Hurst are said to be returning to town after Christmas, but it is unclear whether Miss Bingley will follow their example. I suppose she shall be invited to remain if she so chooses.”
“If they are successful in their scheme, I expect she will not be invited,” Preston speculated.
“Perhaps, or perhaps they are in hopes that the ensuing chaos will cause Miss Bingley to appear indispensable to the supervision of the staff,” Roster suggested, his face still wrinkled in distaste. “In any case, it makes me glad I see but little of her.”
“But, why would you suppose them to wish her such unhappiness at the very beginning of their wedded life?”
Accepting a plate of roasted pheasant and potatoes from Mrs. Maucker, the head cook, Roster thought the question over before answering. Finally, “I think,...I feel they look down upon the Bennets...I mean all of the Bennet family. They make constant sport of the mother, whom I only vaguely remember from the ball. And, there is another sister, the second eldest, whom they seem to despise without constraint.”
Here Preston imperceptibly straightened.
“Apparently,” Roster continued; “she is a barbaric creature. At least, that is what I’ve been told by Miss Bingley’s maid. She runs and plays like a child, and cares nothing of emulating the better class. They, Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst, are dreading having such a connection in the family.”
“I suffered no such notion when I was fortunate enough to speak with her,” Preston interceded stiffly. “She appeared to be most ladylike and intelligent.”
“You spoke to her?” Roster turned to stare at him in disbelief. “Directly?”
“Well, not directly, of course,” the older valet corrected himself; “But my master’s sister, Miss Georgiana Darcy, graced me one evening by asking my opinion on some matter, and Miss Elizabeth Bennet was in attendance at the time. I answered the question put to me as best I could, and was impressed greatly with Miss Bennet’s manner. I saw nothing barbaric nor wild about her at all.”
This silenced Roster for several minutes, until he asked in a very low voice, “So, the other part of the gossip I heard; is that false as well?”
“What would that be?”
“That Mr. Darcy has been harbouring feelings for her? Miss Elizabeth, I mean.”
“That,” Preston answered coolly; “I cannot comment on. Where have you heard such things?”
“Oh,” was the determinedly offhand reply; “the staff overhears bits of the family’s conversations and makes the most of it. Much of the time it is false, but by the frequency this has been repeated, I am almost believing it myself.” Glancing sideways at Preston, he added, “Miss Bingley, especially, seems concerned with the truth of it. Perhaps you could settle the matter once and for all, and the rumours could be stopped.”
“Why should they be stopped?” Preston inquired with a look that could only be described as sanguine. “Perhaps they are not simply rumours after all.”
He probably should not have said it, and in retrospect, regretted this breach of confidence almost immediately. Still, he knew whatever he said at the table would be quickly routed through the household. And, in fact, regarding the subject of his master’s ultimate happiness, he was counting on it.
