The Road to Pemberley (55 page)

When he did not answer immediately, Mr. Darcy repeated his supplication.

Finally, Preston, clearing his throat once again, found his voice. “If you please, sir, I should wish this whole matter simply to be forgotten.”

After studying him for a moment, Mr. Darcy shook his head. “And that is all? I promise you, Preston, this chance may not arise again soon.”

“Sir, I want for nothing. I have no need for more than I currently possess. I wish only to put this to rest. If you”—and here, he colored, lest he say too much—“find the contentment you seek with Miss Bennet, then that is all I could ever desire.”

Silence filled the room. Finally, Mr. Darcy, with one eyebrow raised, said, “For this, I fear I am to remain most ignominiously in your debt. However,” he added, a trace of a smile undermining his austere expression, “as at least partial repayment, perhaps I may refrain from asking how you happen to know of Mrs. Younge's location.”

Meeting his eyes at last, Preston replied evenly, “Yes, sir. I thank you as well, sir.”

A valet (or, as Preston himself preferred, a gentleman's gentleman) lives out his existence providing whatever small satisfaction he can to his master through his own attentiveness and conscientious care. It was, therefore, an unexpected bonus for Samuel Preston to be able to do so outside the realm of his usual duties.

When supplying Mr. Darcy with the direction of Mrs. Younge, he'd had 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 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 eminent Mr. Darcy. The fact that he, Samuel Bard (his mother had held a certain sentimentality about 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 the happy accident.

The facts of the matter were that the infamous Mrs. Younge, after being unceremoniously dismissed from the Darcy household, had 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 not patronize such a place, there was a woman of his close acquaintance employed in the kitchen of that establishment. 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 linens from the abovestairs rooms.

How he came to be familiar with this humble individual, surprising as it might 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, she had trained to be a lady's maid in much the same way as he had trained 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 had suffered a seizure so severe as to render her no longer in need of such attention. Thereafter, the woman's nephew had employed her. He had turned out to be an empty-headed dandy whose youthful wife would not, or could not, be pleased. Three years of growing dissatisfaction on both sides finally led to Clara's services being terminated and then taken up by 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 appropriate situation available at any of the Darcy estates, or at least nothing he could request on his cousin's behalf.

In the few hours each week that 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.

Yet in spite of her red hands and care-worn face, she still retained the open, affectionate nature that had endeared her to him, even when they were both children.

“Worry not for me, Sam,” she'd urged him recently when he scowled at Mrs. Bates's shrill voice in 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 left her. Each occasion that he saw her became a heavier burden upon his conscience. Until he could promise her something better, however, he was helpless to alleviate her condition.

Mr. Darcy, after several weeks of almost frantic activity, at last settled down to a more reasonable schedule. Unfortunately, this alleviation of urgency did not mean any complacency on his part.
He began to relapse into the melancholia that filled Preston's heart with concern.

One morning after having been shaved, Mr. Darcy grimaced at his reflection in the mirror, an expression so rare as to cause his valet to scrutinize his master's face.

“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, “I shall require a formal coat today, Preston. I am to attend a wedding.”

“A wedding, sir?” the valet repeated, relieved that it was not he with whom Mr. Darcy was vexed. “A happy occasion, indeed.” Carefully, he considered the array of frock coats 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 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 likely you never will.” Closing his eyes at some painful image, 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 with the pretense of collecting his master's gloves, Preston was stung with pity. 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, Mr. Darcy was pitiable.

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 earlier. At last, he turned impatiently and allowed Preston to do his job.

“The Gardiners are fine, honorable 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 by his private dilemma that he merely turned away dismissively. Picking up his hat 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.

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 had 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?

In spite of his usual avoidance of tittle-tattle, he found himself listening (while pretending not to—a 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!” his wife, Jenny the laundress, stopped him with a sideways glance at Tilly, who was 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.”