The Gardiner home in Cheapside was once a standard of urban elegance to Elizabeth Bennet. But now Mrs. Darcy, the same young woman peered out the window of the hired carriage and found her perspective dramatically changed. It was not that the Gardiners lived in poverty, far from it in fact, as her uncle's business allowed him to purchase two adjoining town homes more than a decade ago. But the scale of the home could not compare to the houses she had dined in the last two evenings, nor even the house that she now resided in with her husband.
Inwardly, Elizabeth felt slightly guilty at her newer sensibilities, and sniffed when she spied the disapproving look from the man who answered the door when Jack rushed up to bang the knocker. Of course, the Gardiner's manservant recognized Elizabeth the moment she stepped down from the carriage, and her welcome was assured when he realized she was a family member and not an unannounced visitor. Still, he gave his regrets to the new Mrs. Darcy.
“I'm afraid my mistress and the children are in the park at this hour. Would you like to take refreshments in the parlor while you wait for them?” Mr. Kipper asked his employer's niece.
“Yes, that should be lovely, and please do not send a note to my aunt. She is not expecting me, and I do not wish to be a burden. Gwyn can sit with me while we wait for their return,” Mrs. Darcy said. She pressed a few coins into Jack's hand. “Take the carriage back to Darcy House. You can tell Mrs. Abbott I have safely arrived.”
Jack began to protest. "Please don't send me," he pleaded, “I shall be in greater trouble for leaving your side, Ma’am.”
Mrs. Darcy shook her head. “I am safe in my uncle's home. I shall return to Darcy House by his carriage, and Uncle Gardiner will send with me a man for my safety.” A small voice in the back of her mind reminded her that as a mistress, a Darcy did not justify decisions to the hired help. She gave a quixotic smile to the young footman, and signaled that she would not say more. Jack earned a disapproving look from his cousin, Mrs. Darcy’s maid, and he quickly bowed his head to follow the instructions of his mistress.
For the better part of the half hour, Elizabeth Darcy and her maid discussed in great detail all that would be required in preparation for that evening’s festivities. At long last, their discussion was interrupted by the joyful sound of her cousins and their mother returning from the afternoon’s excursion.
“Lizzy!” her young cousins exclaimed, only to be quickly corrected by their mother, Mrs. Gardiner.
“Remember she is Mrs. Darcy now,” Mrs. Gardiner admonished her children, and they quickly said Elizabeth's new name. She reached out for them, and both came rushing to her for an embrace. But as quickly as they had come, Mrs. Gardiner shooed them out to the care of their nanny. Gwyn took the disruption as an opportunity to exit as well.
Finally alone with her unanticipated guest, Mrs. Gardiner forewent the standard of complimenting her niece and drove straight to the point.
“My dearest you look positively terrible, though your gown is exquisite. And your last note to me spoke of a grand fête you are to attend this evening. How are you able to visit me? And without notice?”
“I should go, I do not wish to put you out. Now that I have sat here for some time, I realize my reaction is rash.”
Mrs. Gardiner dismissed her niece's notion of being a burden.
“Come, come, your logic could not have abandoned you so swiftly after marriage. You are here, and there must’ve been something of great import you needed to share. Please, tell me your troubles, and we shall set them right.”
Elizabeth Darcy blanched. Her mouth became dry as she tried to think of where to start, and yet found the task of voicing complaints against her husband utterly distasteful. But then the feelings of misery and isolation in her heart reminded her why she had taken the action she had.
“What if I have made a mistake?”
“We all make mistakes, my dear, I’m afraid I’m going to need a little bit more information than that.”
“In getting married to Fitzwilliam,” Elizabeth said quickly, and then covered her mouth with her gloved hand, astonished that her true feelings bubbled out without so much as a prelude of conversational pleasantries.
Mrs. Gardiner chuckled at her niece’s distress.
“Tell me about your first argument,” Mrs. Gardiner said, rather patronizingly.
“It’s much deeper than that. Truly, I would not have ridden all this way for a simple squabble,” Elizabeth said, adjusting her position on the settee, stiffening her posture in defense. “I misstep on every social occasion. I cannot make head nor tails of how I am supposed to spend and when I am supposed to spend, and when I am to be economical by stealth.”
Mrs. Gardiner listened as Elizabeth detailed the various moments of failure experienced in the last week, and then her rant took a different direction as she began to speak about Mr. Darcy.
“The man has crawled into his cups on more than one evening. He asked for us to take a trip away. He clearly does not approve of me being around his sister. And he wrote a letter!” she yelled as her voice became shrill. “He wrote a letter to Mrs. Reynolds, the housekeeper of Pemberley, to say that I should not be up to taking on the tasks of a mistress!”
Tears streamed down Elizabeth’s face, tears of pain and disappointment that burned lines of heat down her cheeks. Mrs. Gardiner rose from her place by the fire and sat next to her niece, offering a motherly embrace she so desperately needed. When she pulled back, she offered her a handkerchief, but Elizabeth had pulled her own from her pocket, with an embroidered ED on the corner that had been a wedding gift from her sister, Kitty.
“How long have you kept all of this to yourself?”
Elizabeth sniffed.
“And have you been out for your daily walks?”
Elizabeth shook her head, and Mrs. Gardiner clucked her tongue.
“You know you always lose that temper of yours when you stew indoors. You are like your uncle there.”
Elizabeth laughed as her aunt was correct, she and Uncle Edward took many strolls together when she visited, as they both needed fresh air and the exercise to soothe their fiery dispositions.
Mrs. Gardiner continued as she glanced at the clock on the mantle. “In the interest of getting you home before your husband sends a battalion over to seek you out, I am going to start at the heart of the easiest solution before you. Have you spoken to him about any of this?”
Wincing, Elizabeth began to shake her head, then paused. “Before you censure me, it has not been entirely from lack of effort. Or desire,” she said, her mouth twitching slightly at the last word as her thoughts immediately went to the other part of their marriage suffering due to this impasse. “He was not home today, he went to his club without a word to me,” she said, sourly.
Mrs. Gardiner narrowed her eyes, then rose to set right a vase of flowers on the far side of the room, slightly askew from center in the table. She waited for her niece to implore her to share her thoughts before she dared to give her experience.
“You have something you are keeping from me, please, if you have insight, I should dearly like to fix this!” she exclaimed.
Mrs. Gardiner turned around, satisfied she had sorted the table, but then noticed a framed painting not where it ought to be on the far wall. She glided over to set it right and spoke in an off-handed tone, “Your neighbor, Mrs. Wellesley-Poole returned you last evening? And your husband never roused you when he came home?”
Elizabeth shook her head, but as Mrs. Gardiner was still frowning at the framed watercolor, noticing a smudge in the matting that had not been there earlier.
“Yes,” Elizabeth voiced.
Mrs. Gardiner turned around, highly distracted as she almost forgot what they were speaking about. “Yes?” She asked.
“He never woke me from my slumber,” Elizabeth explained.
“Did you hear any sounds of his return?”
This time, Mrs Gardiner was looking at her niece when Elizabeth shook her head.
“Then you cannot be sure that he returned home. Announcing he had gone to his club is an old trick of many servants to say to a wife that they do not know where her husband is without getting themselves caught in the crossfire of quarreling lovers.”
“I have never heard of such a thing,” Elizabeth said, not flippantly as though to overrule her aunt's counsel, but out of curiosity.
“Why should you? Your father never had a club out in Meryton.”
Elizabeth considered her aunt's words carefully. The staff at Darcy house had not given much evidence that her husband had been home. Additionally, if Mr. Darcy had gone to his club, why would he not have the carriage drop him off and return for him? The circumstances that appeared so clear to her before coming to Cheapside suddenly felt muddied. She needed clarity.
“Forgive my impertinence, but how did you come to such knowledge?” Elizabeth asked and her aunt smirked.
Mrs. Gardiner gestured to the door to illustrate her point. “Many of the larger homes of London have had to let their servants go, a loss that has been a gain to families like ours. Our man on the front door once worked in a much grander house than this one. He made the mistake of telling me once that your uncle had gone to his club, when Edward had left without giving any information as to where he was going. The whole concept of a butler was new. The problem is that your uncle does not belong to a club,” Mrs. Gardiner said, laughing. “Once we sorted that the poor man was falling back to his previous training, it was quite humorous. No harm was done.”
Elizabeth nodded, but became struck by the realization she should go home. If her aunt's suspicions were correct, she desperately needed to find her husband. As soon as she voiced as much, Mrs. Gardiner held up both hands and gently waved her fingers to capture Elizabeth's attention.
“Do not go home without a plan.”
“You and Lady Matlock both!” Elizabeth said, astonished at the similarities between the two women: one who had played an instrumental role in her upbringing, and the latter becoming more of an ally each day.
Mrs. Gardiner frowned. “I believe you need to tell me more,” she said.
Elizabeth explained how the previous day she had traveled to Matlock House for guidance. She detailed the small falsehood that Lady Matlock encouraged her to use in order to keep the Darcys in London. Mrs. Gardiner covered her mouth in shock.
“Is it true your courses have not come since your wedding night?” Mrs. Gardiner inquired and Elizabeth nodded. Quickly, her aunt pressed her hand against her forehead and closed her eyes. “That is why your husband is out of sorts!”
“I beg your pardon?”
Mrs. Gardner returned to the settee next to her niece. “Did it ever occur to you, and obviously not his aunt, that Mr. Darcy as a man of the world might wonder why his wife never had to refuse him her bed in the two months they've been married?”
Elizabeth's breathing grew irregular in rhythm. More of his puzzling behavior became clear. As her father had taught her to try to see disagreements with her sisters from their perspective, she did the same with Fitzwilliam. If she could assume he wished to keep her away from his sister with the proposal of a wedding trip, he could just as easily have assumed she didn't want to spend time with him when she declined! If he suspected she was with child before she even did, that would also explain why he became so irrationally angry that they were almost injured by the crowds on Bond Street when Georgiana's boot heel broke!
“Oh I have been so mistaken. And he hates London, Aunt. It is terrible for him. But now he thinks I will lie in order to stay,” she said, wrapping her arms around her midsection.
“You did lie, and I won't speak to the character of someone who encouraged that without understanding all of the context, but let me suggest another solution to communicating with your husband.” Mrs. Gardiner comforted her niece and then whispered into her ear. Ordinarily, she would continue the conversation and allow Elizabeth to arrive at the solution on her own, but there was not time. When she finished giving her niece instructions, Elizabeth had only one question.
“And if I am with child, would that not endanger the babe?”
Mrs. Gardiner chuckled and shook her head. “Women have bred for generations and kept themselves and their husbands satisfied in that quarter. And if it is true, that you carry the future legacy of the Darcy line, you will find your appetite for such exploits will increase and that is all natural.” Mrs. Gardiner said, slightly pained that once the Darcys did remove to Pemberley, it was unlikely she would be able to communicate so freely with her niece during her confinement.
But Mrs. Darcy disabused her of such a notion. “If we have been blessed this soon in our marriage, then you simply must come to Pemberley at the end of the summer. An anniversary of our trip! I have not forgotten that I promised you a phaeton and ponies. I suspect I shall not be such a great walker then,” Elizabeth said teasingly of herself.
As the clock struck the third hour after noon, both ladies realized there was precious little time for Elizabeth to return back to the world in which she now belonged.
Mrs. Gardiner offered one last piece of advice as the Matlock carriage readied to take both Elizabeth and her lady's maid back to Mayfair.
“If your husband truly hates London, then be yourself. You are fierce, and strong, and there is no one better suited to be his wife than you. If anyone intimidates you, laugh at them. If they snub you, find your allies and speak loudly with mirth and joy. None of that set is accustomed to anything new and fresh. It will take them time to come to your side of things. But I do not doubt that they will.”
Elizabeth felt touched by her aunt's blessing, she gave her a tight embrace that took Mrs. Gardiner back. Still, they managed to send Mrs. Darcy on her way. When Mr. Gardiner returned home from work that evening and inquired about the day's events, Mrs. Gardiner didn't even mention that his niece had come to visit. She did however tell him that the children had been playing in her parlor again and she wanted him to give them a stern lecture after dinner.