A Remedy Against Sin: A Pride and Prejudice Variation by Christina Morland

Author:Christina Morland [Morland, Christina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Regency, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Romance, variation
Published: 2016-07-14T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Galloping across the muddy fields that crisscrossed his estate, Darcy tried to remember the last time he had welcomed spring to Pemberley. As a child, he had spent this time of year in London; the family had never left Town before the end of the Season, for Anne Darcy had preferred the city to all other places. Once grown, Darcy had occasionally visited in March to check on the progress of this or that, but had he ever noticed the trees, their trunks dark with recent rains, beginning to bud? How had he, who called himself master of this place (as if the wild woods beyond the fields could be mastered at all) lived to nine and twenty without having heard the gurgle of the recently thawed stream that separated the main estate from the tenants’ fields?

With his face upturned to catch the brisk March breeze, Darcy wondered how much his father had suffered, giving up one of his loves for another. Indeed, he could not think why he himself had chosen to spend so much time each year in the stinking streets of the capital. Then, catching a whiff of the manure being laid on the fields, he smiled. Perhaps there was no escaping the pungent smell of life.

He slowed his horse to a walk, and his steward, who rode next to him, began speaking of the estate. Darcy tried to focus on the words, but a flock of birds flew overhead, and he recalled how, only yesterday, Elizabeth and Georgiana had challenged him during their walk through the gardens to name the various birds they came across, and then laughed as he struggled to come up with something other than blackbird or sparrow.

“Sir?”

Darcy tried to force his lips into their usual hard line, but he was finding that more and more difficult these days.

“Excuse me, Rutherford. My mind is elsewhere. You were saying?”

“Only that with a winter this mild, we may hope for a productive planting season, Mr. Darcy.”

“Good. That should give the Millers an opportunity to improve their lot.”

Rutherford fidgeted with his reins. “Yes, I suppose we might hope for that, sir.”

Darcy studied the man he had hired the previous year when Bancroft, old Mr. Wickham’s replacement, had passed. Despite his relative youth (he had only a few years on Darcy himself), David Rutherford had come highly recommended. Having grown up as the son of a steward on a large estate, he — unlike a certain other steward’s son — had learned his father’s work well.

Darcy could not help but admire this man who had been thrust into a position of responsibility at so young an age. Yet he had one complaint: his steward seemed incapable of speaking his mind without a great deal of urging.

“You cannot blame him,” Elizabeth had chided a few weeks earlier. They had been rambling together through the still-snowy park, and he had found himself telling her of a long, difficult meeting he had just had with Rutherford.

“It is his duty

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