Read Online A Match for Mary Bennet by Eucharista Ward - Free Book Online

his London apartment.” Darcy sighed. “Again this year! He cannot seem to accept life without his wife and son. I do wish he would not continue this mournful solitude.”
    â€œHas he ever taken your suggestion to invite his daughter-in-law and grandson to live with him?” Elizabeth’s voice echoed his sorrow.
    â€œHe does not say so, though the invitation included them.” Darcy grew determined. “Lizzy, if you are well enough in the spring, we must try to visit him again and urge him to it. He cannot continue to live as if he too died on that icy bridge.”
    Mrs. Downey and young Callie came in then to take Charles back to the nursery, and Elizabeth reluctantly yielded him to their care. Mrs. Bennet came in frowning as they went out with the child. “Do you not nurse him yourself?”
    â€œOh yes, Mama. It gives me such a tranquil half-hour to do so. But we must not let Mrs. Downey feel she is not needed.”
    â€œDo you think that young Callie is able to handle such an important charge? She cannot be much older than Lydia!”
    â€œMama, Lydia is old enough and married long enough to have a child herself.”
    â€œBut she has none, and that is good. She is really too young. And so is that Callie.”
    Elizabeth shook her head dismissively. “Mama, Callie has cared for three younger brothers of her own. She has more experience with boys than I do! Please do not make her feel incompetent.”
    Music wafted into the breakfast room from the music room, and Elizabeth hoped Mrs. Bennet would stop to listen. But the lady just said, “Oh, carols,” and walked out.
    Elizabeth loved to hear Georgiana and Mary practising noels and dances for the coming festivities. The friendship of the two musical members of the family had been good for both. It kept Georgiana from playing that doleful snatch of melody which seemed to haunt her, and Mary no longer played the endlessly droning études she practised so often at Longbourn.
    Mrs. Bennet, having spent two weeks nervously and needlessly instructing the long-suffering Mrs. Kaye on midwifery, had of late spent hours pestering the fair-haired, wide-smiling Mrs. Downey with her opinions and her misgivings about young, rosy-cheeked Callie. Fortunately Charles, a healthy, even a robust, child, thrived despite all the fuss. After a time, the nursery routine became established, dampening Mrs. Bennet’s spirit so bent on excitement, and she transferred her attentions to the chambermaids preparing rooms for the coming Christmas guests. After all, some of the rooms were for the Bennet and Bingley families, and who better to know what they would want than Mrs. Bennet? She ignored the great buzz over Lady Catherine’s requirements, which Mrs. Reynolds struggled to recall from that lady’s last visit so long before. Mrs. Reynolds well knew that any item overlooked would constitute the very pivotal necessity that would set Lady Catherine against all the servants. “Remember to tend the fireplaces before seven every morning, put double washstands in their rooms, and each morning at nine bring in two ewers of hot water and two of cold.” Mrs. Reynolds cued the chief chambermaids on each idiosyncrasy that she remembered.
    Mary elected to stay well out of the way. After a morning hour in the music room, she repaired to the library for an hour or so. It was so handy to her room—just down the hall to the great ballroom and across the dance floor where a small door opened onto a balcony surrounding three sides of the immense library. It was on that balcony, right near her door, that she had discovered a copy of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress . She would settle in a comfortable, leather chair in the corner of the sturdy balcony, read a bit in her chosen book, and occasionally dip into some poems by Cowper from a volume that was shelved nearby. After that, she usually met the family for a light repast of soup or