In the morning, Elizabeth rose early and dressed herself. She went down and went outside to see what the gardens were like in their winter dormancy. She was quite surprised to see that Mr. Darcy must have had the same idea as he was there, looking at the mess of what must have once been a rose garden that had not been properly pruned for several years.
He greeted her politely, "Good morning, My Lady. I see that you are also an early riser."
"Good morning to you as well. There is so much to do that I could not sleep. I can see that I will need to add gardeners to the list of staff that I need."
"I hope that I was not too presumptuous, but in my note to Pemberley I added that a gardener should come to see what will be needed to be done first thing in the spring. I already sent off the express to Pemberley. They should receive it by noon today, so Mrs. Reynolds will have the rest of the day to decide who should come. I expect they will start early in the morning and be here just after lunch tomorrow."
"Mr. Darcy, as I said, I am so pleased that you are helping me. I hope that it is not too much of a burden for you."
Darcy was pleased to hear this as these were among the first kind words she had said to him. "My Lady, after my insult to you, I know that I needed to atone for my words. I have always thought of myself as a gentleman and my words were not those of gentleman. You properly castigated me for my insult. It was not more than what I deserved.
"Please do not worry about my willingness to be here; I am finding this estate to be quite interesting and a challenge. Knowing now how much is needed to be done, I am glad that I am here to assist you. I wonder if the Prince Regent knew about the real situation here and did not want to have to clean it up himself. The only good thing for you is that I believe this will be a fine estate once we get it sorted out. After your father and I get out to see the land and tenants, we will have a better idea of what its earnings potential should be."
Elizabeth noted that he said 'we' and not 'you.' She began to wonder if he was only immersing himself in the problem or if he was developing feelings for her and was thinking about the longer term. She had to admit to herself that she was finding him handsome, knowledgeable, and helpful. She had finally forgiven him for his insult. She decided to be quite open with him.
"What I have not yet decided is what I will do with this estate. I will be able to live either at Longbourn or here. I am not yet of age, so my father can still tell me what to do for a few more months until my birthday. I imagine I will live here much of the time so I will make sure it will be in good shape for the next baron, whoever he is. I personally do not need much to live on, so if it earns a goodly sum, I will be able to increase my sisters' dowries as well."
Darcy noticed that she did not say 'my son, the next baron' so he had to ask about this. "Surely you plan to marry so it will be your son who will inherit the title? In addition, if you plan to spend much time in town, you will find that more expensive than living here in the country."
"Mr. Darcy, I am beginning to worry that anyone who thinks of marrying me will look only at my title and this estate. I personally would only be an afterthought, a means to an end. I will never settle for that. Once word about my situation gets out, I expect to begin receiving many visitors. I will be very careful about anyone who might presume to ask to court me; I want to be happy in my life." She suddenly realized that her description of her position could just as easily be applied to him. She wondered if his public appearance of being proud and haughty was just a defensive mechanism to fend off unwanted approaches.
"My Lady, you should not underestimate your appeal. You have many fine qualities in addition to your title, attractiveness, and position. However, I know that you will be busy for some time sorting out this estate. I hope that you will take your time; there is no need to rush into any hasty decisions." This line of talk upset Darcy for some reason. The thought of her marrying unsettled him.
Elizabeth noticed that he was not pleased to talk about this. "I know that this estate will take some time to bring it back to where it should be and that most of the work will fall on me. Father has been treating me very well about this, but he has Longbourn to look after. He will help as much as he can as he wants what is best for all of us. This estate could be our family's salvation even though the entail on Longbourn is no more. If the level of society in the area is better than in Meryton, I will bring my sisters here to visit for extended periods of time." She knew, but did not say, that she could not count on her father for much assistance as he much preferred to sit in his library reading than actually doing any real work.
"However, it is time to go in so we can break our fast. Father and Charlotte should be up by now." She was not comfortable talking about this.
Darcy offered her his arm, which she accepted without hesitation; she found his nearness somehow comforting. Her reaction to him was so different from what it had been. They went in to find that the other two were eating. Elizabeth greeted them, "Good morning, Father, Charlotte. I hope you both slept well. We will be busy again today." She looked to see what the cook had prepared for them and saw that the food appeared to be quite plentiful and well presented. At least this was one area that she did not need to worry too much about.
They both stated that they did sleep well and were ready to go to work. As soon as they had all eaten, they again split up with the gentlemen going out to find the steward while the ladies went to find Mrs. Humm.
As soon as they found her, they began to go through each room in turn, with the housekeeper telling them about the room and Elizabeth and Charlotte discussing what needed to be done. Elizabeth made extensive notes about each room. Just the main floor took all morning. They were interrupted once when a footman announced a visitor, a Mr. Carlyle. They went to find him and saw that he was alone. He was quite well dressed and appeared to be in his early thirties.
Elizabeth greeted him. "Mr. Carlyle? I am Lady Elizabeth Bennet. This is my friend, Miss Charlotte Lucas." They gave him curtsies, which he returned with a proper bow. "How may I help you?"
"My Lady, I do not want to disturb you as I am sure you are busy, but I thought that as your nearest neighbour I should come to introduce myself. My name is Mr. Henry Carlyle. My estate borders yours to the east. I would like to welcome you to the area. I am sure that you are finding many things that need fixing as the house has been unoccupied for years. I was so pleased when I heard that it was to be occupied once again. I will not stay now, but may I invite you over for tea as soon as you are able?"
"That is very kind of you. At the moment, we are just trying to decide what needs to be done. Extra staff should be arriving here tomorrow, but perhaps the next day? We are here with my father and Mr. Darcy who are out with the steward this morning."
"Is that Mr. Darcy of Pemberley in Derbyshire? I believe I met him in town several years ago. I would be pleased to have you all over for tea whenever you can get away."
They set the time for their visit and he left. After he had gone, Mrs. Humm said, "I am not surprised that he was the first visitor. He must have heard about you and your situation. His wife died several years ago and left him with two young children. His estate is not nearly as large as this one, but he lives quite comfortably. He is a good man. I have heard nothing bad about him, but he does not appear to socialize much since his wife died."
Both Elizabeth and Charlotte were surprised that Mrs. Humm volunteered this information, but they were glad to be told this. Mr. Carlyle seemed to be quite gentlemanly and was not unpleasant to look at.
They continued their detailed tour of the house, taking their time to consider each room very carefully. Two rooms that they found were the most interesting to Elizabeth—the library and another sitting room with a piano. The library room seemed to be different from the others; she wondered if it was part of the oldest area of the house. She asked the housekeeper about this.
"Yes, in fact it is quite old. It may be Elizabethan or even older, but I have no definite information about that."
"It does not appear to have been used much recently; almost all the shelves are bare. I know that my father will not be pleased when he sees how few books are here. I hope he will offer to give me some from his library. He has quite an extensive collection."
When she saw the piano, she automatically went to it and played a scale. "Oh! This is badly out of tune. Is there someone in Hinckley who can tune it? We need to put that on our list."
"I believe there is; Mr. Humm will know. I will mention it to him."
They continued going from room to room for the whole day. In the late afternoon, Darcy and Mr. Bennet returned from their tour of the land and tenants. They were obviously full of news. "Lizzy, let us go clean up and we will come down to tell you what we found."
When they came down, Elizabeth had tea ready for them. "Well, Papa, I hope you have good news for us."
"It is mostly good. Perhaps the most important point is that this estate is much larger than Longbourn, so you will be dependent on the services of a good steward. As we expected, a lot of the land has not been used to its fullest extent for years. We managed to speak to several of the tenants and the farmer at the home farm. To sum up, this estate has been mismanaged for years; likely that is the reason it was forfeited to the Crown. Since then, the steward has not been able to obtain the authority or funds to fix problems or to spend any money on improvements. Too many fields have been left fallow for lack of seed. One farm is even empty. Several farms, including the home farm, could raise many more sheep and hogs than they have been producing. Several of the lowest fields need better drainage. Darcy is obviously knowledgeable about what grows best here. Things are much different from Hertfordshire."
"What about the condition of the houses and outbuildings? I want the tenants to be housed properly and happy in their situation."
"Not too bad in general, although several need some minor repairs, but nothing major."
"What about equipment and horses?"
"Lacking. The tenants complained about that and have had to share both, especially at seeding and harvesting, their busiest times. They are not pleased with how the estate has been managed recently. If they could have found other tenancies, I expect we would have lost more of them."
"Were you able to determine if the steward is competent?"
"He seems to be, but he is frustrated. He hopes that you will support him in his plans to fix the problems that he identified."
"It sounds as if it will cost a lot of money."
Darcy finally had his say, "My Lady, I stand by my offer to provide a loan to help you fix this place up. You will not need to spend much yet, only some to repair several houses and outbuildings. That will do a lot to gain their goodwill.
"Seed will be needed as well as breeding stock. Over the winter, we will need to look for the equipment and dray animals that they need, but not much else. The men can work on the drainage issues while they are not too busy. They just need direction for that.
"As for the empty farm, I mentioned that my tenants are always looking for land for their sons. One of my tenant families is desperately looking as they have two husky sons and only the older one will get the farm. The younger one is threatening to leave as soon as he finds land. He has a sweetheart that he cannot marry until then. Their farm is well run and is productive. I know that he would be delighted to be offered that farm. His father would help him get settled, as would I as it would make his father happy. If you agree, I will send word to him to come to look at the farm." He waited expectantly.
"Mr. Darcy, that is very generous of you. I certainly trust your judgement, so I agree that he should come. He can make arrangements with the steward."
Darcy continued, "In the morning, your father and I will be going over the books with the steward. After that, we should have a good estimate of the production that you should expect when it is back in good condition."
Mr. Bennet asked, "Well, Lizzy, what have you and Charlotte accomplished today?"
"We spent the whole day going through some of the rooms and making notes. We found a lot that needs replacing, painting, and cleaning, but nothing unexpected and nothing major. Papa, you will be upset when you see the empty shelves in the library. I will have to beg you to send some of your extra books to me. It also seems that the library is part of the oldest area in the house, but it is in reasonable condition. We have yet to get to the rest of the bedrooms.
"We did not yet get a chance to look at the furniture that is in storage in the attic. I wanted to look at it today, but we did not have time.
"One other interesting occurrence—we had our first visitor, a Mr. Henry Carlyle who lives on the estate just to our east. He dropped in to introduce himself. He said that he met you, Mr. Darcy, several years ago in town. He invited us to go to his place for tea the day after tomorrow. Mrs. Humm says that he lost his wife and is left with two young children. She also said that he is a good person."
Her father chuckled and said, "So it begins. Your first suitor. Lizzy; they will soon be lined up at the door. Darcy, we will need to go visit this one to see if he is worthy of a baroness. Charlotte, you may need to help Lizzy with them as well."
Charlotte blushed as she had already thought that very thought. She had begun to wonder if there might be someone left over for her. She knew that her chances of finding a husband were decreasing steadily the older she became. All she wanted was a decent home of her own so she would not be a burden to her parents and brother. She was getting desperate.
Dinner was better this night as extra supplies had been brought in from Hinckley. No one stayed up late as they were all tired from all their exertions. They also knew that the next day would be busy if the staff arrived from Pemberley as they expected.