They slipped through the door, which had a sign screwed to it: Please Keep This Door Shut, and then into the main room, which was large and airy, with a tall ceiling and three large windows that glanced down over the lake – at one end there was a large dining room table, covered in books; at the other a large sofa and a small, squat chair that stood next to a round table.
The room was painted in a deep, dark blue, with pictures and mirrors and photographs covering the walls. The centre was dominated by a wooden kitchen with dangling lights and large wooden topped island. She told him how it had been cobbled together by the Historical House Society after they inherited her and needed to find somewhere for her to live, but he found it was stylish, understated and a bit eclectic, with odd shabby pieces of furniture, which he assumed were family heirlooms, mixed with newer bits and bobs. There were also piles and piles of books, on the coffee table where she had temptingly placed a few biscuits on a plate, and over in the kitchen where one wall was home to a massive bookcase.
“Do you read?”
He realised that it was a stupid question, given that he was surrounded by books, but then thinking that maybe they were all for show. His own coffee table was filled with thick slabs of self-importance that were rarely touched, unless Anya needed something to lean on when she was drawing.
“Yes, I do like to read, quite a lot actually,” she crossed over and plonked herself on the large leather armchair. “It makes me sad to think that there is a massive library in the house down there and nobody ever reads the books in it anymore”
“Can you not go and read in the library downstairs,” he questioned, intertwining his fingers around the hand of the coffee mug, “would that be against the rules?”
“Against the rules in the sense that I would get really told off, but also that it’s not really my library anymore – not the one I grew up with.” she mumbled. “My grandad bequeathed all of the books to the HHS, but they didn’t want a lot of them, so the ones you see in here with the Darcy coat of arms on are the ones from the library. If you go in there and it hasn’t got this gold bull on it,” she pulled one of the books from the coffee table to show him, “then it’s not from the Pemberley library. It’s an imposter.”
He took the book from her - ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’ – noting the angry little bull with his whipping tail, embossed in gold on the spine
Back in his room at the Armitage Arms, his phone sounded out with a loud R2-D2 ringtone, specially downloaded by Esther who had recently discovered the wonder of ‘Star Wars’. The name on the screen caused a smile to cross his face.
LIZZY: Darcy and Elizabeth actually danced our dance on the night of the Netherfield Ball.
BENN: Our dance?
LIZZY: Oh, shut up, you know what I mean.
BENN: I do. How do you know?
LIZZY: I’ll show you next week.
BENN: Next week?
LIZZY: Yeah, I’m helping Maggie move this weekend.
He was only on set on Saturday afternoon for an hour and then had a radio interview on Monday. It wasn’t enough time to go and see the girls, and he had left it too late to arrange anything with anyone else, because he had planned on asking her if she fancied going out somewhere or just watching tv in the flat. He didn’t want to be alone this weekend. He didn’t know whether to offer to help Maggie move, would that be too desperate? Benn had met Maggie once, she had blushed for the first ten minutes before settling into a conversation tinged with nervous energy and frantic laughter. He decided not to offer, it would definitely be too desperate. He could take him mum out for lunch or something, offer to take his nephew to Legoland. That would be okay. Because he couldn’t offer to help Maggie just so he could spend more time with Lizzy, could he? He needed to play it all very cool.
BENN: Ooh, tell her good luck with it! I’m intrigued anyway.
LIZZY: Don’t get too excited.
BENN: I said intrigued, not excited.
LIZZY: Pfft.
BENN: That’s not even a real word.
LIZZY: Benn, I need to ask you something.
BENN: Fire away.
LIZZY: Did you drink tonight?
He was typing and thinking and deleting and retyping. He needed to be honest, but he was ashamed. Ashamed of what he was letting happen. He was turning into his father and he hated himself for it. Tonight had been the first time in a long time that he hadn’t felt the need to drink, apart from the short bitter espresso he had ordered from room service when he got back.
BENN: No. Why do you ask?
LIZZY: Matthew told me about Shellstone.
As soon as she sent the message, she wished that she hadn’t.
So, the secret was out, he thought, it had only been a matter of time.
Benn didn’t understand Matthew’s motivation, but he suspected that there was some underlying jealousy at work. The whole history with them was so complex and secretive that he should have known his friend would have been a little territorial. He would tell her. He would be honest. No point lying about it all now.
BENN: He shouldn’t have told you that.
LIZZY: I’m sorry if I’m being too nosey, seriously you can tell me to fuck off.
BENN: You’re not being nosey. I should have been honest with you.
LIZZY: Be honest with me now,
BENN: I never thought the shakes were a real thing. They are. Fuck me, they really are. They were awful when I got here. That night at the party was my second night without a drink and I wanted to punch someone. I knew I couldn’t do the whole shoot without drinking something.
LIZZY: That sounds awful.
BENN: When we went out for tea, I was nervous.
LIZZY: Nervous of me?
BENN: Nervous of going out. I had been drinking before I picked you up. It was the reason I brought the driver.
LIZZY: So, the bill was right?
BENN: The bill was right. I am so sorry for lying to you.
LIZZY: Are you okay?
BENN: I’ve been much worse. I’ve been better. It’s exhausting fighting against yourself every day
LIZZY: I’m sorry if I am being overly familiar.
BENN: You’re not. You’re being my friend. I need one of those.
LIZZY: If drinking is your demon, then you need to do all you can to defeat it. It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back, so shake him off.
BENN: You’re so very wise.
LIZZY: It’s Florence and the Machine.
BENN: Oh. So it is.
1756
Glittering with diamonds, smothered in satin and powdered to perfection, the beautiful mistress of Pemberley was bent over the wooden table in the quiet fragrance of the still room, being roughly taken from behind by one of her dinner guests; his wig was tilted to one side, his cravat loose and his breeches flapping around his ankles. Her husband watched for moment, unseen, before returning to the dining room, the dancing and their friends who were all waiting for the return of their illustrious hostess.
At twenty-two, John William Darcy he had inherited a near bankrupt estate, a dilapidated house and was tied to paying a crippling annuity to the Royal Household. Pemberley had suffered greatly after the death of his grandfather, Cyril. His own father, Richard, had neither the aptitude for estate management or the desire to live in the country, especially when the pull of London society was so great, and he had taken the fortunes built by his ancestors and frittered them away at the gambling tables of St James Palace. As a respectable and somewhat god-fearing gentleman, John William realised that his responsibility was to restore the family fortunes in the only way currently open to him. Marrying rich.
Embarking on the hunt for suitable bride, Darcy was feted by gentlemen of trade – newly monied and fashionable - who longed to see their daughters lauded in higher social circles and as mothers to heirs of venerable old family estates. One such gentleman was Roger De Stratton, a merchant from the far north, who had made his fortune in cotton. He had invested wisely
in new processes and procedures, his wealth and new business empire continuing to grow. Mr De Stratton offered an attractive package in his oldest daughter, a somewhat opinionated, but very pleasant woman of five and twenty.
Isabella Stratton was beautiful and whilst John thought that he could have eventually found himself in love with her pretty features, smart retorts and ability to laugh heartily at herself, it was clear that her own ambitions and wishes for life were very far removed from his own. Their wedding was a grand and lavish affair, with her father footing the bill for the banquet and the wedding jewels, a fact that neither the bride or her father would let John forget.
The new Mrs Darcy was as smart as her father, and had times been different she may have eventually found herself in charge of Stratton Mills, rather than as mistress of Pemberley. Holding up her end of the bargain, she was predominantly faithful to John and bore him three children – two sons and a daughter – before promptly abandoning them to live in Paris with her French aristocratic lover, who had promised her the moon on a stick and a ribbon wrapped around it. It would have been most agreeable for this forthright woman of fortune to have lived a long and happy life on the continent, however, she was found dead in her bed seven years later, her jewels stolen, her purse emptied and her lover nowhere to be found. Her husband brought her back home to England, lovingly arranging for her to be placed in the family mausoleum at the little church on the outskirts of the estate.
John William Darcy raised his children as best he could – he taught them always that their duty was to Pemberley first and to their own wants and desires second. He hoped with all of his heart that they could find a path in life that would be a perfect blend of the two. John tried to fight the waves of depression and grief that washed over him with increasing regularity. He continued to repeat to himself, over and over, that he was not a romantic man, that he did not need the pull of a wife to distract him from his duty to his estate and his responsibilities as an MP for the local area.
The family coffers were now restored, and he boosted them by selling parcels of land from the far edges of the parkland and investing his money wisely. He pushed on with his parliamentary work, never inattentive, and focusing on anything other than looking for a new bride, but John William Darcy realised too late that a life without love is a miserable one indeed.
One late February morning, a few days before his fiftieth birthday, he walked into the oldest part of the woods and blew his brains out. It was classed as a ‘hunting accident’ for purposes of report, even though it was deemed peculiar – the shot being close range and hunting out of season.
Thirteen
Of all the talks Lizzy presented in the small chapel at Pemberley, her favourite was the one about John William Darcy, Fitzwilliam Darcy’s grandfather. She thought he was such an interesting and tragic figure that it was pity his efforts and achievements were mainly overlooked by the fictional version of his grandson. As much as she loved telling people the real story of Darcy and Elizabeth, she wished that sometimes they would ask about some of the other characters who had walked down these halls and been married in this very chapel, rather than having to point them in the direction of Mr Darcy’s Pond, which was over a mile away through the parkland and where only the most devoted fans travelled to.
Usually the room was packed full of part-time historians and everyday visitors who were eager to learn more about this elusive gentleman, especially after ‘The Guardian’ ran an article on him a few months back, but today the white-washed chapel was mainly empty as the bulk of her usual crowd were outside watching the filming. The only audience members were the plump, eager girl who was here every weekend mouthing the words, two German tourists who were obviously very confused, and smiling at her from the back row was Harriet, dressed in full costume and looking every inch like a time-traveller from the early 19th century.
“That was really good, Mum.”
“Yeah, did you learn anything?”
“I learned that ‘Wo sind die Toiletten?’ is German for ‘where are the loos?’”
“I knew I was right. I was sure they were only in here because they got lost!”
They walked along the corridor hidden in the cloisters of the house, which felt dark in the shadows caused by the summer sunshine, before walking out into the bright glare. The ground floor rooms at Pemberley were cool, and the heat of the afternoon sun hit them as if they were getting off a plane somewhere humid and hot. They walked to the rocks at the base of Cage Hill, taking shade under one of the multitude of trees that dotted the landscape.
“How long have you got before you’re back on set?”
“About twenty minutes now,” Harriet grimaced. “Dad is being a massive arsehole today.”
“More so than usual?”
“I’m serious, something is obviously bothering him. I spoke to Oleander before, but he was being weird, and Cara was shouting and being shrill in the background telling him to get off the phone. I don’t even know where Brixton and Jude were.”
“Cara is always shrill, what was it today? That her Aeolian Flow had been disrupted by the Shamanic Current? Did the housekeeper pick up the wrong kind of tofu?”
“Mum.”
Lizzy checked herself.
“How was Ol?”
“Upset,” Harriet said sadly. “He said that all Dad’s stuff is gone from the house.”
“How are the other two?”
“Brixton has been crying all the time, Jude’s too little to know what’s going on though. It’s Oleander I feel sorry for.”
Lizzy felt her heart drop to her feet. It had been something she had wanted to hear for a long time, but now it seemed like a very real possibility she didn’t feel how she expected she would. She wasn’t excited about the news, wasn’t anticipating the future that had always danced at her fingertips.
“Harriet, how do you feel about it?”
“Let’s be honest, Cara hates me – for obvious reasons, but she has always been fake nice to me and she is my brothers’ mum, so… I feel bad about it, but it’s not like I went over every weekend or have any kind of a relationship with her, is it?”
Harriet was, for someone who was only just sixteen, remarkably wise.
“Is Benn over for tea tonight?”
She had been sceptical when Benn Williams first came over to the flat – he was so very tall, so very famous, and he had been so very rude to her mum to begin with that she didn’t understand why he was even in their house. The Darcy good opinion once lost was usually lost forever, but the more she knew of him, the more she liked him. He took the time to ask her about her plans for college, told her to always aim big because if someone like him could be a raging success then there was hope for everyone. She had laughed, and he told her she looked like her mum.
“Yeah, but I can tell him not to bother if you want to talk about it.”
“No,” she said. “I like it when he comes over. It means that there’s one parent I don’t have to worry about!”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You fancy him, and he totally fancies you too.”
“Don’t be daft, Harriet.”
“He messages you all of the time, he brings you gin and cake, he practically lives with us during the week. You should just ask him to move in and get right to the point!”
“He’s my friend,” she protested softly. “Just a friend. I’m allowed to have male friends, Harriet.”
“Of course, you are…you keep telling yourself that.”
She turned on her heel and walked off in the direction of the production tent, which had taken up residence behind the Orangery. Harriet really did talk utter nonsense sometimes, Lizzy thought, but as her phone beeped again, she felt her heart doing a little flip when she saw his name.
Benn arrived at half past six as promised, his Darcy hair pomade free and unruly, holding a box from the little bakery in Lambton. She had made chicken fajitas for tea, and they sat together on the couch, her legs cas
ually swung over his as he nibbled on a tortilla dipped in salsa and flicked through the channels on the TV. She screamed out when she saw him on the screen, making him jump and knock the table, causing his drink to spill, small pools of coffee forming around the base of the cup.
“Fuckssake, Lizzy, what the shit!”
“It’s you!”
It was a shrill tone that he suspected only dogs could hear. Giddy with excitement, she slapped him on the thigh, directing his attention to the television. Henry Jones was shooting up villains, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, getting the girl and doing it all whilst doling out suave one liners and sipping whisky on the rocks; he was currently driving a superfast, supercharged sports car down a winding, twisting Swiss road.
Benn groaned, he hated watching himself. ‘Illusion of Fire’ was something he had never expected to be offered and the iconic role had been amazing to film, but it had also been hard and exhausting. The remaining two parts, ‘The Hustler’s Door’ and ‘Dangerous Horizon’ had been filmed back to back, resulting in him being away from home for nearly ten months. He had been paid well; enough to pay off the mortgage on their overpriced house ten times over, but he missed so much – his daughters had started school, learned how to ride bikes - and when he watched the films now, as exciting and fun as they were, he wasn’t entirely convinced that it had been worth it.
Lizzy jumped and laughed throughout the film, even in the parts that weren’t supposed to be funny, and he had cringed during the love scenes with Rosie Schaffer who was, as far as the public believed, the reason for his wife leaving him.
“I don’t know how you manage to do it, y’know,” she shouted later from the kitchen as the credits rolled. They eaten the cheesecake and she was now busy decanting delicate pastel macarons onto a blue, patterned plate.
Becoming Lady Darcy Page 21
