North by Northanger

by Mr. ; Mrs. Darcy Mystery; Carrie Bebris

  She realized their discovery of his parents’ private communication was no doubt triggering countless memories, and she hoped most of them were pleasant ones. She took her stack of letters and came to him so they could read them together. “I believe this note of your mother’s responds to his. Apparently, your mother also was not one to leave anything to chance.”

  Dear Mr. Darcy—Hugh has agreed to bring these lines with him, but says he will deliver no others once at school. Know that I understand the worth of what you have entrusted to me, and that I shall safeguard it until such a time as it may be acknowledged.

  Yrs sincerely, A. F.

  There followed other letters from George and Anne’s brief engagement and the first year of their marriage. The letters exchanged when business called George away or Anne visited a friend were few; once united, it seems the two had been nearly inseparable. More abundant were brief notes left, by the sound of them, on pillows and in pockets. One of these Darcy refolded without reading aloud.

  She tilted her head to see his face. “Darcy—you are not blushing?” She took the note from him, read it herself, and giggled. “Oh, my!”

  His countenance turned still more crimson. “One prefers to remain ignorant about some things regarding one’s parents.”

  “Then we shall not leave such evidence behind for our own child to discover. She might figure out how she came to be.”

  The expressions of newlywed bliss gave way to anticipation of their first child. By the time Elizabeth and Darcy depleted the ribboned stacks, they had followed Anne and George through their eldest’s first year. When Darcy’s rich tenor voice ceased reading the final letter, she opened her eyes but remained curled against him, her head resting against his chest.

  “They clearly had a happy marriage. And it sounds as if your arrival added still more to their joy,” Elizabeth said. “Did you know they adored each other so?”

  He held her tightly. “I could see fondness between them, but it was not the optimistic ardor of these letters. Something changed.”

  Elizabeth did not want to hear that anything had changed. As they had read the correspondence between Darcy’s parents, Anne and George had become real people to her. Especially in the later letters, when Anne had been expecting their first child, her words had touched a response in Elizabeth, created affinity between them as Anne voiced feelings that echoed her own.

  “Perhaps their love merely matured,” Elizabeth said, turning to face him. “Or they were guarded about displaying it before their son.”

  “No, it—” Darcy searched for words. “It altered. I do not want to say it diminished, for my father mourned her as deeply as you can imagine. But it had a different character than what these letters contain.”

  He gathered the letters he had read and stacked them neatly. “Now, we must find our way through this sea of stationery to our dinner attire, for the day grows late.”

  She had become so engrossed in Anne and George’s story that she had lost track of the hour. Now she realized she was famished. “I hope Lucy can maneuver through the door when she arrives to dress me.”

  “I hope so, too.” He stood and stretched. “Meanwhile, I am fleeing to the perfect order of my own dressing room.”

  “You would abandon the mother of your child to this?”

  “Accompany me if you like.”

  “I shall. First, however, I want to return these to their case.” She retied the ribbons around each stack of letters and opened the lid of the leather chest. A solitary letter lay in the bottom.

  “We missed one,” she said.

  “We have read enough for one day. It can wait.”

  She unfolded the letter. George’s handwriting met her gaze. The date was much later than the rest of the letters they had read, the lines more closely written. And the words were, as Darcy would say, of a far different character.

  “No, it cannot.”

  Eighteen

  I shall be glad if you can revive past feelings, and from your unbiassed self resolve to go on as you have done.

  —Jane Austen, letter to Fanny Knight

  29 April 1795

  My beloved Anne,

  I resent the business that forces me from Pemberley this morn. There is too much we need to say to each other, words that perhaps ought to have been spoken last night. You sleep so peacefully that I cannot bring myself to wake you. Yet I cannot leave without unburdening my heart.

  Forgive me, Anne. Forgive my weakness. Forgive me for breaking a promise to you that I intended to keep for the rest of my days if you required it. Most of all, forgive me for not regretting its breach.

  When we wed twelve years ago, neither of us knew then the course our life together would follow. We anticipated—and have known—great joy. But we have also known profound sorrow, and it has nearly undone us. Gregory, Maria, Faith, all the miscarriages in between—though you outwardly bore the losses with fortitude, I saw part of you die with each of our children. And I had no notion of how to comfort you.

  When you came to me and asked for no more children, how could I withhold from you a pledge that might bring you the peace I so desperately wished you would find? I have never regretted our decision, nor resented you for having requested it of me. Nor have I ever been tempted to stray.

  But nothing has been right since. Falling asleep and waking up together had formed the rhythm of our lives. Whatever else our days comprehended, they had begun and ended with each other. Now days pass in which we might not look upon each other until afternoon, or dinner, or not at all. We have fallen out of step, and the distance between us has increased these several years.

  I have missed you, my wife. Dear God, how I have missed you. But last night we again found the perfect accord we once knew. And it gives me hope.

  Anne, should last night’s union bear issue, should your deepest fears be realized and we find you are again with child, I bid you to remember that “love conquers all.” From the day we met, those words have directed our course. You argued them so warmly in our first conversation that you captured me. We believed them in the early years of our marriage, when Fitzwilliam was an infant and we saw nothing but continued joy on the horizon. It was when we stopped believing, when we allowed fear to dominate, that we lost our way. Yet still love conquered, for it finally wearied of our misguided attempts to deny it. Let us trust it to see us through whatever lies ahead.

  Ever your devoted—

  G.

  Darcy and Elizabeth read the letter together in silence. When they had finished, her face held sorrow. She waited for him to speak.

  He felt as if he had just witnessed the demise of someone close to him. In a sense, he had. The letter not only explained the affliction his parents’ marriage had suffered, but foretold his mother’s death. Her deepest fears had been realized: The letter was dated nine months before Georgiana’s birth.

  “As I said—” He cleared the thickness in his throat. “Something changed. Now we know why.”

  “Losses such as theirs must transform any feeling person.” She gently took the letter from his hand and glanced once more at its content. “But, really, it is not altogether a sad letter. It expresses hope—they found their way back to each other. They had a second chance at happiness.” She looked at him expectantly. “Did they not?”

  “They did not. Within a year, she was dead.”

  “What of the time in between? While she carried Georgiana? I must believe that receiving a letter such as this restored your mother’s faith at least a little. She kept it with their love letters, after all.”

  He thought back to the last few months of his mother’s life. They were so long ago. He had been but a boy, and what child of ten or eleven fully comprehends the complex emotions and interactions of the adults around him? “I cannot remember. I do not recall her plunging into despair, so perhaps she did find a measure of peace.”

  “And your father?”

  His father he remembered more clearly—they’d had
another eleven years together. “I think he anticipated Georgiana’s birth with guarded optimism. Thank heaven Georgiana survived. He never fully recovered from my mother’s death, and had he also lost Georgiana, the double defeat might have overpowered him.”

  A fierce protective instinct arose within Darcy. The expectation of their own child filled him with happiness. He looked forward to holding that child, teaching that child, recognizing in that child the best parts of himself and Elizabeth. But he could not give himself over to complete joy in the event until he had escaped his father’s fate.

  She took his hands in hers and caught his gaze. Her eyes, the eyes that had first captured his interest and then his heart, held confidence. “I have no intention of leaving you to raise this child alone, or of losing this child. And surely any child carried by me must inherit my stubbornness along with my better qualities. I can assure you that our daughter has already inherited my strength.”

  “How can you be so certain?”

  “I felt her move.” A quiet light entered her eyes. “Yesterday, in your mother’s garden. And again just now.”

  The news swept away his melancholy. Almost shyly, he put a hand to her abdomen. “I cannot detect anything. Does she yet stir?”

  She stood very still for a minute. He held his own breath, willing even the slightest movement to pass under his fingertips. To his deep disappointment, he felt nothing.

  “I cannot detect anything now, either,” she assured him. “And what I have experienced is such a slight sensation that I doubt you could perceive it from the outside yet. But I am certain it is our child and not bad mutton.”

  At her words, he sensed a small fluctuation beneath his hand. He looked at her hopefully. “Was that him?”

  “I am afraid not.” She suppressed a smile. “That was my stomach reminding us that the dinner hour approaches.”

  Nineteen

  “He is the best landlord, and the best master . . . that ever lived. . . . There is not one of his tenants or servants but what will give him a good name.”

  —Mrs. Reynolds, Pride and Prejudice

  P emberley’s annual harvest feast was a grand event, one to which landlord and tenant alike looked forward. Farmers, laborers, schoolchildren, villagers—all who lived on or near the estate and depended upon it for their livelihoods joined together to celebrate the end of the growing season. Weather permitting, the supper, children’s games, and other entertainments took place under the open sky, and tradition held that once the date had been fixed each year, it could be counted upon to prove fair.

  Today had been no exception. The sun had smiled upon the afternoon’s entertainments and continued as the entire company crowded around a dozen long trestle tables to break bread together. Afterward, the dancing commenced in the rustic tenants’ hall, with Elizabeth and Darcy leading off the opening minuet.

  Elizabeth was happy to see Darcy relaxed and enjoying his duties as host, the strain of recent weeks having left his countenance at least temporarily. Mr. Harper had come and gone, and now worked to bring their legal difficulties in Gloucestershire to an end. He had also reported that his initial enquiries into the Earl of Southwell’s activities in France had yielded nothing of concern. By all accounts, Darcy’s cousin was enjoying a quiet visit to the Continent. Elizabeth and Darcy tried not to ponder too hard the irony that in sending their solicitor away to attend to Lady Catherine’s groundless fears of family scandal, a true potential scandal had brought Lady Catherine under their own roof.

  Indeed, Elizabeth forced all unpleasant thoughts from her mind as she surveyed the revels going on around her. She considered her first harvest feast as mistress of Pemberley a success. Sounds of merriment had filled the air all day. Supper for six hundred had been served with nary a mishap. And every single guest seemed to be having a delightful time.

  Except one.

  “I do not know how you can suffer so many people to overrun Pemberley in this manner. They trample the lawns. Their children hang from the trees. Their vulgar voices form a cacophony. I shudder to see this noble house subjected to such indignity.”

  Lady Catherine observed the spectacle from an out-of-the-way chair to which she had fled the moment supper ended. Though she often boasted of her own far-reaching benevolence, she preferred to demonstrate it from the farthest reach possible. Sharing a table with common tradesmen and farmers had very nearly put her in need of the services of the apothecary who had been sitting across from her. Elizabeth had endeavored to place her amid the company her ladyship would find the least objectionable—the minister, the schoolmaster—but the size of the crowd overall had convinced Darcy’s aunt that she dined in a mob of the coarsest peasants.

  “Pemberley could not exist without these people,” Elizabeth said.

  “The quantity of food they consumed was staggering. Not one of them exercised restraint. Commoners always take advantage of a free meal.”

  “This is a celebration.”

  “They will be celebrating with your ale until every barrel runs dry. I support the principle of noblesse oblige, but you cannot permit the lower orders to exploit your generosity.”

  “I shall hold your ladyship’s advice in mind the next time we plan a gathering to demonstrate our gratitude to the very people who provide what we have to give.”

  Elizabeth excused herself and began a slow weave across the crowded hall. Perhaps she ought to exhibit more patience with Lady Catherine, but the days leading up to today’s festivities had seen a surfeit of her unsolicited counsel. Her self-imposed exile following their quarrel had lasted but a single day; unable to resist involving herself in an event of so large a scale as the harvest feast, she had soon emerged to perform her sacred duty to criticize and command. She had been full of opinions regarding the preparations and censorious of Elizabeth for not dictating every particular to her staff. Elizabeth, however, had defined her proper role differently; given her inexperience at hosting gatherings for hundreds, she thought it prudent to let the servants perform unhampered the tasks they had been doing for years, while she largely observed and learned. She had expressed her preferences on plenty of points, but postponed significant changes until next year when she would possess a better understanding of what had gone before.

  At last, she reached the other side of the room. The noise and heat and closeness of the hall had conspired to render her light-headed, and she sought air and a little space. The doors leading outside stood open to welcome cool evening air into the crowded hall, and to these she headed.

  She stopped suddenly. A trickling sensation brought her hand up to her nose. Drops of blood landed on her fingers.

  An older woman standing nearby hurried over with a handkerchief, which Elizabeth gratefully accepted.

  “Just pinch it for a few minutes, Mrs. Darcy. Here—let us sit down.”

  She led Elizabeth out of the hall to a set of steps where she might attend her nosebleed without the entire community in audience. The stone step chilled her through her dress but she was glad for its solidity beneath her shaky legs. Instinctively, her free hand dropped to her abdomen.

  The woman noted the protective position of her hand but quickly raised her gaze back to Elizabeth’s face. Elizabeth recognized her rescuer as Edith Godwin, the village midwife. She had met Mrs. Godwin at a similar fête Darcy had thrown last winter to celebrate their marriage and Elizabeth’s arrival at Pemberley.

  “There, now. I think we prevented any blood from landing on your dress. Has it stopped?”

  Elizabeth pulled the handkerchief away. Crimson stained half the fabric.

  Mrs. Godwin took Elizabeth’s hand in her own and brought the kerchief back up to her nose. “Pinch here another minute or two.” She placed her other hand on the back of Elizabeth’s head for support. Her calm, comforting manner and sympathetic countenance put Elizabeth at ease despite the blood. While the nosebleed itself did not incite great alarm, the suddenness of it had startled her.

  When the bleeding ha
d stopped, she thanked Mrs. Godwin again. “I believe I owe you a handkerchief.” She regarded the bloody cloth with slight embarrassment.

  “Do not trouble yourself. I am glad I happened to be nearby.”

  “I do not know what caused it.”

  Mrs. Godwin gave her a swift appraisal that included a deliberate glance at her abdomen. “Pardon me for asking, Mrs. Darcy,” she said kindly, “but there has been talk today that perhaps your family is increasing?”

  “I am the subject of gossip?” Her surprise lasted but a moment. Of course such news would not remain secret. Pemberley’s servants had been preparing the house in anticipation of the baby’s arrival, and they interacted so frequently with local tradesmen that the whole village must know of her condition. Too, her middle had grown to the point where even the generous cut of her gown could not disguise her heavier figure. She was either expanding her family or simply expanding.

  “Happy speculation. Folks are excited by the prospect of a new heir at Pemberley.”

  “We anticipate an arrival in early spring.”

  Mrs. Godwin smiled. “I am happy to hear it,” she said. “And there is the cause of your nosebleed—many women in your condition experience them. It is perfectly normal. A woman in the family way produces additional blood for the baby, and her body does not always know what to do with it all. Simply get in the habit of carrying a spare handkerchief. Or two.”

  At the midwife’s reassuring words, Elizabeth’s whole body relaxed. She had not realized she’d been sitting so tensely.

  Mrs. Godwin glanced up at the façade of the house. “It has been a long time since there was an infant at Pemberley.”