North by Northanger m&mdm-3

by Carrie Bebris

  He set the small vessel back to rights. The maid could attend to the powder in the morning.

  They returned to the bedchamber. Elizabeth arched her back and put a hand to the base of her spine. He felt a twinge of guilt at having been away so long, forcing her to deal with Lady Catherine alone and work hard to cover his absence at a time when simply moving through each day presented enough challenges for her.

  “Is my son a heavy burden?” he asked.

  She smiled softly. “Our child is heavy, but no burden.”

  He helped her into bed and she lay on her side while he rubbed her back. “Is there anything more I can do to improve your comfort?”

  “Inform your daughter that she can commence her dancing lessons after she is born.”

  “I shall, but I make no guarantee that the child will listen. What else?”

  “Tell me I am not grown exceedingly fat. My mother says I am big as a house.”

  “You have far to go before you reach the size of Pemberley.” He helped her roll onto her back so that he could meet her gaze. “And to me, you have never looked more handsome.” He kissed her. “Anything more?”

  “Solve this Northanger Abbey puzzle so that we can send your aunt back to Rosings — and never have to deal with the righteous Mr. Melbourne or that officious Mr. Chase again.”

  “All three of them would claim that they are only doing their duty.”

  “Perhaps they could do it with less zeal. Or redirect it. If Mr. Chase, for example, would only apply his sharp investigative talents to our cause instead of against it, the case would solve itself.”

  “It would have to.”

  She was pensive for a moment. “Darcy, what do you suppose happened to the nine ivories that disappeared from Northanger? General Tilney sounds by all accounts to have been an unpleasant man, but I have to agree with his logic. It seems terribly suspicious that the statuettes went missing at the same time Mrs. Tilney visited Pemberley, especially after she suggested giving one of them to your mother. And she was so certain after her return that the birth your mother anticipated would proceed smoothly — perhaps because she left behind nine ivories to replace the one Lady Catherine retained?”

  “If my mother received the ivories from Mrs. Tilney, she would not have withheld them from their rightful owner when he demanded them back.”

  “Even to protect her friend from his wrath?”

  He paused to contemplate. His mother had been a woman of strong loyalties, and the general, a harsh man. Darcy doubted she would knowingly abet theft, but if she had accepted the ivories from Mrs. Tilney with the false assurance of the general’s sanction, then later learned he had not consented, might she have kept silent?

  “If she did harbor the ivories, upon Mrs. Tilney’s death she would have surrendered them to the general. But none of Mrs. Tilney’s letters suggest any complicity on my mother’s part. In fact, they indicate the opposite.”

  Elizabeth sat up. “Perhaps Lady Anne never knew she had them. Consider, Darcy — during her stay, Helen Tilney spent a great deal of time with her hands in the soil of your mother’s new garden. She could have buried the statuettes without anyone’s knowledge. Did you notice how often she referred to the garden after she returned to Northanger? And the quilt she created — it is in the nursery. Its pattern depicts the garden. I believe it possible that she was trying to tell Lady Anne the ivories were somewhere in the garden, without making an explicit statement that would compromise your mother. Perhaps the quilt holds a clue to their whereabouts.”

  He reviewed the letters. Indeed, Mrs. Tilney mentioned the garden in nearly every one. “She specifically refers to lilies of the valley and marigolds. The lilies of the valley appear in her condolence letter, but she brings up the marigolds repeatedly.”

  Elizabeth laughed softly. “The marigolds. Of course.”

  “Why ‘of course’?”

  “Marigolds — Mary’s Gold. She buried her treasure with Mary’s gold.”

  “If she did, we will unearth it tomorrow.”

  They then set aside thoughts of ivories and letters and people from the past. He asked what else had transpired during his absence, and enquired more closely about her health. He was glad Georgiana had seized the initiative and sent for Dr. Severn. He was also glad the doctor was due to return soon and remain with them for the remainder of their wait. Elizabeth’s time approached faster than he cared to contemplate.

  The sound of a door opening in Elizabeth’s dressing room drew their notice toward the open doorway. “Who enters?” Darcy asked.

  One of the housemaids came to the doorway. “Begging your pardon, sir, ma’am.” She offered a flustered curtsy. “I just banked Mrs. Wickham’s fire one last time before retiring, and I thought I would check yours as well. I did not expect to find you awake. I am terribly sorry to have disturbed you.”

  “Thank you, Jenny,” Elizabeth said. “Our fire is fine.”

  “Again, my apologies, ma’am. Good night.” She left them, closing the door behind her.

  “Lydia’s fire is restored. One crisis addressed,” Elizabeth said as she settled into bed. “Lavish some attention on Lady Catherine after breakfast and a second will be dispatched. I then need only find a husband for Mary sometime between dinner and tea, and all of our houseguests will be content.”

  Darcy snuffed out the candle and joined her. “How long do you expect that to last?”

  “Approximately six minutes.”

  Thirty-Three

  Our garden is putting in order by a man who bears a remarkably good character.

  — Jane Austen, letter to Cassandra

  Elizabeth and Darcy found Lady Catherine waiting for them at the breakfast table, where Darcy’s meal comprised three courses: an upbraiding for his neglect of his aunt, a litany of the evils Elizabeth had perpetrated against her, and a generous portion of indignation over her ladyship’s being forced to coexist in the same house as Mrs. Wickham. Fortunately, only Elizabeth overheard her criticisms; Darcy moved their discussion to a more private venue when her parents entered the breakfast room, and Lydia slept so late that she missed breakfast altogether.

  Utterly unable to occupy herself, Mrs. Bennet spent the morning following Elizabeth from room to room, prattling details of a scheme she had devised for introducing Mary to every eligible gentleman in Derbyshire. Elizabeth half-listened, until an absent nod of her own and subsequent squeal of delight on her mother’s part awakened her to the danger of inattentive head movements. She was then forced to give her mother her full concentration lest she accidentally agree to something she would regret. She was still not altogether sure what had inspired the squeal, but felt certain she would find out at the worst possible moment in some horrifically mortifying manner.

  Noon had passed before Elizabeth extricated herself to speak to Mr. Flynn in private. Mindful of her leg lest the unpredictable numbness occur again, she had intended to summon the gardener to the house. But four-and-twenty hours with her family had made her desperate to escape for at least a brief while, and she felt herself safe in walking the short distance to Lady Anne’s garden.

  She found Mr. Flynn near the marigold beds, which apparently had already undergone excavation. He was speaking to several of his undergardeners, his manner more agitated than she had ever witnessed in him, even when the Madonna lily had been stolen from the greenhouse. When he saw her, he dismissed his staff and came forward.

  “You appear distressed, Mr. Flynn. What is the trouble?”

  “Mrs. Darcy, some mischief-maker has dug up part of the garden. When I entered, I found an enormous pit and soil thrown everywhere. My staff can put it back together — by the time the marigolds bloom in summer no one will know the difference. But who would do such a thing?”

  His news took her aback. At first sight, she had assumed Darcy had ordered the digging. But any such command would have gone through the head gardener, and would have been performed with greater care.

  “None of your
staff have any knowledge of it?”

  “No, I have questioned them all. Whoever did this came during the night.”

  “Mr. Flynn, this might seem an odd query, but — was anything buried in that flower bed that the perpetrator might have wanted?”

  “Nothing has ever been buried in this garden but plants, so far as I know.”

  Elizabeth regarded the gaping hole in the earth. Whoever had dug up the marigold beds had done a thorough job. If the ivories had indeed been buried there, they certainly had been found.

  A sense of loss possessed her. Her belly constricted, as if her daughter, too, recognized it. Even worse than the ivories having slipped through her grasp was the fact that now she would never know whether Helen Tilney had hidden the treasure at Pemberley. She felt that she had let down Mrs. Tilney, missed by mere hours the revelation of a secret that had awaited discovery for more than twenty years.

  She sighed heavily and turned back to Mr. Flynn. “I assure you, Mr. Darcy and I will endeavor to identify the culprit.” She suspected Mrs. Stanford was somehow involved, but how Frederick Tilney’s mistress had reached the same conclusion as Elizabeth about the marigolds and acted upon it was a matter about which she would have to speculate with Darcy. “In the meantime, Mr. Flynn, I need to speak with you on another subject.”

  “Of course, ma’am.”

  “Mr. Darcy and I have been seeking a strongbox that once belonged to Lady Anne. A carving of a Madonna lily graces its top, and a letter lock seals it shut. We have come to understand that on the day Lady Anne died, George Wickham had the box in his possession. Have you any knowledge of it?”

  “That good-for-nothing bounder — I always knew he’d turn out a knave. Yes, I came upon him. Found him with a rock getting ready to smash the lock open. He tried to tell me it was his box and that he had simply forgotten the combination, but I took one look at the lily on the lid and suspected it belonged to Lady Anne. I snatched it up before he could damage it. He threatened to report me to his father and insist I be dismissed. I said, ‘Go ahead, boy. Mr. Wickham is a good steward and a fair man. Let us see what he has to say about young scamps who repay the generosity of the Darcy family by stealing from them.’ He blustered some more, but when I told him to get out of Lady Anne’s garden and that I never wanted to catch sight of his worthless hide in it again, he took off fast enough.”

  That indeed sounded like Wickham. “What did you do with the strongbox?” she asked.

  “Well, as I said, I thought it must belong to Lady Anne, but word had passed through the servants that the midwife was with her, so I could not ask her about it. And I did not want to leave it anywhere that scapegrace might find it again. I knew of a place in the garden where it would remain safe until her ladyship could retrieve it.”

  “Is it yet there?”

  “Aye, it waits for her still. Or rather, I suppose it waits for you, Mrs. Darcy — as you are the lady of the house now.”

  He led her to one of the alcoves along the garden’s perimeter. She remembered it well. This was where she had experienced the miraculous moment of quickening, where she had first felt her daughter stir within her. Without realizing it, she had been mere inches from the blessed statuette.

  “Of the three alcoves, this was Lady Anne’s favorite,” he said. “When the Madonna lilies are in bloom, it offers the finest view She spent a great deal of time here the summer before she died, resting or reading on this bench, sometimes simply contemplating.”

  With slow, deliberate actions, Mr. Flynn carefully mounted the stone bench and stood. Under ordinary circumstances, Elizabeth would have insisted on sparing him the climb, but given her shifting center of balance and the amount of grace with which she moved these days, the septuagenarian was probably the superior gymnast between them.

  A large terra-cotta rosette adorned the wall behind the bench. With considerable effort, he lifted it away from the wall and set it down to reveal a niche behind.

  Within the hollow rested a small rosewood box.

  Elizabeth and Darcy stared at the small casket resting on the table between them. She had brought it straight to her dressing room, where Darcy had discovered her testing the letter lock.

  “Would you care for a turn?” she offered.

  “I have already attempted every word of four letters I could call to mind.”

  “That was nearly two decades ago. Surely your vocabulary has acquired a few more.”

  “None that my mother would have used.”

  So close and yet so far. She had first tried simply ANNE, which was apparently too simple. She had next tried Anne and George’s initials without luck. So she’d tried LUCK, but the lock did not appreciate her sense of humor.

  FITZ had failed, DEAR had disappointed, LADY had let her down. She had thought herself brilliant when LILY occurred to her, but evidently it had not occurred to Lady Anne. Nor had MARY or GOLD.

  “We are opening this lock if I have to retrieve Dr. Johnson’s dictionary from the library and attempt every word in it,” she said.

  “Actually, that idea has merit. At least we would be applying a method instead of random guesses. But perhaps my mother’s correspondence would be a better place to start. Or her journal — particularly the entry where she mentions the lock.”

  She retrieved the journal, George and Anne’s love notes, and the Tilney letters. She started with the journal. “The entry about the lock does not offer many inspiring four-letter choices. I doubt we shall meet success with that, have, take, or whim. Some of the other entries hold more promising possibilities. Try baby.”

  He did, and shook his head.

  “Safe? Gift? Born?”

  No. No. No.

  More failures followed. She abandoned the journal and turned to the love notes. She began with the last — the one George had written to Anne when Georgiana was conceived. For some reason, she was partial to it, perhaps because, unlike the breathless infatuation of the early letters, it bespoke a deeper, time-tested affection. She skimmed to the end of the now-familiar lines, to the final paragraph she had read countless times. It had never before made her gasp, as she did presently.

  Of course! Why had she not thought of it?

  “Darcy,” she said, barely able to contain her excitement, “try love.”

  He rotated the four rings to L-O-V-E and tugged on the lock. It remained securely closed.

  “Let me attempt it.”

  Darcy relinquished the box. Elizabeth spun the rings out and back into position — with the same result. The lock would not budge.

  She deflated. “I was so certain.” It had seemed such an obvious, natural word for Lady Anne to have chosen. So intuitive. Love conquers all. Apparently, today it did not.

  They spent another half hour in futile attempts, interspersed with speculation about Helen Tilney’s ivories and who had dug up the marigold beds. Darcy shared her opinion that somehow Mrs. Stanford and her accomplices were involved.

  “I wish we knew Wickham’s present whereabouts,” Darcy said. “If he is in the neighborhood, he could easily have stolen onto the grounds last night.”

  “Lydia says he escorted her as far as Lambton, then returned to Newcastle.”

  “With Wickham, that means nothing. He could have lied to her, or prevailed upon her to lie to us.”

  “It would have to be the former. Lydia is incapable of keeping anything to herself.” She rotated the rings to TALE, without reward. “Yet even if Wickham is the offender, how did he come to suspect the ivories lay beneath the marigolds only hours before we intended to seek them there ourselves?”

  “Might your sister have eavesdropped on our conversation? She was up and about late last night — as were my aunt and your mother. She might have then slipped from the house to meet with Wickham. How did she appear at breakfast this morning?”

  “She did not appear at all.” Had a nocturnal rendezvous with her husband led to Lydia’s late rising? Her sister had never been one to welcome the day at an
early hour. “I dislike contemplating Lydia practicing such deceit upon me. If we are casting a suspicious eye toward our relations, I would much rather blame your aunt.”

  “You believe my aunt conspires with Frederick Tilney’s mistress?”

  “No, with Mr. Wickham — he is such a favorite of hers.” ROSE met with rejection. “I suggest that Mrs. Stanford and company might not be our culprits at all. I caught Lady Catherine prowling in my dressing room during your absence, and for a time I was unable to locate Helen Tilney’s letters. Perhaps her ladyship borrowed the letters and drew her own conclusions from them. She may speculate that your mother hid her statuette with the others. Or she might want all the ivories for herself.”

  “Even if my aunt has taken up espionage, I doubt she has ever held a shovel in her life.”

  “No, but that would not prevent her from instructing someone else in its use. She has servants here at her command.” She pushed the box away, having exhausted her four-letter vocabulary at present, and asked the question that weighed most heavily on her mind. “The culprit’s identity aside, was he successful? Did he find the Northanger ivories?”

  “If he did, he is long gone. If he did not”—an uneasy expression crossed Darcy’s face—”he may yet lurk about Pemberley.”

  “Still trying to find the ivories before we do.” She became more hopeful. Perhaps the Northanger ivories had not slipped through their grasp after all. But if Helen Tilney had not buried them beneath the marigolds, where had she hidden them? The crib quilt came to mind again. Mrs. Tilney could not have sewn the ivories themselves into it — they were too large to go unnoticed — but had she secreted within the stitches some key to their whereabouts?

  “I should like to take a closer look at the quilt Helen Tilney made,” she said.

  They hid the strongbox in a secure location and went to the nursery. All was prepared for the imminently anticipated new Darcy, and Elizabeth realized that she had very little time remaining in which to contemplate such matters as ivories and letter locks. Tiny caps and tinier fingers, hungry cries and toothless smiles would soon consume her attention. She still contemplated the birth itself with apprehension, but the discovery of Lady Anne’s strongbox lent her courage. Surely they would find a way to open it and access the Madonna and Child statuette before she was brought to bed. If they were also to solve the Northanger puzzle and clear the Darcy name before the birth, however, they would have to do so quickly.