by Jane Lark
Cassandra smiled.
A rush of enthusiasm and excitement struck Jane.
“That would be very pleasing,” Jane’s mother answered.
“And Lady Saye and Sele, and Mrs Leigh, you will join the party?” Mr Holt Leigh asked.
“We shall hardly remain here,” Lady S & S barked, probably angry that the invitation had not first been put to her.
Jane bit her lip, it was obvious Mr Holt Leigh had deliberately asked her last to tease her, there was a certain light in his eyes which declared it. He and Mr Leigh, Jane would guess, regularly shared amusing tales of Lady S & S.
“Then we must tell Mrs Giaaf we wish everything ready for an outing in the morning.” Reverend Leigh stood. “I shall send word.”
Jane spent the rest of her evening near Mr Holt Leigh, talking about everything and anything. No subject was barred, and the conversation flew between herself, Cassandra, Mr Holt Leigh and Mr Leigh, as Mrs Leigh watched and listened, and near the hearth Lady S & S sat with Reverend Leigh and Jane’s mother.
As dusk fell, though, Jane fought hard to supress a yawn. She had been awake all of the previous night, writing.
She excused herself, rose, wished everyone a good night, and then retired to her bed.
The maid helped her undress, and then Jane climbed between the sheets. The warmth the warming pan had left in the cotton seeped through Jane’s nightdress, as her head sank into the pillow. The maid blew out the candle.
Jane shut her eyes and let darkness claim her. Her characters did not speak, and yet if they had Jane would have been too tired to get up and write the things they said. It was a time merely to let ideas breathe.
They would come.
Jeopardy…
That was still her puzzle.
Chapter 17
The carriage rocked to the left as a wheel must have hit a rut, throwing Jane against Cassandra. Jane looked at Lady S & S. Lady S & S’s bonnet rested against the side of the carriage. Cassandra looked at Jane and Jane looked at her. They shared a smile.
Lady S & S had joined them in their carriage but she was gently snoring.
Jane, Cassandra and Jane’s mother had, from the moment Lady S & S had closed her eyes, formed a silent agreement not to risk waking her, so they remained quiet. The carriage was far pleasanter with Lady S & S silent apart from the rough sound of her shallow breathing.
Mr Holt Leigh had taken Lady S & S’s seat in the other carriage, and rode with Mr Leigh, Reverend Leigh and Mrs Leigh. Jane imagined their carriage was flooded with chatter.
Cassandra gripped Jane’s hand. They shared another smile as Jane’s fingers closed about Cassandra’s. The first feelings Jane had known as they’d travelled towards Stoneleigh Abbey returned—excitement. Wonder at what she might find. Hope. There was still hope…
She had begun writing again. Lizzy and Darcy had been filling her mind with words and feelings to retell their tale, but it was still a sense of hope and not success, because there was jeopardy to be found for her story, and in her life, a home, a permanent place where Jane would feel safe, settled and happy. She had not found that yet, only this temporary lodging of happiness.
Yet hope was good enough. Hope was to be held onto. Hope, and a sense of life beginning again, were not quite happiness, but they were far better than misery or melancholy feelings.
Jane looked out of the window and watched the countryside pass.
There would be more travelling soon; her mother had implied they ought to leave within a se’nnight. She did not want to outstay their welcome. But that journey would be to Frank’s. Jane was willing to move into her brother’s home. She held affection for all her brothers, but she had a special bond with the family’s two sailors. They had been closer to her in age, and she had spent more hours with them, talking nonsense and creating tales.
A smile lifted Jane’s lips. They would make friends with Frank’s wife and set down new roots. It would be the beginning of a new chapter in her life—the turning of a page.
Yet it would be another home within a city…
The roads became far less rutted after the carriage passed through the last toll gate before Warwick. The estate had been highly invested in. Reverend Leigh must be gazing at everything with eyes that considered what his new wealth ought to be spent upon to bring similar fashionable features to Stoneleigh Abbey.
The carriage was driven between high hedges of dark and variegated rhododendrons. They would be magnificent when they were in flower.
The road turned a corner.
“Oh.” Jane exclaimed jointly with her mother and Cassandra. Lady S & S’s eyes opened.
“That is remarkable,” Jane’s mother said, with a voice that lacked strength as she finished gasping at the giant wall they faced.
There was no need for silence now, Lady S & S was awake, and they were within minutes of climbing out of the carriage.
“I can see why Mr Holt Leigh would have us come to see it,” Cassandra said.
It was a true castle. Nothing about it had a gothic air, instead it had a darker medieval fear about it. There was nothing romantic about the wall Jane could see from the far side of the carriage. She could not even see its top. It was a menacing threat to anyone who dared to come near and its solidity must hold a thousand secrets. It had withstood battles. Jane’s fingers longed to touch it. It looked yards wide, and too high to even guess at. She wished to be able to see exactly how tall, how wide. It would tower high above the carriage. All she could see were rows of large stones as the carriage followed the path about the outside wall.
The wall, with its battlements, had been built in an era when the castle would have withstood sieges. Mangonels and then trebuchets must have hurled objects to knock the stones out from the mortar.
The walls had outlived those gargantuan medieval machines.
“You see, there is the moat.” Lady S & S stated with a note of rare admiration. “Is it not far superior to Kenilworth?”
The carriage turned to the right. Jane leant forward to see beyond Cassandra.
The road turned to face the wall. Cassandra was also leaning forward, trying to look upward.
“We are approaching a bridge,” Jane’s mother stated what had become obvious to them all.
At one time it would have been a drawbridge.
How exciting.
Jane turned to look from the window beside her. She could not see ahead. The edge of the wall curved around a corner. She could look down. The moat was like a wide lake.
The emotions of Susan gripped Jane once more, as they had when she had arrived at Stoneleigh Abbey, and when she had visited Kenilworth. Jane wanted to grasp the strap to pull down the carriage window so she could lean out, but Lady S & S was in the carriage; such behaviour would earn Jane a reprimand.
Jane’s eyes widened as the carriage descended on the far side of the bridge and passed through a gate built for giants. The aged wooden door with its pox of iron nails stood back against the castle’s wall, when once upon a time it would have been closed, barring visitors.
The noise outside the carriage grew in intensity as the horses’ hooves struck cobbles and then the carriage rolled on to them. They were in a courtyard. Now Jane faced the other side of the ridiculously high wall, which she still could not see the top of.
The carriage stopped. Voices rang outside. The words she could hear implied they had been stopped by someone from the castle who asked why they had come. A man’s voice explained their visit and their desire to view the castle.
Jane’s heart thumped harder, her heartbeat pulsing in her arteries. She desperately wished to see the castle. It would hurt if they were turned away after she had glimpsed what might be seen. It was like someone held out a sweet treat and then might close their hand around it and pull it away.
After a moment the carriage rolled into motion again. It rolled forwards, without turning.
Jane smiled as her fingers gripped together in her lap, holding on to her exc
itement and trying not to express it too exuberantly before Lady S & S who would deem even that unladylike.
They passed a tall, handsome man, of good figure, dressed in a very smart scarlet and gold livery. Jane guessed he had been employed as much for his appearance as any skill in his role in service. A man who was meant to be seen.
The carriage rolled on and it began to pass a large ornate building, a building that had everything of the gothic style. It was all crenulation, gargoyles, gothic carving, ornate stonework and leaded, lined glass.
The Susan inside Jane cried out with joy.
When the carriage stopped, it was before an arch at the corner of the house.
The house was romantically gothic!
Jane looked at Cassandra. They shared an excited smile.
Jane’s hands clasped together in her lap when she looked out of the window again, holding in her rising impatience and inquisitive nature as she saw Reverend Leigh walk towards the arch. Her eagerness urged her to rush ahead of the others, but she must wait with ladylike dignity for the footman to open the door of the carriage.
Mrs Leigh’s arm was wrapped around her husband’s as the couple walked towards the arch beside Mr Holt Leigh. The men spoke with their usual strength of animation and absorption.
The carriage door opened. Jane remained in her seat, to let Lady Saye and Sele accept the footman’s hand and climb down first. Jane’s mother followed. Then Jane took the footman’s firm hand.
Like the footman who had stopped their carriages near the gatehouse, this man was tall, had pleasant facial features and an even finer figure.
Jane smiled broadly. She had heard that some people liked their footmen to be a part of the decoration in their home. She had never seen it in practice. It was very amusing.
What would it be like below stairs? A place of vanity and competition rather than a place of industry? Not like Stoneleigh Abbey’s homely and welcoming kitchen.
“I would guess it was the Countess of Warwick and not the Earl who oversees the employment of the footmen,” Cassandra whispered in Jane’s ear as her fingers held Jane’s arm gently.
Jane glanced at her sister, and replied in a quiet voice. “You cannot be sure.”
Cassandra smiled, “No, I suppose that was presumptuous of me.” But if they were not careful they would catch the attention of Lady S & S and receive a scold, and an enquiry about their conversation. Jane did not care to explain it. Her fingers rested over Cassandra’s and pressed in a silent message of accord.
A housekeeper met them at the door, introduced herself and offered them a tour.
The house was a muddle of gothic-style wooden panelling, naked stone, leather and marble wall coverings with sumptuous furnishings. They, were all very modern in contrast to the clutter of old artefacts and ancient wall hangings, armour and weapons scattered about the rooms. It was grand on a scale that was a hundred times beyond Stoneleigh Abbey’s grandeur, and Jane had walked about those halls awed.
These…
Of course Stoneleigh Abbey had an entirely different feel because she knew her ancestors had sat within those rooms and walked through its halls, and it was their faces on the walls. Here it was the faces of strangers who bore no interest to her. Yet even so, as she and Cassandra walked arm in arm, Jane’s gaze turned from side to side as she looked all around her in wonder.
This journey to Stoneleigh Abbey had become the most memorable of her life.
She and Cassandra wandered through the ornate state rooms of the Earls of Warwick at the tail end of their party, quietly exclaiming their awe to one another. At the front of the party Mr Leigh walked with Mrs Leigh on his arm and spoke in a loud voice with Mr Holt Leigh, while behind them Lady Saye and Sele walked with Reverend Leigh and Jane’s mother.
It was Lizzy’s emotions that came to mind now. Entirely different to Susan’s rushes of overpowering excitement and expectation. The scene Jane had written for Lizzy when she’d experienced such a tour of Darcy’s home was decorous. Lizzy would have looked about her with a quiet, reverential awe. Her inner-self, however, would have been equally set off balance.
Lizzy walked within Jane as they continued, and a desire to know Darcy better than Lizzy already did whispered through Jane. What had Lizzy not seen in him? What had Jane not captured? Jeopardy…
The great house at Warwick held a sense of secrets… There must be a moment when a secret was revealed in First Impressions.
But what? Who? Lydia’s elopement with Denny was not enough. The revelation had to be a secret Darcy kept from Lizzy.
Something hidden in the past, and yet it must be something that would shift the reader’s perspective of Darcy entirely—as it also shifted Lizzy’s.
To date, in the story, Lizzy thought very rarely of Darcy until the moment she visited Pemberley and saw a man she had not known before and had previously judged badly. Then she began to think of him, and challenge herself.
Darcy, though, had spent silent hour after hour gazing at Lizzy, watching every shift in her expression, listening to every word she spoke and studying each slight nuance in her voice.
The table should be turned.
Lizzy ought to become the one trapped in memories and thoughts of Darcy.
Yet why? A frustrated sound left Jane’s lips as they were led into another room.
But inspiration and imagination would not be beaten into submission, nor dragged forth.
Darcy’s fumbled proposal—that insulted rather than encouraged acceptance, because he foolishly thought any woman would have him for his wealth alone—currently only did more to push Lizzy away. Perhaps memories of her anger and utter dislike of him held him in Lizzy’s mind until she went to Pemberley?
Then there was his redemption, his rescue of her sister. Like a true romantic hero riding in to save the day. But, as Lizzy did not discover his part in saving Lydia until the end of the story, barely a moment before his second proposal, there was no chance of jeopardy there.
Jane was lost in a daydream when they left the house and walked out into the gardens. The formal garden layout drew her back into the moment. It was unusual. A high, steep mound rose up amidst the shrubs; the motte on which the first castle would have stood. The, all-encompassing, giant wall climbed up to it.
“We would have raced up that slope as children,” Mr Holt Leigh stated.
Mr Leigh laughed. “And I would have won.”
“You would not. You were always slower.”
“Perhaps on the flat, but in a scramble, I think I would have had the edge.”
“I always had the edge, my friend, you just never realised it. I am sorry you competed for no reason.” Mr Holt Leigh teased.
“I have won against you.”
“Never. It was always only when I allowed you to.”
They spoke like Jane’s brothers had when they were younger and together at home. She enjoyed listening to their to and fro.
Their small party began to climb the winding path to the top of the motte, in a sedate, respectable and uncompetitive pace, leaving Lady S & S, Reverend Leigh and Jane’s mother at the bottom.
Jane could not imagine Colonel Fitzwilliam and Darcy speaking as the two men ahead of her talked. Darcy, even as a boy, must have had some element of reserve—due to the shyness in his nature. She could not imagine him being a boy who would challenge another to race up, or down, a hill.
He would have been the boy who watched others race and longed to have the freedom of confidence to take part.
Darcy was a man who wished to be liked, but did not know how to be likeable. At school he would have stood apart, and if not for men like Bingley who would take any bird with a broken wing, or his cousin, the Colonel, who had a deep understanding of others and a generous nature, Darcy might have remained wanting for any true friend.
“Do you think yourselves capable of a walk along the battlements, ladies?” Mr Holt Leigh looked back at Mrs Leigh, Jane and Cassandra.
“Do we look as thou
gh we are women without stamina?” Cassandra responded.
“I love a good walk, and I shall enjoy more than anything to be level with the treetops, studying the view from the aspect of a hawk,” Jane replied.
Mr Leigh looked at Mrs Leigh. “We have been told there are a lot of steps, my dear…”
“I am not afraid of steps,” she answered quietly.
Mr Leigh looked at Jane and Cassandra.
“Neither are we,” Cassandra answered more strongly.
Jane and Cassandra were not of Darcy’s ilk. Perhaps the easy nature of Mr Leigh and Mr Holt Leigh was a characteristic of the descendants from their Leigh ancestors. Jane smiled as Mr Holt Leigh opened a door which led to the first set of stairs they would climb to reach the battlements. Jane and Cassandra passed first, followed by Mr and Mrs Leigh, then Mr Holt Leigh.
Thinking of the nature of her ancestors reminded Jane of the picture of her relation who had given Charles I a roof to hide beneath, and a bed, only to then end up imprisoned by parliamentarians. He had escaped because of his intelligent and sensible wife. She who had conceded to the parliamentarians, allowed them to stay at Stoneleigh until she had won their trust, and then begged them to accept a payment for her husband’s release.
Jane smiled. Perhaps strong and intelligent women were a characteristic of the Leigh family, too. Perhaps all of Jane’s nature had been inherited.
The paved path which extended along the whole of the wall, about two to three feet wide, was very long and more challenging than Jane had imagined. The stairs were frequently steep and winding and at each tower about the wall, of which there were several, there was a requirement to climb down and then up again. Jane’s legs shook when they descended the last set of stairs. Yet the pain in her knees had been worth the effort to see the moat, park and river from the perspective of a bird. It was a stunning property, and placed in a setting that would cast impressions Jane was certain must seep into her books.
“I do not think my legs are capable of walking to the carriage,” Cassandra whispered.
Jane laughed. “Mine feel as wobbly as those of a new born lamb.”
