Mary B

by Katherine J. Chen

  “What nonsense,” Darcy said, shaking his head.

  “And what’s more, the evil sorcerer who keeps me confined is none other than my husband,” Lizzy added, pouting.

  “Yes, your husband, who would keep you safe and in good health,” Darcy muttered.

  I did not wish to take sides, so I volunteered no opinion on the matter, knowing all too well that defending one against the other would only create more bad feeling while resolving nothing. Despite the generous number of comforts I’d enjoyed at Pemberley, I was still little more than a guest and, as a guest, subject to the whims of my generally even-tempered hosts. My indebtedness to Lizzy and Darcy’s charity dictated my every speech and action, and in such delicate circumstances, it was not only wisest but also safest to remain silent.

  “Mrs. Russell thinks we should entertain more,” Lizzy said, changing the subject.

  “Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?” Darcy replied, and I caught him rolling his eyes.

  “You are predisposed to think it a silly idea for the sole reason that the thought originates from Mrs. Russell,” my sister said in rebuttal. “But is it really untrue just because it is Mrs. Russell who expresses that opinion and not your uncle or Mr. Bingley? The Thorpes and the Palmers host no less than six or seven balls a year, and their estate is not half as large as Pemberley.”

  “Well, to make you happy, Lizzy,” Darcy said, eating heartily away at the meat before him, “I think we shall take some of Mrs. Russell’s advice and host a ball just as soon as a certain event comes to pass.” Then he smiled not at Lizzy but at her midsection. “I will even go so far as to offer that in honor of the occasion, we may throw three balls for three consecutive nights, and if that does not silence Mrs. Russell and teach her to keep her pert opinions to herself, then I’m sure nothing else will.”

  Lizzy set down her knife, looking across the table at Darcy. “There was a time when I felt I could have asked for anything, and you would have fulfilled it without any conditions,” she said softly.

  Darcy frowned. He kept his eyes fixed on the table. “Nothing has changed in that regard.”

  “My love,” Lizzy replied, and I thought I heard a small catch in her voice, “everything has changed in that regard.”

  “Nonsense,” Darcy repeated.

  Lizzy did not reply, and Darcy seemed to take her silence for a concession. When I’d first arrived, my expectation had been, of course, that their relationship should be an extension of the connubial joy I’d witnessed on their wedding day. But an unease had arisen between them, which, at first subtle, became more pointed as they’d grown accustomed to my company. In particular, it proved impossible to ignore the change that had come over Lizzy and that, in my bafflement, I could attribute only to the effect of her being exposed to more wealth than she had ever known in her life. To myself, I hoped this was a phase from which she would emerge once she came to realize that one trinket was, in fact, very much like another, whatever the final cost or the rarity of the stones in question.

  The subject of the conversation fortunately shifted, and some attention was at last paid to me.

  “How many chapters have you written today, Mary?” Darcy asked.

  “Nearly three,” I replied, slicing a turnip in two with the edge of my fork.

  “That is a productive outcome,” Darcy said, nodding.

  “This is the story of the queen?” Lizzy inquired. “The sword-wielding one who kills and poisons?”

  “When other people are not trying to kill and poison her,” I answered practically, “yes.”

  “What a fine woman! My idea of a heroine,” Lizzy said, beaming. “Highly preferable, I think, to the princess locked in her ivory tower awaiting rescue.”

  At this, Darcy grunted in assent, and for the next quarter of an hour, we devoted all our attention and energy to the food before us. Then Lizzy piped up to remind Darcy and me of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s impending arrival.

  “I have told Mary that your cousin is coming tomorrow,” Lizzy continued. “He will bring some much-needed liveliness to this house.”

  “Or he may find Pemberley tiresome and move on after a week,” Darcy countered.

  “How can anyone find Pemberley tiresome?” Lizzy argued. “Look at Mary. She has been here over two months and shows no inclination of leaving us.”

  “It’s true: Pemberley is a wonderful place,” I offered shyly, thinking this sentiment wouldn’t affront either one of my hosts.

  “Ha! You see?” Lizzy said.

  “Well, we shall see for ourselves.” Darcy shrugged. “I give him a week. You know his character—a good man but flightier than a restless butterfly when it comes to staying in any one place.”

  “The colonel has always been excessively fond of me,” Lizzy added. “I believe he even fancied me once. I say he will stay at least a month.”

  “As he fancies every woman—married and unmarried,” Darcy rejoined. “A week.”

  “I daresay you are right in most things, Darcy,” Lizzy replied, her voice dripping sweetness, “but in this, you are wrong. A month!”

  “Is it very important how long the colonel stays?” I asked innocently from my seat.

  “Of course it is,” Lizzy said at the very same time that Darcy shook his head.

  Dinner concluded not long after this exchange, and all three of us eagerly went our respective ways: Lizzy to her private sitting room, Darcy to his study, and I to the library, where new tragedies would soon transpire from the blank pages of my novel.

  A tall and very gentlemanlike man was struggling at the bottom of the main staircase with several parcels. It was perhaps two in the morning; being unable to sleep, I had just emerged from my room to retrieve another book from the library when I’d heard a noise downstairs, followed by a few halting footsteps, a crash, and then what sounded like a curse uttered with impeccable elocution. When I appeared at the top of the stairs with my candle, the intruder looked up. He was soaked through, and the ends of his black cloak had already contributed to a midsized puddle at his feet. Boxes, both round and square, encircled the pillar of his drenched person like disorderly ruins.

  “You!” he shouted upon seeing me, which struck me as a decidedly ungentlemanlike way to address a woman. “Yes, you!” he repeated when I gestured at myself in confusion.

  He pointed with a gloved hand at the boxes around him. “Pick these up, will you? And bring them to my usual room. Also, find Turner. He left me at the gate, and I haven’t seen him since! I’m convinced the man is a drunkard. Well, you look new.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, unresolved between fear of his hostility and anger at being mistaken for a servant. The candle trembled precariously in my hand. I thought of making a run for it but steadied myself. “I don’t know who Turner is….” To my shame, my voice shook.

  “I’m sorry, sir, and I don’t know, sir,” he corrected, in the manner of a tutor repeating Latin verb conjugations to his pupils. “Yes, you must be new. You probably don’t even know where my room is, do you? Be quick now, and answer me. I am in no mood to be kept waiting after the journey I’ve had.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again but deliberately, now despising him. “Yes,” I added, for hatred fed my courage, and I decided that I would be as obstructive as possible. “I daresay I am quite new and do not know where your usual room is, so I cannot be of much help.”

  “Amazing, isn’t it!” he shouted, spreading his arms, and his cloak flew out from him like a sinister black kite. “This enormous estate, which is as famous throughout England as any one of the great houses, and there is not a single competent servant to be found to help me take my bags to my room or to prepare my bath or even to remove my wet coat. What hospitality! I shall have a word with Darcy about you and Turner in the morning, though if I could guess, I’d say you aren’t one of the regular staff. You must either be
temporary or visiting some relative. And very likely hoping to be taken on at the end of it, too, if I know servants!”

  “You might say that,” I sniffed.

  “I thought so!” he said, doubtless feeling very clever. “And who, may I ask, might you be visiting?”

  “My sister,” I replied simply.

  “And what part of the house does she work in? What is her post?”

  I strained my face, pretending to think.

  “You could say she covers the whole house,” I answered slowly. “That is, in a way.”

  He sneezed, and I admit my finer feelings got the better of me, seeing him in so wretched a state. That and a lingering curiosity as to Pemberley’s latest arrival inspired me, against my better judgment, to venture downstairs and pass him my candle. Taking up three of the boxes, which were, fortunately, much lighter than they appeared, I begrudgingly asked if he wouldn’t mind leading the way to his room and carrying the last parcel himself.

  “That’s much better,” he conceded gruffly, and accepting the candle, he raised the flame and brought it dangerously close to my face. I thought he intended to burn me as punishment for my insolence and nearly screamed, but he only peered curiously at me, as though I had some unusual part that demanded examination. “An ugly little thing, aren’t you?” he whispered, and the intimacy of his tone struck me more than his insult. “No wonder you sound so bitter,” he concluded with something like triumph, and balancing the candle in his hand, he bent to pick up the last box before proceeding to the staircase.

  We walked in silence for what felt a long interval, down narrow, carpeted corridors obscured in total darkness. He turned back once to bid me keep up with him, and I followed like an obedient moth, his candle guiding me past haunting portraits and furniture whose monstrous shapes seemed ready to spring from the shadows. At times, I imagined I was on the cusp of a daring adventure, the persecuted heroine of a Gothic romance being led by her villainous keeper to the dungeons. Other times, my arms began to ache, and I cursed myself for ever leaving the comfort of my own room. But at last, he stopped and, with what I considered unnecessary force, flung open a pair of double doors at the end of a hall. For the briefest moment, the novelty of standing alone in my nightclothes in the bedroom of a strange man took hold of me. My heart quickened, and I heard its erratic beating in my ears. If this were a scene from a novel, the man would surely take the lady in his arms and begin ravishing her. Fearful—and a bit excited—by this prospect, I didn’t dare look at him.

  “This is my room, and you’d do well to remember where it is, in the event you’re asked to work here later on,” he announced, bringing me back to my senses. “You may leave the boxes on that table there.” He motioned to a round table positioned ritualistically at the center of an elaborate Persian rug. “Then you may go and find Turner, who is to bring up the rest of my luggage and unpack it for me. I will also require a hot bath prepared before I go to bed, as I’m convinced that I’ve already caught cold.”

  “I don’t know who Turner…” I began to say before I tripped over a bump in the carpet and the room collapsed around me. The boxes tumbled out of my arms, and I had just time to cling uselessly to the edge of the table and then topple that fine piece of furniture before I sank quite harmlessly to the floor. Rubbing my arm, I looked up to find my tormentor staring incredulously at me from the doorway. He had, after regaining his composure, the decency to ask if I was all right, but being neither a servant nor a Gothic heroine, I finally decided that I’d had enough of this game of pretend. I stood. Perhaps it was the disillusionment of returning to a mundane reality which emboldened me. For some seconds, I stared with imperious disdain at him, and he returned my gaze with the superior sneer which the idle rich employ towards their dumb menials. I clenched my fists. The threat of violence suggested by my fists seemed to unnerve him, and he retreated cautiously out of the room and a few steps into the hall, knowing from experience, I suppose, what hysterics the lower servants could pull when adequately provoked.

  “Pick up those boxes,” he said uncertainly.

  “No,” I replied, remembering he had called me an “ugly little thing.” My voice issued from my angry, exhausted body like a command: “I will not pick up those boxes, and I will not restore the table. I am tired, sir, and going to bed.” As I passed him, an idea occurred to me, and I lifted my chin and coughed with my mouth uncovered a few times in his direction. This had an effect even more satisfying than that of my clenched fists, for he jumped back and spilled hot wax onto his hands. While he cursed in pain, I repossessed the candle, which had been mine, leaving him in total darkness.

  “Good night,” I called out, content with playing the mischievous imp, if the role of romantic heroine would be denied me.

  “And what, may I ask, is your name for when I make my report to your master?” he roared.

  Pausing, I turned, having reached the end of the hall. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough, sir!”

  Then I ran to my room as fast as my legs would take me and locked the door before bursting into a fit of giggles.

  Mr. Darcy sat serenely at the head of the table with a small silver spoon in one hand and a cup of steaming black tea in the other, as he inquired politely after the health of my heroine. We were alone at breakfast. Lizzy was still too ill to come down. As for our guest, I’d been informed by Darcy that Colonel Fitzwilliam had arrived in the early hours of the morning and would, understandably, take his breakfast in bed, having suffered both a tedious journey in last night’s rain and some serious neglect at the hands of two surly servants. Plans had been made to dismiss Turner before luncheon, with three weeks’ pay and no reference; he’d fallen asleep on top of the colonel’s luggage cradling a depleted bottle of gin. As for the other and more sensational person, who had dared embody superiority where none could be permissible, that lady’s identity had yet to be discovered, but Darcy believed it only a matter of time. Servants often betrayed one another for the sake of appearing well in front of their masters, and in this way were the low kept even lower. Hearing of the drama, I’d offered a few generic opinions on the unreliability of servants and feigned disinterest, knowing, of course, that all would be revealed in good time.

  “Tell me, Mary, how is Queen Leonora these days? And where is she now?” Darcy inquired, looking up from his large cut of ham.

  I struggled to recall the latest chapter and bought some time pretending to dab the corners of my mouth, though I’d eaten nothing. “She’s been abducted by the grand duke, her father’s cousin, whose loyalty has been purchased by the French,” I reported, as though this were an everyday affair—which, for unlucky and stunningly beautiful Leonora, it was. “The grand duke is keeping her prisoner in a secret underground cell that no one knows anything about and blaming the abduction on their allies, the Swedes, with whom the French desire to go to war. Originally, he promised Leonora that he’d betray the French, too, but only on the condition that she marry him and make him king. She, of course, refuses and, at the suggestion, spits in his face. For this insult, he slaps her and reveals, in his anger, that he was also responsible for the poisoning of her father, the good and noble former king. When I last left her, she had just finished eating the entrails of a rat in order to survive.”

  “Good God!” Darcy cried, with genuine enthusiasm. His knife rolled off the side of his plate. “What is to be done?”

  Growing smug, I broke off a piece of cake. “You forget that Wilhelm, the German prince, departed two chapters ago from the shores of his motherland to sail to Denmark. The unfortunate affair with the Spanish princess thankfully forgotten, he realizes he still loves Leonora, and I may have Leonora fall in love with him following a prolonged and tormented struggle with herself. As for her current, unhappy situation…” I paused to wet my mouth with lukewarm coffee.

  “Yes, what of her current, unhappy situation?” Darcy echoed, s
miling and chewing his ham.

  “The grand duke still visits her every evening,” I said, “but I’m currently undecided between two scenarios, both of which I’ll gladly present for your consideration. Either a loyal handmaiden of Leonora’s will discreetly follow the grand duke into the prison cell and bring help later on or Leonora will pretend to accede to the villain’s request, entice him into the cell with promises of pleasure, then strangle him or bash his head in with a rock. The rest is easy enough. All she must do then is find her way back to the castle and emerge malnourished but unharmed to her adoring subjects before revealing the truth.”

  Darcy considered the options for a long time before speaking. “I think I prefer the second scenario, and I’ll explain why. This is, if I’m not mistaken, her fourth abduction since her ascendance to the throne, not counting the two kidnappings from her days as a princess. The reader might reasonably hope that our heroine has learned something from her previous abductions. I’d even suggest—”

  Darcy broke off as a tall and not very gentlemanlike man entered the breakfast room and sat down. He did not speak. His mouth was a straight and bitter line, which underscored the three wavy ridges that creased his forehead. Two deep furrows running diagonally from either end of his nostrils triangulated the bottom half of his face into an expression of fixed and stubborn misery, while a pair of red-rimmed eyes gazed with prophesies of untold doom at the three beverage pots set in a neat arrangement in front of him. As the man splashed inky liquid into his cup, Darcy cleared his throat. His guest looked up, and thereafter a few minor events occurred in rapid succession. First, I crooked my eyebrow, because the intruder to an otherwise extremely pleasant and intimate breakfast had spotted and recognized me. And while that man’s face was busy contorting into an expression which would eventually encompass both mortified amazement and embarrassed disgust, Darcy proceeded to perform a perfunctory introduction (“sister to my wife, Lizzy,” “my cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam, nephew of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who I mentioned arrived earlier today,” etc.) that included, I’m happy to report, a few compliments paid to myself and mention of the “marvelous and highly imaginative book” I was working on. A blustering hand upset the cup of aromatic coffee, and a brown stream eddied beneath the jars of black butter jam and peach preserves, ending its journey at the edge of the platter of hot rolls.