North by Northanger (A Mr. & Mrs. Darcy Mystery) (19 page)

She opened several of Lady Anne’s letters and quickly skimmed the pages. Darcy did the same with his father’s.

“Love letters!” She whispered it like a secret. “Can you tell which is the oldest?”

“This one is dated the third of January, seventeen eighty-three. It is not exactly a love letter—it was written before their engagement, and is actually addressed to my uncle.”

I return herewith your sister’s volume of Chaucer, with gratitude for her having lent it to me. Please tell Lady Anne that at her behest, I reread the general prologue on my journey home, and find that her observations have enhanced my appreciation for the Tales. Whether that pleasure derives from the opinions themselves or the memory of the lively manner in which she delivered them, I cannot say. I shall, however, never again encounter Madame Eglentyne without recalling my visit to Riveton Hall. Nor shall I commit the error of expressing surprise that a friend’s younger sister has read the great poet. If Lady Anne will indulge me, I look forward to continuing our discussion when I join your party at Riveton between Hilary and Easter terms
.

“Your father and uncle attended Cambridge together?” Elizabeth asked.

“Yes, that is how my parents met. My uncle brought a party of friends home with him one Christmas, my father among them. His first night there, he and my mother, who was a bit of a bluestocking, became engaged in a debate over something in
The Canterbury Tales
, to the amusement of all the gentlemen.”

“They fell in love over poetry?”

“I believe it was more the badinage between them than the topic. My father appreciated her quick wit and animated spirit.”

“Traits all men should prize,” Elizabeth declared. Her own husband had once told her that he’d admired her for the liveliness of her mind. “Meanwhile, your mother’s family worked to arrange a marriage between her and Lord Everett. If your mother and father formed an attachment during his first visit, Easter must have seemed very far off, indeed—particularly since they could not with propriety
correspond with each other directly. When and how did your father next write?”

The next letter on the stack was smaller than the others, and multiple crease lines indicated that it had once been well folded. He opened the note. “April.”

Dear Lady Anne—Pray forgive the liberty I take in writing you this note. Though I depart for Pemberley today, I leave something behind at Riveton. As its nature renders a third party unable to transport it, your brother cannot bring it with him when we meet again at Cambridge. It therefore lies in your care. I hope it is not an unwelcome burden, and that one day you might return it. Believe me—

Your most sincere and humble servant,
G. Darcy

Elizabeth smiled. George Darcy had not wanted to leave Riveton without ensuring that Lady Anne knew she had won his regard. In a house full of people on a busy morning of departure, how had George delivered the note? Had he pressed it into Anne’s hand upon parting? Conveyed it through a servant?

“A clandestine letter. Are you shocked by your father’s impropriety?”

“Yes.” Darcy considered a moment. “And no. He was not a man to leave anything to chance. If something occurred shortly before his departure that caused her to doubt him, he would not have quit Riveton without finding some means by which to communicate his intentions. His persistence was one of the qualities I admired most in him.” He refolded the letter, his expression contemplative.

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.”