North by Northanger (A Mr. & Mrs. Darcy Mystery) (2 page)

Lady Anne, Elizabeth had been given to understand by various members of the household, had also found the Wedgwood breakfast
set superior to any of Pemberley’s many others, particularly the Royal Worcester china Elizabeth had thought to use last week. The fortnight previous, she had learned that the pattern of the music room’s wallpaper was the only possible one that could adequately complement the view from that chamber’s windows. The bird motif of the conservatory, another selection of her predecessor’s, Elizabeth did not dare touch. Further, Lady Anne’s taste in decorating had apparently been matched by equal excellence as an art collector, hostess, domestic manager, and philanthropist. As a result, Elizabeth had begun to find the glare of Lady Anne’s perfection growing unpleasant.

“Thank you for the information, but I do not care to face a wall when I write,” she said. “I would much rather look out. Pemberley has such beautiful grounds. I am exceptionally fond of the south garden.”

Mrs. Reynolds smiled wistfully. “So was her ladyship. Lady Anne planted that garden herself—selected all the plants and put them in the ground with her own hands. But I am sure you already knew that.”

“It might have been mentioned to me previously.”

The housekeeper withdrew, and minutes later two footmen arrived to relocate the rosewood writing desk. As weary as she had become of most things related to Lady Anne, Elizabeth had to concede her own partiality for this particular furnishing. The graceful Chippendale piece practically beckoned one to take a seat and invent cause for correspondence.

The footmen lowered the desk to rest in its new position, then replaced the items they had removed from its top during the transfer. As soon as they left, Elizabeth rearranged the quill stand, wick trimmer, and wax jack, the latter of which she managed to drop in the process. She seemed to be dropping a lot of things lately. She bent to retrieve it—a motion more difficult now than it had been mere weeks ago—and positioned it to her satisfaction. The glass inkwell she then slid into place rather than trust herself to lift.

She sat at the desk, admiring the prospect from its chair. From her
new vantage point, she could see not only the river and valley, as she could previously, but also the south garden. Though Michaelmas approached, the roses yet held their own, the marigolds vigorously announced their intention to stay until kissed by frost, and the morning glories climbed heavenward. The blooms’ gentle perfume wafted through the open windows, dominated by a particularly sweet fragrance. As she attempted to identify it, her husband entered.

She held her breath as he silently noted the desk’s new location. Though Darcy had given her leave to make any changes in the house she wished, and had especially encouraged her to remake Lady Anne’s former rooms into her own, she could not escape consciousness of the fact that any alteration of hers severed another small tie to the mother he had lost at far too young an age. Fitzwilliam Darcy had been but eleven when Lady Anne died giving birth to his sister, Georgiana. Their father, George Darcy, had left most of his beloved wife’s effects untouched, and his son had made minimal changes in the six years since he inherited the estate. Out of sensitivity to her husband’s feelings, and those of Georgiana, she hesitated to adapt much at Pemberley to her own taste. A lifetime stretched before them—time enough for a gradual transformation. She need not sweep in and obliterate all traces of the first woman he had loved. If not yet secure in her role as Pemberley’s mistress, she was secure enough in Darcy’s affections to share them with his mother’s memory.

If only that memory were not so idealized. Lady Anne had been loved not only by her family, but also by friends, neighbors, tenants, and servants. She had been a paragon of grace and lived an idyllic life. How Elizabeth would ever find her own place here, she could scarcely imagine.

Darcy at last nodded at the desk in approval. “You shall enjoy a finer view.”

She exhaled. “I am glad you agree. Mrs. Reynolds so disapproves that I thought I might have to move the desk myself.”

“I hope you jest. No mistress of Pemberley should be pushing furniture across a room, but especially not one in your condition.”

“Of course I jest. If the servants mutinied, I would have prevailed upon you.”

“And if I resisted?”

“I might have threatened to name this baby something ridiculous, such as Nancy.”

“Nancy Darcy? You would never saddle a daughter of yours with such a singsong name. Besides, you carry a boy. The Darcys for countless generations have fathered boys as their first offspring, so it only stands to reason that we would continue the family tradition.”

“Very well, then. Quincy Darcy.”

“You do not frighten me.”

“Chauncey? Percy?”

“Enough. We shall name him something that sounds well with Darcy. Richard, perhaps.”

“Nay, not Richard. That,
I
could not countenance.”

“It is a perfectly respectable name. In fact, it is the name of the physician I wish to engage for your lying-in. Dr. Richard Severn.”

“The London doctor? I thought we agreed our child would be born here?”

“I will arrange for him to stay at Pemberley during your confinement. He already divides his time between London and Bath, where he is at present, so I am certain he can be persuaded to come to Derbyshire this winter.”

“Should we not meet Dr. Severn first? What if we do not like him?”

“He has an excellent reputation.”

“So does the village midwife.”

His expression grew shuttered. “I do not want to entrust your safety to a country midwife.”

“I do not want to entrust it to a doctor I have never met.”

He regarded her quietly a moment, his air grown serious. “Very well,” he said finally. “When we have concluded our visit with the Bingleys, we will return home via Bath—provided you feel well enough to prolong our travel.”

“Our little Darcy has been behaving herself much more of late.”

“I am glad to hear it. You have looked rather green these many weeks.”

“I feel quite better.” The morning queasiness that had plagued the early weeks of her condition had nearly abated—a fact for which she was grateful. Her sister Jane, who had just delivered her first child, had suffered nausea right up until the day she was brought to bed. Though Elizabeth remained hypersensitive to scent, only a few smells yet set her insides quaking. “In fact, just now I am famished. If I ring for nuncheon, will you join me?”

“It is only half past ten.”

“Your child cannot yet tell time.” She headed toward the bellpull, discovering on her way a folded sheet of paper on the floor. Certain it had not been there during her conversation with Mrs. Reynolds, she took it up.

“What have you found?” Darcy asked.

“A letter.”

“On the floor? The servants are seldom so careless.”

The note was sealed with the cinquefoil symbol from the Darcy crest. She turned it over and discovered her name on the front: Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy. She smiled softly. Had her husband, intending some surprise, dropped it for her to find? “It is addressed to me,” she said, studying his expression closely.

“Indeed?” His countenance remained open, revealing mild interest but betraying no prior knowledge of the note. “From whom?”

Perhaps he had not authored the letter, or its sudden appearance, after all. Now that she looked at it again, the handwriting resembled Georgiana’s more than his, but was not quite his sister’s hand, either.

Her curiosity piqued, she broke the seal and unfolded the paper. The lines began neatly but became progressively uneven and blotted. She quickly scanned to the end, then lifted her gaze to Darcy in astonishment.

“It is from your mother.”

Two

“Painful recollections will intrude, which cannot, which ought not to be repelled.”

—
Mr. Darcy
, Pride and Prejudice

Pemberley
20 January 1796
Dear Mrs. Darcy
,

Should this letter reach your eyes, it is because I no longer live to deliver its message in person. I know not who you are—what name you bore before taking that of Darcy. I know only that by addressing this letter to you, I write to the woman who has wed my son. For that reason alone I entrust to you the stewardship of something most precious, for as my Fitzwilliam’s wife you already hold in your power that which I value above all else: my son’s well-being and happiness
.

Pardon my poor hand—my pains cause me to blot my words on the page. They follow hard upon each other—my time quickly approaches—already the midwife bids me come to the bed. I pray this babe survives. I cannot bear to bury another—

I had at Fitzwilliam’s birth a . . . an heirloom from my own mother—I want it now, but it has become lost. If only I could find it, I would trust that I will be safely delivered. But I hid it too well, beyond my own reach. You—you must look if I cannot, for I want you to have it when . . . Valuable in itself . . . find it and you will hold the key to greater gifts—

Pain floods my mind—I cannot think for it. If you are my niece, my namesake, Anne, know that I guarded myself from my sister, not from you—

Mrs. Godwin demands that I set down my pen. On her alone I must depend . . . Search for me . . . My daughter, the only one I may ever have, start with the knowledge that love conquers all. I am—

Your mother,
Anne Darcy

Elizabeth watched Darcy read the letter in silence. His expression went from curious to clouded to somber as he reached its end. He stared at the note long after his eyes finished scanning its lines.

“Is it your mother’s hand?” she asked.

He cleared his throat and handed the letter back to her. “It is.”

“The date—”

“Is Georgiana’s birthday. Yes, I noticed.” His voice was thick, and he cleared his throat again. “The letter must have been lodged in some crevice of the desk and fallen when it was moved.” He walked to the window and looked out upon the garden.

Elizabeth glanced once more at the note’s address.
Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy
. How extraordinary, that at such a time Darcy’s mother should have written to her, someone she would never meet.

But Lady Anne had not known that a stranger would read her words. Clearly, she thought she was writing to her niece, Anne de Bourgh. When Darcy and his cousin were infants, their mothers had planned a union between them. The arrangement had been an informal desire rather than an official betrothal, one to which Darcy had not been bound by honor, law, or inclination. But the wrath of his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, upon his engagement to Elizabeth had clearly demonstrated her assumption that those early wishes would be realized. Evidently, Lady Anne had expected his compliance
as well. It was her sister’s daughter, not the unheard-of Elizabeth Bennet, whom she anticipated would one day call Darcy husband and Pemberley home.

Elizabeth wondered whether Darcy’s cousin Anne would have fared any better in escaping the influence of his mother’s memory had they indeed wed. Sharing both Lady Anne’s name and lineage, would she have slipped into her new role more easily than Elizabeth had? Somehow, Elizabeth doubted it. She had met Anne de Bourgh, a girl rendered so timid by growing up under the domination of her mother that she betrayed no hint of possessing a mind or will of her own. Were Anne now Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy, and this her morning room, the rosewood desk would have sat in the same location for at least another generation.

And Lady Anne’s letter would never have been found.

Elizabeth again skimmed the lines—the last Lady Anne had ever written. She tried to read through the blots and scrawls to make out the missing words, but had no better success than upon her first reading.

She approached Darcy, who had fallen into reverie. He leaned against the window frame, his left hand yet holding the edge of the drapery panel he had pushed farther aside to widen his view of the garden below To the world, the expression with which he quietly studied the landscape might appear impassive. But she could read in his stance and hear in his silence a depth of feeling he often found difficult to express, even to her at times.

She placed a hand on his back, and he turned his head to meet her eyes.

“I have always known my mother died in childbed, but I never fully contemplated how painful a death it was.” His tone, normally warm when he had occasion to speak of his mother, held the hush of one referring to someone recently departed. “My memories are of a woman who was always serene and in command—not someone enduring so much agony that she could not compose coherent sentences.”

She felt acutely her own good fortune in yet having two living parents. “Those happier memories are the ones you should keep. She would not wish you to dwell on the circumstances of her death.”

“It is not my mother’s trial I have been contemplating most just now” He let the curtain panel fall back into place and took her hand. “It is yours.”

Indeed, Lady Anne’s letter had hardly made Elizabeth eager for the rite of passage that lay before her. But she did not care to fixate on the dangers of childbirth—at least, not this morning.

“My mother brought five babies into this world and has survived to see us all into adulthood. And my sister just safely delivered. I will be fine. Besides,” she said with a smile she hoped would prove contagious, “there is no turning back now.”

Her attempt at humor failed. Darcy regarded her with more seriousness than ever. “I am going to retain Dr. Severn.” His tone brooked no opposition. Nor, looking at his face, did she wish to object.

“I still want to become acquainted with him before my confinement.”