“James, where is that deed? I searched all of Pemberley for it when I was there before, and found nothing. It has surely been destroyed by now, but someone believes it still exists.”
“Then that someone must be deceiving everyone, for I have seen nothing of it. You may rest assured, I made a thorough search through all the old records at the solicitor, for I felt as you—it is best that it be destroyed, if it is ever found.”
She rested somewhat on her cane, but if her aging arms trembled somewhat, her brother made no comment. “What is to be done? Darcy will listen to no one, the foolish boy!”
“What else can be done? If the deed cannot be found and Darcy has returned well and alive, I suppose that is the end of it. I still do not understand why anyone assumed he would have it, or what they thought to gain from taking him.”
“Are you so simple, or do you believe you can deceive me, James? Someone from this very house must have known of it, and desired to gain access to Darcy’s wealth and estate!”
“That seems a rather elaborate ruse, Catherine. Why would anyone go to such lengths? If this Vasconcelos is still alive, he would have come first to me, not to Darcy.”
“And how,” snarled his sister, “am I to think that he did not?”
Matlock slammed his fist on his desk. “Darcy was like a son to me! I would never have allowed harm to come to him!”
Lady Catherine scoffed. “From the moment of his funeral, I have seen you arranging his affairs, and quite happily! Can you think my memory so poor in that regard? You stood to control all of his wealth through your son!”
Matlock straightened and blinked for a moment. “Indeed,” he answered slowly. “My son….”
Lady Catherine narrowed her eyes and walked toward her brother, cane extended. “You will find this out, James! I will not have my nephew casting this disgrace upon me. I insist that you ride to Pemberley at once to explain matters and to set his head straight. And as we are discussing it, there is another matter. I advised you against it, but you persisted, and now it has brought about a travesty against all that is natural and just. I insist that you speak to him about it before the harm is irreversible!”
“There is more? What greater harm could befall the man than to be imprisoned and presumed dead for six months?”
She tapped her cane on the ground. “Miss Elizabeth Bennet, that is what.”
58
Leicester
“Fitzwilliam, you are making a grave error. If you will only permit me to explain—”
“Unless you have something factual to relate, I am not interested.” Fitzwilliam crossed his arms and stared out the window of the carriage, refusing even to look at the other occupant.
“I am in earnest!” Wickham pleaded. “Darcy has no idea what he is letting himself in for. If you would allow me to show you, I can help!”
“For what price, Wickham?”
Wickham shrugged. “I would hope that Darcy’s gratitude alone would compel him to do all he could for his fellow man.”
Fitzwilliam growled in his throat and rolled his eyes. How typically Wickham! “If you wish me to take seriously your offers of assistance, you might begin with a little free information. How did you become involved with all this, if you were not the architect?”
“I told you. It was heard that I was in London when my marriage was announced in the paper. They came to ask my personal assistance, as one who was brought up at Pemberley but whose present relations with the family were… less than warm. A contact was desired, someone who could find things out. By the time they had discovered my whereabouts, I was already in a carriage bound for Longbourn. When they did catch me up, I naturally wished to make myself amenable to this great person, and I was promised that Miss Darcy would be kept safe by my efforts.”
Fitzwilliam coughed, and could make no answer for a moment as he was laughing heartily. “You expect me to believe that you were concerned for Miss Darcy! After you abandoned your own wife at a coaching inn! I hope they at least paid you well, Wickham, for your skills at prevarication have suffered somewhat.”
Wickham fell silent and stared out of the carriage window. “I regret my treatment of Miss Lydia….”
“Miss? She is no longer a Miss, Wickham.”
He looked the colonel in the eye, some hesitation in his manner. “Have you spoken with her, then? I trust she is well?”
“Better, now that you shall no longer weigh as an anchor upon her.”
Wickham’s eyes lowered.
Fitzwilliam sighed. “Come now, out with it. I know as well as you do that your regiment was not on active duty, and a generous officer might lessen the charges given the proper inducement. I am not promising to vouch for you,” he held up a finger at Wickham’s hopeful expression, “but your cooperation at this juncture cannot harm your case.”
Wickham gazed out of the window for a moment. “And if what I have to say offends you? What then, Fitzwilliam?”
“Then a court-martial shall be the least of your concerns.” He fingered the tip of his sword hilt, enjoying the doubtful shadow that passed over Wickham’s face. “Oh, come, Wickham, you know I would never murder a man in cold blood! An honourable duel, now that would be quite another matter, but you are safer unarmed.”
“For a man who desires information, you are less than accommodating,” grumbled Wickham.
“Have you slander to speak against a lady? Do you intend to ruin any gentlemen of my acquaintance with your lies?”
Wickham gave a short huff. “You will wish they were lies. They will be ruined one way or another, so I suppose I may as well be the one to profit by it.”
“You are noble, indeed. Who was it who desired Darcy killed and wished Georgiana to be isolated? Someone I know?”
Wickham shrugged casually. “I believe you are acquainted with him, yes.”
Fitzwilliam leaned forward in the seat, waiting for the next words, but Wickham was nothing if not a skilled showman. The condemned man had tilted his head to the side, gazing out at the trees as they rolled by. Fitzwilliam hissed and fell back against the squab in disgust. He had let that rat bait him again! Never again, he vowed to himself.
“Fitzwilliam, will you make me a different promise?”
He arched a brow. “I promise you will die quickly.”
Wickham’s eyes were narrowed, and he still gazed out of the carriage as though something genuinely troubled him. “I will give you a name, if you swear to do me one service, should it come to the worst for me.”
Fitzwilliam glanced cynically over him. Was Wickham truly contemplating his own mortality, or was he merely playing for sympathy? “And what is this service?”
“Will you give Mrs Wickham a letter? You need not promise that she will read it, nor even that you will have a kind word to say about me to her, but will you give it to her? She is all the family I have, do you see.” He sighed unhappily.
“You wish for me to give a letter to your adolescent bride, a young lady whose reputation you ruined and whose life shall be forever altered by the few days you actually spent in her company?”
“Yes,” Wickham shrugged simply.
“She would be well within her rights to burn the letter and stomp on your portrait.”
“If that is her wish. You will give it to her?”
Fitzwilliam shook his head, muttering words that were better left under his breath. “I will place your abominable script of falsehoods within her reach, but there I wash my hands of it. Now, tell me what you know.”
“What I know is that this person was approached by a foreign party—”
“Vasconcelos,” Richard interrupted with curled lip.
“Yes, the very one. That gentleman desired the deed of which I spoke, and this other promised to deliver it. In return, Darcy was to ‘disappear,’ though I believe each party held a different definition of the term. Darcy was supposed to remain dead, but when he escaped Portugal, I began hearin
g urgent rumours to that effect. There were men dispatched to recapture him, or at worst, capture Miss Darcy so that she might act as incentive for this other party to complete his task and procure the deed.”
“And, where is it? You said you knew.”
“Oh, I do not know that, specifically, but I can tell you where you ought to begin.”
“Which is?”
“Why, have you not already discerned it? With Viscount Matlock, of course. Your brother.”
~
Pemberley
Darcy fell into his seat, eyes furiously scanning the pages.
“What do you make of it, William?” Elizabeth crouched before him in her own seat, leaning forward intently. “It must be the same!”
“Indeed, it is. This journal was in Pemberley’s library? How came it to be discovered only recently?”
“I know this book, Fitzwilliam!” Georgiana cried eagerly. “Our aunt found it when she had the library torn apart. She brought it to Richard and demanded that we burn it, but Richard merely gave it to Mrs Reynolds to place with the rest of the books our aunt wanted discarded.”
“She warned me to burn it as well,” Elizabeth remembered. “If it was so scandalous, why did she not simply throw it in the fire herself?”
Darcy thumbed through some of the yellowed pages. “She does not do things herself. She commands them to be done—it is so much a part of her assumed prestige, that she scarcely thinks of doing otherwise. Besides, there is little here that could truly convict anyone of anything—allusions, that is all. It seems that my grandmother removed what information might have been truly damaging before the journal was placed in the family collection.”
“So,” Lydia plucked a bit of cheese from a tray which Mrs Reynolds had brought her, “we must find the pages. Where could they be, Lizzy?”
“If I were removing pages from my journal for reasons of privacy, I would burn them.”
“Or keep them hidden in a secret place,” Georgiana suggested hopefully. Do you think anything was important enough to keep? A memento of sorts, in case something ever came of it again?”
“It appears that Lady Georgina was determined to wash her hands of it,” Darcy mused. “Grandmother was a strong-minded woman; it is a pity you have no memory of her. I cannot imagine her leaving spare pages to chance.”
“But if she did,” Elizabeth pondered slowly, “she would have been most selective about the place where she kept them. She said at one point that it was difficult to find such a place in her chambers. Are there secret doors in the house? A garret, perhaps, with a locked desk that has been forgotten?”
Darcy smiled at her gothic suggestions, but shook his head. “I know every corner of this house, and you may have faith that Mrs Reynolds leaves nothing neglected.”
“What about the study, Fitzwilliam?” Georgiana suggested. “Are there not some of Father’s own journals there?”
“His, and Grandfather’s as well. I have read them all a number of times, and I can assure you that there was no mention of anything resembling this.”
“Well,” Lydia stacked a small piece of cold meat on another slice of cheese, “perhaps that awful Lady Catherine truly did burn some things. I think she would even destroy the family birth records, if someone married someone she did not care for. What a good joke! Lizzy, do you realise how annoyed you shall make her when… Lizzy? Lizzy, you are making the face again.”
“Elizabeth?” Darcy leaned forward to catch her attention. “Have you thought of something?”
Elizabeth’s eyes were large, and she put a hand to her mouth. “William, my bedroom! Lady Catherine told me that it was the guest room given to both your mother and grandmother when they first visited Pemberley!”
He glanced at his sister. “It is the finest suite in that wing, typically reserved for… highly esteemed guests. In fact, we use it but seldom, and it is counted an honour.”
“And if Lady Georgina wished to keep something out of the way….”
Darcy rose abruptly from his seat and clasped Elizabeth by the hand. “Come. And send for Mrs Reynolds, Georgiana—only she, none of the maids. It will likely take all of us to search, but I would limit the number of persons with direct knowledge.”
~
The search commenced at once, with Darcy and Elizabeth working together to move and inspect the heavier pieces of furniture. Mrs Reynolds and Georgiana pulled out drawers and felt inside each crevice, while Lydia made absolutely certain that the vanity desk and chair concealed nothing of interest.
“Could something have been tucked behind a mirror?” Elizabeth wondered.
“I looked there,” answered Georgiana. “And behind all the paintings, but that would have been done when Mother had the room re-papered.”
“Re-papered?” Elizabeth’s hope began to flag. “I did not realise that. I suppose there is nothing in this room that could have been left untouched.”
“The floor has not been redone in at least two generations,” William commented. He tilted his head from a number of angles, examining the wooden grooves for any break in their regularity.
Elizabeth tapped her finger to her lips. Now, what items had Lady Catherine noted most particularly? Perhaps those had been unchanged since the days of Lady Anne, at least, if not Lady Georgina. Had not Darcy’s grandmother lived several years after her husband’s death? Perhaps this room might have even served her again during those years of widowhood.
Elizabeth stood back, placing herself in the exact footsteps of Lady Catherine, and surveyed the room. The painting, Georgiana had checked. The bed, she and William had moved. The vanity, the writing desk, the lamp…. she paused. Mrs Reynolds saw the direction of Elizabeth’s gaze, and followed her lead at once. She lifted the old glass, and then the brass covering where the oil was added.
Elizabeth picked up the base. It was large, but the oil well did not fill the whole. She tilted it toward Mrs Reynolds with a curious brow. Mrs Reynolds adjusted her glasses and felt of the brass ridges at the seams. She curled her fingers and caught the lip of the oil well, and it lifted out easily from the remainder of the base.
William was standing behind her shoulder now, and he took the bottom from Elizabeth’s hands. With long fingers, he reached into the base and withdrew a folded yellow paper.
“What is it?” Lydia bounced from her chair. Georgiana, too, had crowded round as William unfolded the old page. He caught Elizabeth’s eyes, and a spark of triumph passed between them.
“It is a deed.”
~
“William, I am not convinced of the wisdom in traveling to London just now.”
Darcy glanced up from the notes he was penning as Elizabeth found him out in his study. “If I do not settle this, it shall continue to trouble us. Vasconcelos—the elder, from my grandmother’s journal—had a son, and he bore me some grudge. I now begin to think there was more to the affair than simply a missing document. He viewed the matter as a personal offence, as if my grandfather had intentionally disgraced his father.”
“But even if he did, William, it was sixty years ago!”
“I think you underestimate the honour of old families, Elizabeth. If his father lost his position at court or a considerable fortune in the business, he might well yet foster a grievance. Memories are long, because the influence of one generation is felt for several more.” He followed this little speech with a look of grave apology. “It is foolish, perhaps, but it is the way of things in….” His cheek flinched and he looked abruptly back to his writing.
“In your sphere of society,” she completed softly. “You are correct, William, perhaps there are things I do not understand.”
He blinked thoughtfully, staring at his page. “It is a credit to you that familial pride such as this is beyond your comprehension. You judge the individual, not his ancestors. My statement was not one of condescension, Elizabeth.”
She took his hand with a wistful smile. “I came to realis
e that nearly a year ago.”
He looked quickly back to her face. “I ought never to have spoken to you so! I am a selfish being, Elizabeth, thinking first of what duty I owed my family and—yes, I dare confess—my pride. You exposed my vanity for what it was. Had you been any less generous of heart, I could never have learned to hope again! I never could have done….” He bit his lips together and returned his gaze to the page, a flush staining his countenance.
“It was not I who was generous.” Elizabeth touched her fingers gently to his jaw, caressing his cheek and turning his eyes back to her. “I misjudged you, willfully and almost irreversibly. Had I not been so blinded by my own foolishness, I might have answered you at least with civility.”
“What did you say that I did not deserve? I am only grateful, my dearest Elizabeth, that you came here last summer and were willing to renew our acquaintance. Had I not seen you again, and begun to cherish the hope that your opinion might be improved, I could not have endured those months without you.”
“Might not that have made it worse for you, to think that perhaps we could have had a future but that you were helpless to free yourself?”
He caught her hand and kissed it. “Worse, and yet somehow I felt as if I still had a life that I was meant to live. You kept my heart beating, Elizabeth, and it was the dream of you that gave me the strength to find my way home.”
She began to blink and her throat felt tight. “I must say, sir, that your address has improved remarkably since last year, for I am finding it difficult not to swoon into your embrace and kiss you most scandalously.”
“I was hoping you would.”
“I might have done sooner, but that I was not certain where I was to kiss you. There seems to be a deal too much of your skin at hand, and I am afraid the task might take longer than I presently have.”
These Dreams: A Pride and Prejudice Variation Page 59