“She is at Longbourn now with the Gardiners’ children, which can only be a delight to her. Jane loves the little ones, and they grew very close while she stayed in London this winter.”
“I so love hearing stories from Longbourn,” said Georgiana. “It always seems such a merry crush.”
Looking about the giant corridors of the wing they passed through, Elizabeth could well imagine the cozy hallways and drawing rooms of her own little estate seeming a crush.
But Georgiana went on. “Being here in this great house all alone but for my cousin, I am quite bereft. It is so quiet here. Beautiful, but empty. Having you come is such a comfort to me.”
“I will endeavor to do my best to make merry for the whole of my visit,” Elizabeth promised.
And she did. For the rest of the week, the grand halls of Pemberley were filled with laughter and conversation, as the two true friends enjoyed themselves to the fullest possible extent. If there had been any concern at all about the suitability of the guests from Cheapside as associates of Miss Georgiana Darcy, Colonel Fitzwilliam showed not the slightest indication. Despite being the son of an earl, he was as friendly and welcoming to the Gardiners as he might have been to a peer, and he and Mr. Gardiner soon discovered they had similar political interests and could talk for hours. The evenings, of course, were filled with Georgiana’s music.
Mrs. Gardiner was delighted by Georgiana, as Elizabeth knew she would be, and the reverse was certainly the case, and the two spent many hours comparing notes on the older woman’s memories of growing up in Lambton and Georgiana’s recollections of the village as well. Mr. Gardiner enjoyed fishing in the lakes and streams, and they all took a ride around the park in Georgiana’s pony cart.
Her ponies were named Cobweb and Mustardseed. Elizabeth was pleased to have met the entire set.
As their time at Pemberley drew to a close, Georgiana grew quiet and sad, and opined more than once that she wished they did not have to move on.
“Alas,” said Elizabeth. “My uncle’s business will not allow him too much time away. He shall have to return to London eventually.”
“We all will return to London eventually, Georgiana,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “Even I cannot stay in Derbyshire forever. You, too, will be down in the winter. I am sure we can arrange for another visit then.”
But Georgiana had other ideas. She approached Elizabeth with a scheme of staying on in Derbyshire after her aunt and uncle’s departure.
“My cousin says it is all right!” she insisted. “And you know, our carriage might take you home whenever you desire. We would take care of every detail. And if we are to leave in a few weeks anyway, we can take you with us to Longbourn on our way to London.” She took Elizabeth’s hands in her own. “Please say that it is all right. Colonel Fitzwilliam believes you might not be able to, given as how your father has never met us. But I am sure Mr. Gardiner will stand as our reference.”
Elizabeth felt torn. She had so enjoyed traveling with her aunt and uncle, but at the same time, Pemberley was beautiful, and Georgiana in obvious need of a friend. She thought of her own sisters, and how she had always taken for granted that they would be there for each other. She had known the love and affection of Jane her entire life, and had in turn kissed each scraped knee and pricked fingertip for Mary, Kitty, and Lydia. But Georgiana, left without companions after the incident with Mrs. Younge the previous summer, had only her cousin.
Especially with her brother gone.
She brought the scheme to Mrs. Gardiner to ask her advice. The older woman laughed. “I can well imagine you’d find it more pleasant to be your young friend’s companion, and travel with her, rather than your old, unfashionable aunt and uncle.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “I have loved this journey.”
“And we have loved having you, but I agree with you that Miss Darcy is a singular creature, and she has taken a very great liking to you. Tell me, Elizabeth, are you driven by your affection for Miss Darcy, or by the duty you feel is owed to her brother for the service he rendered you last winter?”
Her aunt was perceptive as always!
“Georgiana sought me out from the first because she somehow understood that I held more sympathy for her brother than others in our circle, even if she did not know why.” And Elizabeth knew the truth of everything that had come between Georgiana and Mr. Wickham, as well. It was a secret she would take to her grave. “But our friendship has grown far beyond its initial impetus.”
“Yes, as I have seen for myself this past week. And Colonel Fitzwilliam has observed to me how good he thinks you are for her. Miss Darcy was apparently known to all as an exceedingly shy creature, but I confess, I should not have known it to see how you interact. Your influence upon her these past few months must have done much to bring her out.”
“She is a darling girl. As sweet as Jane, but with a fire I believe must be a Darcy trait. Her shyness is something I first noticed when we met in Kent, but it melted away as I came to know her better. It is, I believe, a factor of her loneliness. She did not have the benefit of a mother or sisters, as I have. Her mother and father, I understand, died when she was but a child, and as to her brother—well, I suppose he tried as hard as he could to be both brother and father to her.”
But as the words fell from her lips, Elizabeth was forced to stop as a new thought rose in her mind. Georgiana’s supposed shyness and the taciturn, unfriendly nature that Mr. Darcy had presented when he was in Hertfordshire—were they not of a piece? Neither Darcy conversed easily with strangers. Perhaps it was a family habit, or perhaps it was the result of a lifetime spent protecting themselves from those who might seek to take advantage of them. Georgiana had barely spoken a word to her when first they met, yet after they had learned of each other’s secrets, she was full of conversation. Likewise, Elizabeth had thought Darcy unfriendly, unfeeling, and had very nearly remained insensible to the fact that his long silences and curt answers hid a depth of feeling and care that ought to have been admired.
And still she would be ignorant of it, were it not for what had befallen Mr. Wickham, and what Mr. Darcy had done afterward.
“Lizzy,” Mrs. Gardiner said now, “I feel called upon to ask you. Are you at all in contact with Mr. Darcy? Is there an element to this tale you have not shared?”
“No indeed, aunt!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “I do not believe anyone is in contact with Mr. Darcy, and certainly not I. I have not seen him since the morning after the Netherfield ball—” she cut herself off.
“The morning after?” her aunt asked, astonished. “He came to see you?”
Elizabeth bowed her head. “It was by chance. I was out walking with Jane, trying to clear my head, while Papa was in conference with Mr. Phillips. His carriage passed us in the lane. He was leaving the county—I suppose to go to London. He stopped and descended—I scarcely understood why. But…he was the one to tell me that Mr. Wickham was dead.”
Mrs. Gardiner pressed a hand to her heart. “Oh, my dear!”
“He explained what he had done—he explained about Mr. Phillips. I told him no one had the power to stop gossip.” She shrugged. “I was right. No one has that power, or I should have certainly stopped it in Meryton when I knew what was being said of him.”
“Does Miss Darcy know? Does she know the extent of what her brother has done for you?”
Did she know that he suffered only because he would not allow Elizabeth to suffer instead?
“She knows the truth of what transpired at Netherfield,” Elizabeth replied. “I have been honest with her about the way Mr. Wickham died.”
Mrs. Gardiner frowned. “This whole week, what I have heard from Miss Darcy is that her brother is missed. What I have heard from everyone in the area is that Mr. Darcy is a good man, and no one knows why he has let the wagging of vicious tongues drive him away from his home.”
“I know,” said Lizzy. “Think you that I should tell Georgiana about the origin of that wretched tale?”
<
br /> “You know her better than I do,” replied her aunt. “I am afraid it may cause her to resent you, if she knew that you had any part in the rumor which has so bruised her brother’s reputation that he fled England.”
Elizabeth was afraid of that, too, and resolved that if she planned to remain with Georgiana after her aunt and uncle had left, she must do so with the intention of revealing to her friend the totality of her dealings with Mr. Darcy.
Permission was sought from Mr. Gardiner and the appropriate letters written home to Mr. Bennet explaining the plan. She knew not what her father might think about her deciding to remain in the home of Mr. Darcy upon an extended visit. His eyebrows had already raised at the notion that she and the Gardiners would be visiting Pemberley upon their trip to Derbyshire.
It pained her some, this strange doubt that had sprouted between them after the tragedy at the Netherfield ball, as if, on some level, her father had never fully trusted that the story Mr. Wickham had related on his deathbed was false. She knew she should be satisfied that he did not think it sufficient to force her to be sacrificed in marriage, but still.
She had never lied to him. She was not sure he knew that.
At any rate, it did not signify. Now, as when she had first received the invitation, the only Darcy Elizabeth would associate with at Pemberley was Georgiana.
On the day the Gardiners left without her, Elizabeth entrusted a letter home to Jane, who, other than her father, she felt might miss her most.
“Do take care of yourself,” Mrs. Gardiner said. “Yourself, and your young friend.”
“Of course,” said Elizabeth. “Give my love to everyone at Longbourn.”
They embraced, and Mrs. Gardiner left, with only one long, meaningful look toward Georgiana to indicate to her niece that she had unfinished business there.
Elizabeth did not disagree, yet she remained unsure of how best to broach the topic with her friend. As if by common agreement, neither of them brought up the troubles that had marked their year. The name of Wickham was not spoken, and, aside from that first day, they never talked about what drove Mr. Darcy’s continued absence.
Mr. Darcy, however, was an evergreen topic of conversation. Mr. Darcy’s taste in the new furnishings of Georgiana’s upstairs sitting-room. Mr. Darcy’s vested interest in growing the family library. The way Mr. Darcy had overseen the planting of the nut orchard, or how well Mr. Darcy had liked to swim in the nearby pond.
Elizabeth sometimes wondered if her old self would be shocked to hear how often she found herself talking of Mr. Darcy. No longer did he loom in her imagination as the gentleman who had found her merely “tolerable.” And though she had once thought the image might never be supplanted, when she pictured him now, it was not in that dreadful moment at Netherfield, when he had turned to her in shock and told her to run. No, now the face she pictured was the keen half-smile he wore in the portrait in the Pemberley gallery, the kind, intelligent young man that Georgiana, Mrs. Reynolds, and Colonel Fitzwilliam were fond of describing.
How then, in the face of all this kindness from the Darcys, might Elizabeth tell Georgiana the truth of her brother’s service to her? How she had avoided, teased, and mocked the gentleman for weeks, and he had not only saved her from harm at the hands of a cad, but also directed vicious rumors away from her and onto himself? Georgiana had been so good to her, as Darcy had been before.
Elizabeth decided a walk might clear her head, and so, as Georgiana practiced and Colonel Fitzwilliam closed himself in the study with some matters of business, Elizabeth tied on her bonnet and went out into the afternoon.
The day was overcast, with a dry, blustery wind that stirred the dust in the road into eddies and rippled the water in the pond. Elizabeth took a favorite, twisting path into the woods, where only a few minutes walking brought one beyond the sight of the house and into the company of ancient trees. Perhaps these were the very trees that Mr. Darcy had discussed with her, that long ago day beneath the yew. The trees that were his friends, that he missed whenever he was far from home.
She wondered if he missed them now, these friends. These friends who would stand for him, even if others had fled.
Georgiana must understand her brother’s way. His impetus to protect others, to always take responsibility and try to fix things. She would understand why he had done what he did, and that Elizabeth had not been to blame.
Thus decided, she at last began to make her way back to the house. The clouds had gathered, turning the sky from a reasonable silver to a darker gray, and the wind had grown worse. Her skirt flapped about her ankles as she exited the woods and crossed the bridge over the stream that ran before the house. She followed that same stream up to where it swelled into prominence near the front door, but came to a sudden stop on the lawn.
There was an unfamiliar black carriage standing there. And as she watched, the door to the carriage opened. And out stepped Mr. Darcy.
Chapter 22
The skies above Pemberley were as gray as the stones which made up its edifice. The stream that ran in front was a similar, slate gray. Gray was the gravel path, and gray the dusty carriage in which Darcy rode.
And the woman who stood there, in a white muslin dress and a flower-sprigged bonnet, staring at him with her little rosebud mouth open in shock… was a vision.
Elizabeth Bennet.
She haunted him still.
“Mr. Darcy?” she whispered across the mist.
The footman, coming around the carriage, looked from him to her, as if she were real, and not a mere figment, as she’d been these many long months. As if she were really standing on his lawn.
“Mr. Darcy?” she repeated. “Is it really you?”
“Miss Bennet?” he managed.
He heard his name being called, as if from a great distance, and then a young woman threw herself into his arms. But no—this woman, so tall and slim—how could it be his little Georgiana? But who else would it be, who would hold him so tight, and bury her face into his chest?
“Why didn’t you write? Why didn’t you tell us you were coming home?” she chided. “I thought we might never see you again! We’ve had no word. For months, we’ve had no word at all!”
“Take care, Georgiana,” said the vision of Elizabeth Bennet. It had to be a fantasy. Only listen to how she called his sister by her Christian name! “You shall overwhelm him.”
“Then come into the house!” Georgiana insisted. “Come in and rest. We keep your room ready for you, you know. It shall only take an instant for Mrs. Reynolds to be sure it is prepared. How tired you look! And how very brown, and thin. Don’t you think he looks thin, Elizabeth?”
Elizabeth, now! How was it his sister could call her Elizabeth? How came she to be at Pemberley?
Was he dreaming? Had he fallen asleep in the carriage?
“I think,” said Elizabeth, with the sly little smile he’d pictured in his sleep for months, “that he looks precisely like a man who has undertaken a long and difficult journey. Shall we assess his features at a later date, and now, simply appreciate his—” she met his eyes and her voice faltered. “—Mr. Darcy’s return.”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
He was bundled off into the house, which was as grand and as frozen in time as any monument to the ancients. Marble and art, gilt and glory, servants scurrying about with faces of shock and awe.
The master is home. The master is home.
And Georgiana, clinging tightly to his arm and speaking of their cousin and the steward and the tenants and the new developments on their land and word of the harvest, and how pleased his lordship the earl and Lady Catherine would be to hear of his return and—
“How do you know Elizabeth Bennet?” he croaked. “How came she to be here at Pemberley?”
Georgiana shook her head. “Did you read none of my letters, brother? Have you so little care in your travels for news from your own sister?”
He did not feel equal to replying. He had read her lett
ers, in the beginning. They’d been full of frets and worries. He could not take the anguish and guilt that dripped from every line. For a while he’d let them pile up. And then he’d simply declined to leave a forwarding address.
“Elizabeth and I met at Rosings Park this past spring. She is the dearest person in the world to me, save you and our cousin, of course, and when I learned she was traveling through Derbyshire with her aunt and uncle, I knew I must invite them here. And here she is! And here you are. Oh, here you are! I cannot believe it!”
Her eyes were wet with tears, but on her face she wore such an enormous smile, the likes of which he had not seen in years. His dear Georgiana! She had grown so much since he left her in London. She seemed such a woman now. No longer the child he had so fiercely protected last year, the awkward adolescent he’d watched mope around their home in the months that followed her botched elopement.
She glowed, she beamed, she…spoke. Her shyness seemed to have evaporated like morning mist. She issued orders to the servants and bustled him into his rooms and took charge of every matter. No finishing school could teach such poise.
“Now, you are to wash and change, and then think very hard about whether you will dine with us, or have a tray brought into your room. Of course, I shall not stand upon ceremony, this night at least. I know how tiring travel can be. And it will be good for you to preserve as much strength as you can, as I am sure our cousin shall interrogate you mercilessly, on his father’s behalf as well his own. And, I dare say, upon mine.”
He stared at her in astonishment at such a pronouncement, but she merely hugged him again and left, her smile broader than ever.
Where had she learned to tease him? That was not the Georgiana he knew. He dropped to his bed, utterly baffled. And then it hit him. Of course.
Elizabeth Bennet.
In Darcy's Dreams Page 15