North by Northanger

by Mr. ; Mrs. Darcy Mystery; Carrie Bebris

  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.”

  “You shall know him quite well. When we meet him in Bath, I will ask him to come to Pemberley immediately and stay until the child is born.”

  “For months? Darcy, that hardly seems necessary. What of his other patients?”

  “I shall compensate him handsomely enough for you to be his only patient.”

  She opened her mouth to reply, but at the slight shake of his head she held her tongue. Darcy could be resolute with far less at stake—when confronted with the need to protect something precious to him, his drive was too fierce to redirect. Unable to remove a risk to someone he loved, he would do what he could to mitigate it. That trait was one of the things she admired most in him.

  “Very well,” she said. “Though I assure you, this”—she held up the letter—”will not become my fate. I am far too stubborn.”

  “My mother also possessed a strong will.”

  “So I surmise. She insisted on finishing this letter, after all, despite the circumstances.” No doubt, her husband had inherited at least some of his determination from his mother. Like Darcy, Lady Anne had been trying to safeguard—or rather, recover—something precious to her right up until the end of her life. What could it have been, this object she wanted so desperately? Elizabeth could not imagine anything the faultless Lady Anne might have been denied, any object she could have lost that would not have been immediately replaced. “The item to which she refers—do you know what it is?”

  “No. And I suppose we never shall.”

  She refolded the letter and offered it to Darcy. “Would you care to keep it?”

  “She wrote it to you.”

  “She wrote it to the wife of her dear Fitzwilliam.”

  “Precisely. Which is why it rightfully belongs to you. Unless you do not want it?”

  Elizabeth did not feel personally connected to the letter or its author, but would never admit as much to Darcy. “Of course I want it. It was written by your mother, someone important to you.” She would keep it with the growing collection of Lady Anne’s effects that she sought storage for—someplace safe but out of everyday sight. A house as large as Pemberley surely held room enough for two Mrs. Darcys.

  If the former one would only leave her be.

  Three

  I give you joy of our new nephew, and hope if he ever comes to be hanged it will not be till we are too old to care about it.

  —Jane Austen, letter to her sister, Cassandra

  T his has been a pleasant visit,” Elizabeth said, cuddling the tiny sleeping form against her shoulder one final time. The delight she experienced in holding her nephew was equaled only by that of seeing her sister Jane in good health and happy spirits following his entrance into the world. Nicholas Charles Bingley possessed the ideal attributes of a newborn: his mother’s sweet countenance, his father’s easy temper, and a love of attention that surpassed even that of his aunt Caroline. He seldom cried except when hungry—though on those occasions he exhibited a fretfulness almost certainly inherited from his maternal grandmother. Elizabeth and Darcy had been honored to stand as his godparents.

  “If only you did not have to depart so soon,” Jane replied. “I am sorry Lydia and Mr. Wickham arrived when they did. Had I known they were coming, I would have asked them to postpone.”

  “It is not your fault. At least we enjoyed some time together before they appeared.” Their youngest sister and her husband, who had not been anticipated for the christening, had dropped in unexpectedly for a visit of undetermined duration, ostensibly so that Lydia
could assist Jane. However, Lydia’s aversion to useful occupation and insensibility to the needs of a new mother and child rendered any actual aid from her unlikely at best. This morning, she had quickly grown restless at the sisters’ quiet conversation and had fled Jane’s dressing room in search of superior distraction.

  “But two days in the same house is as much of Mr. Wickham as Darcy can bear,” Elizabeth continued. “He could scarcely endure him long enough for the ceremony to take place.”

  George Wickham, an army officer and a general reprobate, had a long and checkered history with the Darcy family. His father had been Pemberley’s steward, and young Wickham and Fitzwilliam Darcy had grown up together. In fact, George had been named after Darcy’s father, who had stood as his godfather. Regrettably, George Wickham did not share his godfather’s noble character and had grown into a wild, selfish young man.

  “Thank goodness Georgiana’s previous engagement prevented her from accompanying you,” Jane said, “or the situation would have been even more uncomfortable.”

  “Yes. Far better that she remains at Pemberley, safe from any encounter with Lydia’s husband.”

  Jane was the only other member of Elizabeth’s family who knew that upon the elder Mr. Darcy’s death, Wickham had repaid his godfather’s lifelong kindness and generosity by attempting to elope with Georgiana—then but fifteen years old—and thus acquire her inheritance. Luckily, her brother had learned of the plot before Wickham could execute it. Elizabeth’s sister, however, had not been as fortunate. When Lydia fell prey to the scheming Wickham last year, he seduced her before anyone realized her danger. Though Darcy managed to restore the Bennet family’s reputation by pressuring—and paying—Wickham to marry Lydia, his success came at the price of now tolerating a man he loathed as his brother-in-law.

  “How long will you stay in Bath?” Jane asked.

  “A fortnight. Long enough to meet Dr. Severn, though whether I like the man seems immaterial at this point.”

  “Does your reluctance stem from not desiring a man-midwife, or because you feel Mr. Darcy allows you no choice?”

  “Both. Male accoucheurs might be fashionable among the ton, but I have never cared twopence for what is fashionable.” Nicholas stirred against her, and she realized her voice had risen. She stroked his back, and he settled against her peacefully once again. “What I object to most,” she continued more quietly, “is Darcy’s treating me like an invalid. I do not need a physician to attend me around the clock from now until my lying-in.”

  “He loves you.”

  “I love him, too, but he may drive me mad before this child is born. If he worries this much now, I dare not imagine him when my waist has fully expanded. He will lock me in a bedchamber and shut out the sunlight. He will spoon-feed me barley water and blancmange. He will let all the servants go and replace them with medical men. Pemberley will be the only house in England where apothecaries sweep the fireplaces and surgeons polish the silver.”

  Jane laughed. “It will not be as bad as all that.”

  “You believe it may be worse? Indeed, I am in for a very long winter.”

  “Truly, Lizzy, you may find Dr. Severn’s presence reassuring. Yes, women enter childbed every day, but we both know it can be dangerous, and I for one found the delivery itself rather frightening. Mama was here, but her nerves were in such a state that the midwife asked her to leave because she only added to my distress. So she went downstairs and shared her anxiety with Charles until his nerves nearly required a physician’s care.”

  “My poor Jane! I wish I had been here with you, as we had planned.”

  “Apparently, Nicholas was so eager to meet his aunt that he wanted to greet you in person. But I shall come to Pemberley in time for your confinement. By then we will have settled in our new home, so I shall be but thirty miles distant—an easy journey, even with Nicholas.”

  After leasing Netherfield for two years, Jane’s husband had finally found an estate that pleased them both. Just that morning, he had signed papers to purchase Ashdown House in Staffordshire. The sisters rejoiced that they would soon live in neighboring counties. Less frequent contact with Jane had been one of Elizabeth’s few regrets upon quitting Hertfordshire.

  “I know I can depend upon you. So long as Darcy does not smother me with solicitude before then.”

  “Has he been apprehensive since you first told him you were in the family way?”

  “More so following our discovery of that letter from his mother. I must find something else for him to contemplate besides the possibility of my imminent demise.”

  “Perhaps the letter itself can help. Did you not say that Lady Anne mentioned a lost object? Mr. Darcy has a talent for solving problems—he located Lydia and Wickham in London after they eloped, and he apprehended that blackguard who tormented poor Caroline here at Netherfield. You could suggest he try to find whatever item his mother misplaced.”

  Elizabeth did not think she wanted Darcy dwelling on the contents of that letter any more than he already did. Further, while her husband indeed excelled at deducing answers, she herself had also played a crucial role in identifying Caroline Bingley’s antagonist, as well as in solving another puzzle that had fallen their way this past spring. And Lady Anne’s letter, after all, had been addressed to her.

  “Lady Anne must have had a reason for writing to someone other than her son. Perhaps Darcy and I should seek it together.”

  “Seek what?” Lydia strolled in and dropped herself into a chair. “Lord, but I am bored! Wickham’s off shooting and Mama has not come over from Longbourn yet. But you two seem to have finally finished talking about babies. What are you discussing? Who is Lady Anne?”

  “Darcy’s mother.”

  “I thought she was dead.”

  “She is.”

  “Then how could she write to anybody?”

  Elizabeth summoned her reserves of patience, which always ran low in her youngest sister’s company. Despite having acquired the status of a matron when she wed a year ago, Lydia had gained neither understanding nor discretion along with her wedding ring. At seventeen, she remained as immature and self-absorbed as she had ever been. “We found a note she wrote before she died.”

  “A note about what? You said something about seeking.”

  Elizabeth had hardly intended to discuss Lady Anne’s letter with Lydia. “She briefly mentioned having lost some item or other. We do not even know to what she referred.”

  “But you’re going to look for it? Oh—a treasure hunt! What fun! May I come help?”

  Lydia’s snooping around Pemberley was the last thing that would improve Darcy’s mood. “It is not a treasure hunt. There is nothing to find.”

  “But you said—

  “There is no treasure,” Elizabeth repeated emphatically. “Hence, no hunt. And no reason to discuss this further. It was just an old letter, that is all.”

  “Oh. Well, who cares about some old letter?”

  “Precisely.”

  Nicholas opened his eyes, stretched, and let out a cry. Elizabeth tried to comfort him but he soon let it be known that he required more than a soft voice to satisfy him. “Jane, I think your son is hungry again.”

  “Good grief!” Lydia exclaimed. “Does he never stop crying? I cannot listen to it a moment longer. Lizzy, may I use your carriage to go visit Maria Lucas? I have not seen her since I reached Hertfordshire.”

  “I am afraid not. Darcy and I depart shortly. In fact, I have already been too long bidding Jane farewell.” She brought the baby to Jane, kissed her sister’s cheek, and stroked Nicholas’s downy hair one final time. “Take good care of your mama,” she told her nephew.

  Lydia pouted. “What about your carriage, Jane?”

  Jane delayed a response, though Elizabeth suspected she would capitulate just to buy herself some peace. First, however, she addressed Elizabeth. “Write to me as soon as you meet Dr. Severn,” she said. “I long to know what you think of him.”

 
“So do I.”

  “Who is Dr. Severn?” Lydia asked.

  “An accoucheur who might attend me in spring.”

  Lydia rolled her eyes. “Can anybody in this house speak of something besides babies?”

  Four

  “Oh! who can ever be tired of Bath?”

  —Catherine Morland, Northanger Abbey

  O ctober marked the start of the official season in Bath, where members of the Polite World gathered in winter to improve their health and their social standing in a single convenient venue. Mornings were spent “taking the waters,” either through immersion in one of the city’s natural hot baths or by visiting the Pump Room to imbibe a draught of spa water. Evenings were devoted to concerts at Sidney Gardens, plays at the Theatre Royal, public assemblies at the Upper and Lower Rooms, and private parties in the stately town houses of the Crescent. In between, the streets themselves, designed for promenading and lined with any shop one could imagine, offered endless occupation and amusement. Yes, Bath held a cure for any ailment, whether one sought to fortify a weak constitution, a weak claim to society, or a weak wardrobe.

  Though Darcy seldom visited Bath, he discovered many familiar names among the announcements of new arrivals in the Chronicle and the Pump Room’s red book. Much of London’s haut ton had migrated west for the winter, as had some prominent country families with whom he or Elizabeth were acquainted. They found, however, no close friends among those known to be in town. Save for their business with Dr. Severn, their two weeks’ time in Bath was their own.

  He had written to the physician immediately upon their arrival yesterday at lodgings in Pulteney Street. Dr. Severn had replied that the earliest he could meet with them was the following Monday. So today, Darcy and Elizabeth had elected to visit the Pump Room, where Elizabeth wished to sample the renowned water. Darcy, who had previously tasted the waters at Bath and other spas—and considered the experience sufficient indulgence for a lifetime—left his wife on one end of the busy room and went to procure a glass for her.