by Jane Lark
“Oh!” The cry came from Cassandra.
“What?” Jane rounded the steps. Cassandra’s short boots came into sight again and the stairwell was lighter.
“There is nothing here.”
Jane looked up. Except sky… The stairs come to an abrupt end. “What can you see?” Jane asked Cassandra.
“The whole of the ruins. I’ll trade with you in a moment.”
Jane’s fingers pressed against the stone of the central spiral, but an abrasion caught her attention. She looked. There were markings. Letters. Her fingertips traced the carving. T W 1759. She looked down and her fingers traced another carving. R A 1778. She looked at the other side of the stairs. There were more carvings. J M 1762. People had climbed this tower and recorded their assents for the benefit of history. A moment in each person’s personal story actually captured on the walls.
“Come and look. I’ll step down,” Cassandra said.
As Cassandra pressed herself against the outer stone, Jane cautiously made her way past on the narrow end of the spiralling steps.
“You will love the view,” Cassandra said.
The open sky above them beckoned, offering hope for a beautiful sight. Jane’s boots brushed on the dusty worn stone as she climbed the last few steps, thinking of the hundreds—or surely it had been thousands—of people, who had climbed the steps when this castle had been whole and alive. “Oh.” The air left her lungs on a sharp, hard breath. She stood upon the top of the world, the castle ruins laid out before her, like a model on the ground. She was at the highest point of the castle’s remaining towers.
It was beautiful, and perfectly gothic, with the pale grey and white clouds hovering over it. But the emotion winning out above all others as Jane looked at the ruins was the fascination Cassandra had spoken of. “I have never seen anything like this.”
“Nor I.”
“It is magnificent.”
“It is.”
Jane looked back at her sister. “I shall never forget this.”
“No.” Cassandra climbed up a couple of steps and then looked across Jane’s shoulder. “There must have been so many buildings. So many high walls.”
Jane tried to envision how it might have been in olden times, and how Susan might see it with her over-eager mind.
She stood there for what seemed a long time, merely looking. Then Cassandra’s fingers touched her arm. “We should explore some more.”
“Yes.” Jane turned with a smile which rose all the way from her heart before it lifted her lips.
The dark grey inside her had gone. There were still pale grey clouds holding back entire happiness, yet there was no thick veil of black over her. Happiness was visible in the distance, far away and yet it beckoned her. It whispered, telling her she could reach it.
She would be wholly happy when she had settled in Frank’s home. It was a promise she made to herself.
Chapter 9
The image of the Kenilworth ruins, against a background of pale clouds lightened by the pink and orange of a sunset just beginning, hovered in Jane’s mind as she slipped between the sheets of her bed. The maid turned to snuff out the candle.
“No.” Jane sat up a little. “Leave it, please.”
The maid bobbed a swift curtsey, then turned away.
“Thank you!” Jane called, as the maid opened the door to leave. “Goodnight.”
The maid looked back. “Goodnight, miss.” Then she bobbed another shallower curtsey and left.
Jane threw the covers back and climbed off the bed, leaving the comfort of the soft, warm mattress. She walked across the wooden floor, barefoot, her nightdress brushing against her legs. The last candle alight burned on the mantelpiece. Jane collected it, then turned to the chest of drawers where her manuscripts lay.
She picked up First Impressions.
It was inside her. That feeling. A sense of life growing. A buzzing sensation of excitement and pace.
She put the manuscript down on a small table which stood between the bed and the window.
It was not a thing of adjustment, of crossing out lines and writing in new. There was a new scene. That was what it lacked. Another scene.
The scene where Elizabeth sees Pemberley and falls in love, not at first with the man, but with the building… and then she sees the real Darcy, the man living within the beauty of his home. The man who is in love not just with his home, but with the people inside it. Lizzy must fall in love with that man. The person Darcy is able to be in his home. She must see the goodness in him far sooner in the story. She would see it in his eyes long before she would know of it in his actions.
Jane needed blank paper. But she always carried some.
She set the candleholder down beside the manuscript on the table, then turned to her trunk and found out some blank sheets, a fresh quill and a small glass bottle of black ink, which she carried with her in a red leather pouch. Then she returned to the table. She put all her things down. Setting them out as she liked.
The words were within her, flooding her mind, crowding her and trying to push their way to the tip of her quill and onto the paper. She smiled as she sat down.
There had to be a reason Lizzy would visit his property…
A tour.
A tour! As Jane, Cassandra and her mother had begun.
The scene spun out in Jane’s head, as though a thread unravelled from a reel of cotton.
The chair scraped on the wooden floorboards as Jane pulled it closer to the table. Her fingers shook when she reached for the red leather pouch containing her bottle of ink. It smelled of stories and its worn smoothness was a wonderfully familiar sensation. She took the cork out of the ink bottle, then set the bottle down and reached for the quill, her heart racing.
How silly.
It was only that it had been so long since she had written.
She dipped the tip of the quill into the black ink, then wiped it on the edge of the tiny bottle so it would not drip, before bringing it to the paper.
She had written no relations in for Darcy, and for Lizzy she had her family in Longbourn and an aunt and uncle in London. First Impressions was a simple plot, like Susan.
What if Lizzy’s aunt and uncle in London asked Lizzy to accompany them on a tour?
The tip of the quill touched the blank sheet of paper and began to form words. Lizzy would be excited to be travelling away from home, and she would be grateful for the opportunity. Jane captured her own emotions as she had felt when she had left Reverend Leigh’s parsonage at Aldestrop, applying those as Lizzy’s feelings on the paper.
Her hand moved across the page as the words continued.
Jane lifted the quill and refreshed the ink. Lizzy should not be aware that she would be near Darcy’s estate. The tour must occur at the stage of the story that Lizzy disliked Darcy intensely. It was only his saving her younger sister and repairing things for her elder sister that made Lizzy love him in the end, and this journey must happen before then. It must be an element in the things which changed Lizzy’s perspective from dislike to love.
What if Lizzy’s aunt had grown up near Pemberley?
Yes, and that was not their initial destination, but as they end up passing then she longs to visit the estate and request a tour of the house.
If Lizzy believed Darcy was with his friend Bingley in London, Lizzy would trust that he was not there, and might be persuaded to join her aunt for the visit; if it was sworn to her that he would certainly not be there. She must be in complete ignorance of any possibility of seeing him when their meeting occurred so that Jane might capture that moment of shock.
Of course.
Jane’s hand moved quicker and quicker, lifting intermittently to replenish the ink.
Lizzy walked about the house, looking at portraits with a sense of awe—the same awe which filled Jane every time she walked about the halls of Stoneleigh Abbey. Only these were not Lizzy’s ancestors—they were Darcy’s. She would be looking up at the history that had created
Darcy. At the elements of a past that had made the man she knew.
She saw his portrait. He smiled within it. It opened the first question in Lizzy’s mind. That face. That expression. It was not one she knew.
Oh. Inspiration was a wonderful thing when it poured into Jane like this. She was in the room with Lizzy, her aunt at her side, and her uncle standing at the other side. They would be like Mr and Mrs Hill.
Yet if Lizzy were to have relations, Darcy ought to have his character broadened by relations too, and that could not be through a father, because Darcy had inherited his estate, and she did not wish to write him a mother. Lizzy’s mother was an overpowering character;there should not be another mother. Yet a female relation would soften him.
A sister. Jane had mentioned the idea of a sister to Cassandra. She had seen the portrait of a young woman. A sister who was younger and looked up to her brother for guidance.
Bingley had sisters who were as un-sisterly-like as it was possible to be. Darcy ought to have a sister like Lizzy’s, Jane, a gentle precious sister. He must be a loving brother who had become her protector.
Her portrait hung next to her brother’s. The housekeeper introduced Miss Darcy, then she spoke kindly of Mr Darcy, of his love for his sister, his lost father, his kindness to his servants and his good management of his home.
Lizzy’s aunt had to know of Lizzy’s views about Mr Darcy. That he was an arrogant, rude man. She must question the contradiction in the housekeeper’s description, to allow Lizzy to show the challenge she felt. The two images, the man at Longbourn and the portrait displayed here at Pemberley, did not equate.
Jane lifted the quill and recharged the ink.
Lizzy must question herself, and, perhaps, feel a little bit of a fool. She must begin to doubt her judgement.
On the paper, (and in Jane’s mind’s eye) after Lizzy had walked about Darcy’s beautiful home, and heard such a glowing account from a servant, who more than anyone ought to think him overly-proud, she walked outside.
The scene flowed as though Jane was still standing at the very top of that high tower at Kenilworth and she watched it unfold like a play in a theatre below.
Lizzy walked beside her uncle and aunt as they were shown about the gardens before the house by Darcy’s head gardener, in the way Mr Butler had walked with Jane through Stoneleigh Abbey’s gardens. That sense of pride—not pride—love for a place—filled Jane as she continued writing. It was the emotion of all Darcy’s staff. She pictured Mr Butler’s eyes as he spoke, and recalled that light in the eyes of Darcy’s gardener as she wrote the scene.
A slight commotion intruded on Lizzy’s awareness. She looked back. Darcy. He was there; walking around the corner of the house from the stables, and at such a distance from Lizzy and her aunt and uncle, that he could not be ignored. A flush of embarrassment washed over Lizzy. Not only because he would think her prying—to be found at his home when she had made it plain she did not like him—yet because she was uncertain whether that judgement had been justified. The people here spoke so highly of him, and the image of him she had just been studying was so unlike the man she knew.
She was about to turn away in a panic, but then realised she could not with any politeness.
He strode across the lawn. As tall as ever, his body’s movements as superior and graceful as ever, and yet there was something different. He did not appear severe, his shoulders were not quite so stiff, and his arms swung a little looser with the pace of his stride. There was an energy in his presence that she had never seen before.
He bowed to her, and proceeded to ask after her family’s health. Lizzy stumbled through replies.
Then he was silent.
Shock. That emotion cut through them both, neither had expected to encounter the other.
Darcy turned and walked away.
Lizzy had never seen him look uncertain, never seen him look anything other than in complete command. His presence dominated rooms. She felt a fool—as Darcy had when he’d proposed.
She should not have come.
Lizzy’s aunt and uncle were just beginning a woodland walk, following the gardener, and so without being entirely obvious, Lizzy could not suddenly decide to turn back though she longed to leave the grounds of Pemberley the moment Darcy had walked away. It was intolerable to be caught here when he was so very aware of her dislike for him.
The discomfort of Lizzy’s embarrassment gripped in Jane’s chest, as the tip of the quill scratched on the paper writing Lizzy’s part, expressing her mortification. There would be nothing so awful.
By its nature the woodland walk was circular and it must come back to the house. When it did, Darcy was there.
Darcy had retreated to his rooms, shock besieging him in waves like a repeated cavalry charge. There was a second chance. A moment to redeem himself. He did not hold her outburst following his ill-judged proposal, against her. Everything she had said about him was true. He did not have an easy manner. He was not open to general conversation, and yet that was only his way. He had never intended to appear rude, or arrogant, as she had accused. He may have gone astray, since his father’s death—lost himself amongst the responsibilities of his formal role, and yet at heart he was the same man. He was not the monster she had painted. He wished for her to see that, at least.
He changed hurriedly, without the help of his valet.
In his own house, where he had been a boy once, he felt able to do as he wished without fear of judgement and so he ran downstairs.
They had been entering the woodland walk, he would enter it from the far end and meet them along the way.
It was no longer shock clasping within his chest, but eagerness, an urge to hurry. A need to speak with her. To see those eyes and the slightly wicked, teasing smile that had forever mocked and challenged him.
He smiled when he saw her and walked towards Lizzy and her companions. Then bowed when he reached her, certain his pleasure must show in his eyes. He could not contain it. To have her here… All the things together that he loved…
Lizzy could not believe the brightness in his eyes, when so often they had appeared cold and full of disdain.
He asked what she thought of his home. The light in his eyes became that which Jane had seen in Mr Hill’s and Mr Butler’s. Pride. But not for themselves, for the place where they stood, only within Darcy’s eyes it was more than that, more than even a love for a place; it was mellower and warmer, because it was the place of his birth and where he knew only love and security.
Lizzy instinctively praised his home in response to his questions. Of course it was beautiful; how could she not admire and compliment it? Yet in view of his former proposal and her former cold-hearted rejection… The memory closed her lips into silence. What would he think of her admiring his home when she had, with such cruelty, rejected the man who owned it.
Embarrassment swamped her again, in floods, rising and flowing like waves rolling onto a shore. What foolishness!
Had she entirely misjudged the man?
He requested introductions to her aunt and uncle, people she was certain his pride would consider beneath him, and yet, while he showed surprise at the connection, he received them with a warm smile and a bow of his head.
Here at Pemberley, Darcy was able to be confident. His pride and love for his home was too great for him to have any sense of fear or concern, even in the presence of strangers.
The man facing Lizzy was not the Darcy she had met before. His lips lifted regularly at the edges while he spoke with her aunt and uncle, giving them fleeting smiles between words, and his eyes positively glowed each time he mentioned Pemberley.
This was the man of his portrait within the house.
He had turned from an arrogant cold man into a man full of emotion, enthusiasm, and… heart.
He asked her uncle to fish in his river and then turned to walk beside Lizzy and spoke of a party of people who would arrive tomorrow, those that Lizzy had met and become closer to in the days
when she had looked after her sister at Netherfield. The Bingleys. Mr Bingley. Lizzy’s elder sister’s, Jane’s, beau. The man Darcy had taken from Lizzy’s sister in order to save his friend.
Jane’s heart beat harder, as Lizzy’s would have done.
Where had the Darcy who had done that gone? He knew Lizzy’s abhorrence of him had swelled to extremes because he had taken his friend away so that Bingley might not be trapped by Lizzy’s sister.
Lizzy asked about his sister, and when Darcy spoke of her the light in his eyes became ten leagues deeper and the warmth in his voice flooded with his emotions. He loved his sister just as much as Lizzy loved Jane.
Lizzy had not thought him a man capable of real love. She had thought his declaration of love for her a fantasy—an infatuation of a moment. A shallow obsession that would fade swiftly. Yet here he was walking along a path with her, as relaxed, civil and pleasant as any man might be. As charming in manner as Mr Butler, when Mr Butler had walked beside Jane.
He spoke of his sister’s desire to meet Lizzy, as though it was the most normal thing, when she could have heard nothing of Lizzy unless it had come from his lips. It was another contradiction from the man Lizzy had known before and the man she had seen in the portrait in his home, and now walked beside. The Darcy she had thought she knew would have shared none of his feelings, and yet he had spoken of Lizzy to his sister, and presumably with some emotion if she wished to meet the woman he had spoken of.
Who then was the true Darcy? The man she had known, from fleeting, infrequent conversations, and overheard asides, or the man his sister knew? His sister was his ward and would have spent hours in her brother’s company. So many hours she had become his close confidant, and was clearly much loved, unless Darcy was able to deceive with his eyes. If so, then he would make a very great actor.
Jane looked at the candle. It had burned to a short stub and the wax had pooled and solidified in the base of the holder. She looked at the clock. A quarter to four. She had been in Lizzy’s and Darcy’s moment of their first true meeting for hours. But the scene was not the real turning point for the story. It would add a depth to Darcy’s character, and a male publisher would adore Lizzy’s sense of guilt and shame, but the scene did not overly change the plot.