“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.”
“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.