Page 42

The Nursery

Darcy House

Monday, 3rd April, 1815

Two-month-old Anthony Darcy solemnly sucked his tiny fist as he gazed up into his mother’s face. Elizabeth looked back, her heart full of love and adoration for her little one, the heir of Pemberley.

The infant’s blue eyes, with their ridiculously long lashes, closed and opened, and closed and opened, and then firmly closed again, and his breathing grew deep and steady. Elizabeth lifted the baby a trifle so that she could kiss his fuzzy head and then handed him over to Polly, a nursemaid who was waiting nearby.

“I will be back in three hours to feed him, but if he needs me sooner, please send a servant to fetch me,” she directed, and Polly said, “Yes, Madame.”

She left the room, with its infant cot and attentive maid, and entered a larger room where her daughter, Miss Amelia Darcy, age two, was currently enjoying a snack composed of milk and bread and honey. The child shrieked joyfully at the sight of her mother and abandoned her meal in favor of rushing over to grasp her mother’s skirt with sticky fingers.

Amelia’s nursemaid Priscilla, who had been organizing toys in the corner of the room, hurried over to wipe off her charge’s hands with a wet cloth, and Elizabeth lifted the girl into her arms.

“Baby Tony good?” Amelia asked, looking over to the closed door to the infant’s room.

“He is very well, darling. Now, you ought to drink your milk and eat your bread so you can take your nap.”

Amelia’s brow furrowed at these words, and the girl stuck out her lower lip.

“No nap,” she announced.

Elizabeth was well aware that her daughter was a stubborn creature, much like her mother. She also knew that Amelia would be incredibly cranky if she did not take her requisite nap.

“Eat, and then you must lie down,” she ordered.

The ensuing tantrum was not particularly enjoyable, but within thirty minutes, the child had finished her meal and was in her bed, and as Elizabeth told her a story about the last litter of setter puppies at Pemberley, she fell asleep .

“You are so very good with her, Madame,” Priscilla said.

“Thank you,” Elizabeth said with a chuckle. “I suppose it helps that I was as determined a child as Amelia, or perhaps even more so.”

The maid allowed herself a slight smile, and Elizabeth left the room, descended one flight of stairs, and turned a thoughtful look at the closed door of her bedchamber. Her labor and delivery of Anthony had been somewhat difficult, and she was very tired. Her husband, always concerned for her health, thought that she ought to rest every afternoon, but there was so much to be done in managing the house that she was quite reluctant, even if she was exhausted.

“You should rest, darling,” Fitzwilliam’s deep voice said from her right. She turned and smiled at her adored husband, even as she shook her head and said, “I need to speak to Cook about dinner.”

“Anne and Georgiana have made all the necessary arrangements. Please go to bed, Elizabeth. I know you are weary.”

Elizabeth gazed at her husband’s pleading expression and sighed. There was no way that she could deny him when he turned that woebegone look on her.

“Very well,” she said, “but I will attend dinner tonight. ”

“Of course,” he said, leaning over to kiss her. “I will see you later, my dear.”

***

Greymere

Yorkshire

Caroline sat hemming a small child's frock for her nephew, her brow furrowed pensively. One-year-old Augustus was in his nursery, and Greymere was quiet. Caroline was not certain where Louisa and Hurst were, and she did not much care. She was content to be left alone in the drawing room with her sewing and her thoughts.

Ever since Charles had chosen Jane over his sisters, life had been less luxurious than Caroline preferred. The previous year, old Mr. Hurst had passed on, leaving the family estate to his only son. Hurst had immediately moved his wife and son and sister-in-law into Greymere and assumed the responsibilities of running the estate. It was not a large one, and the income was but fifteen hundred pounds a year, but combined with Louisa's eight hundred pounds income from her dowry and a certain amount of frugality, Hurst was able to support his family quite comfortably.

Caroline was grateful for a place to live, but her existence had become entirely monotonous. It seemed that becoming mistress of her own estate, in addition to motherhood, had robbed Louisa of all her taste for fashion and parties. Any time Caroline suggested making the long journey to Town, at first insistently and later more wistfully, Louisa had declined.

“Life is well enough here, sister,” she would say. “I have plenty to keep me busy without going to Town. By the way, Caroline, Mr. Caldwell called again and was disappointed to find you unavailable for visitors.”

Caroline had no particular interest in her brother-in-law's dull, provincial single friends who paid her compliments at every opportunity, but the alternatives were not enticing either. She sewed new frocks for her small and active nephew and practiced economy and yearned for more. She missed the parties of London, the fashionable squeezes and the theaters and the dinner parties and card parties.

Caroline abruptly set her sewing on her lap for a moment and sighed deeply. She could hire a companion, of course, and return to Town, but that would not do her any good either. A little more than a year ago, Hurst, anxious over the health of his wife and unborn first child, had moved them all to Hurst House in London so that Louisa could be attended by the best physicians and accoucheurs, and Caroline had eagerly embraced her chance to participate in a Season. She had always been popular, and her negative gossip about Elizabeth Bennet – now Elizabeth Darcy – had been discreet and subtle, and surely, after several years, the Darcys and Lady Matlock would take no steps against her.

Darcy was, of course, no longer an option, but she was still rich and reasonably young and handsome, and she hoped that she could capture a reasonably high borne gentleman, and perhaps even a member of the minor nobility!

She had been doomed to disappointment and dismay. A few old school friends were kind enough to send dinner invitations to both Caroline, who had accepted with alacrity, and to Louisa, who did not. Caroline had wrung every drop of enjoyment out of these dinners, but they had largely been quiet affairs and small gatherings of a few friends, sometimes with cards after dinner, but she received no invitations to large balls or Venetian breakfasts. No one had been quite so disapproving as to cut her in public, but it was still a crushing realization to discover that Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy stood very high indeed in society, and that her own actions against that lady had poisoned her chances in Town .

Caroline bit her lip, looking out the window. The moors rolled misty and green into the distance, dotted with sheep. The country was unbearably dull and uninteresting and the local gentlemen even more so, but … she was beginning to realize that she was running out of options. Her comparable wealth and beauty availed her nothing compared to the power of the Darcys and the Matlocks.

She knew, because Louisa and Charles had reconciled and maintained a civil correspondence, that Elizabeth Darcy had already provided an heir to Pemberley. Charles, too, was well settled on his estate, blissfully happy with mild-mannered Jane and their children. Similarly, Hurst and Louisa doted on Augustus and country life.

And Caroline remained single. All this time, all her efforts, her ambitions to marry into high society or even lower nobility, and she was already well on her way to being on the shelf, consigned to playing the role of the spinster aunt sewing baby clothes for small Hursts. It was an unbearable prospect, and little as she relished the idea of becoming a country gentleman's wife, Caroline reluctantly acknowledged that it might perhaps be her best option. It was not lost on her that she had once reviled Mrs. Bennet and all her ilk for just that reason, but Caroline was in no mood to appreciate it .

She moaned and resumed her sewing. Mr. Caldwell was not an engaging man, but he was kind and quite bowled over by her beauty, and though not handsome, he was not unpleasing. He was the wealthiest of the gentlemen in the area and would not grudge her a charming wardrobe made at the village dressmaker’s shop. Perhaps it was time to return his compliments.

***

Port Jackson

Australia

Afternoon

George Wickham pulled his tattered coat closer to himself and stepped out of the church and onto the main street of Port Jackson. Even two years after his arrival in Australia, he still found it odd that April was one of the cooler months and December one of the hottest.

There had been an hour long rain earlier in the day, which provided blessed relief from the usual dust of the road. He strode briskly down one side of the street, passing pubs and alleys filled with refuse, before he turned down a side alley and halted at a small house. He opened the door, stepped into a modest foyer, removed his boots, and then stepped into the kitchen where a woman of sixty years of age was stirring something delicious on the stove.

“There you are, George,” Mrs. Ackerton said with a smile. “Sit down and let me dish up some soup. Is Mr. Ackerton coming along soon?”

George obediently took a seat at the simple wooden table and said, “Mr. Greenfell called on him regarding putting up the banns. He and Sylvia Folkes are marrying soon.”

“Well, that is wonderful,” the woman replied as she put a steaming bowl on the table for him. Wickham silently thanked God above, and then began spooning the meal into his mouth. A moment later, Mrs. Ackerton placed a slab of perfectly baked bread beside him, and he eagerly took a bite, nodding his appreciation as he did so.

For the hundredth time, he found himself in awe over all that had occurred in the last three years. For the first eight and twenty years of his life, he had assumed that the world was his oyster, and that he deserved all the pleasures that English high society could offer, and that in spite of the reality that he was but the son of a steward .

Thus he had flitted from one town to another, one pub owner to another, one woman to another, leaving debts and ruined lives behind him.

He had not cared, not at all, because he had been entirely selfish and self-absorbed.

And then he had attempted to abduct Elizabeth Bennet. He had never even considered the lady’s well-being, focused as he was on his own desire for revenge against her and Darcy, and drawn in by the promise of a substantial reward from Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

He wondered what had happened to Lady Catherine. Nothing, probably. She was, after all, the daughter of an earl.

For a moment, the old resentment rose in his heart, of the unfairness of it all, that those in high positions could get away with anything short of treason, while someone like himself…

But no, he had tried to kidnap Elizabeth, which was a genuinely evil act, and had received two stabs with a hat pin for his pains, followed by a forced voyage across the ocean on a wooden sailing ship. That trip had been an eye opening experience as he was forced to work long hours and climb masts and rigging and eat weevily bread and drink grog. His formerly white and tender hands had become callused and ugly, and his face tanned and leathery .

He had, at least, survived the passage, which was no small thing, only to be dumped on the shores of Port Jackson, entirely alone. Duncan, who had been the friendliest of the sailors aboard the Anna Maria , had been kind enough to introduce him to Mr. Atherton, who presided over the church in Port Jackson. Atherton, in turn, had introduced him to a shopkeeper in need of a worker who could write and do sums.

Wickham had found himself working long days in the shop and then giving most of his earnings to the owner of a boarding house, where he had the dubious privilege of living in a tiny room which made his barracks back in Meryton seem spacious. He had not been able to save up much money at all, certainly not enough to return to England. Not that he would anyway, as Richard Fitzwilliam would probably arrange for his execution if he returned to the shores of his native island.

Six months previously, when the last of Mr. Atherton’s children had boarded a ship to England for further education, the old parson had invited Wickham to live in his house to assist with chopping wood and carrying buckets of water, both at church and in the house.

The bedchamber in the Athertons’ house was far nicer than the room in the boarding house, and Mrs. Atherton treated him in a motherly fashion, which filled some aching hole in his heart that he had not known was there.

He had, in fact, changed a great deal in the last years, and while his face was no longer handsome and smooth, and his hands were calloused rough from labor, his heart was cleaner and better. He would never return to England, he knew that, but in spite of the struggles of the last years, he was genuinely happier than he had been during his days of debauchery.

***

Drawing Room

Darcy House

Evening

The door to Elizabeth’s bedchamber opened, and Fitzwilliam Darcy watched as his beloved wife departed the room wearing a green evening gown, with a charmingly simple cap upon her head. She smiled at him, and he smiled back, even as his eyes studied her face carefully .

She was happy, he knew that, but he could also see the shadows under her eyes, and he worried that she was trying to do too much.

“Did you sleep?” he asked, holding out his arm, and she took it and said, “I did for two full hours, and it was glorious. How was your day?”

“It was well enough. I wrote a long letter to my steward dealing with some concerns.”

“Have you heard anything about Mrs. Reynolds?”

He patted her hand as they began descending the stairway. “I have. She is recovering very well and should be able to resume her duties shortly.”

Elizabeth smiled in relief and said, “I am very pleased to hear it. The influenza can be a serious matter.”

“Indeed.”

They had, by now, attained the drawing room, and the pair entered into a crowded room full of family members.

“Lizzy!” Lydia Bennet exclaimed, rushing over from the window. “Oh Lizzy, what do you think of my dress?”

Darcy did not know a great deal about feminine fashion, but he had a vague understanding that the gown in question, a high-waisted dark green creation with puff sleeves and lace at neck and hem, looked very well on his sister by marriage.

“It looks lovely, my dear,” Elizabeth responded, tilting her head to study it carefully. “I was not certain the color would suit you, but it does.”

“What do think of my gown?” Kitty Bennet asked, gesturing at her own blue gown.

“And what of mine?” Georgiana Darcy chimed in.

Darcy considered his sister with a mixture of pride and melancholy. She was dressed in peach-colored silk, and she was not only beautiful but grown up. It seemed it had all happened so fast, her maturation from girl to young lady, now in the midst of her first Season.

“You all look marvelous, and I am sure all of the eligible young men will agree,” Elizabeth remarked with a smile, drawing Darcy’s attention, and he shook away any melancholy in favor of enjoying the sight before him. The two youngest Misses Bennet and Miss Darcy had decided to enter society the same year, and it was a comfort to know that Georgiana, still a trifle shy, would have her two close friends in attendance to most of the parties and dinners they would take part of.

The door opened again to reveal Anne de Bourgh and Richard Fitzwilliam, along with Mrs. Mary Armstrong, formerly Mary Bennet .

The three young ladies surged forward to speak to Mary, now married to Mr. Armstrong, the steward of Rosings. She was pregnant with their first child, and given that the pregnancy had been a difficult one, the decision had been made for her to spend the last two months of her pregnancy at Darcy House so that she would have access to the finest of accoucheurs.

It made for a rather full house, but Darcy did not mind, not at all. Five years previously, both Pemberley and Darcy House had seemed all too quiet. Now he was surrounded by love and laughter and liveliness, and he could only be thankful.