Page 10 of Return to Pemberley

Chapter five

Shadows in the Archives

T he library at Pemberley was never so solemn, nor so exquisitely itself, as in the hour just before dinner, when the waning sun traced lattices of light across the windows and made the gold stamping on every volume burn with a secret fire.

It was a sanctuary of learning, meant less for the idleness of reading than for the exercise of judgment and the marshaling of knowledge to proper ends.

Elizabeth, who had lately come to regard the room as her own, sat at the great writing table in its centre, surrounded by an array of documents so formidable that even Mrs. Reynolds, upon entering, had hesitated to disturb her.

On this particular afternoon, Elizabeth had amassed before her an impressive assortment of relics: Lady Anne’s journals and letters, their pages curled and faintly blue at the edges; the sturdy oak box with its trove of family correspondences; the newly discovered, unsigned document bearing upon the fate of the west boundary; and, arrayed for reference along the table’s edge, the ponderous Pemberley ledgers, estate maps, and two bound registers of births, marriages, and deaths.

It was a scene to daunt the most ambitious of antiquarians, and Elizabeth, seated in the heart of it, felt herself both detective and defendant—searching the past for its promises, and the present for the means to fulfill them.

She began, as she always did, by sorting the papers into strict chronological order, employing the ivory letter-opener Darcy had gifted her with the injunction that “a lady ought never to wrestle with a dull blade.” The box’s contents proved a tantalizing mixture of the trivial and the consequential: notes from Lady Anne to her cousin in Bath; receipts for the purchase of Madeira and lamp oil; lists of charitable disbursements, each entry in Lady Anne’s measured hand, with an occasional lapse into a more hurried and private script for the true confidences.

The unsigned grant—now carefully flattened between two volumes of the county’s statutes—beckoned to her with a siren’s call.

Elizabeth turned her attention to it, examining the script for clues as to its author.

The paper, heavy and rich, was of a quality reserved for legal instruments; the ink, though faded, still betrayed a hint of blue that, she suspected, would match that of Lady Anne’s later letters.

The wording was precise—so legal as to seem almost a parody of itself—yet the signature line, where one expected the flourish of a Darcy, was instead an expanse of blankness, broken only by a faint indent, as though a hand had hovered there but withheld the final act.

She copied out the key sentences onto a sheet of foolscap, noting every peculiarity of phrase: “the parcel abutting the western boundary, being of ancient title and in question since the late Restoration…”; “to the direct issue of Thomas Blackwood, cousin once removed, in the event of a lawful return or demonstrated need…”; “to remain in force twenty years from the date hereof, after which the claim is forfeit to the principal estate…” The logic of the document, its structure and intent, was at once both clear and maddeningly elliptical, as if composed by someone determined to be understood only by those in possession of all the relevant context.

Elizabeth’s next recourse was to the estate ledgers, whose bindings gave off an aroma of beeswax and dust. She turned the brittle pages with the care of a surgeon, scanning the notations for any reference to the Blackwood name.

There, in a ledger dated nearly fifty years prior, she found an entry in the same deliberate script:

“Received this day, May 18, by hand of Thomas Blackwood, the sum of fifty pounds, being satisfaction of arrears for lease of the Shepherd’s Lot, as witnessed by the undersigned.

Also, a note regarding the settlement of the westernmost pasture, now in abeyance until further determination by Master Darcy… ”

The entry was annotated in a different ink, a later hand that she surmised belonged to the old master himself: “Blackwood’s claim remains irregular but is to be given respectful hearing. Lady Anne insists on forbearance. Advise caution in further dealings.”

Elizabeth, who had always found mysteries far more obliging than most people, felt a distinct satisfaction at discovering that even Pemberley's walls harbored secrets—though she suspected this particular quarrel had been considerably more polite in its lurking than most family disputes.

She drew a line beneath the relevant passage and, with a practiced hand, made a note in the margin: “Correspondence to be sought—consult 1761–1774 files. Is there a codicil or will?”

For the better part of an hour, she traced the Blackwood name through the genealogical register, discovering that the family had once been respectable in Derbyshire, though diminished by successive improvidence.

The registers, each line penned with a reverence for order, revealed only a single likely candidate: Thomas Blackwood, born 1739, cousin to Lady Anne by marriage, last heard of in Nottinghamshire “where it is said he prospered in some small way.” His offspring, if any, were not recorded in the book; but there were enough hints—stray references in the letters, a scrap in the margin of a Christmas invitation—to suggest that the Blackwoods had not vanished entirely, but were rather waiting in the wings, biding time.

Her investigation proceeded apace, methodical yet enlivened by the occasional spark of intuition.

She lined up the estate maps—vellum so crisp it sang beneath her fingers—and overlaid the west boundary as described in the grant upon the current demesne.

The parcel in question proved to be a strip of woodland, now subsumed into the main park but once, evidently, its own tenure.

The “Shepherd’s Lot” was marked in faded ink, its original fence lines still faintly visible under the later embellishments.

Elizabeth ran her hand over the map, her thumb catching on a ragged edge where the paper had been nibbled by time.

She marked the position with a slip of paper, then turned back to the box of letters in search of confirmation.

At last, her diligence was rewarded by a note, addressed simply “For the Master of Pemberley,” in which Lady Anne entreated her husband to “consider the matter of the Blackwood boundary with all possible charity, for it is not the part of our house to oppress the honest claims of kin, however inconvenient.”

A sense of accomplishment, modest but genuine, suffused Elizabeth’s being.

She took up her quill—still sharp, still suffused with the scent of Pemberley’s ink—and composed a brief memorandum of her findings, arranging the facts with a lawyerly precision she suspected would have gratified even the most punctilious of ancestors.

She closed the note, blotted it, and set it aside to dry, her mind already alight with strategies for presenting the case to Darcy.

She was in the act of returning the map to its folio when her concentration was broken by the distinct, almost ceremonial, sound of carriage wheels on the gravel below the south window.

Elizabeth stilled, listening as the rhythm drew closer, each crunch of the wheels a harbinger of intrusion.

Through the glass, she caught the flash of livery—a deep plum, almost black, trimmed with gold braid—and in the same instant discerned the rigid, unyielding silhouette of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, as unmistakable in person as in rumour.

Elizabeth drew a sharp breath, the kind which summons all faculties to readiness.

She gathered the papers into a tidy stack—Lady Anne’s letters to one side, the unsigned grant and its supporting documents beneath the register—and moved them, with the utmost deliberation, to the upper right drawer of the writing desk.

The drawer, which had acquired a slight stickiness from years of summer swelling, yielded only after a determined push; Elizabeth pressed it home, then twisted the key in its brass lock, content in the knowledge that even the most enterprising of housekeepers would be thwarted in her absence.

With this final act of concealment, she surveyed the library for any remaining evidence of her inquiry.

The desktop was wiped clean, the ledgers aligned with the edge of the table, and her own memorandum tucked, for safekeeping, within the leaves of a volume of Montaigne's Essays—a hiding place she deemed perfectly secure, as Lady Catherine had never shown the smallest inclination to consult French philosophers on any subject, least of all one so inconvenient as self-reflection.

From the corridor outside, the sound of voices, crisp and faintly adversarial, carried toward the library.

Mrs. Reynolds’s tones were modulated to the register of perfect deference, but even so, Elizabeth detected the slight sharpening of syllables that bespoke a guest not easily pleased.

The next sound was the deliberate, staccato tap of Lady Catherine’s heels upon the marble, each step a metronome for the approach of indignant authority.

Elizabeth allowed herself one moment—one breath—to steady her nerves, arranging her features into an expression of such perfect welcome that even Lady Catherine would be hard-pressed to find fault with it.

She had, after all, considerable practice in the art of appearing delighted to see people who delighted her not at all.

The door swung open with a grandeur that implied its own inevitability.

Lady Catherine swept into the library, her dress a miracle of pleats and slashed velvet, her head crowned with a hat so severe in its geometry that it appeared capable of influencing the very atmosphere of the room.

Her eyes, glacial and gray, scanned the library in a single, dismissive arc before fixing upon Elizabeth.