Page 6 of Return to Pemberley

Chapter three

The Unexpected Discovery

L ate afternoon bestowed a gentle hush upon the east side of Pemberley, where Elizabeth had taken for herself a chamber of modest proportion and excellent light, with windows facing the rising sun and a view across the broad lawn to the distant stables.

The study, for so she called it though Mr. Darcy professed himself shocked by the radical intimacy of the term, had once served as a retiring room for Lady Anne, and still retained something of its former occupant’s taste in the pale blue of the curtains and the delicate tracery of its cornice.

Elizabeth, having already become an inveterate rearranger of books and writing paraphernalia, now presided over the shelves with a satisfaction compounded of both industry and rebellion.

She set to her afternoon’s task with the glee of one who has at last found her proper dominion.

The arrangement of her father’s books had always fallen to her as a matter of course, for Mrs. Bennet disdained the library as dust-laden and unprofitable, and her sisters had shown little inclination to remedy that defect.

But at Pemberley, the shelves were so numerous and so scrupulously catalogued that Elizabeth’s every act of displacement threatened to leave behind a detectable trail.

She began by collecting those volumes whose marginalia bore evidence of the late Lady Anne’s hand, placing them on a table by the window in a sort of silent symposium; then she made an inventory of the newer publications Darcy had acquired since his return from Cambridge, stacking them in order of subject, with the most frivolous at the bottom, in deliberate defiance of the house’s historic gravitas.

There was great pleasure in the work—especially in the ritual cleaning of every surface, as if to exorcise, with each sweep of her cloth, the ghosts of uncertainty that still haunted the place.

She was in the act of dusting a particularly recalcitrant bust of Cicero when a knock, both discreet and determined, sounded upon the door.

“Enter!” she called, setting down her cloth and affecting the pose of one caught in the midst of deep and necessary contemplation.

It was Mrs. Reynolds, bearing in her arms a small, sturdy box of oak, its surface stained by time and its lid tied with a ribbon that had once been blue but was now more properly described as dust.

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Darcy,” the housekeeper began, her eyes flicking briefly from the box to her mistress’s face, “but I thought you might like to see these. They were found in the attic above the west wing, during the spring airing.”

Elizabeth received the offering with all the ceremony due such an artefact, observing the box’s modest construction, the grain of its wood, the careful way the ribbon was knotted. “It is very handsome, Mrs. Reynolds. I thank you. Are they family papers?”

“I believe so, ma’am. The upper attics had not been touched since before—” she stopped herself, and the pause, though slight, spoke volumes; Mrs. Reynolds could cloak sentiment as tidily as she folded linen. “Since before the last mistress’s time.”

“From what I could gather, I believe these are letters that were returned to Pemberley after Lady Anne's passing—correspondence she had written that the recipients' families sent back to us, as is proper practice. There were some letters, a few receipts, and one or two items I did not examine, out of respect for the privacy of the family.”

“Your discretion does you credit,” Elizabeth replied, and meant it. “I shall look them over and see if anything requires returning to the family archives. Thank you, Mrs. Reynolds.”

The housekeeper’s posture indicated a willingness, even a hunger, to linger for further instruction, but Elizabeth dismissed her with a smile and a promise to summon her should anything prove mysterious.

The older woman nodded, her satisfaction evident in the crispness of her curtsy, and withdrew, leaving Elizabeth alone with the box.

For several minutes, Elizabeth allowed the box to remain unopened, as though to prove that it was she, not the contents, who commanded the study. But curiosity, as always, proved stronger than discipline, and with a swift, almost guilty gesture she loosened the ribbon and lifted the lid.

Within, the box was lined with a faded scrap of brocade, and on this soft bed rested a sheaf of letters, each sealed in the manner of a former age, some in red wax, others in the delicate hand of a woman’s script.

At the bottom lay a folded sheet of thick, creamy paper, unsealed and unsigned, but with the look of a document whose purpose was both serious and unresolved.

Elizabeth began with the letters. The first she selected was addressed “To my Dearest Sister,” in a hand at once formal and affectionate.

She turned it over, noting the crest—an unfamiliar one, but rendered in a watercolour so faded as to be nearly illegible.

With a gentle thumb, she cracked the brittle seal and withdrew the contents.

The letter was written in Lady Anne Darcy’s unmistakable hand, its lines neat and well-formed, the words precise, the phrasing as musical as Elizabeth recalled from the journals. She read the salutation twice, then began to scan the page for what revelations it might contain.

“Dearest, I write from the east rooms, where the morning light is very good, and where I am attended by Mrs. Reynolds, who fears I am not robust enough for the current season. My health is, in truth, no weaker than last, but the staff have been drilled to vigilance by years of practice, and it is easier to submit than to resist. I trust you are well, and that the journey to Bath proved not too arduous for your party…”

The tone was one of intimacy, yet held always the formal restraint of women who had been raised to think of letters as both private and yet somehow public—subject to the scrutiny of husbands, housekeepers, and posterity itself.

Elizabeth leafed through the other letters, some longer, some only a page, all penned by Lady Anne, and all addressed either to “my dearest sister” or, on occasion, “to my cousin.” Each contained the minutiae of Pemberley’s domestic seasons—weather, health, arrangements for balls or concerts, and the inevitable references to Mr. Darcy’s growth and progress.

Nowhere did Elizabeth find anything overtly scandalous, though there were several passages in which Lady Anne spoke of the difficulties of managing a house of such consequence without a “true confidante” at her side.

The repetition of this phrase—true confidante—suggested to Elizabeth a loneliness that had not, perhaps, been evident to Lady Anne’s acquaintances.

At last, Elizabeth turned to the folded document at the bottom of the box. It was unsealed, but the paper, when opened, had a stiffness that spoke of never having been read. She spread it on the table and read:

“I, being of sound mind and in full possession of my faculties, do hereby acknowledge the conversation held at Rosings Park on the twenty-seventh of August, regarding the lands abutting the west boundary of Pemberley. It is my intent, subject to the agreement of the current master, that these lands be granted in fee simple to the direct heir of Thomas Blackwood, should he or his issue return to claim them within the term of twenty years from the date of this declaration…”

The statement trailed off, unfinished, the final sentence missing or perhaps torn away.

Elizabeth’s heart leapt, not for the lands, which sounded inconveniently vague—but at the delicious prospect that Pemberley might yet conceal a secret worthy of a gothic romance.

She traced the words with her finger, noting the careful precision of the script, the absence of any formal signature, and the vague, even ambiguous, character of the grant itself.

Who was Thomas Blackwood? What had been his claim, and why had it been left unresolved for so many years?

And—perhaps most curious—why had the document been hidden away, rather than destroyed or filed with the family’s legal papers?

She sat for a time, her mind whirring through the implications.

If the letter was valid—if it could be proved genuine—what might it mean for the estate, for Darcy, for the expectations of the tenantry?

More pressing still, what did it mean for her own position?

Was she now the keeper of a confidence too delicate to share?

Elizabeth gathered the papers into a tidy stack and replaced them in the box, her hands moving with a deliberation that masked the urgency of her thoughts.

She sat at the desk, the golden light now slanting in earnest across the carpet, and resolved to consult the family’s records at the first opportunity.

She would speak to Darcy, of course, but only when she had learned enough to present the matter with the full dignity it deserved.

As she tied the ribbon again, her eyes wandered to the portrait of Lady Anne above the mantel. The face, serene and dignified, seemed to regard her with a mixture of encouragement and mild reproach. Elizabeth found herself smiling.

“It is not enough to inhabit a place,” she murmured, recalling the journal entry from earlier. “ One must persuade it to inhabit you.”

She tucked the box into a drawer of the writing desk, closed the drawer, and rested her hands upon its smooth surface. The matter was not resolved, but she felt, for the first time, the exhilarating pulse of stewardship—of being, not merely the mistress of Pemberley, but its vigilant conscience.