Chapter 8 #2
“Hmph. If that’s the case, perhaps you ought to ask more questions before being too quick to judge.”
Touché. “My apologies, Miss Jeffries. I meant no offense.”
“If I may,” Lizzie said. “Perhaps you could tell us about the origins of the curse? We’ve only heard snippets here and there.”
Miss Jeffries looked uncertain for a moment, and Darcy found himself thinking that after all the coin he’d just handed out,
the very least she could do was throw in a story for free. He tried to school his features into a politely neutral expression
as she studied the three of them. Something seemed to war within her. “Well, it’s said that if you spend a night in Netherfield
Park, you’re destined to never leave.”
When she didn’t continue, he said, “No offense intended, Miss Jeffries, but clearly that is not true. The three of us spent the night at Netherfield just last night, and we’re here now. Mr. and Mrs. Bingley have been there a month, and they were just in the village with us.”
Miss Jeffries merely rolled her eyes. “Aye, and are you going back to Netherfield tonight?”
“Yes,” Darcy responded.
“Well then.” Miss Jeffries said this as if it made sense. It did not.
“But what exactly does it mean?” Lizzie pressed. “If you stay too many nights under that roof, you’ll be trapped there forever,
like some kind of very well-appointed and luxurious prison?”
“There’s no special force that holds anyone there,” Miss Jeffries was quick to point out. “More like . . . bad things happen
to anyone who does leave. And if you do leave, then death follows shortly after.”
It sounded ridiculous, except Miss Jeffries was very serious. Darcy felt his legal instincts take over. “And what proof do
you have of this?”
Miss Jeffries sighed. “None that you’ll believe, I’m sure. But it all goes back to the late Mr. Geoffrey Bingley, when he
was a young man some sixty years ago. He was known to be an adventurer. He and his younger brother, Francis, left home at
a young age and commissioned a ship to take them abroad. They were gone for years, leaving their elderly parents behind with
nary a word except for the stray letter here and there. Until one day when Geoffrey and Francis’s father died. It took months,
but eventually they returned from across the ocean and Geoffrey brought with him a young wife.”
“Honoria?” Lizzie asked.
“Yes. And she brought with her a fortune, too—which was helpful, because the estate and farms had fallen on hard times. Their
father hadn’t been a particularly attentive landlord. Or so the story goes.”
This was not an unsurprising tale. Darcy knew plenty of young gentlemen even now who shirked their duties to their estates,
spending money like it was water, only to find that money did not in fact grow in fields—it required a bit more work and cultivation
than that. He even knew of a few such gentlemen who’d married their way out of such money troubles. “So Honoria’s money restored
Netherfield Park.”
“Yes, and soon after, Geoffrey and Francis’s mother died,” Miss Jeffries said. “And the brothers grew restless again.”
“And then what?” Darcy asked, now more intrigued. As Bingley’s oldest friend, he had a sense of the family’s history, but
he’d not heard the story from this angle.
“Honoria held the purse strings, and she didn’t want her husband to leave. But she had no qualms about Francis setting sail.
She gave him the money he needed, and he left—but she refused to give Geoffrey the same. He became enraged, and so she hid
her fortune somewhere in Netherfield Park.”
“Clever,” Lizzie said admiringly.
“How does one just hide an entire fortune?” Darcy asked. “How much was it?”
“It’s said she brought trunks of silver with her when she married, and she hid whatever remained after restoring the estate.”
How perfectly vague, Darcy thought. It sounded like a rumor, but . . .
He looked at Lizzie and Charlotte, and knew they were thinking the same thing. Silver.
Was that a coincidence?
“What happened after she hid her fortune?” Lizzie asked. “I take it Geoffrey wasn’t pleased?”
“No, miss, he was not. He had no choice but to stay. He was quite angry with his wife, and rumor was they slept in separate
wings of the house. But one day, they had a spectacular shouting match, and Geoffrey threatened to burn down the house around
them unless Honoria revealed where the money was hidden.”
“The east wing,” Lizzie said.
Miss Jeffries nodded. “He lit it on fire. But luckily for everyone, it was contained before it could spread to the rest of
the house—a miracle, really. The staff saved the house.”
“And Geoffrey?” Darcy asked.
“He survived, too. But he was angry—he’d thought that would work. He left in the night. But they found him the next morning
when his horse came back to the stables. He was lying on the ground a stone’s throw from the gates. The consensus was he’d
been thrown.”
This was starting to sound like something from a gothic suspense novel—and not a good one. “So it was a terrible tragedy,”
Darcy said, sounding doubtful even to himself. But . . . what if Geoffrey Bingley was their dead man?
Lizzie shook her head, as if reading his mind. “There must have been a burial—for someone of his status, half the village would have been in attendance. Besides, why entomb her husband in the drawing room flue?”
“So he’d never leave?” Charlotte suggested.
It was quite a macabre thought, but Miss Jeffries said, “Miss Bennet is right—Mr. Bingley is buried in the family plot. But
the story doesn’t end there. The next day, Geoffrey’s former valet left to find work elsewhere. He drowned crossing a river
in the next county. And one of the maids gave her notice so that she could marry a farmer, but shortly after, she fell sick
and died.”
“That’s awful,” Lizzie said. “But—”
“I’m not finished,” Miss Jeffries said. “A footman enlisted and was killed when his musket backfired during training. Not
long after that, the butler dropped dead in the lane while walking to the village. And a groom was stung by a bee and swelled
up until he could no longer breathe!”
“Oh, well . . . that is . . . a lot of tragedy,” Lizzie said, sounding uncertain.
Darcy was not so convinced. “That doesn’t mean Netherfield is cursed. My own estate has experienced its fair share of misfortune—it’s
very sad, but that is life, I’m afraid.”
“Just wait,” Miss Jeffries said. “About a year after Geoffrey died, smallpox struck. It killed every single person in the
house—everyone except the housekeeper.”
“Oh,” Lizzie said.
“Aye. She lived in a cottage not very far from the house with her husband. She was the only one spared, because she didn’t spend her nights under a cursed roof.”
Darcy knew Lizzie well enough to know she wouldn’t accept this faulty logic, but she didn’t argue. “Well . . . how fortunate
for her?”
“It was the old vicar who put it together,” Miss Jeffries said. “On account of him having to preside over so many funerals.
He said the common thread between them all was that they laid their heads down under that roof after Geoffrey died, and it
was all on account of Honoria. Her presence—or her silver—cursed the house.”
Charlotte’s lips pursed in disapproval, and Lizzie’s expression clouded over. “And why was he so quick to blame her? Why not
Geoffrey or Francis for leaving? Or why not blame their parents for neglecting the estate to begin with?”
“Because it’s easier to blame the outsider,” Charlotte said before Miss Jeffries could reply. “Isn’t it?”
Miss Jeffries had the decency to look chastised. “I didn’t mean to imply—”
“No, but the entire village has, haven’t they?” Lizzie asked. “They all blame Honoria for the curse?”
Miss Jeffries neither confirmed nor denied it, but Darcy suspected he knew the answer. Of course they’d blame the recluse,
the woman who’d come from away with her wealth, and then denied sharing it with her husband.
“What about Francis?” Lizzie asked. “Did he not return when his brother died?”
“Bingley’s grandfather died at sea,” Darcy said, able to fill in this bit of the story. “He left behind his pregnant wife at a port town, and his grandmother brought up his father with help from her family, and then Bingley’s father founded Netherfield Shipping before he died.”
Miss Jeffries nodded. “Aye, Francis had passed by that point, and Honoria inherited it all. Everyone wondered whether she’d
remarry, but after the smallpox outbreak, she rarely left the estate. No one wanted to work there. Honoria rarely had visitors,
and if she did, they all left before sundown.”
“What a lonely life,” Charlotte said, profound sadness in her voice.
“She was a nice lady,” Miss Jeffries added. “She sent Sally down to buy books and sheet music, and Sally would say that Mrs.
Bingley always sent her regards.”
“Sally,” Lizzie repeated. “Of course—but she’s far too young to be the housekeeper. Her grandmother?”
Miss Jeffries nodded. “That position has been passed down in her family, and she’s the third generation to work at Netherfield.”
“That is a very tragic story,” Darcy said. “And I can see why rumors of a curse have grown. However—”
“However,” Lizzie interrupted, “a curse is not proof of anything. And we still don’t know who the dead man might be.”
“And that’s why you want the registers?” Miss Jeffries asked.
“It’s a lead,” Darcy said.
“It’s likely too late anyway,” she said in a dark tone.
Despite his pragmatism, a shiver ran down his spine. “Because you believe that we’ll all perish in the near future?”
“No, because I heard what Mrs. Jones was saying about the body when Mr. Oliver brought it to her husband—the man was unrecognizable.”
Oh. Darcy felt a flash of embarrassment for getting caught up in talk of curses.
“However,” Miss Jeffries continued, “it may just be a story to you, but we’ve seen what happens, haven’t we? My gran warned
me to never stay in the manor after dark, and I’m not about to disobey her now, God rest her soul.”
“Those deaths sounded awful,” Lizzie said, sounding sympathetic. “But they happened nearly fifty years ago. No one has died
recently.”
“Well, I suppose that for the last fifty years no one has visited Netherfield Park to put the theory to the test.” Miss Jeffries
looked at the three of them, and added, “Until now.”