Chapter 9 #2
He looked around toward the woodland, over the open moorland views, and shook his head. “No, because I don’t want to forget when I am. This is home.”
She gave him a fond smile, and even though she knew he preferred to be here, he would do better at showing her it was true.
“I never wanted you to sacrifice being able to vote and enter into contracts,” he went on, “or to get ultrasounds and cancer treatment, just to live in my time where you would be thought inherently less because of your gender. I love you just as you are, and you would have had to hide everything that makes you special to me just to live your daily life in the nineteenth century.”
“I may not have to feel guilty for that, but I do feel grateful.”
“Never say that,” he said, more sharply than he intended. Thankfulness in this case felt too close to obligation, a debt to be repaid. “I don’t want your gratitude for doing what was the only sensible choice for us.”
“Nevertheless, you find it a strange world sometimes.” She tilted her head at someone animatedly narrating their walk on a livestream.
Darcy lifted his eyes. “You can talk to anyone on earth in an instant, but more communication has not led to more connection. Still, the scientific advances here amaze me.”
When he first realised the extent of the social and technological changes of the past two hundred years, he had been astounded, if a little fearful. But by the time he had committed himself to life in the twenty-first century, he was eager to embrace every opportunity that the time offered.
Looking at Elizabeth, he said suddenly, “Did you not know back then, when you brought me here to save me, how much I wanted to live here, in this time? Of course it was because of you, but life here fascinated me too.”
She gave a wry smile. “Electricity and indoor plumbing that great?”
“You know the answer to that. You spent three months without them. After I returned to save Georgiana, I kept putting my hand to a wall after entering a room looking for light switches that didn’t exist.”
“Really?” she breathed. “I didn’t know that.”
“When you first brought me here, I did not wish to know more than I needed to keep my secret safe until the equinox and I could return home. But soon…” He remembered the sense of discovery amid the shock.
“Soon I was captivated. At first it was a fascination with alarm, but soon it was with wonder and curiosity.”
“So, the technology and scientific advances bewitched you as much as I did?”
He smiled at her. “You alone were enough, as I told you. This century is hardly perfect, but it is still a safer and more equitable world than the one I knew. I left to be with you, but I also thought I could thrive here.”
“Don’t you miss being Mr Darcy?”
It was a question she teasingly asked him often, but it felt more serious this time, with more fear behind it. Still, he answered as he always did. “I am still Mr Darcy.”
“It’s significantly different, though.” She was silent for a while. “I know you wanted to be here, but I could have tried harder to understand your time enough to go back. I wasn’t brave enough.”
The social mores were in some ways unrecognisable, but things like human decency and the importance of community were the same.
“I never had to live in a world where the male is elevated above the female, enjoying every economic and political privilege to her detriment. In any way success is defined for a man, I could have had it then or now.”
“You have thrived here, but I still could have—”
“You had to stay here, Elizabeth,” he said firmly.
“Where Georgiana lives, women are deprived of opportunities for intellectual and economic achievement. She has what she does because our father and I gave her the money and the legal rights to do it. I loved you, so why would I want that narrow life for you or my daughter?”
“Some women could be happy then,” Elizabeth insisted.
“Not you,” he retorted. “Mrs Reynolds chose it, and it is the only home Georgiana has ever known. She is in an extraordinary and unique situation. Even if Georgiana embraced the twenty-first century like I did, I still don’t think she’d leave her time.”
“She could return here,” Elizabeth said faintly. “Georgiana could resume her original identity and live here if she wanted.”
“But she won’t.”
“Because of Pemberley? And Mr Willers?”
“Partly,” he agreed. “Georgiana also has no curiosity about this world, as far as I can tell.”
“You could know if you talked with her.”
He felt the implication, but grew quiet as he saw the stone circle on the other side of the clearing.
Nine Ladies was an early Bronze Age stone circle believed to depict nine ladies turned to stone as a penalty for dancing on Sunday.
The short stones were set on the inner edge of a slight bank in a ring less than forty feet around.
Like others around Derbyshire, there was little evidence to explain why it was built and how it was used.
All his family knew was that after an antiquarian excavated the site in the 1780s, the portal opened.
“There are more people around than I remember,” said Elizabeth, looking at the other groups passing.
“The weather is fine, and now both Haddon Hall and Pemberley House are open again. There are more tourists in this part of Derbyshire, but also more locals in the community because we employ them.”
Elizabeth stepped toward the stones, and when he thought she might step through the ring toward the centre, he gently clasped his thumb and fingers around her wrist. She looked back at him, but he kept his gaze on the circle, locking his arm at his side but keeping a loose hold on his wife.
The place was unnerving.
She must have understood him, because she relaxed and stayed by him, and only then did he drop his hold. “Never go in there,” he whispered.
“I won’t,” she promised. In a gentler voice she added, “It’s not an equinox, and we’re hours from sunset, anyway.” They watched a hiker’s dog dart into the circle before its owner called it out. “I wouldn’t have gone anywhere.”
“I won’t take that risk. Not with you, not with our daughter. It doesn’t matter the time of year or the hour.” Elizabeth agreed and slipped her hand through his and led him away.
He immediately exhaled a heavy breath. They continued in their loop around Stanton Moor, away from Nine Ladies, his shoulders sore from tension and worry.
“I cannot understand it, Elizabeth,” he said when they were farther away. “Nothing of what I understand about faith or science explains what causes that gateway to open. It is eerie, and although it has been predictable, I could never trust it. I never want to look at it, let alone go inside it.”
“You swore to yourself you would never step foot in it again once you arrived here at the end of 2012, didn’t you? Whether or not you found me, you weren’t going back.”
“Yes.” He exhaled again, more at ease now that they were farther from the stone circle. “My commitment to this time was absolute, and that inexplicable power within those nine stones frightens me. I won’t risk anything sending me back.”
“I wouldn’t have suggested we walk here if I had known how much you hate it.”
“I don’t hate it,” he corrected. “It gave me my sister and my wife.”
“It also gave you the extraordinary chance to have your sister in your life again for a little while.” He sighed, and she looked up at him with eyes that studied him. “Or is that the problem, my dear? If you can’t be part of her life always, then why be a part of her life for now?”
“Partly,” he said. “I put in place an elaborate scheme to allow a young woman with an older brother still living to inherit and control Pemberley, and to do so even after she marries. If I got here and learnt Georgiana had lived a full life, if the Pemberley estates thrived, I wouldn’t have ruined that future for her or threatened the present estate’s success by going back if I hadn’t found you. ”
“You didn’t want her to lose that lifetime of happiness, even if it meant you lost everything and were here alone?” She wore a loving smile on her lips. “You’re the best man in the world. But you must have known you would find me, even if you didn’t have the documents you wanted.”
“I never told you I loved you before I left. You had no reason to believe I was working on returning to you. You might have married. You might have died. You might never have forgiven me for leaving you with so many things unsaid.”
Elizabeth stopped walking and touched his arm to halt him. “Fitzwilliam, I never hated you for going back. Georgiana needed you, and so did Pemberley. And I wasn’t exactly dating after you left,” she said shyly. “No one was going to compare to you.”
He felt a surge of pride and hid his satisfied smile as they resumed crossing the moor. “I was committed to living here no matter what. I knew I could do it, so that meant a complete divorce from the life I had for my first twenty-eight years. No going back, no letters, no visiting.”
She gazed at him and nodded knowingly. “You had to go scorched earth.” He thought he knew what she meant, but he must have made a face because she said, “A ruthless strategy that includes destruction to achieve a goal. But Georgiana’s return has brought to mind everything you renounced in 1812?”
He exhaled heavily. “Her being here is a constant reminder of what I left behind. I tried to escape it by not talking with her, by working more—”
“I noticed,” Elizabeth said. He saw that she forgave him, that she understood why he had acted that way, even though it had hurt her. “You avoided everyone, but nothing helped.”
“I feel jealous that Georgiana will know my cousin’s children and not mine.
I see you with the sister you ought to have had, and it saddens me that any friendship between you can never last. Before, I set it all aside because there was little to remind me of going shooting with Bingley or being teased by Fitzwilliam or an evening in town during the season or, God help me, even Easter at Rosings. ”
“But why not enjoy the chance to know your sister as an adult and send messages to your loved ones back with her? Especially since she came here specifically for your help,” she pleaded. “I intend to enjoy every moment with Georgiana while I have her.”
Elizabeth did not understand. “If she’s here and needs me, even if only for advice or validation, it means I still have a place in the past. If Georgiana needs my encouragement, if Fitzwilliam is writing me letters, if Mr Willers won’t propose because he fears my disapproval—” He broke off as they left the moor behind and he wondered how he was supposed to face his sister.
“How do I cope with the pain of knowing I love my life here and, after all this time, they still need me?”
His wife squeezed his hand. “I can’t make you feel happy that they love and need you.”
“I had to detach myself from all of them to walk away. A total break.”
“You did a brave thing,” she said, leaning into him as they walked.
“I never felt brave,” he said, surprised. “Leaving never felt impossible, not when I finally had a plan. I was miserable without you, and could have a full life here.”
“You still struggle here sometimes, and you can’t tell me you don’t miss them.”
“I hadn’t thought about them in any significant way in years, and now Georgiana’s being here has shown me all that I’ve missed.
” He looked at her as he tried to find the words and saw the feelings in her face before she tried to hide them.
“Don’t look at me like that, dearest,” he whispered.
“I have no regrets. You can do the right thing and it still hurts.”
“Doesn’t it also hurt to ignore your sister who needs you?”
They stopped at the car, and he busied himself with opening her door to avoid the pleading look in her eyes. “It hurts to know I still have a role in her life, and that I’ll never see her again after the equinox.”
Rather than get in, she stood by the open door and put her arms around his shoulders. “If you’re going to hurt either way, which path will you choose?”
He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers. “Should I choose more heartache over the regret I’ll feel if I don’t spend time with her whilst I can?”
She pulled back to look into his eyes. “I’m going to enjoy her friendship while I have it, even though it’ll hurt to say goodbye. She needs you to encourage her so she can keep going with Pemberley, whether or not she marries Mr Willers. Although, we all know my vote is ‘tell her to make a move.’”
He gave a faint smile. “It will be hard, Elizabeth. And it will hurt more knowing I still have a part in that old life. I don’t want it. I want to be here.”
“I know,” she whispered.
When they were in the car, he sat for a moment before putting it into gear. “Should we go home now to talk with her?”
“Oh, not at all,” she said, surprising him. “It can wait another day. I have you all to myself for another twenty-four hours. We haven’t even used the shower yet, let alone the dining table.”
He laughed at her boldness and blushed, knowing shocking him was her point, and he was happy to oblige.