Chapter 17
Elizabeth rose early the next morning. When Blake came in to dress her, she said, “Blake, I need the household to gather downstairs later. Perhaps in an hour?”
“Everyone, ma’am?”
“You, the Mercers, Merry… The younger ones need not trouble themselves. Anyone who served under Mrs Macy should be there though.”
Blake nodded. “I shall arrange it, ma’am.”
They were all waiting for her an hour later, sitting at the long walnut table where they had their meals. She smiled at the sight of them all.
“No doubt all of you have wondered about the strange goings-on in the house of late. My…friends who have been coming and going.”
“Ain’t none of our business, it an’t,” said Mr Mercer, and Elizabeth smiled at him.
“You are too good, sir. But in this case, I do not blame you for being curious, and I am only regretful to tell you…to admit to you that I…” She lowered her face, staring at her folded hands on the dark table. “I have lied to you these two years that I have known you.”
Silence greeted her admission.
With a deep inhale, she said, “I am not any relation of Mrs Macy. Mrs Macy took me in when I had nowhere to go. In truth, I know not why she did it, but I was desperate. You see, the man who has been here these last days…he is my husband. Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley in Derbyshire is my lawful husband, and I…I ran away from him. That is to say he…there was a misunderstanding, and he sent me to Yorkshire, and I did not remain. I left and came here. Well, not here. Upton Park.”
After a short pause, Mrs Mercer said gently, “We knew, dear.”
“Yes, we did,” Mr Mercer echoed softly.
“Yes, didn’t we all?” said Blake. “Ma’am, you need hold out nothing for us. So he found you now?”
“He had believed me…” Elizabeth could not speak the word, but they understood her, and they all nodded.
“In any case, I shall…we shall reconcile. For Bennet’s sake.
He is Mr Darcy’s heir, of course, and he should have all the benefit of that.
But I would not have any of you worried for what comes.
I swore to Mrs Macy that I would take care of all of you, and so I shall, just as you have cared for me these two years. ”
Tears sprung into her eyes. “To know that you did so even while in possession of my shameful secret…well, it is too much. Truly, you are all too good.”
Merry followed her as she left the servants’ hall, quietly requesting a private audience. “Come to my sitting room,” Elizabeth said.
“I have some news myself,” said Merry. “I have been looking for the right time to tell you, but too much has been happening.”
“Well?” Elizabeth smiled, already having some idea what the news might be. “Do not make me wait in agony!”
Merry blushed, her bright eyes lit with a glow. “Senor Esparza has asked me to marry him.”
“Oh Merry!” Elizabeth leant forward to hug her. “You cannot know how happy that makes me.”
“Truly?”
“Oh, yes. There is something in you, a sweetness of temper perhaps, which has always reminded me of my elder sister, Jane. Likewise, Senor Esparza is much like her husband, my brother Bingley. I just pray you will be as happy together as they are.”
“I think we shall,” said Merry with a giggle. Becoming more sober, she added, “There is more though. Senor Esparza has some small fortune, and he wishes to establish himself in London as a music master.”
“Indeed?”
Merry nodded happily. “He is quite brilliant on the bass clarinet and with the dulcian. He plays flute and the serpent and has just helped a friend of his with a new instrument called the ophicleide. And I shall give pianoforte and harp lessons to young ladies. I daresay we shall be very happy doing what we love…”
“And with people you love.” Elizabeth smiled indulgently. “I shall miss you sorely. You cannot know how it has pained me to deceive you. You have been the nearest thing to a friend of the heart I have had these years past.”
“Perhaps we shall know one another in London?” Merry asked tentatively.
Elizabeth knew what she meant. “I shall know you everywhere,” she promised earnestly, then leant over to kiss her friend’s cheek.
Some time later, Elizabeth was at her desk writing letters to her family when she heard Mercer opening the door. Darcy, she thought with a sinking feeling. But a moment later, she heard a loud, boisterous cry—“Lizzy!”—that could only be Lydia.
Moments later, Lydia and Kitty burst into the room, full of chatter and nonsense. Elizabeth embraced them both, kissing their cheeks with all the feeling of a sister. Soon enough, Lydia was done with it.
“Well, this is a pretty place. Have you had any balls here?”
“Here? In this house?”
“Oh! Jolly says he will have a ball! Lizzy, you must help me for I have already spent the money Papa gave me—”
“Do not dare help her, Lizzy, for Mr Darcy is too generous with her by half, and Georgiana gave her a very beautiful gown that she had scarcely worn—”
“You speak of the blue silk? The very blue silk that you greedily wore yourself in London? I can hardly make Jolly propose in someone else’s cast-off gown, now can I?”
“Tell me about Mr Rollings,” said Elizabeth, all the old techniques for managing her younger sisters coming immediately to the fore. From the corner of her eye, she noticed Georgiana and Darcy were shown into the room.
Lydia immediately set off abusing the poor man, decrying his lack of fashion sense, his red hair, and his dreadful habit of slurping his soup. But at the end of it all, Kitty teased, “Yet she is violently in love with him,” and Lydia did not deny it.
Bennet was brought down from the nursery by Merry; he was eager to be off to the beach, ready to spend some time with his small shovel and a bucket.
He offered Darcy a shy greeting of ‘Pop’, after which he hid behind Elizabeth’s skirts, peeping occasionally at his aunts.
Lydia had no interest in him whatsoever, so she was naturally his first object of admiration.
He eventually screwed up the courage to approach her, holding up his shovel for her to admire.
“I do not want that,” she said with a sneer, but Georgiana rhapsodised about it to Bennet’s satisfaction.
When she was done, Georgiana asked nervously, “Elizabeth, I wondered whether I might speak to you for a moment?”
“Of course,” said Elizabeth. The outing was thus commenced without them. Merry took Bennet along with Lydia and Kitty and agreed to meet the other three in a short time.
Elizabeth could see Georgiana was very nervous about what she needed to say, her hands shaking and her eyes already tearing. “Georgiana, what is it?”
Georgiana inhaled deeply and straightened her back, clearly gathering her composure, with a last glance at Darcy to fortify her. “I spoke to my brother last evening. He says you are reluctant to come home.”
Elizabeth forbore replying.
“I understand that my error in this matter…when Mr Wickham and I…and naturally, it is unlikely I should marry…” The girl gave Elizabeth a helpless look, tears beginning to fall. “And the lies, of course… You must be disgusted by the very sight of me. In any case, I shall do as you wish.”
“What I wish? I do not understand.” Elizabeth glanced at Darcy for clarity.
“I contributed very significantly to the demise of your marriage to my brother. We thought that perhaps if I went away somewhere, then you would not—”
“Georgiana,” Elizabeth spoke in a low, angry tone, “do you mean to tell me that you think I might wish to send you away?”
Georgiana nodded. “If you would like.”
Darcy added, “She will do as you wish, Elizabeth, to make it easier—”
There was a loud clatter as Elizabeth rose so rapidly that her chair fell back and hit a table. Her breath came quickly as rage rose up in her, and she struggled for control. She strode to the window, gripping the sill as she attempted to calm herself.
At length, she turned and spoke, biting off each word.
“Let me be perfectly clear, Georgiana. I cannot approve nor excuse the part you have played in this. However, you will not be sent away by me, and I am grievously offended that you or your brother would even think I could do such a thing to you.”
“It is no more than I deserve!” Georgiana cried.
With deadly calm, Elizabeth said, her eyes fixed on Darcy, “No one deserves that.”
Georgiana bowed her head low, her mouth opening and closing with no audible reply.
“No, I shall not send you away,” Elizabeth said tightly. “Not permanently anyway. But for now, I would like you to go to my bedchamber. Pray, refresh yourself and wait in the sitting room upstairs.
Georgiana, understanding her dismissal, hurriedly left the room.
Darcy also rose and went towards Elizabeth. “I thought perhaps you might—”
“I have never been more offended in my life,” Elizabeth hissed at him. “You might be the sort of person that casts people aside if they anger or embarrass you, but I am not and never shall I be.”
“I meant only that I wished to make it more easy—”
“Easy?” Elizabeth shrieked. She stopped herself for a moment, seeking control and some semblance of calm. This would not do, not at all. She refused to allow Darcy to make her into a screeching madwoman.
Although earlier that morning, she had felt resolved to this path, at once, it all seemed far too daunting.
The problems were too numerous, the emotions too raw.
How could they possibly all live together?
There was too much anguish and pain on all sides to be overcome.
Surely it would not benefit her son to leave his peaceful life in Weymouth for a home where people shrieked and cried and argued all the time.
It was unacceptable to her to become her mother, acting increasingly ill-behaved to gain the notice of a man who disdained her.
Quietly, she said, “This is a mistake. I cannot do this.” She turned her back on Darcy and again walked away, back to the window, where she leant her forehead against the glass.