Chapter 16
Sixteen
D arcy opened one eye, finding himself supine, entangled with Elizabeth. Rising slightly, he saw shattered glass, broken wood, and rubble surrounding them. The opera glass that Elizabeth had entered the painting with lay in irreparable pieces among it. Elizabeth had bits of plaster from the walls in her hair. He suspected his own was the same.
Turning on his side, he enquired, “Elizabeth, are you well?”
“I-I think so.” Seeming dazed, she pulled herself into a seated position. She looked at him and then laughed. “Well, you are a sight, and I should imagine I am too. What just happened?”
Darcy sat up fully but was not given any opportunity to answer. Mrs Reynolds appeared just then with a genteel-looking couple in tow. The man stepped forwards, looking down upon them with concern.
“Mr Darcy, your housekeeper has told me much good of you, and so I can only suppose behaviour such as this is outside of your usual way.”
“Lizzy, what is this?” the woman asked, hurrying to Elizabeth’s side. “I hope you have not caused some sort of damage to the house?”
“My aunt and uncle Gardiner,” Elizabeth murmured to him. To her relations, she said, “This is not at all how it seems.”
“I should certainly hope not,” Mr Gardiner replied, and despite the look of vexation that remained, Darcy saw he was a man typically of good humour, who had good sense as well.
“I am in love with your niece,” Darcy said to the man. “I have asked her to marry me, and she has accepted me.”
“And in so doing,” Elizabeth said as Darcy rose and helped her to her feet, “we have broken the curse!”
“What curse?” Mr Gardiner asked, his brow wrinkled.
Mrs Gardiner came forwards and began to brush at her niece’s gown to help her right herself. “Engaged?” Mrs Gardiner said as she did it. “But, I do not remember… Oh, is that Mr Wickham?”
The small cough that Mrs Gardiner had likely heard also alerted Darcy to the fact that Wickham and Jessabelle were still in the room, standing at some remove and seeming amazed into silence.
“Excellent to see you again, sir,” Mr Gardiner said to Wickham. “I trust you will recall that we were introduced at Mrs Philips’s house in Meryton during the Festive Season? ”
Wickham, confronted with such civility, seemed not to comprehend how best to respond, finally settling for, “The pleasure is mine, Mr and Mrs Gardiner.” He then haltingly introduced his sister to them as Mrs Younge.
Jessabelle said nothing throughout, her fury emanating from her eyes. When the civilities were concluded, she walked slowly towards the spot where Darcy and Elizabeth stood.
“This is not over,” she said, pointing one long finger at Darcy. “You might have defeated me this time, but it will not stand. I will follow you to the end of your days. You will never be free of me. There are curses aplenty that I can use to make your life a living hell.”
“I once knew a family called Younge,” Mrs Gardiner said brightly. “In Lambton, yes?”
“Bakewell,” Wickham offered. “Mrs Younge was my aunt and took my sister in after our mother died.”
“Your sister?” Mrs Gardiner said. “Then you are the former Miss Jessabelle Wickham! Do you remember me?”
“No,” Jessabelle replied shortly, not bothering to look at Mrs Gardiner.
“I was Miss Margaret Wright.” Mrs Gardiner smiled pleasantly and took a step towards Jessabelle. “We attended the same parish church. I would be surprised if you had learnt of such things as curses from Mrs Younge. She was a pious soul.”
“Where I have learnt my curses does not signify,” Jessabelle retorted.
“But you did not remain with her, did you? You were sent to someone else—a cousin, if I recollect it?” Mrs Gardiner pressed.
“Yes, yes,” said Jessabelle impatiently. “The story of my life is that no one has ever really wanted me. My natural father never acknowledged me. Mr Wickham ignored me for a while, then sent me off. Lady Anne Darcy had me banished from Pemberley, and my aunt Younge despised me, thought me wicked, and married me off to an elderly Younge cousin. Yet another family member, forced to bear me for the cause of Christian charity—except that the joke was on them, for it was through my marriage that I became acquainted with the one person who might help me avenge myself on all of those who had wronged me.”
“Miss Parham,” said Darcy suddenly, recollecting the long-ago day when Jessabelle had visited him in his study. Heaven only knew he had had plenty of time to review every syllable of that conversation in his mind these last years. “The only person who hated George Darcy as much as you did…or so you said.”
Jessabelle only stared sullenly, neither confirming nor denying it.
“Oh, I do remember hearing of George Darcy’s first romance. I was just a child when I heard of it,” said Mrs Gardiner, “but children have an uncommon advantage in that they are often overlooked even when they are underfoot. I heard the whole of the story from my usual place under a side table.
“She was a lovely girl with an excellent fortune, and it was well known that George Darcy intended to offer for her. He was called away on some business—most thought he went to put his affairs in order that he might marry—and when he returned, she inexplicably told him she would not see him again. Broke his heart, I daresay.”
“The crone who came with you when you visited me that day six years ago,” Darcy added.
“Not a crone,” said Mrs Gardiner. “Just a woman, probably no more than fifty, who had been disappointed in love and permitted it to ruin her.”
Darcy interjected, “I cannot believe my father ever loved anyone but my mother and?—”
“Yes, he did love your mother.” Mrs Gardiner insisted in her gentle way. “Loved your mother but loved Miss Parham before her. When she learnt of what had happened—that he had had a mistress, and that the mistress was with child—Miss Parham went nearly mad with her hatred of him.”
“Her hatred is nothing to mine,” Jessabelle said. “He turned his back on his own child!”
“It was many years gone by, and it was a different time,” Mrs Gardiner appeased. “I do not suggest that you should excuse him, only to forgive him.”
“I shall never forgive him,” Jessabelle hissed. “I wish to dance upon his grave.”
“Perhaps you might, although you see what it did to poor Miss Parham,” said Mrs Gardiner. “Spite and malice are heavy burdens indeed, and they take a toll on one who lives their life buried beneath them.”
“Mrs Younge,” Elizabeth said, “if I might offer a bit of my own philosophy to you it is this: think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure. You would do much better to allow laughter and love to penetrate your spirits, for to love and be loved is a treasure beyond worth of any other.”
Jessabelle scoffed. “Such pretty words. They are not pretty enough to escape me, Miss Bennet. No, you must know, for as long as you are with Darcy, you too will gain my wrath. If the curse began a generation ago with a broken love affair?—”
“Then it will end here, with this love affair,” Darcy interrupted, an understanding having dawned within his mind. He believed he understood what it was Jessabelle had suffered and how her soul had shrivelled into the miserable state in which it existed. Like the flowers that had blossomed as he kissed Elizabeth, so too did Jessabelle require something of beauty and kindness to ignite her own spirits. “It would seem that this story, this twisted tale which began with my father’s betrayal and infidelity can have but one solution.”
“For you to fall in love with Miss Bennet?” Jessabelle spoke mockingly, but her vigour had begun to diminish. “Hardly.”
“No,” Darcy replied. “Not romantic love in any case.”
Those in the room held their breath as Darcy walked in slow, measured paces towards Jessabelle. Jessabelle drew back as if expecting a blow from him, but her face remained courageously spiteful.
Placing both of his hands upon her shoulders, he leant in and placed a gentle kiss on her cheek. To her shocked countenance he said, “Jessabelle, I am sorry for all you have suffered. I am sorry you have felt alone and unwanted all these many years—your own hell for which there was no release your whole life long. I ask, on behalf of my father, that you would forgive the trespasses of our family against you.”
“Forgive you? Why should I?” Jessabelle took a step back from him, raising one hand to cover the cheek he had kissed.
“Hatred is death,” he said. “To love is to live. Let yourself live, Jessabelle. Step out of your own prison.”
“I am not imprisoned,” she shot back.
“Did you not say I had been imprisoned by my heritage? So, too, have you been. Being outcast, disregarded, despised…I cannot change any of that. All that I can offer you is a rightful place in the future. I ask you to consent to being called my sister. You will have a home at Pemberley so long as you should wish for it.”
She gasped, along with several others in the room. Darcy’s gaze was steady on Jessabelle, watching her face. Her scepticism did not dissipate easily. “What of this lady you have just asked to marry you? What of Georgiana?”
Elizabeth came to join them, reaching out to take Jessabelle’s hand in her own. “One can never have too many sisters, I believe.”
“And Georgiana will be delighted,” Darcy said in a confident voice. “If the woman she is now is anything like the girl she was six years ago, she has always longed for a larger family and most particularly a sister. Now she will have two.”
At that moment, in came Reynolds.
“Reynolds!” Darcy exclaimed, turning towards him. “You are alive!”
“Indeed I am, sir,” he said looking briefly puzzled. “ Forgive me. It seems I took a nap when I ought to have been at work.”
“Is everything ready for dinner?” Mrs Reynolds asked him. On his nod, she said, “Then let us move to the dining room.”
As the party followed her, Mrs Reynolds turned back, looked over her shoulder, and spoke to Mrs Gardiner. “Is it not wonderful when all the family can gather round the dinner table? I find it pleasing above all things.”