Chapter I
‘This is strange,’ said Charlotte, as she walked with Elizabeth through the wilderness at the back of the house. ‘Does it feel strange to you? Awkward?’
‘It should,’ replied her friend, touching the bark of a tree she had climbed many times when she was a child.
Elizabeth stopped walking to take in the rest of the gardens, her gaze sweeping the estate.
‘It should feel peculiar, and yet somehow, it does not. This – you, here – seems fitting somehow, Charlotte. I believe you suit being the mistress of Longbourn better than my mother ever did. I always loved the house; it is understated and elegant. It did not deserve the howls and conniptions of my mother’s tenure. ’
‘Eliza! Your poor mother. How is she?’
‘Settled, thank you. In truth, I think she is very content, considering everything. In living with her sister, she has a like-minded companion available at all hours, to share gossip and forceful opinions, to visit other families with. It suits them all very well. That is – I do not say that she does not miss my father, but all things considered, she is in a happy situation.’
‘Good. And it sounds as if Kitty will be content at Pemberley?’
‘Not only content but, if I may sound like my mother for a moment, rather advantaged by it. We are seeing to it that she belatedly enjoys some tuition, and her friendship with Georgiana is growing, so she has a companion close to her own age… We are all still learning to do without father – she feels it keenly, as we all do – but, materially, she is well placed. As is Mary, in a different way.’
‘Will Jane like having Mary with her at Netherfield, do you think?’ asked Charlotte, looking sideways at Elizabeth.
Elizabeth grinned guiltily. ‘She will be a much better guardian for her than I ever could. Jane is so tolerant; Mary has been greeted with kindness and joined a gentle household, which suits her. Lord knows if she will ever embrace a dance, but she has as good a chance now as ever.’
‘But – how are you, Eliza? You must miss him terribly.’
Elizabeth sighed, looking back at the tree.
‘My mother never wanted us to climb trees as girls. Jane and I were good climbers – I know, Jane! Who should have thought it? But mother had a great fear that we would fall. She got less protective the more daughters she had,’ said Elizabeth dryly.
‘It did not stop us; it just meant we would climb it when she was not looking, to save the argument. Father initially waded into the discussion to defend our right to be adventurous but quickly gave it up for some peace. The next time Jane and I climbed this tree, we went farther than before, having spied something in the high branches. I reached it; it was a note, a little faded and folded, tied with coloured string to a branch, presumably so we would not miss it. It read: You are not allowed to be up here.’ She chuckled as she remembered it.
‘He was a good father.’
‘Not entirely,’ said Elizabeth, ‘but he loved us. And he tried his best.’
‘Things turned out very well for his daughters, in the end.’
‘Some of them…’ returned Eliza. She breathed in deeply. ‘I just so wish he had got to meet—’ Her face dissolved into tears now, and Charlotte moved quickly to hold her.
‘Sorry,’ whispered Elizabeth, her voice muffled against Charlotte’s dress.
‘You need not apologise.’ Charlotte held her friend as well as she could, allowing room for Elizabeth’s now prominent bump.
‘He would have suited being a grandfather.’
‘He would indeed,’ said Charlotte.
They stood for a moment and just took each other in. They were both thinking something similar: that girlhood was now firmly behind them. Adulthood pressed upon them more keenly than it ever had.
Elizabeth roused them both from their reverie. ‘Shall we return to the house? To your house?’
‘Only if you’re ready?’
‘I am ready.’
‘Thank goodness, because I do not want to leave Darcy alone with my husband for too much longer. I am afflicted, after all, with compassion.’
Eliza laughed but then, as they set off, observed, ‘But you seem more settled now, together. Perhaps I imagine it, but there is a calmness between you that I had not observed before. What has changed?’
Charlotte had so much to say to her dearest friend. Were she to tell anyone, it would be Elizabeth, but if she began to divulge any part of it, the dam might break. She feared she would start to proclaim all her secrets to the whole of Hertfordshire.
‘It is true, as you say. We are simply more settled together. That is marriage, I suppose – growing to understand each other better over time.’
Elizabeth looked archly at her friend. ‘You are concealing something, but you are not very adept at it. And yet we do not have time to investigate it at present; Darcy and I need to set off shortly. Perhaps you will have more to say when I next see you.’
Presently, the Darcys were to make their way back to Derbyshire, via Meryton, as Mr Collins had requested a ride in their carriage as far as there.
He needed to deliver a letter urgently, and it also afforded him more time to converse with – or rather, talk at – Mr Darcy, which was one of his favourite pastimes, and one of Darcy’s least.
As Charlotte watched the carriage depart, she smiled to herself. An afternoon of solitude – blissful. Elizabeth was not wrong on one score; she was calm, and in many ways, she was content.
Since the cold morning when she had severed relations with Colonel Fitzwilliam, she had made no contact with him and neither had he with her.
It had been understood, in their parting, that this was how it should be.
She had heard nothing of his life – Lady Catherine and Mr Darcy were the only people of her acquaintance who might know anything of his movements, and they had no reason to share this intelligence with her, and she certainly dared not ask.
But above that, she actively decided she did not wish to know.
She had closed that chapter – the most thrilling chapter of her life, certainly, but she’d known it could only ever have been a short one, and it had now run its course.
Since their parting in February, many things had occurred: a death, a will, another new home.
They had taken up residence in Longbourn at the very start of May, allowing two months for the Bennets to make their arrangements.
Charlotte would have given them longer, but their attorney, Noakes, advised against.
It should have felt odd moving again so soon, but it did not. It felt like coming home. She knew every room, every path, every nook and cranny of Longbourn.
Charlotte summoned the memories now: she and Jane and Eliza entering the hall dripping with mud after a long walk, playing charades by firelight in the drawing room, snow falling across the garden and the thick ice that formed over the pond, newly baked cakes smuggled from the kitchen by Elizabeth, and the three of them huddled on the bench under the stairs, sharing whispered secrets as the night drew closer.
She had come to know Longbourn well. And now it was all hers.
Charlotte still had secrets to hold in this house, but she would no longer be sharing them with anyone.