Chapter Twenty-three
elizabeth
I had a headache for days, a headache like I’ve never had in my life. It pounded and pulsed. Sometimes I saw bright lights and images. I spent the day abed, and I did not get up to read the letter from Mr. Darcy that a servant delivered to me—a scandalous thing to do at all, to send me a letter!
By the time I recovered enough to read it, he was gone.
The knowledge that he had left Kent gave me a pang, which I found odd. I had expected him to leave. It had been planned. But it was strange, because some part of me felt unsettled at the knowledge he was not close by, as if he ought to be close.
But perhaps it was only the letter.
At first, I did not wish to believe it, but I found that I could not make myself think he would lie about such a thing, to tell me this secret about his sister, something that could be damaging to his own family’s reputation. No one would make something like that up. It could only be true.
And then word reached us that Mr. Wickham had been found dead one morning, a most curious thing. It seemed his neck was broken, his injuries grievous, but no one had any notion how he could have come to be harmed in such a way. It was as if he had fallen from a great height and then been placed in his tent by someone, left there to be discovered.
I only remained in Kent myself for another week, and then I left for London, to be reunited, at long last, with Jane. It felt, when I embraced her, that we had been parted for much longer than a handful of months, but I could not say why I felt that either.
The pang, it was ever present. I found myself looking up in crowded rooms, searching for something or someone, someone who was always missing, never there, someone who I felt should be there.
At night sometimes, I would have dreams, strange dreams that would fade entirely from my memory upon waking, but I would be left with a certainty that I had been dreaming about him. About Mr. Darcy.
I began to feel an urge to find him, somehow.
But this was not an easy undertaking. Even if I could determine where he was, I could not send him a letter through the post. The best I would have been able to do would have been to write to a female of my acquaintance who was staying under the same roof, and I was not well acquainted with his circle. If he were with the Bingleys, I could have written to either of the sisters, but I had already witnessed how Caroline had rebuffed Jane’s attempts to continue a friendship in London.
So, it seemed a pointless endeavor, one I turned to, thought through, and discarded a number of times.
However, he had seemingly left the proposal an open-ended one, had he not? Indeed, he had been rather assured of my eventual acceptance, something I had found to be alarmingly arrogant at the time, but now I clung to each night as I slipped off to sleep and to my dreams of his voice and his countenance, and—at least once, shockingly—his bare chest.
So, months slipped by. May was gone and then most of June, and I was engaged in a correspondence with my aunt Mrs. Gardiner, proposing that we take a trip far to the north, to see the Lakes.
I began to mention to my aunt that she had often told me stories of her girlhood in Lambton. I knew that she knew of the Darcy family, after all. We had discussed the fact that she had a passing knowledge of the family back when I had thought that Mr. Wickham was telling the truth.
When it came to pass that my uncle could not get away from business for nearly as long as he had hoped, it was my aunt who proposed we go no further north than Derbyshire.
Something leaped inside my chest, for I thought I must contrive somehow to see him. We would visit his home, tour Pemberley, and I must see him, speak to him, I knew not what. I must apologize for the way I had rudely refused him, and I must explain that my pounding head had put me in a temper, and I must discover if he truly meant what he had said, that he thought we were meant to be.
I slept poorly every night of the trip, as we journeyed closer and closer to Pemberley.
I began to think, with a dull dread, that he would not be at home when we arrived, and to think of how I might somehow leave a letter for him. Could I do such a thing, if I asked one of the servants to deliver it to him? What were the odds that it would be read, however, if so? What could I say in it to convey to him my meaning without making it gossip fodder, something beneath propriety?
That morning, something very odd occurred. At breakfast in the inn, a servant came to us with a parcel addressed to me. I recognized the servant as someone who worked at Rosings.
He confirmed that the parcel was from Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
I opened the parcel and it was a golden pocket watch.
I turned the thing over and over in my hands, quite confused.
Inside was a letter.
Upon opening this, you will have no idea what this is, read the letter. However, I believe that will soon change, and you will remember everything there is to remember about this watch. It is with trepidation that I send it to you, against my better judgment, in all honesty, but I feel as if I am tugged by conscience to do so. I became apprised of your whereabouts when I inquired with my nephew, Mr. Darcy.
I drew back, furrowing my brow in confusion. How did Mr. Darcy know where I was?
“What is it?” said my aunt.
“I haven’t the faintest clue,” I said.
She made to pick up the watch.
But I prevented this, for reasons I could not quite explain. I felt certain she should not touch it, and I snatched it up and laid it down in my lap.
“Well, what does the letter say?” said my aunt.
“Let her read, would you?” said my uncle, gently amused.
I returned to the letter.
Nearly a month ago, my daughter Miss de Bourgh found this watch lying on the banks of the lake near our home. Upon touching it, her memory was restored. Though the experience was quite distressing for her at first, within days, she began a marked improvement. You may have known my daughter as sickly and wan, but she—it seems—was only suffering from the lack of her knowledge of what had befallen her at the hands of this watch, years and years ago. My daughter is now in quite good health, and we are, even now, planning a trip to London, where she will come out in society.
I had long cherished the idea of my daughter and my nephew making a match, and I would have done anything in service of this fond hope, which was shared by my sister, his mother. But as my daughter is whole and happy for the first time in years, I find myself free to hope for something even better for her, and I have convinced myself that I must send this watch to you, in the hopes of freeing you from whatever lingering malignancy it has wrought in your mind.
I hope you will appreciate how deeply I have weighed sending it to you and that you will be grateful for the sacrifice I have made for you. I quite imagine my nephew will be overjoyed. But if my dear Anne can—at long last—find happiness and health, I do not have it in me to prevent your happiness either, I find.
There is no need to thank me for this service I have rendered to the both of you, of course. You need never mention it.
I picked the watch up again and stared at it.
I was in some consternation about this. Positively nothing about this letter made anything approaching sense.
“Well?” said my aunt again. “What does it say?”
I merely shook my head, speechless. I handed the letter over to her. My uncle put his head close to hers. They both read it.
When they were done, they fixed me with quite confused expressions.
“Lady Catherine is getting on in years,” I said. “Perhaps she is not quite all there these days?”
“Hmm,” said my uncle, looking at the letter. “It seems so. Let’s see that watch, then.”
I reached down for it.
But it had disappeared from my lap.
We looked for it in and around the table for nearly a quarter hour, but it was nowhere to be seen.
After, we talked of nothing but the strange letter and the watch for the entire morning, and all the way to see and tour Pemberley, for that was where we were bound today.
It was at least a distraction from wondering about Mr. Darcy himself, and wondering if I would, in fact, see him today.
Presently, we arrived at Pemberley. After disembarking from our carriage, we began to make our way towards the front door, walking along the lawn, the river at our backs.
I turned and I caught sight of him. There he was, coming up the road from the stables.
We were within twenty yards of each other, and we both stopped, staring at each other, as if we had just been struck by some force.
I had a wave pass through me, a wave of force, and I blinked hard as I staggered forward, because, as I did, memories assailed me. Memories and memories and— oh!
I wavered, hardly able to keep my balance, and I might have swayed over and fallen, but he was there, having rushed to me, and he caught me, steadying me with his strong arms.
I toppled into him, pressing my palms flat into his chest, and I looked up at him, my eyes filling with tears. “Oh, Will,” I breathed.
His eyed widened. “You have just… you called me…?”
I pushed backwards, gesturing behind me nonsensically, as if this mattered. “Just there, when I saw you, it all came back like the rush of a summer storm. I remember.”
“Do you?” he breathed.
I nodded. “I do.”
“You remember all of it?”
“Every single moment,” I said, gasping. “We nearly drowned in the English Channel together, and you have left me alone for months, you blackguard! How could you?” I slammed my palms against him for emphasis.
His expression dissolved into a wondering smile. “Oh, Lizzy, my Lizzy, it is you.”
“You left me all alone!”
“I… that is not exactly the way of it,” he said.
“What do you mean, yes it is!”
But he was prevented from answering me, for—at that moment—my aunt and uncle intruded upon the conversation in a state of some anxiety, both at my having nearly collapsed and the way that I was still in the circle of Mr. Darcy’s arms with my hands all over his chest. It was necessary then that we break apart for the sake of propriety.
Mr. Darcy, the maddening sort of man he is, started up some conversation with my uncle about fishing of all things, and my aunt was left whispering questions to me about what it was exactly that I had left out in my account of what might have passed between myself and Mr. Darcy when we had both been in Kent, and I sputtered out that he might have proposed to me, and she was aghast.
Then Mr. Darcy asked where we were staying and said he would send for servants to collect our belongings, for we were to stay at Pemberley, with him, as his guests, and he would hear of no protests to the contrary.
It wasn’t until much later, in the dark of night, that he came to the door of my bedchamber, holding a candle.
“I have been watching you,” he said. “Staying out of sight, simply observing, trying to make sure that you were all right. I have kept pace with your journey north, so I arrived here today at the same time as you did. There was concern of harm, you see. My aunt said that Anne was never the same, and then she said this awful thing to me that it was her presence with Anne that had caused it and that I must leave you alone for your own good—”
“You have been skulking about in the shadows all this time!” This might explain why I kept feeling as if he was there, all the time, mightn’t it? Why I kept looking up and expecting him to be there, though he never was. I had been seeing him out of the corner of my eye, no doubt. “Also, your aunt sent me the watch.”
“Did she?” He was astonished.
“It had a letter,” I said. “I think I still have it.” I got up to sort through my belongings to find it. I gave it to him.
He read it, shaking his head. “I am all astonishment. To think my aunt could do something out of the goodness of her heart.”
“Oh, she expects us to pay her a great deal of gratitude. She has been quite clear about how much we owe her.”
“She says that we need never mention it,” he said, pointing at the letter.
“Yes, but that is not what she means ,” I said. “Goodness, Will, you are hopeless with people, are you not?”
He chuckled. “This is why I need you.”
“Anyway,” I said, “go back and fill me in to what you have been up to. You have been following me, you say, for months.”
“Yes, well, it seemed clear you did not remember,” he said. “Also, you didn’t seem damaged, but I was… I don’t know… waiting.” He lifted a shoulder. “Bingley is going back to Netherfield, he says. He plans to be there in September. I thought I could go along with him, and that seemed enough time to observe you. But then, if all was well, we could renew our—”
“September?” I clenched my hands into fists. “You would have left me until September?”
“Well, it matters not. You are here now, and we shall be married as soon as the banns can be read.” He gave me a shy smile. “Do you approve of Pemberley? Could you like it here?”
“Do I approve of…?” I glared at him.
“Well, if there are things you don’t like, perhaps they can be altered. I should be quite happy to allocate whatever funds you might need—”
“You are impossible, Will Darcy,” I said, but my voice was breathy.
“Am I?”
“And you have still not proposed to me properly,” I said in an imperious voice.
“Ah, indeed,” he said. “Well, every time I ask, you say no.”
“You must keep asking,” I said. “You must do it again. And again. And again.”
“All right,” he said. “I shall propose every Thursday, then? How will that suit you?”
“Every Thursday,” I said with a smile. “Without fail.”
He reached out to brush his fingertips over my jaw. “We shall spend every Thursday together, then.”
“Yes,” I said. “And every Friday and every Saturday and Sunday and Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday as well.”
“It will be quite a novel experience, I think, every day together, but every day different .”
“Oh, yes,” I said.
And then he kissed me.
~
I’m ever so pleased you’ve made it here, all the way to the end!
Thank you for reading my book.
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