Chapter Two #2
“She is a woman who has been forced to accept her brother marrying into a family she considers beneath her, and she is unhappy,” Elizabeth corrected.
“Which does not excuse her behaviour, but should temper our response to it. Besides, if you haunt Caroline Bingley, she will make Jane’s life difficult, and I will not have that. ”
The argument was unanswerable, and they knew it.
Jane was the deciding factor. Jane, who had sat by the fire in this very room reading aloud from novels she knew Elizabeth was not listening to, because she understood that Elizabeth needed the sound of her voice as an anchor while she tended to business she could not explain.
Jane, who had never once asked Elizabeth to justify what she could not see.
The Netherfield ghosts might not be able to communicate with Jane as they could Elizabeth, but they like every other soul who came into Jane’s presence, had recognised her innate goodness.
Elizabeth was fairly sure they were already devoted to her.
“Very well,” Lady Cecily said, her tone suggesting she was making a considerable personal sacrifice. “For Mrs Bingley’s sake, we shall exercise restraint.”
“We shall be models of propriety,” Sir Harold agreed, rather less convincingly.
“Thank you.” Elizabeth stood, and looked at them, this odd little household of the dead. “Take care of her. She is my best beloved, and I am trusting you with her.”
Old Margaret was dabbing at her eyes. Daniel raised his hand in a half-wave, his young face solemn. Sir Harold bowed; Lady Cecily inclined her head.
Elizabeth left the library and climbed the stairs toward the room where her husband waited, carrying with her the quiet weight of another farewell.
Jane came to Elizabeth’s room the next morning, after Darcy had gone down but before most of the household had properly stirred.
She knocked softly and let herself in; Elizabeth, who had been sitting at the dressing table pretending to brush her hair while actually staring at the ring on her finger, trying to believe it was real, turned and felt something inside her loosen at the sight of her sister’s face.
They did not need to speak. They had never needed to speak, not really; not about the things that mattered most. Jane sat on the edge of the bed and Elizabeth sat beside her, and they held hands.
For a few minutes they simply sat and breathed together, two sisters on the edge of their separate futures.
“You look well,” Jane said at last, her voice soft and warm, carrying just the faintest undertone of a question. Elizabeth understood what she was really asking.
“I am well,” she said honestly. “He is everything I hoped.”
Jane’s smile bloomed, slow and luminous. “I am glad. So very glad.”
“And you? Bingley?”
“He is...” Jane paused, searching for the word, and then laughed, a quiet, wondering sound. “He is exactly himself. I do not know why that surprises me, but it does. He is exactly who I thought he was, and somehow that is the most astonishing thing of all.”
Elizabeth squeezed her hand. Outside, a bird sang; the September morning was clear and still, and through the window she could see the grounds of Netherfield spreading out in their gentle, rolling green. In an hour, or less, she would be in a carriage heading north. Leaving Jane behind.
“You will write to me,” Jane said. It was not a question.
“Every week. Twice, probably.”
“And you will tell me the truth? Not just the pretty version?”
Elizabeth looked at her. Jane’s blue eyes were steady. She knew the shape of Elizabeth’s fears. Pemberley was old, vast, steeped in centuries of Darcy history. If ever a house in England was going to test Elizabeth’s particular burden, it would be that one.
“Pemberley will have them,” Jane said gently, when Elizabeth did not answer. “You know it will.”
“I know.”
“And you will be managing an entirely new household of them, with no one who knows. Kitty will be there, which means you will have at least one confidant, but Lizzy...” Jane hesitated, then pressed on. “You have not told him.”
“No.”
“You will need to. Not today, perhaps. Not this week. But soon.” Jane squeezed her hand. “He loves you. He married you. Whatever you tell him, he will not turn from you.”
“You do not know that.”
“I know him,” Jane said simply. “Not as well as you, but well enough. He is a good man, Lizzy. He deserves the truth, and you deserve to share it.”
Elizabeth’s throat ached. She had heard this argument before, made it to herself a hundred times, and each time the fear had won.
The fear of his face changing. Beneath that, buried deepest, was the certainty that the world she inhabited, the world of the dead, would repulse the man she had come to love with her whole heart.
That she would lose him to a truth he would not believe, one she could not take back once she had spoken.
“I will tell him,” she said. “When I am ready.”
Jane did not press. She never did. She simply held Elizabeth’s hand, and they sat together in the quiet morning, the distance that was coming settling between them like a held breath.
“Write to me,” Jane said again, when the sounds of the household beginning to stir reached them through the floorboards. “And if you need me, I will come. Through mud and rain if necessary.”
Elizabeth laughed, the sound catching in her throat. “I seem to recall that is my trick.”
“Then I have learnt from the best.” Jane kissed her cheek, stood, and smoothed her skirts. At the door she paused and looked back, and her expression was the same one Elizabeth had seen a thousand times: love, worry, and an absolute refusal to let either defeat her.
“Be brave, Lizzy,” she said. “Pemberley cannot possibly be worse than Mr Collins at Christmas dinner.”
Elizabeth was still laughing when the door closed behind her sister. The sound carried her all the way to the carriage, where Darcy was waiting, his hand outstretched to help her in. The road to Pemberley stretched out ahead of them, long, unknown, and full of ghosts she had not yet met.