Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
"And I have known for considerably longer, and I do not waste time. The linens are being aired. You may thank me later."
Nana rose from her chair, gave Elizabeth one last look of profound satisfaction, and drifted through the bookcase.
Elizabeth sat at her desk, with her hand on her stomach. She sat there for a long time, in the quiet parlour, wondering if the warmth in the walls was because Pemberley knew an heir was coming.
Then she went to find Darcy, because if Nana knew that meant all the other ghosts would know, and it was quite unfair that Darcy should be so far down the list of those who knew.
He was in the study, at his desk, dealing with some correspondence. He looked up when she came in. She closed the door behind her. He must have seen something in her face, because he set down his pen and rose to his feet.
"Elizabeth?"
"Nana has just informed me," Elizabeth said, "that she is not going anywhere.
Her mission, as she describes it, is to see enough Darcy descendants safely into the world that she need not worry about the family line.
She says she's been here for a hundred and thirty years; she intends to see our first child born and properly looked after.
She will not set a number of Darcys who will be sufficient.
I think it possible there will never be a sufficient number, and she will haunt Pemberley forever.
But at least our child will have a most devoted guardian. "
Darcy looked at her. His gaze dropped to where her hand rested on her waist, and she watched him draw the correct conclusion.
He let out a shout of laughter. It was the most startling sound Elizabeth had ever heard from Fitzwilliam Darcy: loud, unguarded, joyful, a sound that belonged to a man who had just survived the worst week of his life and then been handed the best news of it.
He laughed, came around the desk, took her face in his hands and kissed her.
"We had better keep Nana happy," he said, against her mouth.
"She has already convinced Mrs Reynolds the nursery linens need to be aired; I had the sense not to inquire exactly how."
He laughed again. Then he took her hand and led her through the house to their bedroom, and Pemberley's ghosts, who had opinions about everything, kept their opinions to themselves for once.
Later, in the quiet of the afternoon, Elizabeth walked through the house again.
She walked slowly. She touched the walls as she passed, and the stone was warm, and the house hummed, very faintly, but not with dread or anger or the unsettled vibration of the days before the ball.
It hummed the way a house hums when it is content: the creak of old timbers, the whisper of air through windows that had seen four centuries of weather, the distant sound of servants going about their work.
There was a sense of anticipation, too, for the new heir. Life, continuing.
Graves was at his post in the hall. Mrs Alcott was in the kitchens, arguing with nobody about the proper storage of preserves. Sarah Dunn was dusting. Edmund and Charlotte were in the gallery, laughing. Miss Pardoe was reading. Lady Margaret was smiling in the rose garden. Sir Roderick slept.
Elizabeth paused in the entrance hall and looked up at the painted ceiling, the way she had on her first visit to Pemberley, that summer afternoon with the Gardiners when she had come as a tourist and tried not to think too hard about the man who owned it.
She had looked up at the ceiling and she had been impressed, and Nana, watching from somewhere, had decided she would do.
She was still looking up when Nana's voice came from behind her.
"Mrs Reynolds wishes me to tell you," Nana said, "though of course she does not know I am telling you, that the kitchen maid, Ellen, has been making eyes at the under-gardener, Thomas.
She does not approve. I do not approve either.
The under-gardener is a perfectly decent young man, but the kitchen maid is needed in the kitchen.
If she marries him she will leave service, and Mrs Reynolds has spent a year training her; she does not wish to start again.
Ellen is too young to be making such momentous decisions.
Another three years at least, Mrs Reynolds thinks. "
"Nana. I have just received the most significant news of my life, and you wish to discuss the kitchen maid?"
"The kitchen maid is an immediate concern. The heir is not due for months." Nana folded her arms. "Priorities, Elizabeth."
Elizabeth looked at Nana. Nana looked at Elizabeth, and raised one imperious, ghostly eyebrow.
"I'll speak to Mrs Reynolds," Elizabeth said.
"See that you do. And while you are about it, the fire in the yellow drawing room is smoking again. Sir Roderick does not notice, because he is asleep, but the living guests will notice, and I will not have Pemberley's fireplaces smoking when there are people in the house."
"There are no guests in the house, Nana. They have all gone."
"Miss de Bourgh is still here. Standards do not slip because the audience is small."
Elizabeth took a breath. She let it out.
She looked around the entrance hall of her home: the marble floor, the staircase, the portraits, the ghost of a mistress who wouldn't rest, the spectral servants who didn't know how to stop serving, the house that held them all, living and dead, in its ancient embrace.
Pemberley would never be silent. Elizabeth would never be alone in it. The dead would always be here, bickering, dusting, reading, sleeping, offering opinions she had not asked for about matters she was perfectly capable of handling herself.
She would not have it any other way.
"I'll see to the chimney, Nana, and about the kitchen-maid," Elizabeth said. She went to find Mrs Reynolds, and Pemberley hummed contentedly around her, warm and waiting for its new heir.