Epilogue #3
“Illness makes one honest.” Mrs. Morgan walked several paces in silence, her gaze fixed on some point far out to sea, and Elizabeth had the distinct impression she was deciding how much of herself to give away.
“My husband came home from the war with a cough that never left him, and we had one year before the end. It was, in an odd way, a good year. I would not trade it, for we fell in love all over again.” She paused.
When she resumed, her voice had lost its usual tartness.
“Life as an officer’s wife was difficult, but we were happy, and that is more than most wives of my acquaintance can claim.
” She adjusted her bonnet with a brisk tug.
“Half the women I nursed through childbed were married to men they tolerated at best. Matches for fortune, family arrangements, mothers who thought security was the same as happiness. It is not.”
Elizabeth thought of the easy way in which Uncle Gardiner handed her aunt into a carriage, the private smiles they exchanged when they thought no one was looking.
That was the kind of marriage she wanted, if she married at all.
She would rather remain a spinster aunt to her eldest sister Jane’s future children than sell her freedom for the sake of a comfortable settlement.
Though she supposed it was easy enough to say that when one was young and not yet desperate.
One house at the far end of the terrace stood slightly apart from its neighbours, set back from the Parade behind a low stone wall—likely leased for the summer, furnished and attended, at an expense Elizabeth could not comfortably imagine.
Its blind was down, giving it a shuttered, secretive look.
Elizabeth might have thought no more of it had her attention not been caught by her companion.
“There,” Mrs. Morgan said, nodding toward a figure ahead of them on the promenade. “That girl again.”
Elizabeth followed Mrs. Morgan’s gaze. A young woman stood near the railing, looking out at the sea. She was perhaps fifteen or sixteen, fair-haired and slight, dressed in a pale blue pelisse that was too thin for the windy weather. Even at this distance, Elizabeth could see that she was shivering.
“She was here yesterday as well,” Mrs. Morgan continued. “And the day before. Always alone. Always staring at the water, and not in a peaceful way.”
They drew closer, and Elizabeth studied the girl with more attention than was polite. There was something in her taut posture that was more than simple contemplation. She appeared to be searching for an answer to some perplexing question, though what that might be, Elizabeth could not say.
“We should not stare,” Mrs. Morgan murmured.
“You pointed her out.”
“I did not point, I merely made an observation.”
The girl must have sensed their attention, because she turned suddenly, her eyes meeting Elizabeth’s across the distance. For a moment, something like surprise, or perhaps alarm flickered in her expression. Then her features smoothed into a careful blankness.
She was a pretty girl, Elizabeth noted. Pretty and troubled.
“Good morning,” Elizabeth said, because it seemed wrong to simply walk past.
The girl dipped into a curtsey that was correct but somehow mechanical. “Good morning.”
Her voice was soft and cultivated, bearing the unmistakable polish of an expensive education. A gentleman’s daughter, then, or higher. But there was no maid in attendance, no companion hovering nearby, only this solitary figure, shivering in the early morning wind.
“Forgive my impertinence,” Elizabeth continued, ignoring Mrs. Morgan’s warning look, “but you appear to be cold. There is a tea shop just there”—she gestured at the place several shops ahead of them—“that serves an excellent chocolate. Might we persuade you to join us?”
The girl’s eyes widened. “I—that is very kind, but I could not possibly—my companion would not like it.”
Elizabeth could not help but glance about. “Your companion?”
“Mrs. Younge.” The girl made a slight gesture at the house behind them, the one at the end of the terrace. “She does not approve of my speaking to strangers.”
“Well then.” Elizabeth smiled, hoping to coax an answering expression from that young, anxious face. “I am Miss Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourn in Hertfordshire, and this is Mrs. Morgan, of Ramsgate. There. Now we are not strangers.”
The girl stared at her for a long moment. Then, slowly, something that might have been the ghost of a smile touched her lips.
“Miss Darcy,” she said. “Of Pemberley.”
Elizabeth inclined her head. She had never heard of Pemberley, but from the manner in which Miss Darcy spoke the name, she suspected many people did.
“I am honoured to make your acquaintance, Miss Darcy of Pemberley. And I am doubly honoured that you have condescended to stand in a Ramsgate gale to speak with me.”
Mrs. Morgan cleared her throat.
Colour rose in the girl’s cheeks. She glanced past Elizabeth, as though only now recalling the existence of Mrs. Morgan. “Oh, do excuse me. Are you quite all right?”
Mrs. Morgan gave a slight curtsey that managed to convey proper respect and complete disapproval at once.
“At your service, Miss Darcy.” She hesitated, then said what had evidently been on her mind, “You ought to be wearing a warmer pelisse. That scrap of blue silk is fit only for sitting near a drawing room fire. Surely you have something more suitable for the weather?”
Miss Darcy did not speak. Mrs. Morgan’s bluntness had flustered her.
“Will you not fetch Mrs. Younge and join us at the tea shop, Miss Darcy?” Elizabeth asked. “I promise we shall not talk of anything more improper than novels and seals.”
For one unguarded instant, yearning flickered nakedly across Miss Darcy’s face. “I should like, but . . . that is . . . I ought not,” she amended quickly. “Mrs. Younge expects me back at the house. She does not approve of my lingering.”
“Mrs. Younge sounds like a woman who has never been thoroughly converted to chocolate,” Elizabeth said. “I cannot help but regard that as a moral failing.”
That earned a breath of a laugh. “She says chocolate is an unnecessary indulgence.”
“Then she has been drinking the wrong sort,” Mrs. Morgan remarked. “Good chocolate makes one steady. Bad chocolate makes one sick. Like husbands.”
“Mrs. Morgan,” Elizabeth protested, though she could not entirely suppress her own amusement.
“I shall tell my brother I met you,” Miss Darcy said, seizing upon a safer topic. “He is to arrive soon, I think.” Her gloved hands twisted together. “He is the best brother in the whole of England, and he will be pleased to know that I have made an acquaintance.”
Elizabeth suspected that pleased might not be all that Mr. Darcy would feel when he heard his sister had struck up an acquaintance with a stranger on a public promenade.
She wondered what sort of man could command such devotion from so gentle a creature—whether he was the excellent brother Miss Darcy claimed, or merely the sort who confused provision with attention.
“I hope you are correct,” she said. “And if he is not pleased, you may tell him that Miss Bennet is quite determined to steal some of his sister’s morning hours, with or without his approbation. ”
Miss Darcy’s eyes shone. “You are very good.”
“I am excessively selfish,” Elizabeth corrected. “I have been given a prescription for sea air and exercise and am greedy enough to wish for company as well. It is a tedious thing, being so virtuous alone.”
“You are not alone,“ Mrs. Morgan said.
Elizabeth smiled. “Do you see the reach of my avarice, Miss Darcy? I already have the company of Mrs. Morgan and yet I still desire more.”
“Then I shall do my best to accommodate,” Miss Darcy replied, a bit of playfulness lightening her countenance. “For I too wish for more company.”
A sharp rap sounded against the glass of the nearest window.
All three ladies turned. A woman stood inside the house at the far end of the terrace, her features distorted by the pane but her displeasure unmistakable.
Elizabeth could see the rigid line of Mrs. Younge’s mouth, the imperious tilt of her head as she tossed a shawl around her shoulders and turned away.
The little hope that had been growing in Miss Darcy seemed to fold in on itself. The door to the house opened. Miss Darcy flinched, and the small, involuntary movement sent a prickle of unease down Elizabeth’s spine.
Mrs. Younge stepped out. “Miss Darcy.” The woman’s voice was perfectly pleasant and carried beautifully in the sea air. “You will catch your death out here. Come inside at once if you please.” The words were all solicitude, but Miss Darcy seemed to hear in them something . . . less amiable.
“I must go,” she whispered. “It was very wrong of me to linger. Mrs. Younge will be . . . She does not like that I come out alone to view the sea.”
“Then we must not make you wretched on our account,” Mrs. Morgan said briskly. “Go along with you, child. We shall manage to drink chocolate without you, though it will taste the poorer for the want of your company.”
Miss Darcy hesitated. Then, with evident effort, she dipped another curtsey. “Good morning, Miss Bennet. Mrs. Morgan.”
“Tomorrow,” Elizabeth said quietly. “We are here each morning before breakfast.”
Mrs. Morgan’s eyebrows lifted, but she said nothing to contradict Elizabeth’s statement.
Miss Darcy almost smiled. “Tomorrow,” she echoed, so softly that Elizabeth could only just hear it.
They watched her hurry back toward the house. Mrs. Younge stepped aside to allow her entrance and closed the door behind them.
They stood in silence for a moment.
“That,” Mrs. Morgan said, “is a girl in a cage.”
“Her brother has given her a summer by the sea and a companion to escort her,” Elizabeth said slowly. “He would likely be offended to hear his arrangements described as a cage.”
“Men rarely recognise cages so long as they are the ones who ordered them built.” Mrs. Morgan set off toward the town with a determined step.
“Come. If we do not arrive at the tea shop soon, you will be obliged to lean upon me the whole way home, and my knees cannot bear the strain. And you will not attempt chocolate with your cough. Tea is just the thing.”
Elizabeth fell into step beside Mrs. Morgan, once again feeling weary from her exertions. Yet for the first time in months, her mind was occupied with something other than her own recovery.
That flinch. That small, sharp flinch when the door had opened.
Elizabeth looked back, not to the promenade, but to the house. One of the upper blinds moved, as if a hand had released it too quickly.
Tomorrow, she thought. She would be here tomorrow.