Chapter 25 Miriam’s Perch #2
Once they settled in, Amanda said, “I believe you were speaking of sand and fingers? You need not tell me what happened. You are a widower like me, though every other aspect of your life is different.”
“Such as?”
“Such as marriage, for example. I can marry, and as owner of a prosperous shop, I have plenty of choices. You must marry and should have years ago. If I do not wed again, this little shop is the only thing affected, and the half-dozen people that rely on me will need to be taken care of. If you do not, hundreds, perhaps thousands, would be affected. You have a long family history that must be passed whole and complete to your son. I have four years of history that I can do with as I will. I could sell this shop and retire any day I like. Our situations are vastly different.”
“I suppose that is true. I also have more freedom of movement, but more responsibility to go with it.”
“Obviously! May I ask a delicate question?”
Darcy was surprised by the tone of her query, as if he had been speaking to Mrs Thorne through a wall for three months and she had opened a tiny window so they could face each other.
He surprised himself. “You may ask me anything you like, and I will do my best to answer.”
“What happened?”
Darcy settled back into the comfortable chair and reflected that this bookshop had far more comfortable chairs than all of Rosings combined before Bingley and Anne took charge.
He thought a minute and finally sighed resignedly. “My marriage was forced. I later learned that it was more forced for my wife than for me. She tried in vain to run away—twice!”
“Go on,” Mrs Thorne said guardedly, which did not surprise Darcy in the least. He had just admitted he seemed a terrible prospect and probably not someone she should be all that comfortable with, but she seemed unbothered.
He dragged his attention back five years to the time of his greatest failure. “She was unsuccessful, but I knew nothing about that until later—much later—after she died, in fact. I may have mentioned I went to France right after the wedding?”
“I believe you went to ransom your cousin, the current Earl of Matlock, and became ill?”
Darcy sighed, remembering the sheer hopelessness that descended on him when he returned to Pemberley.
“That was when the war left mail service non-existent, and the French were being particularly strict about it. It was just before the invasion of Russia. The British Navy was blockading France, so nothing but privateers and smugglers got through. I sent her five letters all told, but not even one arrived before she left. The first, sent a few days after the wedding, went down with a sinking ship, though I learned that much later.”
“Did you treat her badly?”
“Yes, I—” then he found his hand shaking a bit, even after all those years. “I did not beat or starve her, but I did something as bad. I distrusted her. I ignored her. I humiliated her. I am not the least bit surprised she left. It turned out that—”
He sat, thinking what he wanted to say, and finally continued shakily. “I think both of us were not quite serious when we made our vows. We gave them provisionally, even though that goes against the spirit of the whole thing.”
“I was not aware there were provisional vows.”
“There are not, but we did it anyway. She gave me six months to say one kind word.”
“That seems fair.”
“More than fair,” Darcy said with a shrug. “My attitude was more nefarious. I mostly ignored her and vowed that I would do whatever I had to do to make her into an acceptable wife upon my return—little understanding I was the one in need of reformation.”
“People seldom change others. Change must come from within.”
“Yes, it was a stupid plan. It was arrogant and foolhardy. I think the last words she ever said to me were what, at the time, I considered an assassination of my character, but they turned out to be an assessment—a frightfully accurate one at that.”
“And yet, you are not the man you were—or if you are, you hide it well. What happened between then and now to transform you?”
“Her death was odd, and frankly suspicious. She died in a place where her body could not be recovered, where she should not have been in the first place, travelling somewhere she should not have known about, to find a husband she despised. It all made no sense.”
“Perhaps all that is true, but it sounds more like bitterness.”
Darcy shrugged resignedly. “Naturally. I did not know whether to believe it or not. I thought it could well be a ruse—a particularly good one, but a ruse nonetheless—so I investigated.”
“I would assume no less. What did you learn?”
Darcy thought she seemed far more interested in that answer than earlier ones, but it could just as well have been the wine, since he was not exactly thinking at peak capacity.
“I followed it up for months. I spent half of my mourning period quietly investigating.
I wanted to know beyond doubt exactly what happened.
The witnesses seemed credible, but most of them were inconveniently absent.
The ship was on a Clipper Route, which goes from the Continent, south to New Zealand, then across the South Atlantic, around the Cape of Good Hope, up to the American cities, and finally back to England.
It would be gone for a year or more. Two of the witnesses were servants from Pemberley, but they used funds my wife left them to emigrate.
I tracked them to Philadelphia, but they disappeared westward after that. “
“Hardly surprising, when their mistress was killed on their watch. Many men of your station would start searching for scapegoats. They would be particularly vulnerable, and it sounds like you left them little reason to trust your forbearance. It is interesting that they had enough money for that.”
“Yes, my wife engineered a very clever scheme to make several thousand pounds. She left them enough to set themselves up for life.”
“Interesting.”
“Yes, interesting. You can see why I found it so convenient. Elizabeth was stuck at my estate for six months, but much to my shame, I did not allow her to be a proper mistress. She, very cleverly in my opinion, pretended to be in mourning so she would not be well known. She spent a lot of time with the two lowest ranked servants in the house, then took them with her. I never met either. She knew the housekeeper, the butler, my stablemaster and a few others moderately well, but never spent a lot of time with any of them. It was as if—”
He faltered, wondering if he was going to start wallowing in guilt, but Amanda helped him out.
“It sounds as if she was holding herself in reserve. Not allowing herself to become a part of the estate or vice versa until she was certain it was her place. Keep in mind you could have easily put her aside, stuck her in a cabin in the woods, or anything else you wanted. Perhaps her place in your life was, as you said about the vows, provisional.”
“Yes, it was provisional, and when the probation period ended, she set out to force the issue. She left at the end of six months, to the minute.”
“Was she capable of finding you? Had the accident not occurred, would she have been successful? What makes you so certain she was not genuine in her efforts?”
Darcy had thought about that a lot that first year, so he answered at once.
“Yes, I believe she could have found me. She would have been too late, but absent the accident, she could have quickly discovered I had been there and gone without a lot of effort from Porto. She would have returned a few months after I did with none the wiser.”
He thought about it a moment more. “I eventually found the man who escorted her and sent me the news of her death—Mr Baker. He was normally a thief-taker, the same man who returned her to her father twice.”
“Yes, you mentioned that. It would seem your wife was particularly inept at escape.”
“No, I think not. I think Mr Baker was very, very good, and he admitted that he was lucky both times.”
Amanda looked thoughtful. “Mr Baker seems a man with a certain—how can I say it—moral flexibility.”
“That he does. I even asked him about it, and he described his personal code of ethics. I expected it to be purely avaricious, but it was more nuanced than that. When he takes a case, he gives absolute loyalty to the client for the duration of the job, but there are limits. He would not allow me to engage him to investigate my wife because he still considered himself loyal to her mission, even though she was dead. He said her death in no way removed any obligation to her. It simply transferred that loyalty to her memory.”
“That seems a peculiar place to draw the line.”
“A man like that must either be completely amoral or work out a code of conduct. He could well have brought people back to things they did not deserve, with my wife being a perfect example, so he had to have some guiding principle, even if he had to bend his logic in half to follow it. If he worshipped only money, it would be easy, but I got the idea he was more subtle than that.”
“Interesting.”
“Mr Baker finally convinced me to accept my wife’s death.”
Amanda leaned forward. “Did you really accept it? You seemed convinced I was your wife that first day. Do you still harbour such delusions? If so, it would make me very nervous.”
Darcy looked over and gave his companion the respect of seriously considering her question before answering.
“I am beyond that. You still remind me of her in many ways when you let down your guard a moment. You have her humour, you match or best her in intelligence, you look more like her than her sisters do.”
Then he chuckled and added, “To be honest, you match her in pure grit. Having said that, I appreciate you for yourself, not for your similarities to her. If I may be so bold as to say so, I would like to consider you a friend.”
She stared at him for some moments, and finally said, “Very well. You may have my friendship gladly.”