Chapter 43
A PERVERSE TWIST OF FATE
E lizabeth paid a call on her aunt’s friends in Lambton on Saturday.
Having seen neither Mrs Whitaker nor Miss Tanner since she and the Gardiners left Derbyshire in the summer, she was pleased to be able to pass on her aunt’s apologies for their abrupt departure.
The call afforded a blissful hiatus from Lady Catherine’s incessant cavilling, though when she arrived back at Pemberley, Elizabeth felt rather bad for having abandoned Darcy to it, for it seemed that matters had come to a head in her absence.
Her maid, Garrett, filled her in on most of it, and the rest, she determined to learn from her husband.
She found him in the Stag Parlour, reading a book, which he set aside the instant he saw her in favour of pulling her down next to him for a kiss.
“That was a very enthusiastic welcome home.”
“I am excessively pleased you are back.”
“Yes, I heard that you have had a rather unpleasant time of it.”
At her behest, Darcy related the morning’s goings-on, ending with an enquiry as to why she had not informed him about the business with Edna.
“I did not know she was a thief, only that she was a malcontent.”
“Then you ought to have told me that . You need not shield me from these matters. When I asked you to choose the new housekeeper, it was so you would feel that the household was your domain, not because I expected you to take on everything, straight away.”
“’Tis not as onerous as you seem to think. It has taken some time to get to know everyone’s faces and understand how things work, but Mrs Lovell is very much running the show.”
“Mrs Lovell was all praise of your judiciousness and understanding. She insists that she has learnt a good deal from you already.”
Elizabeth bit her lip guiltily. “I ought to make a confession, but you are sworn to secrecy, do you understand? All these wonderful suggestions that Mrs Lovell thinks are mine have in fact come from my aunt Wallis.”
“Your godmother?”
She nodded. “She even chose Mrs Lovell from the applications I sent her. I hate to break it to you, but Lady Catherine is right. I really do not know what I am doing.”
Darcy reached for her hand. “You are not giving yourself enough credit. Mrs Lovell, Matthis, Ferguson—they all approve of you.” He kissed her fingers. “Even Vaughan approves, and his good opinion is scarcely ever bestowed.”
“Now I need only to convince Lady Catherine.”
“No, you do not,” he replied, stiffening. “I was about to say that I approve of you, and that is all that matters. Anyone who disagrees—my aunt, Mrs Reynolds, the lot of them can take their disapproval to the Devil.”
Elizabeth was taken aback by the incongruous mention of Mrs Reynolds.
Her name was spat out so reflexively, it seemed as though Darcy was not aware he had said it.
His enduring bitterness ought not to have been a surprise.
He had admitted early in their acquaintance that he found it hard to forgive other people’s offences against him—but she knew he had meant people who were important to him.
Though, she supposed Mrs Reynolds had been the nearest thing to a matriarch at Pemberley since Lady Anne died, and there was no doubt that Darcy must have felt the warmth of her devotion.
The thought made her heart heavy for him, for it confirmed something she had long suspected: his anger towards Mrs Reynolds was born of more than displeasure at a servant’s misconduct; it was born of real hurt.
Elizabeth had assumed Darcy disliked Mrs Lovell because he had decided all housekeepers were untrustworthy, but it occurred to her now that there was a simpler explanation.
He missed Mrs Reynolds but was too angry—and undoubtedly too proud—to admit it.
She cupped his face. “I wish I could cheer you up.”
“You do. Constantly.”
“Mrs Whitaker mentioned that the Lambton assembly is next week. I think we should go.” She dissolved into laughter to see Darcy’s expression. “I would not be so cruel! But I might insist that you let me invite Mr Connelly and Miss Reid to dinner, to liven us up a bit.”
“You can invite Napoleon to dinner if you like. Anything but an assembly, I beg you.”
They parted ways thereafter, Darcy to speak to his steward and Elizabeth to see whether Georgiana was recovered from her earlier upset. She was halfway up the stairs when Mrs Lovell called her name from below. She waited for her to catch up, then continued with her to the landing.
“I was planning to come and see you in a short while, Mrs Lovell. I understand you have had a rather trying day.”
The housekeeper waved away her concern. “It is all resolved, Mrs Darcy. I shall happily answer any questions you have, but that is not what I came to speak to you about.” She held out several bundles of letters, each tied with string.
“I was unpacking some more of my belongings this morning, and I found these at the back of one of the cabinets in my room. I presume they belonged to Mrs Reynolds. I was not sure what you would like me to do with them.”
Elizabeth took them and was about to jest that perhaps she would save them for the next time they ran out of coal when she was arrested by the familiarity of the handwriting on the uppermost letter.
Frowning, she slid it out of the binding to look at it more closely—and inhaled sharply when the post mark confirmed the identity of the sender.
“Is anything the matter, ma’am?” the housekeeper asked, all concern.
“Um, no. No, I…thank you for these.” She walked away, her heart pounding and her mind racing.
Georgiana would have to wait, for these letters could not.
Not when, by the looks of it, every single one had been sent to Mrs Reynolds from her own aunt Wallis.
She hastened to her room and tore open the first one.
Ten minutes later, she was cross-legged on the floor, sheafs of opened letters spread all around her as she attempted to fathom what on earth she had uncovered.
The two women were clearly the best of friends; the earliest letter Elizabeth had found thus far was dated 1776 and was full of Mrs Wallis’s descriptions of her new home in North Devon.
Many of the letters meant nothing to her, full of references to people she did not know and incidents that were unrelated to her, all written in her aunt Wallis’s distinctive style, with daft names for everything and sarcasm largely obscuring the gist of the message.
But in a letter dated 1799 the line, ‘Dot has recovered!’ caught her eye, and her heart sank.
That was the year she contracted whooping cough, and what were the chances that her aunt knew two Dots, both of whom were ill in the same year?
Having seen her name once, she saw it everywhere.
In another letter, dated 1801, Mrs Wallis had written about Elizabeth’s first visit to Ilfracombe with her father and Jane.
In 1807, she had filled two pages with her raptures at having spent a week in Bath with Mr Wallis and ‘dear Dot’.
A quick perusal of a dozen more letters revealed multiple mentions of the events of Elizabeth’s formative years.
Her whole life was here, in snippet form, for Mrs Reynolds to play voyeur to!
The prospect that her aunt Wallis, one of the most beloved people in her life, should have been privy to that woman’s scheming was inexpressibly painful.
She was tempted to burn the lot in anger, but unwillingness to believe it of her aunt compelled her to read on in search of some other explanation.
There were many reports of happy events. Births were mentioned frequently, from Georgiana’s—
How Pemberley must be rejoicing at this happy news!
To Lydia’s—
The Termagant has birthed a fifth girl. She is officially useless.
Childhood antics seemed a favourite topic, and a few of the allusions to Darcy’s misadventures made Elizabeth laugh aloud despite her distress.
She knew not which of the women had coined his nickname but given that she herself had heard Mrs Reynolds describe him as a good-natured boy, she suspected ‘The Cherub’ had been the housekeeper’s epithet.
It did not take long to work out that ‘The Wastrel’ must be George Wickham.
Some of the letters contained more distressing news.
In one, her aunt sent her condolences for the death of Lady Anne, expressing her pride that Mrs Reynolds had shown such compassion to her ‘friend and mistress’ in nursing her steadfastly through her final hours.
Did Darcy know Mrs Reynolds had done that?
In another, Mrs Wallis had written of her own grief at the death of ‘her dear friend Jane’, whom Elizabeth comprehended with a start was probably her grandmother.
Another—a distressingly candid communication—contained advice on how Mrs Reynolds might assist Lady Anne through her repeated miscarriages, based on Mrs Wallis’s own numerous experiences.
Tears stung Elizabeth’s eyes when she read the letter that her aunt had evidently written in response to the news that Darcy’s father had died.
It was full of pity and sadness and spoke volumes as to the sorrow enshrouding Pemberley at the time.
She noticed, also, that Mrs Wallis did not refer to Darcy with his childhood nickname in any letter dated after that day.
An hour was not enough to read a fraction of the correspondence Mrs Lovell had found, and when her clock chimed four, Elizabeth was no closer to understanding how her godmother and Darcy’s housekeeper had come to know each other, nor what part each had played in separating them in the summer.
She sifted about in the sea of open pages for more unread letters and uncovered a whole cache, still bound with string, behind the leg of the chaise.
These were dated more recently, and as she read them, a far more detailed picture began to paint itself.