Chapter 43 #2
August 1811, You always said that Mrs Younge was a canny one, and you were right!
It is probably best not to know the details of what transpired in Ramsgate if it has given Mr Darcy such pain, but you were right to dismiss the fools who were whispering about it. Your master would thank you if he knew.
October 1811, A stupid man, whom Dot has very aptly named Starch, refused to dance with her and said she was not handsome enough to tempt him—can you credit it!
December 1811, Dog Collar has proposed to Dot (she refused him), Wet Lettuce has run away, never to return, and Peacock has turned his attentions to an heiress. Pray send your Mr Darcy quickly, Agnes, and save Dot from all these insincere Lotharios!
April 1812, Starch has proposed to Dot! It is preposterous enough that he should think himself worthy of her, but he added insult to injury by doing it in the most contemptible, hurtful manner imaginable!
May 1812, I am sorry to hear Mr Darcy’s spirits are so low. I agree with Mrs Fairlight; he is probably lonely. I know you think no one is good enough for him except my Dot, but really, you must not judge all other young ladies by her standard, it is most unfair. She is a rare creature.
August 1812, Clarabelle sounds utterly delightful. What a charming mix of guile and impudence for a young lady to possess! Her connexion to George Wickham is something of which to be wary, to be sure. I hope, for all your sakes, you see no more of her.
“Am I Clarabelle?” Elizabeth cried indignantly.
August 1812, Dot, my precious, undeserving goddaughter, has been dealt the most unjust and injurious of blows. Her youngest sister has eloped!
“ This is how she found out about Lydia and Wickham!”
August 1812, Dot is not now and never has been short for Dorothy. My goddaughter’s name is Elizabeth.
“She did not know it was me!” Elizabeth scrabbled to her feet, relieved beyond measure to discover that her aunt Wallis had not been party to Mrs Reynolds’s interference.
It was still unclear what had induced the housekeeper’s intervention, though from the fragments she had read, it seemed as though her main objection was that she—or rather Clarabelle—had not been enough like Dot.
Elizabeth let out a small, slightly hysterical laugh. “She disliked me because I was not as wonderful as myself!”
Little wonder that Elizabeth had not appeared to her best advantage when she first arrived at Pemberley, tongue-tied with dread at the possibility of encountering Darcy and thereafter mortified to have obtruded into his life again uninvited.
But of far more significance was that Mrs Reynolds had approved of Dot—the version of her that Mrs Wallis had portrayed in her letters; the version that was far closer to her true self; the version with whom Darcy had fallen in love.
She had to tell him! If he knew Mrs Reynolds would have heartily approved of their marriage, it might ease the hurt of her betrayal.
It might not, of course, for he would first have to admit to being hurt, but that was a bridge Elizabeth could cross at a later date.
At the very least it must lessen the sting, to see written in these letters such immutable proof of the devotion with which Mrs Reynolds served him up until that point.
The clock struck the half hour, and Elizabeth noticed how gloomy the room and sky outside had become. She hastily gathered up all the letters and threw them in a drawer, snatched a shawl from the back of a chair, then walked briskly to the front of the house.
“James, is Mr Darcy still outside with Mr Ferguson?”
The footman confirmed that he was, and she dashed through the door, along the path and around the corner to where the east wing jutted out from the back of the house.
She smiled to herself as she thought of how, in one of the letters, her aunt Wallis had referred to Pemberley as Mrs Reynolds’s pride and joy.
How it would surely please Darcy to know she had thought so well of it!
She took a wide berth around the trench and the scaffolding and wove her way between the many piles of earth and rubble.
The workmen were packing up for the day, more of them milling about on the lawn than were still working on the footings.
A few of them doffed their caps, and she smiled and wished them good afternoon, but she was in too much of a hurry to stop and speak to them.
She did not spot Darcy until she was almost at the back of the house.
He was standing at the foot of the north slope with several other men, all of them looking back at the north elevation.
Her heart leapt at the sight of him, not least because she was anxious to tell him what she had discovered, but also because, even at this distance and in the waning light, he cut an exceedingly fine figure—taller, more stately, more masterful than any of the people to whom he was speaking.
She allowed herself a small smile of complacency and quickened her steps, eager to reach him.
She jumped and almost stumbled when someone bellowed something at her from close by.
She turned to see who. Several men, all of them shouting, came scrambling with unnerving urgency out of the trench beneath the scaffolding.
At the very instant that she comprehended they were screaming “Run!” there came a noise unlike anything she had ever heard, and to her horror, the entire east wing abruptly shrank away from the sky in a flood of tumbling, crashing, cascading stone.
Scaffolding pinged away from the walls like snapping twigs; the ground shook; and a roiling bank of dust and rubble bubbled up from the ground to engulf her, the sky, and everything in between.
It filled her eyes and ears and lungs with grit and turned the whole world black.