18. I Begin to Hope
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I BEGIN TO HOPE
Pemberley, Derbyshire
My Dearest Jane,
I hardly know where to begin, except to assure you immediately that I am in excellent health and spirits, lest you imagine from my long silence that some catastrophe has befallen me.
Quite the reverse, in fact—and I can only plead the usual excuse of the newly married, which is that one becomes so absorbed in the novelty of one’s situation that correspondence falls shamefully behind.
You will be relieved to learn that Pemberley has not swallowed me whole, though it made a valiant attempt during my first week.
The house is everything the guidebooks claim and rather more besides—I have not yet explored all of its rooms, and I suspect I shall still be discovering new passages and forgotten parlors when I am eighty.
The grounds are magnificent, the staff numerous and frighteningly efficient, and the portraits of Darcy ancestors gaze down from the walls with expressions ranging from stern disapproval to benign affront, as though they cannot quite believe that a country mouse from Hertfordshire has infiltrated their illustrious ranks.
Can you imagine, Jane, your own sister as mistress of such an establishment?
I confess I could not when I first arrived.
I expected to feel like an imposter, to spend my days waiting for someone to notice that I did not belong and escort me firmly back to Longbourn, where I might resume my proper station in life.
But a peculiar thing has happened. The household has decided, collectively and without consulting me, that I am precisely what Pemberley requires.
The servants smile when I pass. The housekeeper approves of my management.
And I have just survived a most entertaining siege by two neighbors, Lady Cathcart and Miss Entwhistle, the latter of whom is determined to convert me to the philosophy of a mysterious authoress called Lady Renwick.
You would find her novels diverting, I think—full of passionate heroines who demand honesty from their brooding lovers and refuse to be protected from difficult truths.
I have been loaned The Midnight Tower and am instructed to write with my impressions immediately upon finishing.
Miss Entwhistle is quite convinced that Lady Renwick will alter my understanding of matrimony entirely.
I did not have the heart to tell her that my understanding of matrimony has already been considerably altered, and not by any novelist but my own husband.
Jane, I hardly know how to describe him except to say that the reserved stranger I married has proved considerably warmer upon closer acquaintance.
You must not laugh when I tell you that I believe I am falling in love with him.
I know how absurd it sounds. Ours was meant to be a practical arrangement, a marriage of convenience that would benefit both parties without requiring the inconvenience of genuine feeling.
But convenience, it seems, has developed complications.
Mr. Darcy has been kind where I expected coldness, attentive where I anticipated indifference, and possessed of a dry wit that catches me entirely off guard when it emerges from behind his formidable reserve.
He carried me through a rainstorm last week when I was taken ill—actually lifted me in his arms and bore me up the stairs like a hero from one of Georgiana’s Gothic novels—and the household has been composing romantic ballads about it ever since.
I have attempted to explain that he was merely being practical, that a wife collapsed in the mud reflects poorly on one’s estate, but no one believes me.
They are all of them convinced that Mr. Darcy is desperately in love with me, and I am beginning to suspect they may be right.
First, the fever—you must not worry. After a great deal of rest and gargling with salt water, I am quite restored.
I emerged from the adventure with nothing worse than a slight cough and a considerably revised opinion of my husband’s character.
Being sheltered in a barn full of hay was rather lacking in propriety, but Jane, he is my husband, although he entirely made no demands and wishes me to choose him.
Any affection would be entirely my doing—but I demure.
I am burying the lead shamefully, for I have not yet told you about little Thomas.
You will remember that Mr. Darcy’s purpose in marrying was to provide a mother for his nephew.
I confess I anticipated difficulty. The boy called for his mother day and night and was suspicious of me at first. He bit me on our first meeting, Jane. Actually drew blood.
He does not trust easily—he lost his mother quite precipitously, and children understand loss even when they cannot name it.
He required patience rather than pursuit.
I have learned to let him come to me, to wait for his trust rather than demand it, and he has rewarded my patience with small gifts: a wilted dandelion presented with enormous ceremony, the loan of his most treasured wooden horse, and, most recently, the decision to fall asleep in my arms while his uncle watched with an expression I shall not soon forget.
He calls me Lizba, which Georgiana informs me is the highest honor he bestows. He has claimed me, Jane, with a toddler’s directness: “Lizba, mine.” And I find I do not mind being so claimed.
And now we have acquired a puppy. A basset hound, of all things—the most ridiculous creature imaginable.
His ears are longer than his legs, his expression suggests he is contemplating the sorrows of existence, and he has attached himself to me with a devotion that borders on the inconvenient.
Thomas has named him Harley, and the two of them have been inseparable since the moment of introduction.
You should have seen Thomas laughing in the farmyard, Jane—actually laughing, with all the unguarded joy of a child who has finally found a creature to love without fear.
I cried a little, I confess, though I pretended it was merely the dust.
I, too, might have found a place I belong to, although I yearn to visit Longbourn again.
Mr. Darcy insists I may travel as I desire, but frankly, I sense that he fears I may leave now that Longbourn’s roof is made whole and Papa is recovering his health.
Dear Jane, he called me ‘essential,’ and it was the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to me.
I catch him contemplating me around the corners and across rooms, as if he cannot believe the gift I had given him.
Do I belong here? I begin to think I might. I begin to hope.
There are shadows, of course. Thomas’s father remains abroad, having secured a commission that removes him conveniently from any obligation toward his son. Mr. Darcy does not speak of him, and I do not ask. Some subjects are best left undisturbed.
And yet I cannot entirely silence the fear that he may one day return.
Fathers have rights, Jane, however little they have earned them.
And then I discovered Thomas’s mother was the daughter of an Earl.
Her family was estranged after her unconventional choices, but families have a way of remembering their claims when it suits them.
I probably shouldn’t mention her name, but I believe Mrs. Gardiner might have introduced us at one of the modistes, and even though you stayed home, I attended a few of her literary readings.
They met in that coffee shop near the booksellers.
You remember the one. She was a brilliant writer of satires and essays, and there is talk that she wrote novels, possibly unpublished.
Georgiana has been everything delightful.
She is sixteen and full of enthusiasm, and she has adopted me with the fervor of a sister who has been waiting her whole life for female companionship.
She plays for hours on the pianoforte and reads Gothic novels aloud in dramatic voices, teases her brother about his reserve, and insists that I am the heroine of a great romance, destined to unlock his mysterious heart.
I have not the heart to disabuse her of this notion, particularly since it may contain more truth than I initially believed.
She believes Darcy to be a brooding Gothic hero with mysterious secrets other than his reserve and the agricultural tracts he assiduously devours.
My visitors suggested he must have attended literary salons in London, and the rector’s daughter believes he was entrusted with Lady Amelia’s unfinished manuscripts.
I suppose she would have wished for her son to receive them when he came of age, and Darcy could be trusted not to divulge her radical ideas to any pamphleteers.
I hope for a true marriage, Jane. Not merely the arrangement we made, the practical alliance for practical purposes, but something real.
Something lasting. I believe he hopes for the same, though he would sooner swallow hot coals than admit it aloud.
We are still circling each other, testing the boundaries, learning what is permitted and what is possible.
I find myself wondering what might happen if I stopped circling. If I simply told him what I feel, what I want, what I am beginning to believe we might build together. He is so careful, so guarded—perhaps he needs permission to want more. Perhaps I must be the one to offer it.
These are dangerous thoughts. I should not commit them to paper. But you are my sister, and I can tell you anything, and I find I need to say it aloud—or write it, at least—to make it real.
I am happy, Jane. Genuinely, uncomplicatedly happy, for the first time in longer than I care to remember. Whatever shadows linger at the edges, whatever questions remain unanswered, this happiness is real, and I intend to hold onto it.
Now—tell me everything about Longbourn. Is Mamma’s nerves much improved?
Is Papa so hale and hearty that once again, the booksellers circulate peddling the philosophical treatises he loves to torment visitors with?
Are Kitty and Lydia as wild as ever? Does Mary still torture the pianoforte at all hours?
Please tell Mamma that I am well and thriving, that Pemberley is every bit as grand as she imagined, and that I have not yet fallen into a fit of vapors from the responsibility of managing such an establishment.
You may also assure her that Mr. Darcy is proving an attentive husband—she will want to know this, I am certain, and will probably announce it to the entire neighborhood within the hour—and that her second daughter has secured a situation beyond anything she might reasonably have hoped for.
Tell Papa that I miss him dreadfully, that I think of him every time I enter the Pemberley library (which is magnificent beyond description and would keep him occupied for approximately three hundred years), and that I hope his health continues to improve under the physician’s care.
The arrangement we made has cost me nothing I was unwilling to give and has given me far more than I anticipated receiving.
He must not feel guilty on my account. None of you must. I came here expecting to make the best of difficult circumstances, and instead I have found something approaching joy.
I shall write again soon with more news—there is much I have not told you, including the continued saga of Sidney the snail and the ongoing negotiations between Thomas and the kitchen regarding the proper allocation of biscuits.
For now, know that I am well, that I am loved (I believe I may say this now without qualification), and that I miss you all with an ache that distance has not diminished.
You may set your mind entirely at rest, dearest Jane. The concern we discussed before my departure has proved without foundation, and there is no cause for the anxiety you so kindly tried to conceal from me. We need not speak of it again.
I miss you dreadfully, Jane. You must come to Pemberley soon. There is room enough for a dozen Bennets and their various eccentricities, and I find I am eager to show you what I have found here.
Give my love to all—even Kitty and Lydia, who I am certain have forgotten my existence in favor of whatever officers are currently stationed in the neighborhood.
Tell Mary that the Pemberley chapel has excellent acoustics, should she wish to practice her hymns in a more impressive setting.
And tell Mamma that I am thinking of her, even when I am grateful to be thinking of her from a considerable distance.
Write to me, Jane. Tell me everything. I am desperate for news of home, even as I am learning to call this place by the same name.
Your loving sister,
Elizabeth