23. The Registry Revelations
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE REGISTRY REVELATIONS
Longbourn, Hertfordshire
My Dearest Lizzy,
Your letter brought me such joy—to know that you are happy, that you have found purpose and affection at Pemberley, that little Thomas has claimed you as his own. I read your words three times over, and each reading warmed me more than the last.
But I must confess, one passage has troubled me.
You mentioned Thomas’s mother—Lady Amelia, the one Mrs. Gardiner introduced us to at Madame Delacroix’s.
You also mention Thomas’s father was currently abroad, and I find I must ask: is he the same gentleman we encountered during your stay with our aunt and uncle?
The one who was so charming at that particular gathering, and who afterward proved rather less constant than we had hoped?
If so, there is something I have carried with me, and I think you ought to know it.
On the morning we departed Cheapside, I stepped outside while you were packing.
I wished to retrieve something he had taken, and I was perhaps more direct than I ought to have been.
He was not unkind—he rarely is, which makes him all the more difficult to censure—but he made clear that he considered himself owed something for his troubles, and I had not enough coin.
Then he spoke of how siblings protect one another, and how protection has its price.
He said—and I have remembered this—that he had done his brother a considerable service.
“I signed a registry for him,” he told me, “and he owes me still.” He laughed as though this were a jest, but I do not believe it was.
It may be a coincidence or nothing at all—only that I have heard that this man was rumored to have gone aboard after Lady Amelia’s unfortunate accident, and I find myself uneasy. I do not wish to alarm you unduly, and I am truly overjoyed that your marriage has brought you happiness.
Write to me when you can. Tell me I am worrying over nothing.
Your ever-loving sister,
Jane
P.S. - I have told no one about this. Not Mamma, not Papa, not even our aunt. Some conversations are better held in person. When you are able, please come to Longbourn, or send for me to come to you. There is more I would say that I dare not commit to paper.
“Mrs. Darcy?” Clarice’s voice was carefully neutral as always. “Miss Duntze has arrived for luncheon, and Miss Darcy asks if you will join them in the small parlor.”
Elizabeth looked up from Jane’s letter. She had entirely forgotten that Prue was coming today—they had arranged it last week, before the dinner with Darcy, before everything had become so complicated. Her mind was still caught on Jane’s words: I signed a registry for him, and he owes me still.
It could only be George Wickham. Who else would Jane have confronted over Elizabeth’s missing locket?
Elizabeth folded Jane’s letter and tucked it into her pocket, as Clarice waited for an answer.
“Tell them I shall be down presently.”
She did not know the registry Jane meant, but she did know that Little Tom had been christened at St. Michael’s in Kympton—possibly by Prue’s father, the rector of Kympton. Prue was downstairs, and Kympton was close, a little over a mile away.
The small parlor was warm with spring sunlight and considerably more crowded than Elizabeth had expected.
Prue Duntze occupied the settee nearest the window, her round face animated with the particular enthusiasm she brought to any gathering.
Georgiana sat opposite, attempting to pour tea while suppressing what appeared to be a smile.
And wedged into the corner chair, clutching a well-worn volume to her chest like a prayer book, was Miss Entwhistle.
Elizabeth, in her distraction, had quite neglected to remember Miss Entwhistle’s inclusion.
“Mrs. Darcy!” Prue bounded up with more energy than the hour warranted. “We were just discussing Lady Renwick’s use of landscape. Miss Entwhistle has the most fascinating theory about the symbolic geography of The Midnight Tower.”
“The moors represent isolation,” Miss Entwhistle intoned, her thin face solemn. “The village represents community. And the great house represents—”
“Everything else, presumably,” Elizabeth murmured, crossing to take her seat.
“Imprisonment,” Miss Entwhistle corrected, undeterred.
“The heroine is trapped within its walls, surrounded by secrets she cannot penetrate. The locked cabinet in the library haunts her dreams. The portrait of the hero’s mother watches her every movement.
Even the long gallery seems to breathe with hidden purpose. ”
Elizabeth’s hand paused over the teapot.
“A locked cabinet?” Georgiana asked, with the innocent curiosity of someone who had not spent the previous afternoon watching her brother guard one.
“In the library,” Miss Entwhistle confirmed, warming to her subject. “Lady Renwick describes it with such specificity—the carved oak, the brass fittings, and the way the heroine’s fingers tremble when she touches the lock. One cannot help but believe she knew such a cabinet intimately.”
“Fiction improved by geography,” Elizabeth replied, her tone light though her thoughts ran ahead. A locked cabinet. A long gallery. A portrait of the hero’s mother. Lady Renwick wrote with the precision of one who had wandered these very halls, observed these details, perhaps—
“And necessary,” Miss Entwhistle corrected.
“Lady Renwick writes from experience. I am convinced of it. The manor house in The Ruined Chapel is clearly modeled on a great estate. The hero’s brooding silences, his midnight wanderings, his tortured devotion to a woman who cannot love him as he deserves—”
“That sounds rather specific,” Elizabeth observed.
“It is specific. That is the genius of it.” Miss Entwhistle clutched her book more tightly. “Lady Renwick understood the male heart in ways most authoresses cannot. She wrote heroes who suffered beautifully, who loved without hope, who—”
“Who bore a suspicious resemblance to someone she knew?” Prue interrupted, grinning.
Miss Entwhistle’s pale cheeks flushed. “I would not presume to speculate on Lady Renwick’s personal acquaintance.”
But Elizabeth would speculate, and did so now with a fervor that surprised even herself, drawing together threads she had never before considered related.
Lady Renwick’s novels were set in places that resembled Pemberley. Her heroes brooded like Darcy, suffered like Darcy, and loved hopelessly. And Lady Amelia had been a writer. A scandalous one. The sort of woman who might very well have published under a pseudonym.
The manuscripts in Darcy’s locked cabinet, the ones he guarded so fiercely—they were Lady Renwick’s. They were evidence of Amelia’s secret identity, and Darcy was protecting them because—
Because he had loved her. She had left them to him, and Darcy would not allow anyone to destroy them.
“Elizabeth?” Georgiana’s voice was gentle and inquiring. “You have gone quite distant.”
Elizabeth blinked, returning herself to the present. Three faces regarded her: Prue’s alight with open curiosity, Georgiana’s shaded with gentle concern, and Miss Entwhistle’s lost in the labyrinth of her own literary reverie.
“Forgive me. I was merely thinking about…” She paused. “Actually, I was thinking about Kympton.”
“The parsonage?” Prue brightened. “Would you come to visit?”
“Yes, Lady Renwick uses it as a setting,” Elizabeth said, glancing at Miss Entwhistle. “The hero is christened in an old Norman church surrounded by mud, is he not? There is a scene at the old bridge that is quite devastating, if I recall correctly.”
Miss Entwhistle’s eyes widened with something approaching religious fervor.
“You have read her! Oh, Mrs. Darcy, I knew you must be a woman of discernment. Yes, the christening scene is exquisite—the hero standing at the font while his future stretches before him, the godfather’s hand upon his shoulder, the shadow of destiny—”
“I should like to see it,” Elizabeth interrupted, before Miss Entwhistle could recite the entire passage from memory. “The church, I mean, and the registry. Since Thomas was christened there, I ought to familiarize myself with the parish records.”
“Thomas?” Prue’s brow furrowed. “But whatever does he have to do with Lady Renwick’s settings?”
“The Apethorpes have been making inquiries,” Elizabeth confided, her tone light and conspiratorial. “Mr. Darcy is closeted with his solicitor at this very moment, preparing for their demands. I confess myself curious as to what, precisely, they find so absorbing in a christening registry.”
Prue’s eyes went wide. “Inquiries? What sort of inquiries?”
“I cannot say. Only that Viscount Drake is expected this afternoon, and my husband has requested not to be disturbed.” Elizabeth paused, letting the suspense ripen. “I thought perhaps, if we visited the church, we might discover what all the fuss is about.”
“Like an investigation,” Georgiana said slowly, a smile tugging at her lips. “Like the heroine of a novel.”
“Like Miss Belwood in The Ruined Chapel,” Miss Entwhistle breathed. “She examined the parish records to discover the hero’s true parentage, and what she found—”
“Spoiled the ending for everyone,” Prue finished, but she was grinning. “Oh, this is brilliant, Mrs. Darcy. An adventure! A genuine adventure! And my father is away visiting his sister, so Mamma will have no reason to refuse us access to the vestry. She simply adores visitors.”
“Your mother keeps the registry?” Elizabeth asked.
“When Papa is away, yes. She considers herself the guardian of parish history.” Prue was already rising from her seat. “I shall send word that we are coming. She will be thrilled. Nothing exciting has happened at the parsonage since Little Tom’s christening, and that was more than two years ago.”
“We should bring Miss Entwhistle,” Georgiana suggested. “She can compare the actual setting to Lady Renwick’s descriptions.”