27. The Keys to Pemberley #3
Elizabeth crossed to her dressing table and sat heavily on the bench, her legs unsteady beneath her. She reached for Lady Anne’s journals, held on the shelf above.
She searched the spines for the proper year—1784—and turned the pages until she found the entry for his christening.
He is a squalling, red-faced creature who wanted nothing but milk and comfort and had no notion that his very existence was a scandal.
He will always bear the shame of my husband’s indiscretion, but I cannot turn him away.
My husband covered it well, forcing his mother to marry his elderly steward to give him a name and a place.
And I have loved him since the day Martha placed him in my arms. I chose to call him a son.
The world sees only birth and inheritance, and no amount of maternal devotion can change what the law declares him to be.
But I wish I could make him understand that the love I bear him is not obligation—it is as fierce and whole as any I feel for Fitzwilliam.
A mother’s love is not a ledger—that there is no finite supply to be divided, no portion that diminishes when shared.
Elizabeth closed her eyes, grasping at the pain in Lady Anne’s voice. George was younger than Fitzwilliam. The betrayal came after their marriage, and yet, her heart was large enough.
She reached for a later volume, dated from the years when both boys were older. When the fault lines between them might have begun to show.
George asked again why he could not go to Cambridge with Fitzwilliam.
I explained, as gently as I could, that the circumstances are different—that Fitzwilliam is the heir and must be educated accordingly, while George’s path lies elsewhere.
He listened politely and said nothing improper, but I saw his eyes, and they held a question I could not answer: Why am I less?
He is not less. Although the world sees him so.
Without a birthright, he has subsisted on charm, without an anchor of faith or the assurance of his place in the world.
He takes after his birth mother—a restlessness that reaches too high.
My husband dotes on him, and that makes it difficult, as he is forever resentful of Fitzwilliam, who cannot quite believe in a love he did not earn.
Elizabeth read this entry a second time. Was Lady Anne referring to Wickham or Darcy, who did not believe in a love he did not earn?
Both had been boys once. Both were raised at Pemberley to be gentlemen.
One was the heir, made responsible for the Darcy name, the legacy, and all that he was entitled to.
The other was raised by a woman who was not his mother, in a house that was not quite his home.
He had watched Fitzwilliam ride off to Cambridge while he remained behind, and wondered why he was less.
Had this made a boy of charm into a man who jilted innocents, signed false registries, and laughed at debts?
Elizabeth could not say. Yet she suspected the answer mattered—that to comprehend Wickham might be the only way to weather what was to come.
She was still holding the journal when she noticed the folded paper on her writing desk.
It had not been there when she left for breakfast.
Elizabeth set aside the journal and crossed to the desk. Her hands remained steady—she would permit nothing less—though her heart thudded with a most undignified haste.
She unfolded the paper and read.
Elizabeth—
I go to London on matters concerning Thomas. I expect to return within the week, though I will send word if circumstances require longer.
Mrs. Reynolds has my instructions. Pemberley is yours—not merely in my absence, but always. I meant what I said.
I will not write what I wish to write. But I would have you know that nothing has changed for me. Nothing will.
Your servant,
Darcy
She read it several times, her eyes swelling with that affliction she did not wish to name, leaking perhaps from the spring weather. What he meant… he still meant it, and he had said it many times. Whatever else—whatever secrets, whatever complications—he loved her.
Nothing has changed for me. Nothing will.
She folded the note and pressed it to her heart, sighing. Why must he be so confounding? Yet she dared not hope, for she knew his heart better than he did himself. Lady Amelia was lost to him, and he sought only to mend the vacancy.
She was convenient and acceptable, and so he had talked himself into this bind.
“Oh, Darcy.” She opened the drawer of her writing desk—the one with the lock Darcy had given her, the lock she had thought so odd at the time—and placed the note inside, beside the journal with its foolish observations and the hidden pouch with the ring she ought to discard—a double-edged sword, leverage or ruin, she did not know.
And then she returned to Lady Anne’s journal, searching for the boy who had become the man she feared, while the morning light strengthened and the great house stirred around her, and her husband rode toward London to find the brother who might destroy them both.