Chapter Three
Bella's tears came hot and hard, but they did not last long.
She was not one of those ladies prone to vapours and weeping.
She stood and washed her face and then, methodically, pin by pin, released her elaborate coiffure until her hair fell freely down her back.
She could do little about the voluminous curls that framed her face.
Had Marie set them in iron? She used her fingertips to massage some blood back into her scalp, loosened the belt fastened tightly about her waist and undid the few buttons she could reach at her neck.
Having secured something resembling comfort, she kicked off her shoes and curled up in the window seat, her mind full.
She looked across the vast grounds of her home and tried to sort through the jumble of her thoughts.
If she could just have a little time and space to breathe, it would make things so much easier.
Her door opened unannounced and Kate walked in. She did not say anything but plopped down on Bella's bed, her chin resting on her hands. She looked at her sister for several long moments.
"What was all of that at breakfast, Bell? I thought Papa would burst a blood vessel. He retired to his study after you escaped upstairs, and even Mama has not been able to coax him out. Mina cried for a full fifteen minutes without stopping. She sounded like that barn cat that got its tail chopped off by Mr Dunn’s scythe.
" She shook her head sadly. Kate loved all animals.
"Mama told her she would only make herself sick and should go for a walk around the gardens to compose herself. "
"A walk is Mama's answer to every problem. I dare say she would send me out for a walk if I complained of a broken leg."
"But you love to walk," said Kate, cocking her head curiously.
"Yes, I know that," Bella said, letting out a little huff of frustration. "I only meant... never mind."
Kate’s dark hair was touched with auburn like their mother's, but she was a Darcy through and through. She had their father's solemn brown eyes and long lashes and skin that always looked as though it had been touched by the sun. She also saw the world as a thing to be catalogued and organised.
Bella knew her sister was trying to be kind, but Kate saw the world as a place of natural order, where one thing followed another because that was simply how it was meant to be.
To her, Bella becoming mistress of Pemberley was as inevitable as a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.
The comparison made Bella shiver. She still remembered the tank of wriggling creatures Kate had insisted they keep in the nursery when they were children.
Some nights, her sister would wake and move the tank onto the little table between their beds so that she could be closer to them.
Bella had opened her eyes on more than one occasion to find the small green monsters staring back at her.
"You do not need to worry, Katie Kat," she said, reverting to her sister's childhood nickname.
"Papa just wants Pemberley to be secure, and I just want...
I don't know what I want. I suppose that's the crux of it, really.
I don't feel ready to be mistress of all...
" She waved her arms around in explanation.
"This. I want to see more of the world. I want to experience more than Grosvenor Square and Lambton. "
"But this is your home and your family," said Katie, kicking her legs back and forth. "It is like a caterpillar will always become a butterfly, so you will become mistress of Pemberley. It is natural. I could not become a... I don't know, a lion or a mountain, just because I wished it."
"I knew you would bring caterpillars into it," muttered Bella, but there was no heat in her words.
At that moment, Mina came running into the room.
"Arabella Jane Darcy," she said in a fine approximation of their ancient and terrifying great-aunt, Lady Catherine.
"Whatever are you about? I believe you have made Papa very sad, and you look sad, and I hate it when everyone is cross.
It creates an unpleasant atmosphere, and you know I cannot create my art in such circumstances. "
Bella let out a short, humourless laugh. In Mina's mind, it truly was her world, and they were all just living in it.
"I know, Min," she said, not wanting to provoke another weeping fit from her sensitive younger sister.
"And you have taken your spectacular hair down. Now I will not be able to record it for posterity."
"I truly felt my head was going to explode," Bella said with a sigh.
Mina giggled and jumped onto the bed beside Kate. "Marie is going to be most vexed with you as well. Do you think she might recreate it again tomorrow? Then I could work up a charcoal sketch that I could use for a larger study."
"I fear I have vexed most of the household, and it is not yet ten."
"There is a certain efficiency about that to be admired," said Kate. "Now, why not attend your lesson with Papa? And be sure to attend properly. That will resolve everything nicely."
"I fear it will not," said Bella, turning her head back towards the window.
She heard the soft brush of slippers on the carpet and turned to see her mother standing in the doorway.
Elizabeth Darcy was petite in stature, but she had a presence that seemed to fill any space she occupied.
Always ready with a witty remark or a kind word, she had a knack for putting people at ease that Bella had come to envy.
Bella so often felt awkward in her own skin, uncertain of what to say until the wrong words had already escaped her mouth.
Her mother never seemed to suffer from such difficulties.
That did not mean she was always welcoming.
Elizabeth Darcy had little patience for high-handedness or conceit, and Bella had witnessed more than one pompous lady or gentleman leave her company looking as though they had been violently stripped of several layers of self-importance.
She was still a handsome woman, though the smile lines around her eyes had softened her features.
Her hair remained a glorious mass of chestnut shot through with amber, although Bella had once caught her mother's maid applying some mysterious concoction to disguise the few strands of grey beginning to appear.
Her mother had sworn her to secrecy, declaring her hair to be her one vanity and laughing that Papa would think her a very silly goose if he discovered the lengths she went to preserve it.
Her mother looked towards her younger daughters. "Off with you now, please, girls. Your French master is looking for you, Mina. Kate, you need to ready yourself for our trip to Lambton if you wish to collect the books you have ordered."
"Yes, Mama," they chimed, scrambling from their positions on the bed. Mina paused in the doorway and gave Bella a meaningful look that plainly said do not cause any more disharmony, before their mother closed the door behind them.
Her mother crossed the room and motioned for Bella to rearrange herself on the window seat so that she might squeeze in beside her. "I am sorry you have had such a difficult morning, my dear. Your papa lost his temper, and he ought not to have shouted at you. I have told him the same."
Bella picked at a loose thread on her skirt. "He thinks I am going to ruin Pemberley. That all his hard work will go to nothing."
"He most assuredly does not."
"He said as much," said Bella, her gaze fixed on her lap. "And he may be right."
"That is not true. Not even in the smallest degree. He said something foolish because he was frightened."
Bella looked at her. "Frightened? Of me?"
"Not of you. For you. Your grandfather died when your papa was very young. He inherited Pemberley before he felt ready for it, and I think he worries that the same thing will happen to you."
Bella felt tears prick behind her eyes. "Is Papa ill? Oh, and I have made him so unhappy. I am sorry, Mama, I am so selfish."
"No," said her mother firmly. "He is as healthy as healthy can be. He just worries for you as he worries for all his girls. William has always been a deep thinker. I have never been able to train him out of it."
Bella gave a faint smile, but it quickly disappeared.
"I do not understand why he behaves as though I am refusing Pemberley.
I am not. I know it will be mine one day.
I know there are people depending upon me.
I only..." She stared through the window at the hills beyond the lawn. "I want something before that."
"What sort of something? It is difficult for me to know how to help if I do not know what it is that you seek."
"I don't know." Bella gave a frustrated little laugh. "That is the problem. How am I supposed to know what I want from the world when I have scarcely seen any of it?"
"I suppose I want to go somewhere where nobody knows who I am," Bella continued.
"Where no one bows because I am Miss Darcy of Pemberley or wonders how much money I shall inherit or whether I might make a suitable wife for their son.
I want to meet people I would never meet here.
I want to know whether I am capable of doing anything without Papa arranging it or an army of servants following me around every minute of every day. "
Her mother's eyes searched her face. "I suppose I felt a little of that when I first arrived here.
Although I think I have told you that it was your father's fine grounds that truly opened my heart to him.
" She laughed. "But you must remember that when I was your age, I lived on a much less grand estate, and I can assure you that life without the comforts of Pemberley is not some romantic idyll.
It is hard work, and a smaller house filled with girls is very, very noisy. "
"Mama! It is very noisy here. And you forget, I have been to Longbourn many times to visit with Grandpa and Aunt Mary."