Chapter Three
Elizabeth retired that evening with a sense of euphoria, and Lady Rebecca was ready to tease her for it. “Well, Lizzy! You have made short work of your first conquest. I was not prepared to lose you so soon!”
Rebecca flounced down onto the bed; Elizabeth finished brushing out her hair and then joined her cousin. “You are an odd creature. Whatever do you mean, losing me?”
“You will have your head full of Will Darcy until Lady Catherine drags you back to the country next month.” Rebecca gave a dramatic roll of her eyes before turning onto her stomach to retrieve a bottle of whiskey from under her bed, and then she flailed wildly when her night rail tangled about her as she tried to right herself.
Elizabeth playfully snatched away the half-empty bottle and laughed. “You are losing your mind, Rebecca!”
When Rebecca had recovered her dignity, she leaned back against the pillows and shook her head in a mocking display of consternation. “I ought to have known you would fancy him at once – you have been obsessed with Lady Anne since you met her.”
“But what has she to do with….” Elizabeth fidgeted with the bottle in her hands as she cozied up beside her favorite cousin. “Surely you mean to tell me. What was all that mysterious business in the parlor this afternoon? There is something about her lost son….”
“Yes, Mother has long been curious about Richard’s friend. Last winter she mentioned it to me, asking a great many questions that neither I nor my brother could answer. He thinks our suspicions are fanciful and irritating, that there is nothing in it, and I suppose there is not.”
Elizabeth tensed. She liked Mr. Darcy very well – as she had fully expected to. She had no wish to hear anything of him that may alter her favorable impression. And yet, she must satisfy her curiosity. “What suspicions?”
“Lord, do you really not know? Lady Anne’s first child, her son Fitzwilliam… when she says he was lost, she does not mean that he died. He was lost; we all believe he was taken.”
“Taken? Do you mean he was kidnapped?” Elizabeth trembled a little at the notion; no wonder Lady Anne had always possessed such an air of tragedy about her, especially in Elizabeth’s younger years.
Rebecca seized the bottle of whiskey and took an indecorous swig before assuming an animated pose as she elaborated on her tale.
“There was no ransom ever asked. His governess took him out in his perambulator one morning, and simply never returned. They found her a week later and she claimed she could not remember what had befallen her in the interval. My late uncle Darcy expected there would be kidnappers making demands of him, but they heard nothing. They began to comb through the newspapers, searching for notices of foundlings, he and my father and even Sir Lewis all searched the local orphanages – but they found nothing. My mother and grandfather privately posted a notice offering a reward, but after interviewing dozens of pretenders seeking financial gain, they ended their search. It pained them, but they at least spared the Darcys the grief of being exposed to so much false hope.”
“Lady Anne never knew of the pretenders?”
“No, and you are never to tell her.” Rebecca wagged a finger at Elizabeth, who nodded in emphatic agreement.
“Our poor aunt! How devastated she must have been!” Elizabeth blinked back tears and took a sip of the whiskey. She cringed as it burned its way down her throat. “But wait,” she rasped. “Do you think Mr. Darcy could be connected to all this? He did say that he was adopted.”
Lady Rebecca raised her brows. “Did he? Richard has asked me to cease my speculation; he has told me every particular he knows, and I suppose he is right, it is not possible.”
“You are being coy,” Elizabeth accused with a grin.
“If you must know, I thought it odd, when first they met. It happened very near Pemberley; Mr. Darcy was traveling with friends, and visited the manor along his journey. I imagined some devious motive in trying to claim a connection to the place, but Richard insisted that it was quite the reverse, that Mr. Darcy was from a French family of the same name, but had settled in Surrey. At any rate, if he completed university seven years ago, he must be more than a year older than my lost cousin would be.”
Elizabeth felt her shoulders sag; how perfect it would have been, if the handsome and intelligent Mr. Darcy whose company she could have enjoyed for hours more should prove to be Lady Anne’s lost son. “He has dark, curly hair like Lady Anne.”
“So do you, Lizzy, and you share no blood with her. Besides, my uncle George was pale and fair, just like Georgie, and the stillborn just before her. And Lady Anne and Georgie are both so diminutive – Mr. Darcy is so tall!”
“Yes, he is tall and quite broad.” Elizabeth gave an appreciative sigh as she conjured him up in her mind’s eye.
“You like him, and this is why I fear I shall lose you, either to Lady Catherine carrying you off, or God forbid, to that ghastly institution of matrimony.”
“Ghastly? No indeed; you know I wish to wed and have children someday. At the very least, I shall be gratified by moving in society and meeting a great many amusing people whom you and I shall discuss together with insurmountable irreverence. Can that not be enough to please you? I imagine I shall fall in love someday – it is my nature, for I could never marry without the deepest attachment – but you need not fear my heart has been captured my first evening in town.”
They both knew Elizabeth was not being entirely truthful.
Rebecca had been as shrewdly observant as ever that evening, though Elizabeth had not been daunted by her cousin’s watchful gaze.
She simply could not help herself. There was something irresistible about Mr. Darcy, not only in his good looks and stimulating conversation, but in his very name.
He was in every way Elizabeth’s ideal of just what a gentleman ought to be.
Rebecca opened her mouth to protest Elizabeth’s denial, but the offer of more whiskey silenced her long enough for the subject to turn.
“I wonder, what are the chances that your sister Rose is having a similar conversation next door with Jane? Surely she must be quizzing her about your brother, for Jane is not wicked enough to tease her about Mr. Bingley.”
“Poor Rose, I think she actually likes him. I do not think he fancies her overly much – or perhaps Richard has spoken to him, though I cannot imagine why he would not approve. It is an odd sort of thing between brothers and sisters, I suppose. But Mother is quite determined, and I fear my poor sister may not have the same liberty of choice I had at her age, before Rupert’s lavish spending depleted what is left for the girls.
” Rebecca grimaced. “Our family is quite ridiculous, Lizzy.”
“I am sorry for Rose. But at least she seems keen enough to be fallen in love with; she may yet charm Mr. Bingley – perhaps in a year or two, when she has grown more sensible.”
“I cannot think Mr. Bingley entitled to a sensible creature, since he is not such a one himself.”
Elizabeth laughed with wicked glee. “Yes, but at least he is affable and ready to agree with everyone. The poor man! I believe I could pinpoint the exact moment at dinner when he realized that he did not wish to compete with Richard for Jane’s attention. He was quite deflated.”
“I should like to hear what Jane has to say about that! It would serve my brother right, you know, if she took a liking to his friend. He has evaded her all these years, so he hardly deserves to have her served up to him on a silver platter.”
A small parlor connected the bedrooms of the two sisters of the house; Elizabeth and her cousin crept through it, stumbling a little in the darkness before they entered the chamber Rose was sharing with Jane. The scene they discovered was far from the one they had quit in Rebecca’s room.
The fire had nearly gone out, and the room was dark, the curtains drawn closed.
Jane and Rose sat cross-legged atop the bed.
They were both in their bedclothes, their hair loosely braided.
Jane held a small candle so that the light shone eerily over her face, and she spoke in a slow and eerie tone of voice.
“And every year on that night, if there is a full moon, you will certainly see the ghost of Lady Mary in the upper gallery, weeping before the portrait of her murderous and murdered husband. Some have even said that if a storm has shadowed the full moon, the portrait of Sir Ebenezer will bleed.”
Elizabeth and Rebecca had opened the door without a sound, which allowed the latter an irresistible opportunity to sneak behind her sister, then spring forward and grab her by the shoulders. “OoooOoooooOoooooOoOooh!”
Rose let out a shriek, and Jane nearly dropped her candle as she leaned forward to clamp a hand over the girl’s mouth. “Rosamund Lydia Fitzwilliam! You could wake the devil!”
Elizabeth was nearly doubled over with laughter. “Jane, not this old story!”
Rebecca chuckled as she settled on the bed beside her sister. “Did Annie never tell you the story of her great-grandmother de Bourgh before? I must have heard it a dozen times when we were girls! Well, Lady Catherine would marry into such a family, eh?”
Elizabeth crossed the room to add some wood to the dwindling fire, and took the opportunity to study her sister.
When the blaze cast more light on Jane, Elizabeth instantly understood why her sister had been telling ghost stories with Rose.
And if Jane wished to deflect from talk of the gentlemen, that must mean it was a subject well worth raising with her.