Chapter Seventeen #3
Elizabeth looked up with wide eyes. She was paler than usual, and something about her countenance was altered. She appeared tired, and he suspected she had recently wept—because of him. Her lips parted a few times before she finally spoke. “Has something changed?”
“I hope so,” he said softly. He knew not how to explain what was not yet a certainty, and feared giving her any false hope, though he had begun to cling to his cousin and sister’s reassurances that the dowager countess would outmaneuver Lady Catherine.
Across the room, Miss Dashwood opened a window looking down on the courtyard and called out to the Bingleys below, then to Elizabeth.
“Lizzy, look who has come! The Bingleys, and the Knightleys, too. And there are the Bevanses by the fountain. Oh, and there is your uncle! I shall tell them all to come up.”
Elizabeth looked panicked. She gave Darcy a hasty nod before rejoining their companions. “My uncle does not like to receive hotel guests in our home. Perhaps we might all walk to the beach instead? We would be terribly crowded in here.”
As the others agreed and filed out of the room to find their outerwear, Elizabeth lingered, whispering fervently to Lady Parker. “I just need a moment to speak privately with him.”
Darcy turned away, not wishing to eavesdrop, and pained by the pity in Lady Parker’s countenance.
He ran his fingers over the volumes. Something caught his attention—a folded slip of thick paper protruding from the pages of one of the Bevan volumes.
He knew it must be a place marker, yet some vague sense of recognition compelled him to reach for it.
He unfolded what turned out to be a heart-shaped valentine.
Darcy felt as if his brain had fallen out of his head as he gaped at it.
Though the paper was warped and the ink blurred from water damage, he could make out traces of his own handwriting—words he had once written to Anne.
How did Elizabeth have it? He swiftly tucked it into his pocket and took a few steps toward her, hardly knowing what he wished to ask.
Had Anne given this to her? Had she found it and taken it as a memento?
Mr. Gardiner was entering the apartment as the others prepared to depart, and he greeted them all warmly.
“I have only come back for my spectacles—I always leave them here on the shelf by the door. But I see your friends are gathering downstairs and waiting, so I shall not keep you. Oh, but Lady Parker, I have something for you.”
Lady Parker looked mildly surprised. “For me?”
“For your former self, as it were.” Sir Edward produced a folded envelope from his coat and handed it to her.
“I meant to give it to you yesterday, but in all the hullabaloo I completely forgot. I must admit, I find it curious that Miss de Bourgh asked me to post this to an address in Bunbury, and to Charlotte Lucas, rather than just sending it to Trafalgar House directly. A mystery we shall leave for another time, for I must be off.”
As Sir Edward hastened back to his duties at the hotel and Miss Dashwood flounced after him to tell their friends to wait for them, Darcy moved closer to Lady Parker and Elizabeth, who had reached for her friend’s letter. “I know that writing.”
Lady Parker looked between Darcy and Elizabeth with inexplicable horror. “It is as I feared!”
Richard had just helped Georgiana into her pelisse; now Georgiana spun around and looked at Lady Parker with concern. “Has something happened, Charlotte?”
“It was Anne,” Elizabeth said to her friend, before turning to Darcy with bewilderment. “And it was you.”
Darcy glanced down at the letter, and found that he also recognized the handwriting on the letter.
It was Anne’s, though the direction said Penny.
Her maid, Penelope Lovelace, had apparently acted as secretary—but why?
As Darcy grasped for the missing information the ladies were too stunned to supply, Darcy ran his fingers over the valentine in his pocket.
Elizabeth burst into tears. “I heard you tell her to communicate with him—to write to him—at the picnic. How long have you known, Charlotte?” But before she could get an answer, she glanced over at Darcy and then fled the room, covering her face in her hands.
Georgiana took a step to follow her and then stopped. “What is happening? What did Anne write to you, and why did she do it in such a strange way? If she is threatening Lizzy, I have already considered drowning as an effective method of problem solving!”
And now Richard was interested. “Who is Anne threatening? Is she cross with you, Lady Parker, over Sir Sidney’s defection? I should not fault you for feeling some relief at gaining a more agreeable sister-in-law.”
Lady Parker held the letter in her fingers as if it were poisonous, and then fixed her anxious gaze on Darcy. “Your cousin is not threatening anybody; I suspect she wishes to make amends.”
Darcy furrowed his brow and shook his head, trying to make sense of it all. “Why would she write to you? And why address you as Charlotte Lucas, at a different address than your home?”
“Your cousin does not know me as Charlotte Lucas,” Lady Parker said.
“To her, Miss Lucas is only the woman who answered an anonymous advertisement in the papers a year and a half ago, and agreed to write love letters on her behalf. It seemed a pleasant distraction for a certain eloquent and romantic friend of mine who had just lost her mother.”
Darcy had never been so lost for words. He gaped at Lady Parker for what felt like an eternity before reaching into his pocket and presenting the valentine he had accidentally crumpled in his hand.
Lady Parker looked at it and nodded sadly.
“Lizzy kept all the letters, but this is her favorite. It is written in your own hand, not copied by Miss Penny.”
He was struck with the memory of Elizabeth reeling from the effects of her medicine at Trafalgar House, lighting up the corridor with her fanciful effusions.
She had said something to Lady Parker about a Mr. Penny—she had said Darcy reminded her of him.
And then Darcy truly understood what Elizabeth had meant in telling him that she had loved and lost, and he felt as if he might faint.