An Ink Blot #3
“What happened to them?” Jane asked quietly. “George and Alice?”
“George’s elder brother died up north, and he was recalled to Derbyshire to take up his proper inheritance.
” Mrs. Pratt shook her head slowly. “The families quarreled over it, my grandmother said. The Bennets felt betrayed. They had loved him as their own, and now he was being taken away. The Darcys felt they had every right to reclaim their son. Alice said she was not allowed to see him again.”
“And George never returned to claim her?” Elizabeth asked.
“No, Alice never married.” Mrs. Pratt’s eyes met Elizabeth’s with unexpected shrewdness. “She lived to a great age. They say she kept a letter from this remote heir until the day she died. Carried it in her pocket wherever she went.”
The fire crackled, the kettle hissed, and Mrs. Pratt rose to tend it.
Jane’s hand found Elizabeth’s beneath the table.
Somehow, the tale of George Darcy—she was certain now it was he who had written so fondly of Longbourn—had become the story of Mr. Darcy, who had also come and found a Bennet daughter he could not forget.
“Mrs. Pratt,” she said slowly. “Did your grandmother ever say—did Alice ever speak of why George left? Whether he wanted to go?”
“Oh, he didn’t want to go.” Mrs. Pratt said it with certainty.
“My grandmother was clear on that point. He wept when they came for him—a young man of eighteen or nineteen, weeping like a child. But duty called, and the Darcys were not a family who ignored duty. He went because he had to. Because honor demanded it.” She paused.
“Just like your Mr. Darcy, I suppose. Called away to his sister when he would rather have stayed.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth to protest that he was not her Mr. Darcy, but the words would not come.
Elizabeth still had no words as she and Jane walked back toward Longbourn. The lane curved by the paddock where Jane’s mare stood, flicking her tail, past the outbuildings and the stable yard, and past the hedge that screened the steward’s cottage from the main house.
And there it was: the steward’s cottage, dark, its windows unlit, its chimney cold. Hoof marks, footprints, and wheel ruts tangled in the snow, evidence of the gentlemen’s earlier departure. Elizabeth halted, her heart thudding, and swallowed a lump she chose to blame on the seedcake.
“Lizzy?” Jane paused beside her. “What is it?”
“I want to look inside.”
“The cottage? But it will be empty.”
“I want to check that it has been secured.”
Jane looked at her—a long, quiet look that saw everything and pressed nothing. “Of course.”
“I shall not delay above a moment.”
Elizabeth climbed the low stile and crossed the yard.
The cottage door was closed but not locked.
She lifted the latch and stepped inside.
The air was still and cold, carrying a faint mineral smell of stone and plaster.
The valet had swept before they left, with the floor clean and the shelves bare of personal items, no shaving kit, boot-brush or leather journal lying conveniently in a forgotten nook.
The Longbourn ledger sat on the desk, and Elizabeth opened it, flipping the pages, not sure what she expected or hoped to find. There was no loose paper, and the invoices had been noted and paid with Darcy’s precise handwriting.
A single inkblot marked the surface near the right-hand edge—fresh enough that the edges had not yet dulled to brown, dark and round and glistening faintly in the thin light that crept through the shutters.
He had sat here this morning, dipped a pen, and written the note to her father. Short, polite, and clear.
Elizabeth touched the edge of the blot, feeling the slight stickiness, and something ached in her chest that she could not name.
She looked around the room. The chair was pushed back, not tucked in—the habit of a man who rose in haste.
“Lizzy.” Jane stood in the doorway, her face soft with understanding. “We must return. It will be full dark soon.”
“Yes.” Elizabeth pulled her hand away from the desk. “Yes, we should go.”
But she lingered a moment longer, looking around the empty room: at the cold hearth, at the frosted windows and the desk where his hand had rested just hours ago.
She could feel his presence here still, like a warmth that had not quite faded, like an echo of a voice she had not realized she was straining to hear.
Know my character, and you will understand.
She was beginning to understand, and that was the trouble. She was starting to see what she had refused to see, to feel what she had refused to feel, and he was gone, riding north toward Matlock, toward his sister and a life that did not include her.
“Come, Lizzy.” Jane’s urged gently. “Mamma will worry.”
Elizabeth took the ledger and closed the door behind her, latching it. She did not look back. “There is nothing for him to return to.”
Jane pinched her arm like she did when they were young, and Elizabeth was being especially obstinate. “Come. He will return as he does not like leaving things undone.”