North by Northanger

Should this letter reach your eyes, it is because I no longer live to deliver its message in person. I know not who you are — what name you bore before taking that of Darcy. I know only that by addressing this letter to you, I write to the woman who has wed my son. For that reason alone I entrust to you the stewardship of something most precious, for as my Fitzwilliam’s wife you already hold in your power that which I value above all else: my son’s well-being and happiness.

Pardon my poor hand — my pains cause me to blot my words on the page. They follow hard upon each other — my time quickly approaches — already the midwife bids me come to the bed. I pray this babe survives. I cannot bear to bury another—

I had at Fitzwilliam’s birth a... an heirloom from my own mother — I want it now, but it has become lost. If only I could find it, I would trust that I will be safely delivered. But I hid it too well, beyond my own reach. You — you must look if I cannot, for I want you to have it when... Valuable in itself... find it and you will hold the key to greater gifts—

Pain floods my mind — I cannot think for it. If you are my niece, my namesake, Anne, know that I guarded myself from my sister, not from you—

Mrs. Godwin demands that I set down my pen. On her alone I must depend... Search for me... My daughter, the only one I may ever have, start with the knowledge that love conquers all. I am—

Your mother,

Anne Darcy

Elizabeth watched Darcy read the letter in silence. His expression went from curious to clouded to somber as he reached its end. He stared at the note long after his eyes finished scanning its lines.

“Is it your mother’s hand?” she asked.

He cleared his throat and handed the letter back to her. “It is.”

“The date—”

“Is Georgiana’s birthday. Yes, I noticed.” His voice was thick, and he cleared his throat again. “The letter must have been lodged in some crevice of the desk and fallen when it was moved.” He walked to the window and looked out upon the garden.

Elizabeth glanced once more at the note’s address. Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy. How extraordinary, that at such a time Darcy’s mother should have written to her, someone she would never meet.

But Lady Anne had not known that a stranger would read her words. Clearly, she thought she was writing to her niece, Anne de Bourgh. When Darcy and his cousin were infants, their mothers had planned a union between them. The arrangement had been an informal desire rather than an official betrothal, one to which Darcy had not been bound by honor, law, or inclination. But the wrath of his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, upon his engagement to Elizabeth had clearly demonstrated her assumption that those early wishes would be realized. Evidently, Lady Anne had expected his compliance as well. It was her sister’s daughter, not the unheard-of Elizabeth Bennet, whom she anticipated would one day call Darcy husband and Pemberley home.

Elizabeth wondered whether Darcy’s cousin Anne would have fared any better in escaping the influence of his mother’s memory had they indeed wed. Sharing both Lady Anne’s name and lineage, would she have slipped into her new role more easily than Elizabeth had? Somehow, Elizabeth doubted it. She had met Anne de Bourgh, a girl rendered so timid by growing up under the domination of her mother that she betrayed no hint of possessing a mind or will of her own. Were Anne now Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy, and this her morning room, the rosewood desk would have sat in the same location for at least another generation.

And Lady Anne’s letter would never have been found.

Elizabeth again skimmed the lines — the last Lady Anne had ever written. She tried to read through the blots and scrawls to make out the missing words, but had no better success than upon her first reading.

She approached Darcy, who had fallen into reverie. He leaned against the window frame, his left hand yet holding the edge of the drapery panel he had pushed farther aside to widen his view of the garden below To the world, the expression with which he quietly studied the landscape might appear impassive. But she could read in his stance and hear in his silence a depth of feeling he often found difficult to express, even to her at times.

She placed a hand on his back, and he turned his head to meet her eyes.

“I have always known my mother died in childbed, but I never fully contemplated how painful a death it was.” His tone, normally warm when he had occasion to speak of his mother, held the hush of one referring to someone recently departed. “My memories are of a woman who was always serene and in command — not someone enduring so much agony that she could not compose coherent sentences.”

She felt acutely her own good fortune in yet having two living parents. “Those happier memories are the ones you should keep. She would not wish you to dwell on the circumstances of her death.”

“It is not my mother’s trial I have been contemplating most just now” He let the curtain panel fall back into place and took her hand. “It is yours.”

Indeed, Lady Anne’s letter had hardly made Elizabeth eager for the rite of passage that lay before her. But she did not care to fixate on the dangers of childbirth — at least, not this morning.

“My mother brought five babies into this world and has survived to see us all into adulthood. And my sister just safely delivered. I will be fine. Besides,” she said with a smile she hoped would prove contagious, “there is no turning back now.”

Her attempt at humor failed. Darcy regarded her with more seriousness than ever. “I am going to retain Dr. Severn.” His tone brooked no opposition. Nor, looking at his face, did she wish to object.

“I still want to become acquainted with him before my confinement.”

“You shall know him quite well. When we meet him in Bath, I will ask him to come to Pemberley immediately and stay until the child is born.”

“For months? Darcy, that hardly seems necessary. What of his other patients?”

“I shall compensate him handsomely enough for you to be his only patient.”

She opened her mouth to reply, but at the slight shake of his head she held her tongue. Darcy could be resolute with far less at stake — when confronted with the need to protect something precious to him, his drive was too fierce to redirect. Unable to remove a risk to someone he loved, he would do what he could to mitigate it. That trait was one of the things she admired most in him.

“Very well,” she said. “Though I assure you, this”—she held up the letter—”will not become my fate. I am far too stubborn.”

“My mother also possessed a strong will.”

“So I surmise. She insisted on finishing this letter, after all, despite the circumstances.” No doubt, her husband had inherited at least some of his determination from his mother. Like Darcy, Lady Anne had been trying to safeguard — or rather, recover — something precious to her right up until the end of her life. What could it have been, this object she wanted so desperately? Elizabeth could not imagine anything the faultless Lady Anne might have been denied, any object she could have lost that would not have been immediately replaced. “The item to which she refers — do you know what it is?”

“No. And I suppose we never shall.”

She refolded the letter and offered it to Darcy. “Would you care to keep it?”

“She wrote it to you.”

“She wrote it to the wife of her dear Fitzwilliam.”

“Precisely. Which is why it rightfully belongs to you. Unless you do not want it?”

Elizabeth did not feel personally connected to the letter or its author, but would never admit as much to Darcy. “Of course I want it. It was written by your mother, someone important to you.” She would keep it with the growing collection of Lady Anne’s effects that she sought storage for — someplace safe but out of everyday sight. A house as large as Pemberley surely held room enough for two Mrs. Darcys.

If the former one would only leave her be.

Three