North by Northanger

But nothing has been right since. Falling asleep and waking up together had formed the rhythm of our lives. Whatever else our days comprehended, they had begun and ended with each other. Now days pass in which we might not look upon each other until afternoon, or dinner, or not at all. We have fallen out of step, and the distance between us has increased these several years.

I have missed you, my wife. Dear God, how I have missed you. But last night we again found the perfect accord we once knew. And it gives me hope.

Anne, should last night’s union bear issue, should your deepest fears be realized and we find you are again with child, I bid you to remember that “love conquers all.” From the day we met, those words have directed our course. You argued them so warmly in our first conversation that you captured me. We believed them in the early years of our marriage, when Fitzwilliam was an infant and we saw nothing but continued joy on the horizon. It was when we stopped believing, when we allowed fear to dominate, that we lost our way. Yet still love conquered, for it finally wearied of our misguided attempts to deny it. Let us trust it to see us through whatever lies ahead.

Ever your devoted—

G.

Darcy and Elizabeth read the letter together in silence. When they had finished, her face held sorrow. She waited for him to speak.

He felt as if he had just witnessed the demise of someone close to him. In a sense, he had. The letter not only explained the affliction his parents’ marriage had suffered, but foretold his mother’s death. Her deepest fears had been realized: The letter was dated nine months before Georgiana’s birth.

“As I said—” He cleared the thickness in his throat. “Something changed. Now we know why.”

“Losses such as theirs must transform any feeling person.” She gently took the letter from his hand and glanced once more at its content. “But, really, it is not altogether a sad letter. It expresses hope — they found their way back to each other. They had a second chance at happiness.” She looked at him expectantly. “Did they not?”

“They did not. Within a year, she was dead.”

“What of the time in between? While she carried Georgiana? I must believe that receiving a letter such as this restored your mother’s faith at least a little. She kept it with their love letters, after all.”

He thought back to the last few months of his mother’s life. They were so long ago. He had been but a boy, and what child of ten or eleven fully comprehends the complex emotions and interactions of the adults around him? “I cannot remember. I do not recall her plunging into despair, so perhaps she did find a measure of peace.”

“And your father?”

His father he remembered more clearly — they’d had another eleven years together. “I think he anticipated Georgiana’s birth with guarded optimism. Thank heaven Georgiana survived. He never fully recovered from my mother’s death, and had he also lost Georgiana, the double defeat might have overpowered him.”

A fierce protective instinct arose within Darcy. The expectation of their own child filled him with happiness. He looked forward to holding that child, teaching that child, recognizing in that child the best parts of himself and Elizabeth. But he could not give himself over to complete joy in the event until he had escaped his father’s fate.

She took his hands in hers and caught his gaze. Her eyes, the eyes that had first captured his interest and then his heart, held confidence. “I have no intention of leaving you to raise this child alone, or of losing this child. And surely any child carried by me must inherit my stubbornness along with my better qualities. I can assure you that our daughter has already inherited my strength.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“I felt her move.” A quiet light entered her eyes. “Yesterday, in your mother’s garden. And again just now.”

The news swept away his melancholy. Almost shyly, he put a hand to her abdomen. “I cannot detect anything. Does she yet stir?”

She stood very still for a minute. He held his own breath, willing even the slightest movement to pass under his fingertips. To his deep disappointment, he felt nothing.

“I cannot detect anything now, either,” she assured him. “And what I have experienced is such a slight sensation that I doubt you could perceive it from the outside yet. But I am certain it is our child and not bad mutton.”

At her words, he sensed a small fluctuation beneath his hand. He looked at her hopefully. “Was that him?”

“I am afraid not.” She suppressed a smile. “That was my stomach reminding us that the dinner hour approaches.”

Nineteen

“He is the best landlord, and the best master... that ever lived... There is not one of his tenants or servants but what will give him a good name.”

— Mrs. Reynolds, Pride and Prejudice

Pemberley’s annual harvest feast was a grand event, one to which landlord and tenant alike looked forward. Farmers, laborers, schoolchildren, villagers — all who lived on or near the estate and depended upon it for their livelihoods joined together to celebrate the end of the growing season. Weather permitting, the supper, children’s games, and other entertainments took place under the open sky, and tradition held that once the date had been fixed each year, it could be counted upon to prove fair.

Today had been no exception. The sun had smiled upon the afternoon’s entertainments and continued as the entire company crowded around a dozen long trestle tables to break bread together. Afterward, the dancing commenced in the rustic tenants’ hall, with Elizabeth and Darcy leading off the opening minuet.

Elizabeth was happy to see Darcy relaxed and enjoying his duties as host, the strain of recent weeks having left his countenance at least temporarily. Mr. Harper had come and gone, and now worked to bring their legal difficulties in Gloucestershire to an end. He had also reported that his initial enquiries into the Earl of Southwell’s activities in France had yielded nothing of concern. By all accounts, Darcy’s cousin was enjoying a quiet visit to the Continent. Elizabeth and Darcy tried not to ponder too hard the irony that in sending their solicitor away to attend to Lady Catherine’s groundless fears of family scandal, a true potential scandal had brought Lady Catherine under their own roof.

Indeed, Elizabeth forced all unpleasant thoughts from her mind as she surveyed the revels going on around her. She considered her first harvest feast as mistress of Pemberley a success. Sounds of merriment had filled the air all day. Supper for six hundred had been served with nary a mishap. And every single guest seemed to be having a delightful time.

Except one.

“I do not know how you can suffer so many people to overrun Pemberley in this manner. They trample the lawns. Their children hang from the trees. Their vulgar voices form a cacophony. I shudder to see this noble house subjected to such indignity.”

Lady Catherine observed the spectacle from an out-of-the-way chair to which she had fled the moment supper ended. Though she often boasted of her own far-reaching benevolence, she preferred to demonstrate it from the farthest reach possible. Sharing a table with common tradesmen and farmers had very nearly put her in need of the services of the apothecary who had been sitting across from her. Elizabeth had endeavored to place her amid the company her ladyship would find the least objectionable — the minister, the schoolmaster — but the size of the crowd overall had convinced Darcy’s aunt that she dined in a mob of the coarsest peasants.

“Pemberley could not exist without these people,” Elizabeth said.

“The quantity of food they consumed was staggering. Not one of them exercised restraint. Commoners