North by Northanger

unguarded moments.”

— Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice

Darcy approached Elizabeth’s dressing room with apprehension. His wife had sent word through the servant that he should come quickly, but had not indicated why. Though the maid had assured him of Mrs. Darcy’s appearing perfectly well, the distance between his library and their apartment had never seemed so great as it did now, with one dreadful imagining after another flying through his mind.

He found her seated beside a trunk, one letter in hand and surrounded by others. Upon his entrance, she with obvious reluctance dragged her gaze away from the open letter.

“I hastened here directly you summoned me,” he said. “Are you quite all right?”

She regarded him eagerly. “These are letters from Northanger Abbey.” She made a sweeping gesture toward the piles of paper. “I tried to wait for you, but I could not help myself.”

“Is that all?” Relief overtook him at the knowledge that her health had not created the urgency. He sat down beside her.

“Is that all? These are filled with information about your mother’s ivory. It seems that the statuette once belonged to the abbey — before the Dissolution, when it was yet a religious house. Upon receiving the statuette, your mother contacted the Tilneys in hopes of learning more of its history, and a friendship formed between Lady Anne and Helen. Here — these two messages are the earliest.”

She thrust the notes into his hands. They were dated the year of his birth. She watched him impatiently while he read. He had barely finished, and was yet absorbing the particulars, when she picked up a third letter.

“Now in this one, Lady Anne learns that her ivory is one of ten such statuettes. And here — listen to this. Helen Tilney gave her ‘a beautiful new strongbox in which to safeguard my treasure. It is a small rosewood casket with a Madonna lily carved on its lid.’ ” She looked up at him excitedly. “That is what we ought to be seeking. We have been searching all this while for the statuette itself, not a rosewood box with a lily on top.”

A sickening sensation began in the pit of his stomach as a longburied memory forced its way into his mind. A rosewood box with a lily on top. Dread rapidly enveloped him. Oh, Lord. Oh, dear Lord.

“Darcy? All the color has drained from your face. What is the matter?”

He had held such a box in his hands that day.

The day Georgiana was born.

The day his mother died.

He swallowed, but the bile in his throat would not recede. “I have seen that box.”

“Indeed? Where?”

“In the summerhouse of the south garden.”

“Lady Anne’s garden?” She reflected a moment. “I suppose it makes sense that your mother might keep it there. When her sister finally returned the statuette, she put it in a place significant to her but outside the main house, where Lady Catherine would be unlikely to casually notice it and revoke its ‘loan,’ or to seek it if the determination ever possessed her — which it has, nearly twenty years later. But Darcy, you appear quite distressed. This is a happy discovery, is it not? We need only go down to the garden now and — Oh! But when did you see the box? As a boy, or recently? It might not be there, as we know that when your mother went looking for the ivory, it was not where she had left it.”

Because he had moved it.

Guilt suffused him, the overwhelming remorse of a child who has committed a deed so naughty he fears his parents can never forgive it. While his mother had been suffering, his actions had denied her the one item that might have brought her comfort.

“I came upon it that morning — the day of my sister’s birth. My mother was short-tempered at breakfast that day. For a fortnight she had been expecting her pains to commence at any moment, but they had not, and I think she grew weary of the waiting. As soon as I finished my toast, I fled the house in search of more pleasant society. I found it in...” He shifted his gaze, unable to meet her eyes. “George Wickham.”

The very thought nauseated him. Of all people whose companionship to prefer above his mother’s on the last day of her life! With whom to have committed his folly!

“He has not always been the scoundrel we recognize him as now. He once was your friend.”

“But even then, I sensed a wayward bent to his character.”

“You could not have known what he would become. Your own father did not, and he possessed the acumen of an adult.”

She was too forgiving. But then, she had not yet heard the remainder of what he had to tell. Like a penitent to his confessor, he continued.

“We wandered into the garden. Wickham had entered it only once before and been run out by Mr. Flynn, who never liked him — in retrospect, the gardener had better judgment than any of us. But in my company, Wickham need not fear eviction. He had never been inside the summerhouse and wanted to explore it. Have you been within?”

She shook her head.

“There is a fountain in the center — a statue of a lily. When in operation, water spouts from its blooms. It was dry; my mother had decided it made the air in the summerhouse too damp, so it had not run all season. Wickham wanted to see how it worked. I was curious myself — I had entered a stage in my education where I took great interest in the physical sciences and I wished to examine its components. At the base of the fountain we discerned a section of loose bricks. Speculating that they concealed the fountain’s mechanism, we removed them and discovered instead a small casket — the very one my mother’s note just described. It was secured with a letter lock.”

“I do not believe I have ever seen such a lock.”

“Instead of requiring a key, it has moveable rings inscribed with letters that must be turned to the proper combination to open it. Wickham, of course, wanted to see what the strongbox held. He attempted to guess the code but was unsuccessful.” Darcy recalled the scene with disgust; Wickham’s failure had resulted largely from the fact that the lock had four rings, and he had amused himself by spelling all manner of vulgar words. “I indulged the experiment for a few minutes, despite uneasiness. The box did not belong to us, I told him, and should remain undisturbed. He responded that as heir to Pemberley, I had a right to everything on the estate. Then he challenged me, asking whether I was clever enough to puzzle out the combination.”

“And you could not retreat from such a challenge, especially issued by Wickham.”

“My pride would not allow it.” Remorse washed over him. He had ignored his conscience and listened instead to the voice of conceit, allowed an unprincipled ne’er-do-well to goad him into conduct he had known to be wrong. “Wickham worried that Mr. Flynn would interrupt us, so we quit the garden and brought the casket into the woods. I tried all day to determine the code — I could not bear for Wickham to witness my failure.

“When the dinner hour approached, I was at last forced to admit defeat. We returned the strongbox to its repository and I left Wickham to go dress for dinner. Immediately upon entering the house, I learned that my mother’s travail had begun some hours earlier.” He shook his head, as if denying them now could change the events of the past. “She must have gone to the summerhouse while I was vainly using the thing most precious to her to prove to the worthless George Wickham that I was more clever than he.”

“You were the thing most precious to her.”

Elizabeth’s statement only made him feel worse. “And I repaid that affection by stealing from her the one object that might have succored her.” That might have saved her. Though Darcy did not believe the statuette or any other good-luck charm held any innate power of its own to affect one’s fortune, he did believe it possible that the faith of its owner might influence a course of events. If his mother had held the ivory, might she have drawn on inner reserves she did not realize she possessed?

“You were a child.”

“I was eleven years old. Old enough to know better than to take, even temporarily, something that was not mine. Especially at the very time it was most needed.”

“You did not know what it was, and could not have known your mother sought it.” Her eyes held the forgiveness he would never be able to beg from the person he had injured. “If you would blame anyone, let it be