Nameless by Julie Cooper

Chapter One

December 1, 1819

The Dowager Countess of Matlock rang her silver bell, a sound I had grown to hate. Clearly never having had any idea of restraint, the countess slept little and demanded much. I had learned a good deal of her sufferings in the twelve months I had been in her service; too, she cherished a rather selfish pride which would not allow her to admit to imperfections, aches, pains, or loneliness. The only worse position in the house than mine was Lady Matlock’s personal maid, Dawson, with whom I often exchanged grim looks of mutual sympathy.

“My vinaigrette,” she demanded, when I scurried into the room like a trained mouse. “And at once, you lazy girl. My nephew is to visit. Where is Dawson? She must arrange my hair. I should like to wear the pale pink pelisse. Mademoiselle says that no one would ever guess me to have reached the half-century mark when I wear pink.”

I forbore pointing out that as her son was in his mid-forties, she must have seen her half-century mark decades’ past. When one is in service, one quickly learns to mind one’s tongue.

It had not been an easy lesson. I had been raised a daughter of Longbourn, accustomed to saying whatever my tongue demanded. It was providential, really, that Mama and Papa had died together—Mama never would have learnt discretion, or how to gracefully undertake the role of impoverished relation. It was helpful, too, that I had spent six of the seven years since my parents’ deaths with my uncle and aunt Gardiner. I was much more adjusted to a less indulged existence by the time my brother-in-law found the position with Lady Matlock for me, and I was fortunate to live in comfort. While thoughts of those early happy, melancholy years could sadden me, I had also learnt another important lesson—to remember the past only as it gave me wisdom and pleasure to do so. There were tears enough locked within me to drown myself, were I to indulge them. I never did.

If Lady Matlock seldom remembered past pleasures, she had no trouble recalling current difficulties. She had only the one child, the current earl, who, to my way of seeing it, paid her to stay away. She spoke of her grandchildren only in terms of their many failings, and of her other relations, I heard little. I had met a niece and one of Lady Matlock’s two sisters during my year in her service. She had never mentioned any of her nephews individually except to complain of their selfishness and neglect—collectively—so I would wager this nephew’s visit a surprise to us both. Suddenly, however, he had become a treasure, a favourite, and her dearest relation.

“Willsy is a grieving widower,” she warned me.

I hid my smile at a grown man called ‘Willsy’. Very unsympathetic of me.

“He lost his wife only three months’ past, and it is said he cannot recover. They had no children to be of comfort to him now. They were such a couple, leaders of the highest circles. His estate is Pemberley, you know—I am certain even you have heard of it. The parties they once held! They were written up in all the London papers. Everyone who was anyone coveted an invitation to a party at Pemberley—it was a sign of social success, even more so than vouchers at Almack’s.”

Pemberley… The name did sound familiar, but I could not place it in that moment. I ought to have, of course—many years before, I had heard it discussed at Netherfield, and even the hated Wickham mentioned it once or twice. But after losing Papa and the idyllic life at Longbourn, I had firmly consigned any thoughts of ‘higher circles’ to my past, accepting my present circumstances with hope, and seldom bothering to read of the doings of society in the papers. I paid little attention to ‘the Quality’, as Dawson termed England’s elite.

I had wanted, of course, to marry, and there had been a few encouraging prospects. Mama would call me too fastidious, had she lived. I did not think I was; I had utterly given up on the idea of love. But I had wished for respect, good character, and intelligence. Somehow, all those things together had been too much to ask for from those few whose interest I attracted. Nevertheless, Lady Matlock’s comparison of Pemberley to Almack’s sounded a bit ridiculous; she was a master of hyperbole.

Of course, I could have remained at Longbourn after my parents’ deaths—Charlotte generously offered. But my pride interfered. Mary stayed, and had found her place as Charlotte’s helpful companion. She did not complain and was, I think, content. However, Mary had never refused the marriage proposal of Longbourn’s master, and thus he did not feel compelled to continually remind her of her lost status and all that could have been hers, had she not been so stubborn. Neither the years nor my position in life had taught me to regret my refusal; my cousin was even more repellent as the Master of Longbourn than he had been as Lady Matlock’s loathsome vicar. Charlotte ignored him, for the most part—a heroic act of blindness I could not emulate.

I had visited Charlotte once at the parsonage at Matlock Court shortly after her marriage to Mr Collins, before my parents’ deaths and before the current earl inherited. It had been a pleasant visit, except for any time spent in the company of Lady Matlock or my cousin. I had never dreamt I would visit the countess again after Papa died and Mr Collins vacated the living she had granted him. Of course, she was at Matlock Court no longer. She had brought Rosings Park with her into marriage, and the earl paid her quite generously to remain here—in Kent—and as far away from himself as was possible.

I opened my mouth to ask where in the country Pemberley was to be found, when Dawson entered, curtseyed, and handed over a card to my mistress. She looked at it.

“Willsy is here! How delightful! He is early, even! I did not expect him before tea. What do you wait for, girl? Bring him to me. Dawson, we will have an early tea here in the pink parlour. Do not forget the lobster cakes! Ensure Cook serves it with the good china! And if the silver is not polished to perfection, I shall know why!”

I shall always be grateful that the countess sent me on the errand to fetch her long-lost nephew; had I not, our first meeting in the eight years since last I saw him might have taken place under her watchful eye. Lady Matlock was arrogant, self-absorbed, and callous; she was not stupid, however. She would have seen at once that there was something there.

He stood in the front parlour where Dawson had left him, a broad-shouldered man in an elegantly cut coat, his back to me, staring out the window at the grey skies. It was only as I entered that I realised her ladyship had never uttered his surname, and so I stumbled a bit with my greeting.

“Excuse me, um, sir,” I began, and then he turned to face me.

I was so astonished, I spoke aloud my first foolish thought. “Mr Darcy? You cannot be her favourite nephew!”

I am not sure how it was that I recognised him so quickly. His hair, worn short, was already silvering, though he was not yet forty, and deep creases cut where once had been only dimples. His skin looked browner, as though he spent a good deal of time out of doors. But his eyes still held those dark, unfathomable depths. There were no laugh lines around them, but then, I had not expected there would be.

Fleetingly, I wished that I had understood sooner that it was he who visited; I was not as delusional as Lady Matlock in believing that if I wore a certain colour, I could discard the years since I had seen him last. Still, my pride would have demanded I make at least some attempt at looking my best. But what, really, did it matter? At closer to thirty years than twenty, employed as companion to his aunt, it would not have mattered had I been as stout as Mr Collins and dressed in rags.

“I apologise,” I added hastily. “’Tis only that I was surprised. Please come with me, sir, and I shall take you to your aunt.”

He just stood, looking at me, and I was reminded of the time I had rushed in a downpour to visit Jane, arriving unexpectedly at Netherfield with my hems six inches deep in mud. In a way, it eased my chagrin at seeing him again after all these years in my role of impoverished gentlewoman. He had not approved of me at my best; there was no use acting self-conscious now.

He did not move. “You know me, then?” he asked.

Did I? That brief period of time near the end of my old life was so very long ago. So much of what I thought I understood had turned out to be nonsense. I remembered the man I thought I had known—and hated, even, in the way of overly dramatic, foolish young girls. It did not matter.

“Of course, sir. If you will follow me,” I repeated.

For a moment he looked as though he might argue the point—although what he wished to argue about was beyond my comprehension. But then he nodded and did as I requested. Once we were in his aunt’s parlour, I ceased to exist—a state which, I am sorry to say, had become most comfortable for me. My ideas and opinions were no longer necessary or welcome, a difficulty in the beginning. But I had finally accepted the encumbrances of servitude, and now wore them as a second skin.

There were compensations, however. The countess’s supercilious nature guaranteed that I was not obliged to listen, particularly, to her effusions and criticisms. She could be amusing in her conceit because she believed her own lies, laughed at her own jests, and revealed her own secrets—she required nothing of one’s real self.

To his credit, Mr Darcy tried to include me in the insipid, fractured conversation. But that only led Lady Matlock to send me away in order to fetch letters—supposedly to be found in her room—from her son, Mr Darcy’s cousin. Since I knew for a fact that the earl had written to her only twice in the year I had been in residence, I did not feel overly confident that they would be easily found.

A cursory look inside the bureau drawer she had indicated revealed letters from some of her London friends, and one dressmaker’s bill from Madame Marchand, but nothing from the earl. However, atop her bureau there stood a miniature I had never seen before; I was certain it had not been there yesterday, or any of the many other times she had required me to fetch and carry. The frame was silver and needed polish.

Mr Darcy’s solemn eyes bored into me; beside him posed a lavishly dressed golden-haired beauty, the sleeves little puffs at her slim shoulders, her forehead noble, her nose slim, her mouth a rosebud, her unusually coloured bluish-green eyes sparkling. I picked it up, staring. On the back was engraved ‘September 2, 1812, Our Wedding Day, Mr and Mrs Fitzwilliam Darcy’.

It was almost impossible to think that the vibrant female in the portrait should be dead. Mr Darcy appeared exactly as I remembered him from Netherfield Park—unflappable, distinguished, handsome, staid. Yet, the artist had caught a hint of puzzlement in his eyes. What am I doing with this diamond of the first water? his eyes asked. She is much too alive for me! And yet, she was dead, and he was in the parlour enduring Lady Matlock.

Life was beyond strange, at times.

The only other letter in the drawer was written in the firm, masculine scrawl that I instinctively knew was his. I remembered suddenly, the time that Caroline Bingley had remarked upon his handwriting with such excessive flattery. Caroline Bingley! I had not thought of that name for so many years! Obviously, she had not succeeded in capturing her prize, and idly I wondered what had ever happened to her. I unfolded it—for if I was wrong about the author, and it was, indeed, from the earl, I should never hear the end of it.

My Lady Aunt,

I shall be in the area the first of December, and perhaps you will agree to a visit of a fortnight or so at Rosings Park. Write to me at Darcy House in London if it will be an inconvenience.

Yours&c,

F.D.

And that was all. Evidently, the gentleman no longer believed in long letters to his relatives. I smiled to myself at the thought.

In the absence of any letters from the earl, I happily considered myself dismissed, retiring to my room to enjoy a bit of time to myself with a book—a wonderful luxury, because Lady Matlock hated for anyone to be reading while she talked aloud to herself. But the words would not right themselves on the page, insisting upon blurring, coaxing my thoughts towards a past that ought to be dead and buried like my parents.

Why was he here?I wondered. I knew, of course, that Mr Darcy was related to the earl through his maternal line; I would never forget my cousin Collins introducing himself so boldly and embarrassingly at the Netherfield ball. But I had not heard his name mentioned in so many years, he had faded into the past. I had paid little enough attention to the countess’s rambling outpourings upon receiving his letter, but I doubt any clues had emerged. That he was grieving, I was certain—his visage was a study in mourning. Perhaps he was making the rounds of all his relations, avoiding his own company, getting through the first year of loneliness by passing time with his family. But after my year with Lady Matlock, I would think the earl’s company to be a good deal more favourable.

I peered up at the clock, noting the time. It had been half an hour since I left aunt and nephew. I would try to escape for a walk before it grew any later, I decided. I dared not leave the house without permission, but if the countess was attempting to keep all his attention upon herself, she would not hesitate to grant it. I paused by my looking glass, trying to see what Mr Darcy would see: no longer a girl, a woman past her first blush of youth, a too-determined chin, dark-eyed, in an old-maid’s lace cap. Defiantly, I tugged it off and exchanged it for my Sunday best. Not that it would impress him—nor was I trying to. The alteration was for myself. My hair was both the bane of my existence and my greatest pride. It was heavy, full and thick, and even with an iron, would never behave in such smooth fashionableness as the dead Mrs Darcy’s, instead curling madly when the weather was wet or sultry. It fell almost to my waist when unrestrained, with not a hint of grey in it.

I am eight and twenty, and in my heart—if not to the world—a girl yet. I do not care what he thinks. Even so, I tugged a few curls down at my ears, and they obligingly coiled flatteringly, framing my chin—which was still thankfully firm, if too sharp in other ways—and donned my wrap.

As I approached the parlour, all was quiet; perhaps they had both retired to their rooms. I peeked in.

The countess was snoring, her chins compressed against her ample bosom. Mr Darcy was, once again, staring out the window. But I had not been as quiet as I supposed, for he turned suddenly and looked at me. I opened my mouth to say something, but he held his hand up peremptorily and strode towards me, his eyes fixed upon me. Rather like a predator, I thought fancifully.

I fell into step beside him as he motioned me out the door in his somewhat imperious way. However, I could not blame him for making his escape, and as soon as we were well away, I attempted to make mine.

“I will take you to Mrs Jenkinson, and she will show you to your rooms,” I said. “We usually dine at eight, if it suits.”

“Where are you going? Out of doors? I was watching at the window—I thought I might see you leave,” he said. “I remember you liked to roam the countryside.”

Was this a criticism? It seemed an odd thing to mention or even remember, but of course, he had endured an hour of Lady Matlock and her stuffy parlour. It made memories of roaming extremely attractive; I bolted whenever I could.

“Yes, that is—my hours of wandering are few, but I wish to stroll in the garden before nightfall,” I said with some hesitation. “It is walled and quite safe. I shall see you at dinner, then?”

“May I walk with you?” he persisted.

Internally I sighed; I had no wish to be rude to a guest, much less someone in mourning. If he wanted company, I ought to be a good enough person to provide some for him. But I could summon no enthusiasm.

“Very well,” I replied, and walked briskly to another parlour overlooking the terrace. He hurried to unlatch the door before I could reach for it, and then, finally I was out. It had not rained for a few days, but it probably would again, soon. For now, the air was fresh and clear and felt delicious in my lungs.

For some time, we walked silently together amongst the plantings. Mr Darcy had not much changed, it seemed; as I recalled, he had never been overly fond of conversation. I mostly ignored him, pretending he was only a large, gloomy shadow, and fixed my attention upon the greenery, inhaling deeply of the evening breezes, trying to centre myself within their refreshment.

“I am sorry about your parents,” he said at last, startling me.

“Oh…thank you. It has been many years. I am surprised you heard.”

“My aunt mentioned it. How do your sisters fare?”

Lady Matlock had probably prattled off what she knew of them as well; hopefully, she had not said everything she knew. “My sister, Jane, is married to the earl…er, your cousin’s vicar, Mr Tilney. They have three children with a fourth on the way. Her life suits her very well.” I could believe he did not know this, since he had never been interested in those of less importance than himself. Because he had been at least partially responsible for crushing Jane’s long-ago hopes for Mr Bingley, revealing to him of her current happiness was a matter of pride and I would probably have said the same thing no matter its accuracy. Fortunately, it was very true. “It was Mr Tilney who kindly arranged this position for me after my uncle Gardiner died, and my aunt removed to her elderly mother’s home with her three youngest.”

He did not contribute any useless platitudes, or worse, any congratulatory ones—only nodding—which I appreciated. “Kitty resides with my aunt and uncle Philips, with her husband, who is my uncle’s law clerk, in Meryton. They have one son. My sister, Mary, is yet at Longbourn with my cousin Collins and his wife and their two children.”

He nodded. I waited, tensely, for him to ask after my youngest sister, thinking it too much to hope that he would fail to remember her. I glanced sideways at him. But he said nothing, fortunately. Because, of course, I had no idea what to say.

I quickly thought of questions of my own, hoping they would forestall any I dreaded. “What do you hear from our old friends, Mr and Miss Bingley?”

He stiffened. I was not mistaken in it, for I watched him carefully. His answers, however, were smoothly enough given. “Miss Bingley eloped to the Continent eighteen months ago, and Mr Bingley does not hear from her often.”

This, I admit, surprised me mightily. Of all people I knew or had ever known, Caroline Bingley seemed the least likely to commit such an indiscretion.

“Mr Bingley is married to my sister, Georgiana,” he said, after a small hesitation. “They have been married two and a half years now. No children as yet.” He added nothing more, but seemed as though he could have.

He is waiting, I realised. Waiting for me to say something about…old times. Ancient history, really. Of Mr Bingley’s abrupt departure, with him, from our neighbourhood, just before the Christmas of 1811. Perhaps Mr Darcy had even known, as Miss Bingley had, that Jane had been in London after, and kept the knowledge from his friend. Regardless, we had never seen either of them again, and after my parents’ deaths in August of the following year, neither had I given them much thought. It all seemed so insignificant now.

“I wish them very happy,” I murmured perfunctorily. Truthfully, I did not much care whether any of them were happy or not, but I certainly wished none ill. I was sadly deceived—we all had been—in Lieutenant Wickham’s character, and had long ago decided that nothing the scoundrel had said against Mr Darcy could be trusted. The happiness or unhappiness of the Bingleys was irrelevant.

But now it seemed unmannerly not to offer my own condolences.

“I was very sorry to hear of your wife’s death, when the countess told me of it today,” I said dutifully.

He answered not another word. In fact, the remainder of the walk was accomplished in utter and complete silence.