Nameless by Julie Cooper

Chapter Thirty-Two

Mrs Reynolds returned to Pemberley after leaving me in the care of good Mrs Pruitt; while she had ensured that all her people were out of the house before joining me and Mr Darcy, she knew they were still frightened and in need of useful purpose. I would very much have liked to join her, but my burns had grown uncomfortable. Mrs Pruitt anointed each one with a pain-relieving unguent she swore was healing, dressed them, and then sent me to rest in a spare bedchamber. As I lay there in that bright, cosy room upon a hand-stitched quilt that might have been sewn by Mr Williams’s mother, echoes of quiet chatter just beyond the door, I tried to comprehend all of what had occurred.

I had been brutally attacked; Mrs de Bourgh had wanted me dead, more than she wanted her own health or liberty or even life itself.

It made little sense to me. I did not like her, true. I had arranged for her care and visited her, but only out of duty. I had been thrilled at the announcement that she was returning to Ramsgate, ending that obligation. I had not planned, in fact, to think of her ever again, was only resolved to act in a manner which would, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to her, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.

Why could she not have felt the same? I believe I had heard of Anne de Bourgh, or rumours of Mr Darcy’s attachment to such a person, years ago in Meryton, but I had quickly forgotten her. We had nothing whatsoever to do with each other. My existence meant nothing to the course of her life or her death. If I had believed de Bourgh’s actions were a strike solely at Mr Darcy, some strange vindictiveness for his hasty remarriage, I could perhaps understand her better.

But this, too, was incomprehensible. Beyond the fact that she’d known Anne’s marriage to be an unhappy one on both sides, Mrs de Bourgh had never seemed to show much interest in him. Her sentiments seemed exactly the same as Mr Darcy had described Anne’s feelings—who, by the time she announced herself ready to bear his child, had looked upon him only as a chess piece to be moved about on her board. That her husband meant nothing to her had been proven by the absence of her apparently famous tact and charm when demanding he give her one. Likewise, those villagers in the ballroom had not existed to Mrs de Bourgh, except as obstructions to her one true goal—to kill me.

She enjoyed the thought of destroying his home and his marriage, but her real purpose was to ensure no other Mrs Darcy ever ruled Pemberley, I thought. Anne de Bourgh was to be the last.

* * *

It was late in the afternoon before Mr Williams entered the small parlour where Mrs Pruitt and I waited. Apologising for his filthy appearance, he explained that Mr Darcy had specially charged him to immediately give me the news that they had been able to extinguish the fire long before it reached the main house. For the most part, only the ballroom and the rooms directly above it were utterly ruined. Since they were to be demolished regardless, it mattered little beyond the loss of a few furnishings. Mr Darcy, he said, would be here to fetch me as soon as he had washed away the soot.

He came for me at the twilight hour, the fresh evening breezes blowing away the waning scents of smoke and soot. His hair was still damp from a recent bath, his features solemn and troubled. He bowed to Mrs Pruitt, thanked her for her ministrations, and together we departed.

Mr Darcy had brought a carriage, but I requested we walk the bare half-mile distance.

“You are hurt,” Mr Darcy said with a sober frown, looking at my ruined gown and the bandages upon my arms. Mrs Pruitt and I were not at all of a size, so she had done her best to freshen the dress and I had donned it again after my own bath.

“Truly, I am well. Whatever Mrs Pruitt used to treat my small injuries has relieved any pain. I have wished to make the walk home for some time, but she was so hospitable, I did not wish to cause her worry by disappearing from her care.”

“I owe her even more of my thanks if she bid you rest,” he said before instructing the young man holding the reins to return the vehicle to the Pemberley stables.

We walked in silence for some minutes; he carefully matched his pace to mine, but made no move to touch me, to offer his arm. Of course, I knew him so well now—he had doubtlessly taken entire responsibility for the actions of the villains and for any tiny ache upon my person. So I tucked my arm in his, despite a little stinging, and as I expected, he seemed to ease a bit.

“How did you know?” I asked. “How did you know we were hostages?”

“I did not,” he replied. “I only kept watching for you and your party to emerge from the ballroom. And when you did not, I was impatient, and thought to look in on your group. Then I found the door had been nailed shut and I was alarmed, as was Mr Williams, and so we burst in upon you. Which led, of course, to her setting the place afire.”

“Oh, she meant to do that regardless. There was no good way to prevent it. What with all the workmen’s hammers, we did not recognise the sound of nailing, I suppose. Do we have any idea what happened to Mr Donavan and Mr Frost?” I asked. “They were supposed to be delivering her to Ramsgate! Mr Frost most of all, of course.” I grinned up at him, but he could not yet be teased.

“Mr Davis gave me a full accounting of the events in the ballroom. After speaking with him, I met with Wickham. He was…unusually cooperative. A veritable fountain of information,” he replied gravely. “Mrs de Bourgh wrote to him about a week ago, asking him to meet her at The Bell, a coaching inn that was to be their first night’s stop. There, she simply hired a woman to play her part on the journey to Ramsgate, instructing her maid to say nothing of the ruse.”

“She was veiled,” I remembered. “I suppose, if their actress is clever, they might make it all the way to Ramsgate. If she is sly, as well, they might never find out, and return home none the wiser. But if she is not, they might return to Pemberley speedily. It was a risk…she could not have held auditions for qualified actresses.”

“She only needed to be a day ahead of them,” he said grimly. “She did not mean to return to Ramsgate, I am thinking, although Wickham denies that much.”

Since I had drawn the same conclusions, I only nodded. “What did Wickham say was their intent?”

“Only to question us and insist upon real answers as to the cause of Anne’s death.”

“I believe that was his intention,” I said slowly, working it out in my head. “However, he heard enough to realise, by the time she ordered him to collect me, that it was not hers. I do not believe he came to kill me, but I would be unsurprised if he was willing enough that she should.”

His arm tensed beneath my hand, and I sighed. “I do not, I cannot understand it. Her hatred of me makes no sense at all, no matter how I puzzle it out.”

“I do,” he said, after a small hesitation. “She had worked out who you were, and I was too thick to realise she might have understood.”

“Who I am?” I queried, half-smiling. “An orphan from Hertfordshire and Cheapside? An impoverished spinster? A relation of one-too-many vicars?”

He let out a heavy sigh, and said nothing for several more minutes. The moon rose, lighting our path well enough. In the distance, I could see the lights of Pemberley, and smell the bruised scent of burnt wood and singed stone. Somewhat to my surprise, however, Mr Darcy led me off the direct path to the house, instead guiding me into Pemberley’s version of a hermitage—far more elaborate than the one at Rosings, perched upon a hilltop with wood and garden views from all sides. Of course, it was too dark to appreciate them, but he lit a taper and then seated himself upon the padded wood bench beside me. For a time, he simply sat there in contemplation. I could not have said why, but he appeared more fiercely alone than I had seen him since before our wedding. When he spoke, it was with a grim note of determination.

“I fell in love with you whilst still at Netherfield Park,” he said at last.

I bit my lip. He had mentioned it before, a certain attraction he had held then; I liked that he had, at some point, remembered me fondly and even with desire. Love, however, seemed an exaggeration wrought by time and, perhaps, the unhappiness he had borne since. I felt my memories were closer to the truth. “You did not,” I protested gently. “I recall those days fairly clearly. And it was not simply your refusal to dance with me at an assembly, although I believe you when you say you decided I was not so unattractive, after all. Still, I would put your feelings for me then rather closer to disgust than to love.”

He sighed. “I am embarrassed to confess to you how meanly I considered the inferiority of your relations, although I am certain my arrogance comes as no surprise. Of course, you and Mrs Tilney avoided completely any like share of censure. I have already divulged the dishonour of my part in separating Bingley from your sister.”

“And I have discovered your role in elevating Mr Tilney, to the point of buying Matlock’s benefice so that you might see her happily wed.”

“But towards you, I behaved more dishonourably still,” he said, continuing as if I had not spoken. “I was in love with you, but felt your family an insult to my station. My uncle, the old earl, who knew of Georgiana’s near escape from Wickham, believed her misjudgement entirely due to my bachelor state, and that what was needed was a maternal figure. I understood my aunt could not be that person for her. I say this not to excuse myself, but only to explain my rationalisations at the time. I knew you would be an excellent sister, but I imagined with abhorrence introducing the rest of your family to the earl, of listening to him rage at my lack of sense. I never wanted to admit this to you. I am ashamed of what my feelings once were.”

It was not precisely easy—though hardly a surprise—to listen to his memories. But had I not listened to Wickham, allowing his perceptions to so easily rule my own feelings? Had not my family—especially my mother and younger sisters, but at times, even my father, embarrassed me?

“I understand,” I said quietly.

He glanced over at me, the first time he’d really looked at me since entering the hermitage. “I doubt you do,” he said acerbically. “Even after I brought Bingley away, I thought often of you by day and dreamt of you by night. I hoped somehow that you would leave Hertfordshire, visit someplace where I might see you again. At one point, I even considered buying Netherfield Park so that I would have some excuse to spend time in the neighbourhood. The only thing that kept me from it, I believe, was the thought of trying to come up with some excuse to keep Bingley out of it.”

He shook his head at my open-mouthed astonishment. I had been to visit Charlotte in March of 1812, and thus he certainly could have seen me at Matlock Court. But of course, Lady Matlock had never had me to dine, and it is doubtful she would ever have mentioned such an undistinguished guest of her rector’s wife.

“Meanwhile, there was Anne,” he continued, “whom the earl had met and approved, and he was pushing mightily for the match. I extended myself to go out into society, accepting invitations as never before, hoping, I think, to find someone who was exactly like you and yet who could meet my family’s expectations. Everywhere I was, there she was also, and as I wanted to like her, and repeatedly looked for ways we might suit…well, before I knew it, I had created expectations in her, in everyone.”

I could see it all so clearly. Manipulative Anne de Bourgh, with her mother’s assistance, and perhaps with the cooperation of the earl or some other spy learning which invitations he had accepted, ensuring she was always nearby—and then that the right ears heard fabrications about his intentions, creating enough talk, until an obligation had been formed in his mind. A subtle trap, indeed.

“And why should you not have?” I said, keeping my voice steady. “She had the approval of your family, the wealth to replace your sister’s dowry, the beauty, and the birth.”

He gave a bitter bark of laughter. “Because it was the essence of dishonour. To waken every morning longing to go back to sleep, to recapture the dream of you. To wish, in my heart of hearts, that the woman I had just given my body to was somebody else altogether—everysingletime—until I had to force myself to be a husband to her. It was almost a relief, really, when I found she was repeatedly unfaithful, and had an excuse to stop trying once and for all.”

I took his hand, brought it to my lips, kissed his cold fingers. My heart swelled at these admissions, and I revelled in the constancy of his adoration. But I would not have him suffer needlessly.

“Dearest,” I said, “I believe with all my heart that you tried to love her. It was only that she was so cold, so heartless herself, that you could not find any emotion to cling to, to build a foundation upon. Yes, you were mistaken in her character. But I do not believe for one moment that your affection for me could have withstood the test of time, had she been even slightly worthy of your efforts.”

Meanwhile, I thought but did not say, she manipulated and abused you and your loyalty and trust, separating you from nearly every person you cared for, until she finally could push you no further.

He took my face within his hands. “Listen to me,” he said. “If I had done as I ought and asked you to marry me in 1811, none of it might ever have happened! I could have explained Wickham’s perfidies to your father and prevented the Brighton excursion that led to your parents’ deaths and your sister’s disgrace.”

I smiled softly at him, placing my hands over his. “And yet, my darling, you forget an important impediment to our happiness. I did not like you then. I am certain I was perfectly capable of refusing your proposal of marriage, for all the stupidest reasons in the world.”

He rested his forehead on mine. “What are the odds,” he said with a hint of self-reproach, “that I might have proposed in so elegant and humble a manner so as to have changed your mind?”

“That might have been one of the labours of Hercules,” I said, smiling. “And I cannot believe you said anything of your feelings for me to Anne, no matter how many times she disappointed you.”

He looked into my eyes, his reflecting his deeply held regrets. “But I did. When she lay, broken and dying, as I thought, she said she was sorry, sorry for the pain she caused to me and mine. It was a deathbed repentance, but she did feel it in the moment, I was certain. And I apologised as well, for marrying her when my heart was engaged to another, and for any pain it might have brought her, however unknowingly done. I did not want her to die holding onto it all. I wanted to be free of it myself.”

“I am happy she apologised at the last, for you were certainly owed one. I am happy if your confession gave you a bit of peace, for never has a man deserved it more. And if Mrs de Bourgh somehow overheard you saying it, well, perhaps the old lady did suspect your feelings for me. Nevertheless, I can safely state my belief that she would have despised me with every fibre of her being, with or without that information.”

He pulled me into his arms, a bit more forcefully than was his wont, causing my gasp. “The best act of my entire life was begging you to marry me.”

I grinned up at him, our faces so close, our breath intermingled. “I do not remember the begging, but perhaps my memory is faulty.”

He did not smile back. “I knew you were going to say no,” he said. “I was certain of it. I knew I had not the means of convincing you. And I thought, I must have one kiss, dear Lord, please, just one kiss, to last me the rest of my life.”

And he kissed me again, taking away my breath, my mind, my reason, just as he had with the first one. This time, because I was not quite so astonished, I had enough sense to return it in full measure, over and over again.

When I finally caught my breath enough to speak, I whispered, “I do hope you would not have been so poor-spirited as all that, to concede defeat so easily had I been foolish enough to say no the first time you asked.”

“I love you, Elizabeth,” he said. “I thought I loved you then, but I had only scratched the surface of my emotion, at what I was capable of feeling for you. I want you to know that I did not bring you to Pemberley for my pleasure, though it has been everything I ever dreamed of and more. I brought you here to give you the life you ought to have had, as soon as I could give it, had I not been such a fool.”

Everything felt new and bright within my soul. I was his, and he was mine; I felt younger than I had in years.

“Fitzwilliam,” I said, and he kissed me again at the sound of his name upon my lips. “I have had, I think, the life I ought to have had. Perhaps it was not the life I would have chosen, but a valuable life. Precious years with my uncle, experiences in service that have built compassion within my soul and made of me a better mistress for Pemberley. Any wisdom I know of marriage or motherhood, I have learnt from living with my aunt Gardiner. And not simply me. If Lydia and Jane are happy, it is due to you. If you could not mend everything, you mended everything you could. It was—is—more than enough. I love you.”

“You do?” he asked, almost as if he could not believe my words.

“Of course I do.”

“I have been afraid to hope. When did you…” a tinge of pink touched his cheekbones, and he clamped his mouth shut.

I laughed. “When did I know I loved you? Was it the first time you came to me as a husband, and were so careful, so gentle, so…adoring, though I was so ignorant? Was it during long walks on that meandering journey home to Pemberley, tramping about the countryside so patiently whilst I explored? Was it the first time you admitted that I was in the right and you were so, so wrong?” I grinned. “I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago and took hardly any time at all. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”

“I want you,” he said, his thumbs stroking my cheeks. “I want you now.”

“I will want you always,” I said. “Let us go home, to our beautiful home, and to the beautiful life we have before us.” I kissed him again, and grinned. “I believe there is also a beautiful bed somewhere therein.”

“Not necessary,” he said. And we did go home—much later—after expressing ourselves as only a couple most happily wed and violently in love could be supposed to do.