Sleep was scarce. When he did sleep, the dream he had was actually a recurring nightmare of Elizabeth Bennet excoriating him and sending him away. He was not one to imbibe under normal circumstances, but things were far from normal.
Darcy was in the study close to noon on Monday. He had a tumbler in his hand; it had contained two fingers of his best French cognac. Now, there were only a few drops left. He still had three cases left in his cellar. At the rate he enjoyed the amber coloured liquor when he was not feeling as he was now, what he had was enough for some years. The way he was indulging now, that time would be significantly less.
As he sat feeling sorry for himself, Darcy decided the overarching theme of his life was loss. First, his mother, then the elder Mr Wickham, and then his father. The next series of losses were not of life, but of confidence and then recently friendship and love.
But he still loved Elizabeth Bennet. If anything, he loved her more so than he had before he proposed to her.
Thinking of the proposal brought back all the mortification as soon as he remembered the manner in which he had asked for her hand. She had been right to refuse him, even if she had been wrong about some of the things of which she had accused him. She had been correct about enough, and chief among them was his pride. Who the hell was he to judge others when he had so many deficiencies in his own character?
Darcy decided that he needed to dull the pain with another measure of cognac from the decanter on the sideboard. He stood from the settee, which was placed between the windows, which began three feet from the floor and went up to the ceiling. He stumbled to the sideboard and placed the tumbleron the silver tray.
He was about to pour himself more when a bout of melancholy crashed around him. “Mother and Father, why did you leave me and Anna? Why did you not leave any instructions beyond your will, Father?” Darcy asked the empty study. “I wanted someone to sit at my side and share the responsibility with me, but my pride and arrogance destroyed my happiness.”
He felt the need to hit something, so he aimed at the thing nearest to him. The wood panelling on the wall of the study was closest to him. He pulled his fist back and drove it into the wall. Part of his reason to do so was that his hand would be hurt, and who deserved to feel pain if not him?
Instead of pain, his fist broke through that section of panelling. He had broken some sort of door and left two pieces hanging from their hinges. Inside was a void, and within, Darcy saw a green leather pouch held closed by some sort of twine crossed over from top to bottom and left to right. The twine was tied into a bow to secure it. What was this? Why did he not know of this secret place? A memory stirred. Father mentioned a place only known to him and Mother and not in the safe. This must be it.
He extracted the pouch and sat behind his desk; any thoughts of cognac were quickly forgotten. He reverently untied the bow and removed the twine. He opened the pouch. Within were several letters. Some were to him and others were addressed to Anna. There were epistles in his mother’s hand, and there were those written by his father.
Darcy put those to the side for the moment and lifted one which was wrapped in a page which had his father’s script on it. It read:
Read this if Anne de Bourgh passes away before she marries, or has married and has nosurviving child. William, if Matlock is alive and I am not, then you will join your uncle and become an executor of Lewis de Bourgh’s will.
Robert Darcy
As he knew Anne was not long for the world, and she was certainly not married, Darcy opened the yellowed sheet of paper and read. What he read there shocked him to the core.
“Oh, my!” was all he could exclaim. Come Monday morning, he would be travelling south again. He had to reach Rosings Park to see Uncle Reggie.
When he looked at the letters, he saw they were meant to be opened at certain points in his and Anna’s life. The pouch, which was worth more than all his wealth, would join him as he travelled. He intended to read the letter from Mother and the one from Father meant for after he gained his majority.
Here, he had been lamenting his parents leaving him; and now, he would be able to hear their voices again.
Darcy lifted his eyes to the heavens. Could it be that his late parents had guided his hand to strike the panelling at the exact point where the secret door was? He liked to believe that it was their influence. “Thank you Mother and Father,” he said with his eyes still looking to the sky.
Chapter 17
Darcy sat with two epistles in his hand as the coach swayed every time the wheels hit a bump or rut in the road. No matter how well-sprung it was, there was no way not to feel some of what the unevenness of the road caused.
Seeing that his mother had passed away when he was only twelve, he broke her seal reverently and very gently unfolded the pressed paper, which was somewhat yellowed after so many years. He had never thought to see his mother’s handwriting again, unless it was in an old ledger where she had made a notation about the household expenses. He remembered his mother’s paper always had a lavender fragrance; however, as much as he sniffed the paper in his hand for a trace of her scent, none remained after all the time which had passed.
He took a deep breath and allowed his eyes to focus on his mother’s writing.
15 January 1796
William, my dearest son,
If you are reading this then you have reached your majority, and my suspicion that I would not survive the birth of the child who is making him or herself known to me with his or her kicks as I write this has been proved true.
My son, I hope you have accepted what I wrote to your father and not blamed my new son or daughter for what has befallen me. William,do not forget it is God who decides how long each of us is allowed in the mortal world. If He has decided to call me home to Him, then to blame your new brother or sister would be going against His will.
Of course, I would have preferred to remain alive to see you and Alexander or Georgiana (we chose the names for a son and daughter ahead of my lying in) grow up and take your places in the world. My desires will not change what He has determined for me.
First, let me tell you that if your Aunt Catherine attempts to browbeat you into engaging yourself to Anne de Bourgh, no matter what my sister says, it was never my desire and not once did I agree with her many entreaties to make a ‘cradle betrothal’ or to press your father to do so.
Catherine has always had problems with maths which is, I suppose, why she thought that with you being 3 years older than my namesake, you were in your cradles at the same time. I was flattered that my sister named her daughter for me. She thought that doing so would obligate me to acquiesce to her demands to engage the two of you. In that, like so many (most) of her ideas and pronouncements, my sister was wrong.
Darcy was very thankful Anne was as sickly as she was, and not because he wished her ill. It was for the reason that had she been healthy, he would have thought he was doing his duty to his mother to propose to and marry Anne. His Aunt Catherine said it was a fact so often that he had eventually come to believe it to be true. What else had his aunt been wrong about? He went back to the letter.
