Page 107 of Midnight at Pemberley

“Do you truly believe as such?”

It was now Edward’s turn to look for something not there. “Darcy, you are the golden child, the heir to one of the most beautiful estates in all of England, massive wealth, a handsome countenance, wit and intelligence, acceptance by Society; yet, I was never jealous of you in any matter until now. What man in England would not give up all his worldly goods for the love you possess with Mrs. Darcy? I cannot imagine such a man exists. However, you continue to doubt that you deserve Mrs. Darcy’s love. You must simply open your whole heart to it.” Edward gave Darcy a level look. “Change your fate, Darcy. Conclude the story of Lady Ellender and Lord Thomas’s love, and begin the one between you and Elizabeth.”

Darcy’s eyes softened. “How did you become so wise?”

“I must excel over you in at least one manner, Darcy.” Edward smiled as the ease between them returned. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have a prior engagement with an island.” His cousin strode away to the waiting wagon. Darcy blessed the heavens for placing the colonel on the road to Derbyshire at the same time as Elizabeth departed Pemberley. Without the colonel’s assistance, this excursion would have had a disastrous conclusion.

Reluctantly, he turned to his task. The men had opened five graves. It was time for Darcy to perform the final step to redemption. “Gentlemen,” he called to the workers, “the colonel brought back breakfast. If you care to enter the chapel, my wife has everything arranged.”

The men immediately dropped the shovels and the pickaxes they had brought for the job. They good-naturedly made their way to the back of the church, thankful for the food and the break from such morbid work. None of them understood the logic of digging up a grave simply to refill it, but for a month’s wages for a day’s work, they would take orders from the Devil himself.

While the workers busied themselves with the food, Darcy claimed six stakes, six coins, a bar to leverage each coffin lid, and a small hammer. Reaching the first of the exposed openings, he took off his coat and placed it on one of the nearby benches, and then he climbed down into the grave, the earth banked on either side of him. Finding a narrow foothold beside the wooden box, he wedged the lever between the sealed wood. Tapping with the hammer, he popped one of the nails, providing him the opening he required. Then it was only a matter of moments before he lifted the lid on the resting place of the girl who was likely the one described by Edward as the first he and Elizabeth released.

The girl in her white gown rested, as if in sleep. Her appearance shocked Darcy, for he had half expected a decomposed skeleton. Instead, before him rested a body in repose. Her full face appeared flushed, as if in permanent blush, and her only apparent imperfections were badly scraped knuckles and fingernails. Instinctively, Darcy looked at the inside of the coffin lid. Frighteningly, scratch marks, signs of the struggle to be set free, crisscrossed the closure.

Pulling back the girl’s supple lips, Darcy pried her mouth open. The soft fullness of her mouth gave way to elongated teeth protruding from pink gums. He wedged a finger between the teeth and slipped the coin in. Then he readjusted the girl’s mouth into a smile.

“You are a beautiful child,” he mused. “You will forgive me, I pray.” He placed the stake above her heart. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” Then he struck the blunted end of the ashen wood with the hammer, driving in deep into her chest. A half-nasal, half-throaty grunt came from the body, and horrifyingly, blood oozed from the nose and mouth.

Unable to look upon the girl’s face again, he repositioned the lid and nailed it closed. “At least, now I know what to expect.” He climbed onto the coffin and painfully pulled himself to the surface.

Learning from his mistakes, Darcy became quite adept at meting out eternity. He dispensed with four others before the men returned to work. “These may be refilled,” he instructed Gordy. “Keep digging until all graves not marked by the upright staves have been opened.”

“We be workin’ in pairs, Sir. It not be long. The men be thinkin’ to leave before dark.”

“As soon as the work is finished, Gordy, they are free to leave. The sooner, the better for all of us. But remind them I am paying for the work to be complete.” Darcy picked up his tools and moved to Lady Ellender’s chambers.

A few minutes later, Elizabeth found him there. “You did not come to eat, my husband.”

Darcy sat in deep contemplation, perched on the ledge inside the gate. He looked up with Elizabeth’s approach. “I seem to have lost my appetite.” He reached for her and assisted Elizabeth to sit beside him.

Elizabeth caught his hand and brought his palm to her mouth. The featherlike kiss placed the shadow of a smile on his lips. “We have lived a lifetime these past three months,” she mused aloud.

“Only three months?” he chuckled. “I feel I have known you all my life.”

“Because we just began to live when we found each other.” Still holding his hand in hers, she traced his lifeline with her index finger.

Darcy cupped her chin in his other hand. “Edward says we possess a great love, one to surpass that of our famous relatives.”

“One equal to the love of Arawn and Ellender would satisfy me. Even in death, she longed to sleep once more in his arms. Can you imagine such a devotion, William?”

“Every time I look into your eyes,” he said simply. For long moments they remained lost in their thoughts. Surrounded by death, they found life. “Let us provide Lady Ellender the release for which she has longed for two centuries. Tonight, her ladyship will sleep with her Lord Thomas.” Darcy climbed from the ledge and assisted Elizabeth down to stand before him.

“These events were horrendous, but we must think of the good we leave behind: a community free to begin again and an end to the unspeakable terror plaguing them,” she declared.

Hand in hand, they entered Lady Ellender’s spacious vault and made their farewells before he sent Elizabeth out into the sunshine and he dispatched Lady Ellender’s endless existence. As Gordy predicted, the men finished by mid-afternoon. All one and twenty graves turned, the Darcys left the clergy to deliver his blessings. Returning to the inn, they waited patiently for the colonel’s arrival.

Colonel Edward Fitzwilliam hated boats of any size, from rowboats to the largest warships. It was not that he held a fear of drowning. He actually swam very well. But the rolling of the ship upon the water affected his sense of order, and he always felt weak and not much of a man when his stomach pitched and heaved on its own. Even so, with Wickham’s coffin aboard, he clung to the inner railing of the fishing vessel as it cut through the rough waters of the North Sea. The rocking had Edward counting to ten for the hundredth time as he took great gulps of air to settle the queasy feeling rumbling through him.

“Ye be lookin’ for one of St. Cuthbert’s miracles on the Holy Isle?” the ship’s captain asked out of curiosity.

Edward appeared confused, but then realized the fishing captain thought Edward wished to take his deceased passenger to the monastery of St. Cuthbert, known to bring about inexplicable healing. “No … no, nothing of that sort. Just a dying wish I intend to fulfill.” He prayed God would forgive the lie.

“I see,” said the man, although he did not understand why it was so important to take the body to Lindisfarne on that particular day. “We be in harbor in ’nother half hour.”

“Thank you, Captain. I will be prepared.”

Landing in the harbor of a small village on the southwestern tip of the island, the colonel, Peters, and two of the men from the ship—whom Edward had agreed to pay extra—took off for the interior, carrying the coffin and several shovels. Expecting sandy, barren beaches, the fertile rise of land surprised the colonel. There were hundreds of birds, which did not shock him, but also rabbits and other small game, which did. In the distance, he noted the ruins of the tumbledown monastery, and he chuckled at the irony of placing Wickham’s bones within view of holy markers.