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Chapter Nineteen
Derbyshire weather began growing warmer within a day of the windstorm, promising a temperate and early spring. Mr Williams helped me assemble a list of tenants who might be agreeable to a call, and Georgiana agreed to go along and make introductions—although once she’d looked over the names, she protested that some she knew best were gone. “I thought the Martins would live here forever,” she said sadly.
“His wife died, and he couldn’t stand the place without her,” Mr Williams replied. “His son took a position as steward for one of Matlock’s properties. Darcy has rented the home farm to Martin’s nephew for now, but I know he worries. Too many sons are leaving.”
It was a problem Mr Darcy and I had discussed before—how to retain more of the younger generation, who were beginning to find more prosperity labouring in the northern mills than they could in farming for their parents. The issues were complex, but I liked how he included me in his conversations about them. We were beginning to understand and rely upon each other, I thought, building a marriage and…a love I had once believed impossible. Though he never said the words, it was in his actions, his attention, his concern for my welfare, and his respect for my ideas.
Georgiana and I began visiting tenants, bringing baskets while she helped acquaint me with the wives and daughters. She was shy; this duty was manifestly not her favourite, and the tenants seemed a bit standoffish in return.
However, I had always enjoyed excellent relations with the tenants of Longbourn—not that Longbourn had nearly so many—and had grown up knowing well those upon whose labour we depended, understanding their families and needs and joys and sorrows. It was a connexion unlike any other. My father had been criticised for his liberality—often by my mother—but I shall never forget his opinions on the subject.
“We pretend to be masters of this place, Daughter,” he would say while taking me along to visit the farms, bringing baskets of bounty from Mama’s splendid kitchen. “But without men and their families to work the lands, tend the herds, and bring in the crops, Longbourn dies. Longbourn is the mother, and they are her children. What mother would allow her children to starve while she feasts? And if she does, why, soon she is a mother no more.”
When he died, to a man, they came to me expressing a grief to nearly match my own.
I was determined to know these people of Pemberley and that they should know me—and, perhaps, to continue the legacy of care my father had demonstrated. Happily, by the end of each visit, I felt the goodness of new beginnings and new interests amongst our people, and their interest in me. Mr Darcy was a good master, it was plain—I saw no hunger or serious need. However, they seemed to hold him in some reverence. I was happy for respect, but found awe completely unnecessary. I thought it well that, through me, he should become more approachable to them.
Within two weeks of the fire, the site of Thorncroft was barren of any sign of the wreckage of the former cottage. Mr Williams seemed cheerful, even, as he supervised the work on the day that Georgiana and I walked up to view the progress. It had been decided that the soil was warm enough and the site protected enough to begin the plantings of saplings, along with several more mature trees that were to be replanted there as well.
Somewhat to my disappointment, Mr Darcy was nowhere about—I was wearing a pretty new dress, and was vain enough to look forward to his customary expressions of appropriate admiration. But one of the elderly gardeners, encircled by dozens of pots of delicate young trees, showed us which saplings were going where, fussing and clucking like a mother hen with her chicks. Amused, we listened to his botany lecture while crews of men—some moving pots, some digging holes in preparation for the replants—followed his commands.
Suddenly, one of the men cursed loudly. My head swivelled towards the sound, and the gardener, tutting disapprovingly, apologised and ambled over to where others were beginning to congregate beside the agitated man.
“I wonder what they have found?” I questioned idly.
Georgiana twirled the new parasol she had purchased at our last foray into Hopewell, bored. “Probably some Roman artifact. Every now and again, someone will find something ancient and unrecognisable and everyone makes a fuss. Shall we walk back down?”
Her supposition seemed unlikely to me, because our diggers today did not seem of the sort who would recognise unrecognisable artifacts, of any era. I watched Mr Williams stride over, looking impatient, the men making way for him as he crouched over something. And then he stood, speaking a few words to the men surrounding the site, one of whom immediately took off running. All work ceased. Men were milling about, talking amongst each other, but quietly, soberly.
I watched for several minutes, but work did not resume. “Something is the matter,” I said at last, starting for Mr Williams. Georgiana followed me with some reluctance, which I could understand. The steward’s expression was grim.
“What is happening?” I asked him.
If ever a man was the picture of reluctance, it was Mr Williams at my approach. His eyes darted from side to side, as if searching for any avenue of escape.
“There has been an, er, unusual discovery. I would, um, prefer for Mr Darcy to reveal any particulars at his discretion.”
“Every single person here, with the exception of myself and Mrs Bingley, already possesses some knowledge of the matter,” I retorted. “It is far too late for discretion.”
At that moment, the sound of approaching horses caught our attention. Mr Williams appeared relieved as my husband and Mr Bingley dismounted. Tossing their reins to a man waiting to receive them, they strode towards us; Mr Darcy was hatless, which was unusual indeed. I wondered if he’d ridden here so quickly, it had blown off. I was to be disappointed in my quest for information, however. He nodded his head at me in an abbreviated gesture of acknowledgement and said but one word, addressed to Williams:
“Where?”
Mr Williams paced towards the spot where the men had been digging, Mr Darcy directly behind him. Georgiana had waylaid Mr Bingley, but he only shook his head, unwilling or unable to add anything more useful, and they trailed behind me as I followed him to the excavations.
I came up beside Mr Darcy, observing the ground before us. At first, I could only see what appeared to be scraps of rotting fabric. And then I noticed it.
Georgiana, peering over my shoulder, gasped. Mr Bingley, taller than both of us, cried, “Great gads!”
There amongst the mounds of dirt, protruding from the fabric’s mouldering folds, were the skeletal remains of a human hand, golden rings resting upon the bones.
Before I could say a word of either wonder or horror, Mr Bingley fell to his knees. “No, no,” he cried. “It cannot be. Darcy, why does it wear Caroline’s rings? What can it mean? No! It must not be!”
And then, he retched upon the ground and began to cry.
* * *
Surprisingly, it was Georgiana who moved first. Her face had gone utterly pale and she looked nearly as green as Mr Bingley, but she went to her husband immediately, gently rubbing his back until he could stand again. Mr Darcy handed him his handkerchief, with which he wiped his sweating face; then did not seem to know what to do with it.
