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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.”
