B00CO8L910 EBOK (13 page)

Darcy wished he were back at Netherfield attending to Elizabeth. He wondered what she thought of the package he sent to her father. He hoped she would not be angry with him for his presumption. Bingley had invited him to come back at any time; however, he could not go back until he had some answers.

But first he had to find the reprobate.

* * *

Elizabeth stood before her sister’s door, her hand on the knob. She turned the handle and entered, bracing herself for the feelings she was sure would overwhelm her. Standing just inside the room and looking around at the treasures and baubles belonging to her late sister, instead of being overwhelmed with grief, her heart filled with longing. Lydia’s disorganized writing desk was covered with ribbons, bonnets and adornments. Her closet hung open where she must have pulled out her spencer with haste when she left for her walk.

Elizabeth walked around the room and lightly touched the furniture where dust had begun to accumulate. The dust saddened Elizabeth with the knowledge of how much the world kept turning even when one was gone. She indulged in a few tears before she set about her work. She had to get through this.

A noise at the door alerted Elizabeth to Mr. Hill bringing in a trunk to consign her sister’s treasures. Sue, an upstairs maid, was behind him, waiting to help Elizabeth with the task. She was grateful for the presence of the maid as it helped her to hold her emotions in check.

Together they placed items in the trunk as they worked through the room. Elizabeth came to a table next to the bed. There was a small traveling box meant for perfumes and hairbrushes sitting underneath the table. She sat down on the floor to open it, intending to save anything her sisters might find as comforting keepsakes. Inside, she found a small book, bound with worn leather and strapped to a pencil.

Leaning back against the side of the bed, Elizabeth carefully removed the strap with the pencil and opened the book. Her heart tore and her hands stilled as she realized she held Lydia’s journal — her dear sister’s heart’s desires, thoughts and wishes. Tears rolled down Elizabeth’s cheeks as she closed the book and hugged it to her chest.
Oh, poor, poor Lydia.

When her tears had ceased, Elizabeth stood to place the journal in Lydia’s trunk. She kissed it tenderly before placing it under some lace, out of sight. She excused the maid and closed the door to her sister’s room after she left. She had managed all she could that day.

* * *

When Darcy finally reached his home, he wished for nothing but a hot bath — maybe two. Never before had he been as discomfited by a place as he had been in the pub that day. After waiting nearly an hour past the scheduled time, he yielded. Peeved, he stood and tossed a few coins on the table. It was then that a man who had been sitting at the table next to him the whole time stood and addressed him by the alias surname he had given himself.

Darcy wanted to rage at the scamp for having been there the whole time, toying with him in such an establishment! Instead, he clenched his jaw and acknowledged the man.

“I had’a see for m’self how much a bloke like y’self wanted to know whats I know, see?” he explained. Darcy grumbled to himself but got to his purpose directly.

The man vouched for the whereabouts of Wickham as of four days earlier. He said they had been in the same gaming hell when Wickham had won a hefty purse. The grungy fellow sitting before Darcy had secreted himself in a corner of the room and then followed Wickham to a boarding house not far away. This Perkins, as he referred to himself — and which Darcy was sure was not
his
real name either — made his living skulking about, detecting the interests of others. He had been hired by another gentleman to follow Wickham; it would seem Wickham owed the other gentleman a significant amount of money, and Perkins was to inform him when Wickham’s luck turned, so he might reclaim his debts.

Somehow, Perkins heard that another gentleman by the name of Burns — in truth, Darcy — was looking for Wickham too. That was how Darcy’s man had been introduced to the informant who wanted to meet this fellow Burns. And so Darcy went as ‘Burns’ to meet this carrier regarding Wickham.

He pulled at his cravat and wrestled out of his now filthy greatcoat as he shook his head in aggravation. Perkins had found himself ten pounds richer for the information he had gathered. He demanded that price from Darcy before he would reveal what he knew. It was not a wasted investment in Darcy’s mind if it brought him another step closer to Wickham. But it left him needing to investigate an even seedier part of town. Even more disagreeable to Darcy, it required ‘Burns’ to have to employ Perkins again as a go-between. And worse, it meant Darcy would have to go back to the same disgusting haunt to meet with his new employee.

The only comfort Darcy gained from the day’s events was that there was still no further evidence that Wickham had anything to do with Lydia’s death other than his presence. Nothing was unusual in Wickham’s behavior since coming to town; he gambled as was his wont. Unfortunately, Perkins did not have any information as to the whereabouts of the servant girl from the Meryton Inn. It would seem Wickham had dispensed with her, and alas, she was now lost in London’s underworld, not likely to be found again.

Blast and hell, Wickham! Must you always cause me trouble?
He sank into his hot bath and hoped it would serve to wash his mind clean of all this business. As had become his habit since he had met Elizabeth, whenever Darcy was troubled, he turned his thoughts to her. It was the only thing that would truly bring him peace. He pictured her back home in Hertfordshire, gaining strength in the face of her loss.

* * *

Elizabeth crossed the last ‘t’ of her name with her quill and blew on it to dry the ink. While she blew, she looked towards that irksome package on the side table again. Her father still had not opened it, and it had been another week.
Two weeks and he has not opened it! What could he be about?
The whole situation was maddening. She had turned to her only hope for information: Miss Darcy.

They had written each other only once since Elizabeth left London with Georgiana’s brother. Georgiana empathized with coping with the loss while Elizabeth had shared an accounting of the mourning hours — minus, of course, her meeting with Mr. Darcy — and the emotional trial of sorting out Lydia’s room. She did not know whether it was the profound connection she felt after having wept with her at the piano in London or Georgiana’s sincere kindness and understanding expressed in her letters that caused Elizabeth to be so open after such a short acquaintance. Whatever the reason, Elizabeth was growing to love Georgiana dearly.

In the letter she had just signed, she hinted to the package her father received. She contrived to sound as if she knew its contents, thus possibly encouraging her friend to expand upon what she knew of it.
For surely, she knows what her brother sent.
Elizabeth certainly hoped it was so.

She stood and placed her letter on the mail tray. Looking to where her father sat near the hearth, she thought about his changed demeanor. He had been a bit more subdued than usual, and oddly enough, so had her mother. She had heard them talking late at night and felt encouraged by the behavior. She had never seen her parents interact so frequently. It caused her to wonder whether there was some good to have come out of the whole, sad affair. For the first time in her nearly one and twenty years, Elizabeth had parents who acted as if they cared about one another.

Her eyes, for probably the tenth time, returned to the box. Looking down at the letter on the tray, she thought how Miss Darcy’s reply could not come for another week at least, and a week was certainly a long time to wait for information that her friend might not even know.

“Papa?”

Mr. Bennet looked up from his book — a book so engrossing that he had ceased to turn the pages the past twenty minutes she noted — and smiled, though it did not quite reach his eyes.

Keeping her back to him so he would not see the flush of her cheeks, Elizabeth walked over to the beguiling package and inquired offhandedly, “What can Mr. Darcy have sent you, Papa?”

“I know not. To be honest, I had forgotten it was there, poppet.”

Forgotten?
The package was as prominent in the room as an elephant!
She swallowed and continued with feigned indifference. “Do you not think you ought to find out?”

“I suppose so, though I cannot think what the man would wish to send me.”

Elizabeth smiled and took the package in her hands, wondering at its weight. Her curiosity was at near boiling point as she paced herself to step leisurely to her father.

He shrugged when she reached him and waved her off. For a moment, she panicked and thought he might not wish to open it at all. To her relief he merely said, “You open it, dear. I find I care little to know its contents.”

Elizabeth then sat, perhaps too eagerly, in the chair next to him. Her nervous fingers tried to open the strings of the package. She was finally able to fumble her way through the cords and to pull apart the paper. When it fell away, her breath caught in her throat and her heart began to beat faster. Her eyes could not believe what she saw, and not because they were now filled with new tears.

Mr. Bennet looked at his favorite daughter and saw the raw emotion on her face. Looking at her lap and the opened package, he nervously asked, “What did he send, dear?”

Elizabeth had to swallow a few times to gain control as she whispered, “He has sent us each a mourning book to remember Lydia by.” She caressed the six spines of the gilded bindings. At the bottom a letter was enclosed. It had a strong, clear script in a decidedly masculine hand that read, “
Mr. Bennet
.”

She handed the letter to her father and said weakly, “He included a letter.”

While her father read the letter, Elizabeth returned her attention to the books. She could not find even a modicum of aversion at his presumptuous skirting of propriety to find a way to give her his gift. She felt only gratitude. She opened the first book and saw her father’s name across the bookplate in the same elegant handwriting. She turned to the next book, seeing it labeled for her mother. She flipped through each book, labeled for every one of her sisters. Eagerly she searched for her own and found it to be the last. She gingerly opened the binding to the bookplate. Seeing her name in his elegant handwriting caused her heart to flip. She ran her finger across it: “
Miss Elizabeth Bennet
.” Her eyes filled with tears again, but this time, she felt more than she could understand.

“That was kind of him,” her father said as he removed his glasses from his face to pinch the bridge of his nose and lowered the letter to his lap.

Elizabeth drew in a shallow breath as she said, “May I read it, Papa?”

She reached for the letter as her father nodded his approval. She handed him the open parcel, minus her own book. The letter, she knew, was written more for her than for her father.

Mr. Bennet,

Please accept this gift from me to your family as a fervent wish for their future comfort. And please forgive me the liberty I have taken in getting it into your hands. If it were not for the comfort I derived from a similar item when my own dear father passed five years ago and a sincere wish to see your family healed from this tragedy, I would not have presumed upon you. I will only add,

God bless and keep you,
Fitzwilliam Darcy

Chapter 9

Elizabeth knocked on the door to her mother’s bedchambers and waited for an answer. She had personally delivered Mr. Darcy’s gift to each of her family members at the request of her father. Her mother’s was last, and Elizabeth worried about her reaction. Her mother had been much subdued since Lydia’s death, and every day since, the Bennet household anticipated her return to her previous disposition with some trepidation.

“Come in,” she heard her mother say.

Elizabeth gingerly opened the door, holding her mother’s new mourning book close to her chest. Her mother was sitting at her dressing table preparing herself for bed. Elizabeth was beset with emotion as she took in her mother’s countenance, solemn and downcast, and yet quite a beautiful woman for her age. She was combing her long, dark hair and looking at her daughter through the mirror.

“What is it you need, Lizzy?”

Elizabeth stepped forward and placed the book in front of her mother. Stalling her mother’s hand, she took up her brush for her. Brushing her mother’s hair, she noticed for the first time the beautiful streaks of grey coming through. She swallowed as she observed through the mirror her mother slowly reach for the book.

“It is a mourning book, Mama. Mr. Darcy sent one for all of us, to remember Lydia.”

Mrs. Bennet reverently turned the book over in her hands a few times, a single tear running down her cheek. Elizabeth put the brush down, wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck and kissed her teary cheek.

“My poor, poor Lydie.”

Elizabeth choked down her own emotion at hearing her mother whisper the endearment that only she had ever used. She was surprised then, when her mother sat up straighter, pulled Elizabeth’s arms from about her shoulders and gave the book back to her.