Page 80 of The Longbourn Bloodline

She sat on her bed. The room was hushed, winter light pale through the curtains. Somewhere below, her family was waking: Mrs. Bennet’s voice rising from the breakfast room, Lydia’s laughter, the cheerful clatter of dishes. Ordinary sounds, belonging to a household blissfully ignorant of what she now carried.

She drew the packet from her pocket and spread its contents across the counterpane. Then she placed the miniature she had found next to it—the baby named George, undated, as Georgiana had observed. Curious, that omission.

She opened the packet of letters and papers from 1695 and read the torn scraps in Philippa’s hand—anguished entries from when the Darcys arrived with their offer and their gold. There was a careful accounting of the sum: enough to mend the Longbourn roof, drain the south field, secure the family’s future for a generation. And then, the entry from the day George was taken, the handwriting trembling with grief:

He did not cry. He was too young to understand. He went with them smiling, because they gave him a wooden horse to hold. I pray God forgives me. I do not think I shall ever forgive myself.

Elizabeth wrapped everything, Philippa’s guilt, the miniature included, into the oilskin packet and slipped it beneath her pillow. She did not cry. She had moved beyond tears, into a hollow place where only the weight of knowledge remained, and the impossible question of what to do with it.

She spoke to no one. Jane came and went, withdrawing to sit with Mary when Elizabeth said she could not speak. She heard Darcy’s horse in the drive, his voice asking for her, and then confusion and concern as he departed. She stood at the window, hidden behind the curtain, and watched him look up at her window before riding away.

He did not know. He would ride back to Netherfield and wonder what had happened, what had changed, why his betrothed had suddenly locked herself away. He would not sleep tonight, or if he slept, he would dream of her.

And neither would she sleep, nor did she, as she retraced the history, spoke aloud to the dead, asking Alice questions she could not answer, tore apart Philippa’s journals and books, looking for a broken mother’s heart, and what the silence had cost. For had George not fallen in love with Alice, and had Alice not loved him back, the two families would not have had to separate. They could have remained friends, living a lie, but preserving the lie—polite acquaintances, perhaps exchanging invitations, a useful connection—the way Bingley’s father wished to cultivate the Darcys through Mathilda—another woman born in a world with no place for her choices.

And so, dawn came grey and cold, and Elizabeth dressed in her warmest clothes, took the packet from beneath her pillow and slipped out of the house. Molly was in the stable, already saddled by a groom who did not question why Miss Elizabeth wanted to ride at first light. Elizabeth mounted and turned the mare north, toward the boundary stream, toward the fallen tree, toward the place where Darcy would be supervising the workers.

The ride was quiet. The fields were white with frost, the hedgerows stark against the pale sky. Elizabeth did not think about what she would say. There were no words for this. There was only the packet in her pocket and the man waiting at the end of the lane.

The man she loved with all her heart, and whom she was about to break. Darcy turned and saw her, and his face—so beloved, so carefully guarded, so achingly vulnerable—opened with relief, concern, perilously close to fear.

“Elizabeth.” He was moving toward her, helping her to dismount, holding on to her as if she was not real. “Elizabeth, what happened yesterday? Jane said you were unwell, but she would not⁠—”

“I found something, Fitzwilliam, and I think you should see it.”

“What is it?” Darcy’s expression shifted, confusion and wariness. “Elizabeth…”

Wordlessly, she reached into her pocket and drew out the oilskin, holding it out to him.

Darcy took the packet from her hands. His eyes held hers for a long moment—searching, questioning, uncertain—and then he looked down at the bundle in his hands, and he began to unwrap the oilskin.

Elizabeth touched his arm, rested her forehead against his chest, and waited for the world to topple.

CHAPTER THIRTY

THE MATCHED BAYS

Darcy looked up from the great root ball the men were excavating—a mound of upturned earth and tangled roots, still clinging stubbornly to the bank. Elizabeth rode toward him on Molly, alone, at the break of dawn, and the way she held herself in the saddle, still as if something fragile had shattered within her, compelled him forward. She had taken to her bedchamber the day before, had not spoken to anyone.

He had agonized all night. Had she changed her mind? Decided she could not leave Longbourn? Or concluded that accepting him and his burdens was too great a sacrifice? Yet the love he glimpsed in her eyes—a look profound with grief, devastating as if the entire world had collapsed around her—made the possibility seem impossible.

“Elizabeth.” He reached for Molly’s bridle, steadying her as she dismounted. Her fingers gripped his arm with a pressure that alarmed him. “Elizabeth, what occurred yesterday? Jane said you were unwell, but she refused to speak about it.”

“I found something, Fitzwilliam.” Her voice was composed, oddly distant, though her eyes betrayed nothing new. Love lingered there, but fear had drawn its signature across her brow, and her hands trembled as she pressed a darkened oilskin into his.

He opened it at once. A faded ribbon fluttered to the ground, and the few sheets of paper flapped in the breeze. The outer fold bore an inscription in faded brown ink, a feminine hand he did not recognize. To the Bennet girl who imagines she would marry a Darcy.

A chill, as insubstantial as a ghost at the window, crept through Darcy. Elizabeth stood silent, scarcely breathing, while he unfolded the first letter. The hand was bold and rounded—George Darcy’s—dated 1723, years after he had left Longbourn.

He scanned it. My dear Alice… I have loved you since we were children… if there is any chance… that you might feel as I do, please write to me. Send your letter through my sister Mathilda.

“So it is true,” Darcy exhaled. “He loved her… and Mathilda… she was real.”

He stared at Elizabeth, who should have been exultant that her suspicions were confirmed, but her face was ashen and distraught.

“Read the next one,” Elizabeth’s voice was strangely flat, as though she were speaking from very far away.

Darcy turned to the second folded letter, three sheets, dense with writing, dated 1775—far more recent. His eyes flew down the page, flipping to the next and the next… his heart racing and stumbling at each devastating revelation.