Page 105 of Near Pemberley

Darcy set the report aside with a frown.

The next letters proved less urgent. There were invitations to two dinners, a musicale, and an evening card party. Under ordinary circumstances, he might have accepted one or two of them. At present, he declined them all without hesitation.

A further letter was from his cousin, Viscount Phillip Fitzwilliam, and was immediately set aside for later consideration. Experience had taught him that any communication from Phillip generally contained either an excellent idea or a thoroughly alarming one, and occasionally both at once.

Gradually, the pile diminished. Several required replies. Others were of no consequence at all.

At length, he reached a small bundle that had been forwarded from Pemberley. Darcy untied the ribbon.

His attention immediately settled upon a single envelope.

He frowned. The handwriting was feminine.

He turned the letter over. Longbourn, Hertfordshire.

He simply stared. The room seemed strangely still. Suddenly, the remaining correspondence upon the desk no longer appeared of the slightest importance.

His hands were shaking all of a sudden. His pulse quickened. This letter came from Pemberley.

Very carefully, he broke the seal.

The fire crackled softly in the silence. Outside, somewhere beyond the windows, a carriage rattled along the street. Darcy heard neither.

Only hours earlier, he had stood in the same room with her, and tomorrow she would be under his roof.

And yet here was a letter.

The first line met his eyes. And at once the remainder of the evening ceased to exist.

Chapter XXII

The letter trembled slightly in his hand.

Mr. Darcy,

I hardly know whether I ought to write to you at all. Pride, propriety, shame – all tell me I should remain silent. Yet after what I discovered this evening, silence itself has begun to feel almost dishonest.

I found your letter to my father.

I learnt only today that you wrote after our departure from Lambton, and that your offer of assistance was never answered. I cannot express the pain this knowledge has occasioned me. That you should have written at all, after the abruptness of our leaving, after every circumstance which might naturally have encouraged you to withdraw yourself entirely from any concern connected with us, has affected me more deeply than I can properly say.

You were treated with neglect where you deserved gratitude.

I cannot bear that you should believe your kindness unnoticed merely because it was unanswered.

You once told me, at Hunsford, that had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner, I would have felt differently towards you. At the time, I believed myself entirely just in condemning you. I thought your pride the greatest fault between us.

I know now how little I understood – not only of you, but of myself.

You warned me against Mr. Wickham long before I was willing to hear you fairly. Even after your letter, though I believed you, I still lacked the courage to speak openly when perhaps I ought to have done so. I thought only of avoiding pain, avoiding scandal, avoiding difficult truths. And now the consequences stand before us all.

The sad state of affairs is that my youngest sister has left her friends while sojourning in Brighton with the Forsters (the militia’s colonel stationed in Meryton, if you recall) and gone away with Mr. Wickham. At first, it was believed they had intended marriage; we have since learnt there was little reason for such hope. They travelled towards London and have not yet been discovered.

I cannot describe to you what this knowledge has inflicted upon us all. The shame of the connection alone would have been painful enough, but the uncertainty – the dreadful uncertainty of where my sister is, if she is harmed – renders every hour almost intolerable.

I do not know whether Lydia may yet be found. I do not know whether any part of our family’s reputation can still be preserved. At times, the disgrace appears so complete that I cannot breathe beneath it. My poor father is broken by self-reproach; Jane struggles to hope where there is almost no hope left; my mother alternates between tears and nerves; and I, who once imagined myself sensible, can think only of all I failed to prevent.

But then I learnt that you wrote… that you thought of me kindly still – even after everything.