Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart Page 7

  “Very few people have ever seen these,” she began. She tapped the manuscript in my lap. “It’s an honor, you see, but also a responsibility. A very great responsibility.” She sounded like one of my young nieces when they shared a secret with me, solemn and excited all at the same time.

  “I appreciate you including me,” I said, although appreciate might not have been quite the right word.

  “Mrs. Parrot won’t like that I’ve shown you this,” she said in a softer tone, as if she were afraid someone might be listening to us. I glanced around the gentrified chaos of Harriet’s sitting room. For all I knew, someone might be listening. In Harriet’s cottage, anything seemed possible.

  “Mrs. Parrot?”

  “Yes. She ’s in charge, you know.”

  “No. I didn’t know that.” My shoulders sagged. Eleanor had been telling the truth after all. Harriet clearly wasn’t quite in touch with reality.

  Harriet laid a gnarled hand on my forearm. “Yes, well, I had promised her not to act without her sanction. It was one of her conditions.”

  “Conditions?”

  “For allowing me into the group.”

  I wanted to tell her right then that I knew about her dementia. That Eleanor had spilled the beans. That this Mrs. Parrot was probably a figment of her imagination—or rather, her illness. But Harriet was so sweet and harmless, really. Why not humor her some more?

  “So this Mrs. Parrot, she calls the shots?”

  Harriet nodded. “They’ve kept her secrets for many years, you see. Almost two centuries.”

  I paused, confused. “They? Kept secrets? Whose secrets?”

  “Why, Jane Austen’s, of course.”

  I suppressed the laugh that threatened to escape. “What are you? Part of some secret society?”

  “Yes, exactly.” She beamed at me. “We’re called the Formidables.”

  I had been joking, but Harriet clearly wasn’t. “The What-ables?”

  “The Formidables. It’s the name Jane Austen and her sister, Cassandra, gave themselves in their later years. All the nieces and nephews called them by that name.”

  From what I had heard of Austen’s character, I could imagine that she had been a very formidable maiden aunt indeed. “And it’s a secret group?” Perhaps it was best to humor her and then make my escape as quickly as I could.

  Harriet smiled. “Very secret. And very exclusive.”

  Her disclosure took the wind out of my sails. Harriet’s mind was as charming and disordered as her cottage. Secret society indeed.

  “Why would Jane Austen need protection?” I couldn’t help but ask. “What secrets could she possibly have had?”

  Harriet pursed her lips just a touch. “You might be surprised, if you knew.” She looked as if she wanted to say more on the subject, but instead she tapped the manuscript pages in my lap. “The Formidables require absolute discretion.” She looked up and I met her gaze. It was clear as crystal, with no sign of mental deterioration.

  “Then why are you sharing your secret with me?”

  Harriet smiled. “I knew I could rely on your keeping this matter confidential.”

  “How could you know that?” Guilt poured through me.

  Harriet sniffed. “By looking at you, of course. I am a superior judge of character.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to disillusion her.

  Harriet’s smile wavered. “I need your help, you see.”

  “My help?”

  She placed the crumbling pages in my hands. “We’ll talk more about that later. For now, go ahead and read, my dear. I’ll see to the tea.”

  She rose from the sofa and disappeared from the sitting room, leaving me alone with the stack of yellowed pages and my own confusion. I looked down and started to read.

  First Impressions

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Three? I looked up, wanting to ask Harriet where the missing second chapter might be, but she was already in the kitchen. I could hear her running water and rattling dishes.

  Lady Catherine proved to be a tireless employer who never failed to find fault with Elizabeth’s efforts. Miss de Bourgh was slightly less trying and only showed her displeasure by coughing behind her handkerchief when overset.

  Lady Catherine? Miss de Bourgh? Employers?

  No, that was completely wrong. The Lady Catherine in Pride and Prejudice was Darcy’s aunt. But then I remembered that the chapter I’d read on Sunday mentioned Elizabeth seeking employment. Was that how Austen had first envisioned it, then? That Darcy and Elizabeth would meet at Lady Catherine’s home, Rosings?

  “We are to have visitors today,” Lady Catherine announced at breakfast over toast and coffee. “My dear nephews cannot keep away.” She cast a pointed glance at her daughter. “There is much at Rosings to tempt them, you see.”

  Anne de Bourgh raised her napkin and coughed. Elizabeth took a bite of her toast as a means of hiding the smile that threatened. She chewed and then sipped her coffee. “Your nephews, Lady Catherine?”

  Her inquiry gratified her employer’s vanity.

  “Yes, such dear boys. They are quite attached to Rosings. And to me,” she added for emphasis as she waved away the footman who would have removed her plate. “Mr. Darcy of Pemberley in Derbyshire. And Colonel Fitzwilliam, grandson of the Earl of ______, with a comfortable independence. I expect that they will stay a month altogether. Perhaps two.”

  Yes, there was Darcy, all right. And Colonel Fitzwilliam too, although he was a very minor character in Pride and Prejudice. I had wondered, when I read the novel, why Austen hadn’t done more with him.

  Elizabeth couldn’t imagine any inducement that would lure two young gentlemen into such a lengthy visit, but she knew better than to express her opinion.

  “We must provide them with some little entertainments.” Lady Catherine’s eyes narrowed. “Dinner parties, to be sure. Perhaps a picnic, if the weather holds.” She looked at her daughter. “I should like to give a ball, Anne, if you think your health sufficient to the demands.” Lady Catherine’s expression clearly conveyed her wishes on the matter to her daughter.

  “Of course, Mama. Whatever you like.”

  Elizabeth would have liked nothing more than to intervene. Anne’s health was too delicate, of course, for such exertions, but Elizabeth had learned in her weeks at Rosings that to contradict Lady Catherine only made her more obstinate.

  “A ball, ma’am?” Elizabeth said. “I can think of nothing more enjoyable.”

  Lady Catherine’s eyebrows tilted until they nearly met her hairline. “Enjoyable? I assure you, Miss Bennet, my motive is not to provide my daughter’s companion with a party of pleasure.”

  Elizabeth schooled her features into a servile expression. “Of course not, ma’am. I only meant—”

  “What you meant is of no importance to me. Your presence will be necessary only when Anne has need of you. Otherwise, you shall remain in your room, well out of the way.”

  Of course, ma am.

  Even though she had become accustomed to Lady Catherine’s imperious manner, her contempt still did injury to Elizabeth’s pride.

  “I’m a little tired, Mama,” Anne said. “I think I shall return to my room to rest.”

  “You are looking peaked.” Lady Catherine frowned at Elizabeth as if she were the cause of her daughter’s distress. “Perhaps you might try to make her comfortable, Miss Bennet, if it is not too much trouble.”

  “I shall put my whole heart into the task,” Elizabeth said with as sweet a smile as her disposition could muster. “Anne? Take my arm. We will call for a footman to assist us, if one is needed.”

  Anne did as Elizabeth said and leaned heavily against her. “Thank you, dearest Lizzie.”

  “Lizzie?” Lady Catherine’s shock rang in her voice. “Such familiarity—”

  “I asked if I might call her that, Mama,” Anne said as she sagged a bit more.

  Lady Catherine harrumphed but returned her attention to her coffee.


  “Come, Anne.” Elizabeth helped her from the room and wondered which might be worse—an imperious mother or an ineffectual one. Intimacy with Lady Catherine de Bourgh was rapidly improving Mrs. Bennet in Elizabeth’s estimation.

  “Here is the tea, Claire.”

  Harriet’s voice jerked me back into the present moment. I looked up at her in confusion. “Elizabeth is at Rosings as a paid companion? That’s not what happened in the book.” Dismay and frustration had settled on me like a veil as I read the pages.

  Harriet set the tea tray on the table in front of the sofa. “Yes, the plot is very different, is it not?”

  I looked helplessly at the manuscript in my lap. “It’s not right. Elizabeth shouldn’t be there.”

  “Right? I suppose not. But that is how matters stand. At least on these pages.”

  I peered at her. “Is it true? Is this the missing early manuscript? Is it the real First Impressions?”

  Harriet shrugged and reached for the teapot, but I could see she was quite enjoying herself. “What do you think?” She handed me a cup of fragrant tea, and I gripped it carefully so I wouldn’t spill any on the pages in my lap.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Then you must keep reading,” Harriet said. “Perhaps further acquaintance will help you decide.”

  I took a sip of the tea and did as she’d instructed, confused but also excited, and worried that I was allowing myself to be caught up in a sweet, dotty woman’s fantasy.

  First Impressions

  Chapter Four

  The park at Rosings proved ample to Elizabeth’s need for respite from her employer. As soon as Anne had fallen into a sound sleep, Elizabeth slipped from the room and made her way to her own chamber under the eaves near the other servants’ quarters. There, she donned her bonnet and pelisse. Anne would no doubt sleep for several hours, as was her custom. Elizabeth said a prayer of thanksgiving for the fine weather and made her way out of the house.

  She called a greeting to the head groomsman as she passed the stables and then set out down the path that wound its way through the park. The sunshine held more promise of warmth than the actuality of it, but the brilliance of the sky and the carpet of bluebells beneath the trees heralded the arrival of spring.

  She had climbed the rise behind the house and achieved the overlook when she heard a horse approaching from the opposite direction. She stepped to the side of the path. No doubt it was one of the grooms exercising his mount. Yet when beast and rider came into view, she recognized neither the man nor the animal.

  The dark-haired stranger reined the horse to a stop a few yards away and looked at her down the length of his aristocratic nose. No doubt some would call his visage handsome, but Elizabeth saw only arrogance. She curled her fingers into soft fists at her side and hid her much worn and mended gloves in the folds of her skirts.

  “Good day, sir.” She had no apprehension of danger, for she was near enough to the house. Still, given her sheltered upbringing at Longbourn, she had little experience meeting strangers and so exercised caution.

  “Good day.” He bowed at her greeting but offered her no acknowledgement as his equal.

  Silence fell while Elizabeth waited for him to elaborate or explain himself. Instead, he seemed inclined to sit mutely atop his horse. Whoever he was, she thought very little of his manners and breeding. Even in the restricted society of Meryton, men knew how to be chivalrous when meeting a lady.

  She glanced down at her decidedly unfashionable pelisse and felt the weight of her rather plain bonnet, as if it were made of iron rather than straw and ribbon. She supposed he took her for a servant, which, in truth, she was. As such, she should no doubt nod, duck her head, and scurry past. But Lady Catherine’s harangue at the breakfast table still nettled her, as did this gentleman’s stiff-necked posture.

  “You are bound for Rosings, sir?” She spoke the words before her better judgment could persuade her to hold her tongue.

  His eyebrows rose in surprise at her familiarity. “I am, madam, though I am sure it is no concern of yours. You would be better served to concede the path.”

  He might have been a Spanish matador waving a crimson cape, so effectively did his words stoke her temper.

  “I thought I already had, sir.” She glanced down at her sturdy boots, now wet with morning dew where she stood in the grass. “But perhaps I expect too much. A gentleman would not leave a lady standing in the damp while he lectured her.”

  He stiffened, as if she’d dealt him a blow.

  “Good day, sir.” Elizabeth stepped onto the path in defiance of him.

  His jaw tightened, and she suppressed a smile. But then the expression of triumph that threatened died an instant death. For she realized in that moment that the man before her must be one of Lady Catherine’s nephews.

  Well, Mr. Darcy, at least, was very much the same, I thought as I turned the page. His pride was as evident in this version of the book as in the later one. Perhaps, in the end, Austen hadn’t changed that much from the early version.

  “Headstrong, impetuous girl.” Lady Catherine’s favorite imprecation against Elizabeth rang in her ears. Her employer was right, of course. No matter how Elizabeth tried to curb her behavior, she was too accustomed to speaking her own mind to prevent it happening.

  She hurried away from the gentleman at such a pace that her feet seemed barely to touch the ground. Had it been the Mr. Darcy of Pemberley she’d just insulted? She rather thought so, since he’d not appeared to be a military man. True, his bearing had been just short of regal, but he hadn’t the demeanor of a soldier who had campaigned in the saddle.

  With a sigh, and a short prayer that her impertinence would not put paid to her tenure as Anne’s companion, Elizabeth hurried along the path as quickly as her dew-slickened boots would allow.

  “Her first encounter with Darcy doesn’t go well,” I said, looking up at Harriet. “That much hasn’t changed. He insults her in the park instead of in public, at the Meryton assembly.”

  Harriet nodded. “True. That much is the same.” She reached for the plate of cookies on the tea tray. “Biscuit?” she said as she offered me my choice of the stale-looking tidbits.

  “No, I’m fine, thanks.” I bent my head once more to avoid her insisting that I help myself. From the looks of them, the cookies were as old as one of my nieces.

  The park that day was destined to be her comeuppance, Elizabeth decided, when not long after her encounter with Mr. Darcy she came upon yet another gentleman seated on a fallen log just off the path. He wore riding clothes, but she saw no evidence of a horse. Although he was not old by any means, his face was tanned by the sun. His weather-beaten complexion confirmed his identity.

  “Good day, sir.”

  He rose at her approach and doffed his hat, the very antithesis of the man she’d met a few moments before. “Good day, madam.” He grinned rather sheepishly, an attractive expression that emphasized the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. “Please take no fright at my appearance. My horse got the better of me and left me stranded here. I had hoped for a rescue party, and here you are.”

  “Are you injured, Colonel Fitzwilliam?” Elizabeth asked with a smile, unable to conceal her knowledge.

  He responded in kind with laughter of his own. “You must be Miss Elizabeth Bennet. My aunt mentioned you in her letters.”

  “I am quite certain she must have.” Elizabeth clasped her gloved hands in front of her. “I am afraid that I am a great trial to Lady Catherine.”

  “Yes, well, my aunt could use a few more trials, I think.” He paused. “But where are my manners? You will think me the veriest slowtop.” He pushed himself to his feet, but once there, he wavered.

  “Sir, you are injured.” Elizabeth moved to his side. “Put your hand on my shoulder.”

  “One might think a cavalry officer would be capable of remaining in the saddle. I have been too long absent from my regiment.”

  “You have returned
from the Continent, sir?” Elizabeth’s respect for him grew. “Have you served there long?”

  “Long enough, Miss Elizabeth.” He glanced down at one scuffed boot, as weathered as his complexion. “I am afraid that my ankle will not support me as far as the house.”

  “It is a shame that it is only I, and not your cousin, who happened upon you.”

  “My cousin? So you’ve made Darcy’s acquaintance, have you? He always did manage to best me in a race.”

  “I met him on the path only five minutes ago, but I fear he will be at the house by now. I wonder you did not see him yourself.”

  Colonel Fitzwilliam gave her another sheepish grin. “I took off across the countryside rather than remain safely on the road. I thought to steal a march on Darcy, but my treachery has demanded payment.”

  “Treachery?” Elizabeth laughed. “I have no brothers, Colonel, but I suspect you suffer more from the affliction of rivalry usually associated with close siblings. Nothing as dire as treachery.”

  The colonel nodded. “Yes, perhaps that’s the case.” He looked around. “Well, Miss Elizabeth Bennet, I am afraid you must be my means of rescue. Would you be so kind as to make your way back to the house and send a stout groom with a fresh horse? And perhaps spread the word that my own mount is loose somewhere in the park?”

  Elizabeth bit her lip. “I do not like to leave you here alone, sir.”

  His eyes sparkled. “And I do not wish it either, ma’am, but it cannot be helped.”

  Elizabeth flushed. She had not meant to flirt. She had learned long ago to leave such behavior to Kitty and Lydia. But the admiration in the colonel’s eyes was balm to a soul that had begun to sink beneath the weight of Lady Catherine’s disapprobation.

  “I will walk as quickly as possible,” she assured him and turned to go.

  “Not too quickly,” he called after her. “For if you fall and injure yourself, we are both undone.”

  Elizabeth chuckled and hurried back along the path from where she had come. Since she did not turn to look back at the colonel, she failed to see the admiration in his eyes and the warmth with which he regarded her retreating form.