An Autumn Accord: A Pride and Prejudice Novella Variation (Seasons of Serendipity Book 4) (8 page)

As Bingley barked orders to a hall boy who scurried away as soon as his master finished yelling, he charged up the stairs to have his valet assist him with his proper riding attire. As he thought more and more about this Bergamote character, he made a decision to ask Darcy about the status and respectability of fallen French aristocrats. He was beginning to understand why the public wanted to behead everyone in the town square!

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In the impeccable hall of Darcy House, a small table with a silver charger sat with the day’s post stacked neatly upon the tray. The letters were truly the previous day’s mailings, but Fitzwilliam Darcy’s habits were to not accept any notes or invitations aside from expresses after three in the afternoon. This allowed him to avoid many a last-minute dinner or ballroom reminders from people who insinuated a closer relationship than their actual acquaintance supported. But on this morning, Darcy was eager to set his affairs in order as there was much to do before he could whisk his Elizabeth away.

A faint whisper of a young girl’s voice made the great master pause at the top of the stairs looking down to the hall below from the balustrade. Slowly, two heads, one of a fair color and the other as brunette as his own, appeared beneath him looking earnestly about for others.

“
You go, I looked yesterday,” Georgiana Darcy whispered.

The other girl nodded her head and craned her neck trying to see if there were any servants about.

Moving from the top landing of the stairs for a better view, Darcy stood perplexed as the dark-haired young lady snuck into the main hall, furtively glancing about. When she reached the table, she hurriedly cycled through the letters, careful to stack them in the same order in which they had rested before she touched them. Catherine Bennet turned to stare at her companion at the side of the stairs and frowned, shaking her head. Suddenly, the situation became clear to the master of the house.

Darcy quickly began to descend the stairs, and called out to both girls. “I believe an audience in my study is warranted. Don’t you agree Catherine and Georgiana?” Fitzwilliam made sure to turn his head to indicate he saw his younger sister hiding in the shadows. Young Kitty hung her head, an involuntary admission of guilt.   Darcy marched the two girls past the library to the next room that had ever been the master’s study.

Fetching chairs for his two sisters, he placed them both squarely facing his desk. He retrieved a key from his waistcoat and unlocked the bottom right drawer of his desk to pull out three letters. The two girls glumly sitting in the chairs before him gave themselves both away by quickly looking at each other before returning their attentions back towards Darcy.

“
I can explain, sir. This whole situation is my fault and my fault alone. Georgiana had nothing to do with it.” Kitty hastily tried to protect her friend from her brother’s wrath. She reasoned she was the older of the two and it was her story they had tried to publish.

Darcy raised an eyebrow at the willingness of Catherine Bennet to fall on the sword and protect his sister. But he had no illusions such a scheme to forge his name would have come to Miss Bennet’s mind on her own. No, this situation had entirely too much Darcy mischievousness about it.

Darcy first recited a letter he received last summer from Kitty, herself. Reading a few lines of the utter chastisement for scolding his sister via letter, Darcy paused after a moment to witness Catherine’s reaction. The poor girl’s cheeks burned brighter than a tomato.

“
I shall not continue to read the heavy accusations you lay at my feet, assuming we might come to an agreement that you wrote this letter of admonishment with the best intentions . . .” Kitty stared at him, her eyes wide, brimming with tears. She furiously nodded. “And that I am a brother to both of you with the best intentions?” Darcy observed the two younger girls glance to one another once more, but he did not give either a chance to speak before continuing. “Now I would like for one of you to explain to me what possessed you to sign my name in a letter of business to a publisher?”

The two protectively hunched their shoulders slightly as the master of Pemberley tone inadvertently spilled from Fitzwilliam’s question. For a few seconds, neither girl offered an explanation. Kitty darted her eyes towards her sister-in-law, who appeared set on merely waiting her brother out. But the discomfort was too much for Catherine Bennet to bear.

“
We worked so hard on my story, finishing the novel this summer. I hoped to ask you or my Uncle Gardiner to assist me with the publication . . .”

“
An admirable plan, go on to how you deviated from this.”

“
You ran away to Scotland and her uncle is still too sick for us to put that on his shoulders. So I told Kitty she should send a letter herself. Only the mean publisher threw her manuscript away and wrote back he would not enter into a discussion of publication with a mere woman!” Georgiana did not raise her voice and reported the facts of their collective perspective with an air of disinterest.

Inhaling sharply through his nose, Fitzwilliam Darcy forced himself to stay calm in the face of such a preposterous accusation. He picked up the second and third letters, one the forgery and the other imploring him to allow the publisher to print [the title of Kitty’s story] in time for spring.  With no intention of the kind, as he had completely forgotten Catherine wrote stories as a hobby, his mind now raced with the possibilities.

“
Are you going to tell my sister?”  Catherine Bennet had begun to cry softly during Darcy’s silence.

“
Of course he will, and she will decide our punishment and it will be double the reading and thrice the French.” Darcy raised an eyebrow to his sister, utterly stunned such a tongue wagged in the young woman he still thought of in his mind to be a young girl.  He again inspected the penmanship of the forgery. If he had not known the signature was not by his own hand, he would have thought it genuine. This sparked an idea.

“
I believe you ladies shall have one hour in which to pack your trunks, you are to accompany me and my wife to Hertfordshire –

“
Fitzwilliam, we agreed that we were old enough to remain home on our own with the staff for the few weeks you will be gone!”

 “
I’m afraid it will be quite some time before I’m convinced either of you are mature enough to play lady of the house.”  Both girls leaned forward as if to rise from their chairs, but Darcy held his hands up to halt them, “I have not yet issued your punishment.”

“
There is to be more?” Kitty Bennet asked earnestly as her mother and father had never much concerned themselves with actual punishment for her or Lydia.

“
While in Hertfordshire, you shall double your reading and triple the conversations you hold in French, and once we are at Pemberley the two of you shall serve as secretary. I find Mrs. Darcy and I shall have a number of letters we will need penned and the two of you will be happy to assist us in that regard.”

 
Georgiana opened her mouth to protest, but Kitty grabbed her arm to keep her silent.  “Forgive my impertinence, but what of my novel?”

 
Darcy collected the three letters to refold them and lock them back in his drawer. He hoped to avoid discussing the fate of the manuscript, but a direct question deserved a direct query in return.  “Have you considered the consequences of publishing even under a pseudonym?  A lady does not hold an occupation.”

“
I have no wish to marry, please,  sir . . .”  Kitty swallowed as her emotions threatened to choke her, “Brother.”  She paused as the title felt heavy in use for the first time in her life, “I only wish to share my stories.”

A brief memory of the last moments of Lydia Bennet’s life tugged on Darcy’s heartstrings.  Such youth, such promise, ended by unfortunate circumstances. He could not agree for Catherine to give up her potential happiness without any knowledge of how wonderful a marriage could be. Still, this was not his decision to make. “That I shall discuss with your sister, and also your mother. My stance is that every young lady should enjoy at least one season where she is the belle of the ball. Afterwards, if another path is your true calling, I shall not stand in your way.”

The girls left to study, sulking about the sudden loss of their freedom and to make good on Fitzwilliam’s order to pack their trunks. Darcy removed the thin slip of paper he also kept in his waistcoat that itemized the tasks yet to finish for the day’s journey. Smiling that the list was in the penmanship of Mrs. Darcy, his Mrs. Darcy, Fitzwilliam completely forgot to send an express to Bingley and apprise him of the additions to their party.

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Chapter 7

Despite being well-sprung, the Darcy carriage jostled and jerked over the deep ruts on the main road to Meryton. Elizabeth Darcy smiled at the familiar sites of Winslow’s Farm and the fork in the road where one could cut a path to her favorite glen. As they reached the outskirts of her hometown, the carriage turned left away from the road leading into the town proper and the inn.

Elizabeth turned around as she glanced out both windows to find her husband riding Poseidon on the carriage’s left flank. Frowning at the two sulking sisters on the bench across from her as they offered her no help or explanation, Elizabeth bested the stuck window and lowered the pane to lean her head out the side.

“
Mr. Darcy! Mr. Darcy!” She called out to her husband as he rode just behind the carriage wheel.

“
Mrs. Darcy!” he bellowed in surprise to see wife’s lovely face pop out of the carriage proper.

“
Kindly return your head inside the carriage!” he called out as he encouraged the pace of Poseidon to come closer to the window, lest his wife lean even further out and risk falling.

“
Why have we turned away from town?”

“
It was meant as a surprise, but Charles is to reopen Netherfield. Now, return to the safety of the carriage!” The master of Pemberley voice issued the edict from on high.

Elizabeth slammed the windowpane closed with more force than necessary and sank back on the opposing bench from her sisters. The man was infuriating with his surprises and failure to disclose changes in their arrangements to her, his wife. First, their two younger sisters were all at once to join them without even so much as a discussion with Elizabeth, and now they were not to stay at the inn and therefore close to her mother, but clear on the other side of the county. At the dastardly Mr. Bingley’s leased estate, no less!

“
I never did occasion a chance to stay at Netherfield Park when we lived here before. I wonder if it is indeed as grand as they say?” Kitty Bennet broke the silence both she and Georgiana maintained the entire length of travel from London to Hertfordshire. The presumed excitement of staying at the only estate in the neighborhood aside from Longbourn, once owned by their family but now in the care of a cousin, trumped whatever malady afflicted Elizabeth Darcy’s travel companions.

“
My brother’s friend Bingley is an agreeable gentlemen, but I often find myself uncomfortable in his sisters’ company.” Georgiana admitted, biting her lower lip. Her outburst that morning over their mischief to seek publication for Kitty’s novel had done considerable damage between her and her brother. She doubted she could rely upon him to spare her from Caroline Bingley’s company as he had on previous occasions.

There could be little doubt if Mr. Bingley had opened his home, his sister must be in residence to play hostess. After spending the previous summer in Hertfordshire, Georgiana was less excited to visit again so soon and ruminated on how she might once again make apologies to her brother for her impertinent behavior.

Elizabeth Darcy stoically gazed at both girls with a raised eyebrow, wondering what had occurred to make her husband change his mind about bringing them along to Meryton. She had yet to receive a straight answer from any of them and she would not let her pique over the change in accommodations diminish her desire for the truth.

As she extended her hands in her lap and looked down at her midsection, Elizabeth did at least have the sense to realize she never told her husband about the particulars of Jane calling off her courtship with Mr. Bingley. But why had not the Matlocks shared the intelligence with him? Elizabeth’s heart ached as she wondered how Jane was faring so far away in Scotland. Her guilt distracted her so that the carriage arrived at Netherfield quicker than she had anticipated.

The Darcy party, fussed over by both Bingleys, was heartily welcomed into a home all too familiar to Elizabeth. Nearly one year ago, she had walked through the same entryway with her skirts several inches deep with mud to inquire about Jane’s health. The toll that illness took on her family and the rest of the county still cut to the core of too many hearts. She and Jane both survived, thankfully, but lost their beloved father.

As if perceiving emotion overwhelming her, Darcy gently grasped his wife’s hand as though to assist her up the many flights of steps. She had become so absentminded of late. She had utterly missed the discussions and arrangements for the two younger girls who were a surprise for both Caroline and Charles Bingley. Where the brother had taken it in stride, Elizabeth Darcy caught the last remnants of a sour look on Caroline’s face as she left the merry party to give instruction to the house staff to ready two more rooms.

“
Mrs. Darcy, I must say you wear marriage well, Madame.” Charles Bingley greeted the wife of his closest friend without the slightest hesitation. Quite shocked he would grab her hand and bow over it, Elizabeth hastily pulled it back and glared at the man she once thought suitable for her older sister’s hand.