Pemberley to Waterloo: Georgiana Darcy's Diary, Volume 2

P
EMBERLEY TO
W
ATERLOO

Georgiana Darcy's Diary
, Volume 2

ANNA ELLIOTT

with illustrations by Laura Masselos

a W
ILTON
P
RESS
book

P
EMBERLEY TO
W
ATERLOO

Georgiana Darcy's Diary
, Volume 2

(c) 2011 Anna Elliott
All rights reserved
Approximately 72,000 words

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's (or Jane Austen's) imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

• • •

For more information, please visit
www.AnnaElliottBooks.com

Anna Elliott can be contacted at [email protected].

W
ILTON
P
RESS

Product Description

Can their love withstand the trials of war?

Georgiana Darcy and Edward Fitzwilliam want only to be together. But when the former Emperor Napoleon escapes from his exile on the Isle of Elba, Britain is plunged into renewed war with France ... and Edward is once more called away to fight.

To be with the man she loves, Georgiana makes the perilous journey to Brussels, in time to witness the historic downfall of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. But when Edward is gravely injured in the battle, she will need more courage than she ever knew she had to fight for their future together.

Author's Note

Pemberley to Waterloo
is the sequel to
Georgiana Darcy's Diary
, the first book in the
Pride and Prejudice Chronicles
series. And thank you so much to all the readers out there who wrote to me, asking for more of Georgiana and Edward's story!

Pemberley to Waterloo
can be read alone, but it does build on the events of
Georgiana Darcy's Diary
(link goes to Amazon.com page). For new readers, I will explain that these books were born of my love of all things
Pride and Prejudice
, and the character of Georgiana Darcy in particular. After (many, many, many) readings of
Pride and Prejudice
, Georgiana was the character whose fate I wondered about the most. And I always felt that she and Colonel Fitzwilliam belonged together. As I explained in the author's note to Volume I, the modern reader may be surprised, since Georgiana and Colonel Fitzwilliam are cousins. But in Jane Austen's day, marriages between cousins were common--even to be encouraged. In fact, Jane Austen herself wrote about such romance in
Mansfield Park
: Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram are first cousins.

Georgiana Darcy's Diary,
Volume I is the story of Edward Fitzwilliam and Georgiana discovering their love for each other. But--as you will see in
Pemberley to Waterloo
--they still have a long journey and a great many obstacles to overcome, including the threat of renewed war with France.

In writing Georgiana's experiences in Brussels during the Battle of Waterloo, I drew heavily on the period accounts of Charlotte A. Eaton, Magdalene De Lancey, and Juana Smith--three fascinating women, all of whom actually experienced the terror of being a few short miles away from the field of battle, just as Georgiana does. Nick Foulkes'
Dancing into Battle: A Social History of the Battle of Waterloo
was also an invaluable resource.

It was an incredible privilege and a delight to live in my imagination inside the world of Jane Austen's
Pride and Prejudice
. And--as with Volume I--
Pemberley to Waterloo
is meant as an entertainment only, written for readers who love Jane Austen's story as much as I do. I certainly would never compare my books or my writing style to the immortal Jane Austen's.

I am especially excited in
Pemberley to Waterloo
to be able to write that my incredibly talented friend Laura Masselos has provided all original drawings for the illustrations. Thank you, Laura! You truly brought Georgiana's love of drawing to life.

Wednesday 21 June 1815

I'm writing this on the inside cover of my diary. Which means that the rest of my entry may be entirely illegible. There's barely space for a tenth of what I wish I could write--and besides, the cover was dampened by sea-water on the journey here, so that it's still slightly bent and smells of old seaweed.

There's no other paper to be had. Half the shops in Brussels are still closed, since the shopkeepers fled to Antwerp or further with everyone else, and are only now beginning to trickle back. I've no other blank writing books with me--and we've used up all the writing paper in our house to take down letters for the wounded men in our care. They're all desperate to send word to their families back in England. Assurances that they are alive and expected to recover and return home. Or in the saddest cases, bidding their loved ones good-bye.

I wrote one of those letters just this morning. For an Irish rifleman who was shot in the stomach and has been slowly dying of the wound for the last three days. He's so young--younger than I am, and I'm nineteen. Or rather, he
was
so young. He died this morning, just after dictating his words to me, addressed to the girl he'd been engaged to marry. His face was stark, livid with pain, and his lips were so dry they were cracking because the surgeon said that with a wound like his, he mustn't be allowed to drink.

But he whispered his message to me, telling his betrothed how much he loved her--and that his last wish was that she go on living without him, make a life for herself, marry another man. Be happy. He said she was too young to be lonely for the rest of her life.

And then he died.

That's really why I'm writing this--hoping that it will help me put the memory of it somewhere I can bear to keep it. Just now, I feel as though I could cry for days--except that if I once let myself start, I would not be able to stop.

This entry will make quite a prologue to the first proper entries in this diary, which, flipping through, I can see are mostly an account of our Christmas at Pemberley.

That seems so far removed and unreal now that even glancing at what I wrote all those months ago is like reading a novel, or looking through a window into another life. And poor Kitty--I'm so sorry for everything I wrote about her now.

I feel as though we've been trapped in Brussels for an eternity, feeling the noise from the city outside beat on the walls of the Forsters' house like a physical force. First the artillery fire from the fighting at
Quatre Bras
. Then the thunder and rain on the night before the battle at Waterloo. The cries and alarms from the street during the following endless day and night, when every moment it seemed brought another report that all was lost, that Wellington's troops had been defeated and the French armies would be pillaging the city by dawn.

Now even the wild celebrations of our army's victory have died down. But still the city is not quiet; it is filled with the rumble of carts carrying the dead and dying. The groans of the wounded. There are so many wounded soldiers that hundreds of them are lying in the streets on whatever beds of straw can be thrown down for them.

Even the Duke of Wellington--who was in the thick of fighting throughout the battle, but by miracle came through it without even the slightest wound--is sad and downcast, so they say. Napoleon has been defeated, finally and completely--but at what heavy a cost.

And I have had no word of Edward. No word of whether he is alive ... or prisoner ... or--

Edward would have been in the thick of the battle, too. I know him well enough to be certain of it. And he was one of Wellington's aides-de-camp.

The last report we had was that before the French turned tail and fled, they killed all the British officers they had taken prisoner.

I keep thinking that if Edward were killed, some part of me would
know
. I have turned the ring on my finger round and round a thousand times, feeling as though the emerald would have split--or
something
--if he had been killed. That I would--must--feel something myself. But would I?

I have said prayers for Edward's safety every moment of every day.
Please, please let him be alive, let him come back home to me, and I'll
--

But then I always stop short. Any clergyman would probably tell me it is bordering on the heretical to try to bargain with God. But I would--I'd do it in a heartbeat, if only I could think of anything to offer up against Edward's life.

But what do I have to bargain with? What exactly does one offer an omnipotent Divinity?

And besides, other women have said those same prayers. I have nothing, really--no possible assurance or guarantee that in the midst of so much death, my love should have been one of the few to survive.

B
OOK
I

Sunday 18 December 1814

If I hear the word 'beau' one single time more, I am perfectly convinced that I am going to scream.

To think that a mere three weeks ago, I did not even know the meaning of the term. Of course, anyone who has spent any time in London has heard of the famous Beau Brummell, the ultimate arbiter of men's fashion--or so it's said in all the circles of high society that Mr. Brummell still frequents, despite his quarrel with the Prince Regent. But I had never heard the word used as a simple descriptor. As for example:
There were a
vast
number of smart beaux at the party last night.

Or,
Oh, if only Mr. Norton were not engaged to that horrid, freckled Miss Price, I think he would be
quite
a beau.