She had been dreaming of this boy since she was sixteen years old.Sometimes he was a babe, sometimes he was a young lad of eight.He was always sweet, a little gangly, and he looked at her with such adoration in his eyes.She lay next to him on the grass to watch a trail of ants march by.She helped him catch a frog in the stream and tripped over her skirts, laughing hysterically when he fell in beside her as he tried to rescue her.
He was the child of her heart.
Sometimes in her dreams, there was another child.A little girl who had dark, sparkling eyes like her own and a bashful smile.Elizabeth knew this one was more like her father.Quiet, a little shy, observant.She had to be cajoled into games, but she always enjoyed herself once she began.She was much shorter than her brother, and there was a man nearby who would tease Elizabeth about being so short, and that they were lucky it was the daughter who had taken after her less-than-towering stature and not the son.The man was blonde and cheerful, and she somehow knew he was her brother.Her sister Jane was often beside him smiling gently and telling him to be kind to Lizzy.He would laugh and kiss Jane’s hand, saying he was only teasing.Lizzy was his favorite sister, after all.
This happy family scene was sometimes completed by yet another man.He was the most mysterious character of all.She never saw his face, only the set of his shoulders and the straight line of his back as he walked away.There was one dream that she particularly favored.She was sitting next to Jane on a terrace, both of their bellies swollen with child, and there were two men on the lawn.One of them was Jane’s cheerful blonde husband who cavorted with the children chasing him.The other was Elizabeth’s husband.She could not see his face from this distance, but she somehow knew that his countenance was very dear to her.She felt a great affection for him welling up in her chest.She loved this man with all her heart.
As the small children ran by, chasing their uncle, her husband reached down and swooped one up, lifting him over his head with a roar of laughter as the child squealed and squealed.They repeated the move more than once with her husband doing the same for his nephew.They were a happy party on the lawn, and she smiled at Jane beside her.
“I am so happy we are to spend the summer together, Lizzy.”
“As am I,” Dream Elizabeth would say.She thought for a moment that she and her husband, whoever he was, were visiting Jane and her family.But when she was walking along the stream, she would occasionally see a house in the distance.It was made of light-colored stone, grand but not ostentatious—and somehow, she knew this was her home.She was mistress of all of this.
The first time she had this dream, she had thought it merely a passing fancy.The hopeful wishes of a young girl.It had felt real and been clearer than any dream she’d ever had, but visions of the future were not real.They simply were not!No matter what her granny had said.But as the dreams became more detailed and occurred with more frequency, she was forced to admit perhaps something else was afoot.
Her great-grandmother Bennet had been a Scottish woman of uncommon wisdom.Elizabeth remembered sitting next to her and reading her stories, even though Elizabeth was not a very good reader at the time.One day, Elizabeth asked her grandmother why she was the only one who read to her.Her sister Mary was still learning, but she could get by, and Jane was the eldest of them all and had a lovely speaking voice.Her grandmother had looked at her with searching eyes, staring unblinking at her granddaughter until Elizabeth squirmed in her chair.“Because you are like me, Little Lizzy,” she had said.
Elizabeth did not know why, but gooseflesh had broken out on her arms and her heart sped up.
As Elizabeth sat up in her bed in 1811, she thought about what her grandmother had said.Her grandmother had enjoyed teasing her, saying in the mornings, “I had a dream about you last night.You were learning to ride a horse.You did not like it at all.”
Or “You will become quite the dancer, young Lizzy.You will never want for a partner.”
Or “My, what a grand house you will live in!I only wish I would see it one day.”
Elizabeth had smiled at her grandmother’s eccentricity, thinking her words had been good-natured teasing.But when she woke on her sixteenth birthday—nearly a year after Granny Bennet had died—with a dream of the future so clear she had almost thought it real, she felt the first prickling of doubt.
Now, at nearly twenty years of age, the dreams had only become clearer and more frequent.Her grandmother’s predictions bore a startling resemblance to her own dreams of the future.Oh, how she wished her grandmother was there to tell her what to make of them!She rose and put on her oldest walking dress.She would gather flowers for Granny’s grave today.
8thof August, 1811
Hertfordshire
Elizabeth woke in the middle of the night with her heart thundering in her chest.Something was wrong.Something was very, very wrong.She crept out of bed, tied on her wrapper, then crept down the hall to Jane’s room.Her sister was asleep in her bed, her room undisturbed.She found the same in Mary’s room and in Kitty and Lydia’s chamber.What had woken her?Her parents’ rooms were silent although she could not enter in the middle of the night to check on them.She thought of the servants and tiptoed down to the kitchen.Mrs.Hill had a room and office not far down the corridor, and Elizabeth could hear her snoring from a distance.Cook and the kitchen maids had rooms on the opposite side of the hall.She listened at each door and heard no sounds of distress, only the deep breathing of sleep.She could not bring herself to check the butler’s quarters so she sighed, said a quick prayer, and made her way to the bookroom.She was too anxious to sleep; perhaps reading would help.
She quickly found a volume and settled into a chair by the empty fireplace.It was warm this time of year and she was perfectly comfortable with only her father’s light blanket draped over her knees.She read for perhaps an hour, then slowly drifted off to sleep.
“Pardon me, Miss.”
Elizabeth woke to see Molly, one of the maids, who had come into her father’s study to clean before the master occupied it.
“Good morning, Molly.I must have fallen asleep while reading.I will get out of your way.”She smiled and left the room, leaving a befuddled maid in her wake.She closed the door to her chamber and sat at the desk to write down her dreams.
Her husband was in trouble—well, her Dream Husband.She had dreamt of him again as she slept in her father’s bookroom, and she knew without a doubt that his distress had wakened her and not her family’s.She did not know what was wrong or where he was, but she instinctively felt that he needed her.In her dream, she had held him to her chest, running her fingers through his soft hair as he released his anguish to her.She had whispered soothing words and rocked slightly.He had been utterly bereft, like she had never seen him in four years of dreaming.Heartbroken.
Not knowing what else to do, she prayed.She prayed fervently that wherever he was, whoever he was, he would find comfort through this trial.That he would not be alone.And maybe, if it was not too strange, that he would be comforted by a dream of her, as she had learned to find comfort in her dreams of him.
Darcy awoke with a jolt, looking around the strange room.He wondered where he was for a moment before it all came back to him.He was in Ramsgate.He had come to see Georgiana a few days earlier than planned.He had been visiting a friend when he had had a burning desire to see his sister.He could not explain it, but he had felt that he simply must see her.When he arrived the day before, it had been to the sight of his sister packing—for a trip to Gretna Green.And she was going with George Wickham of all people!
After a hellish afternoon spent comforting his distraught sister, ridding his home of her duplicitous companion, and dispatching George Wickham, Darcy had sunk into the chair in his room with a glass of brandy and stared blindly out the window.He would have liked to walk along the beach, but he did not wish to risk being seen by anyone he was acquainted with.He could not find it in himself to be civil at the moment.
He had never missed his parents quite so much as he had that day.His mother would have known what to do with Georgiana.She never would have hired Mrs.Younge.She would have accompanied her daughter to the seaside and no fortune hunters would have been allowed near her.His father would have handled George Wickham.He doubted George would have had the audacity to come near Georgiana had the elder Mr.Darcy been alive.They also would not have made the mistakes he had.What had he been thinking?To send Georgiana off to the seaside with no one accompanying her beyond a companion he had known for less than a year?It had been utter stupidity!Only a fool would trust something as precious as his only sister to a virtual stranger.
Sitting in his bed with the counterpane bunched around his waist, Darcy rubbed his eyes.Sleep had not lessened the guilt.If anything, it had brought it into sharp relief.He should not have had a restful night.He should not wake up refreshed.He should have tossed and turned and wakened tired and cranky.That was what he deserved for being such a negligent brother and guardian.
And yet, he had had the most peaceful dream.He had been with a woman.He was not certain who she was, but she had stroked his hair and whispered soothing words to him.She had held him tightly and told him everything was going to be all right.He could not place her among his acquaintance, but he had the strangest sensation that he knew her.Or that he would know her.In the dream, she had been important to him; her opinion had been the one that mattered above all others, and he cared most for her approval.Her compassion had been the balm his battered spirits so desperately needed.
He tried to hold onto the image of her face.He had only seen it for a moment as she smiled at him.She had a beautiful smile and her eyes sparkled with happiness.He remembered the feel of her hands in his hair and the sound of her voice as she called him her love.
