Though he could not conceive of how they might achieve it, for the first time, Darcy felt a glimmer of hope that she might be right. He nodded and let out a breath that it felt as though he had been holding for a very, very long time.
“I am feeling moved to shift a rock or two myself,” Fitzwilliam announced and, without waiting for a reply, set off towards the workers, removing his coat as he went.
“You had better join him,” Elizabeth said, still sounding greatly affected. “I shall see whether Chef can rustle up enough refreshments for them all.”
After the upheaval of the last few days, Darcy did not much feel like exerting himself, but in the end, he was required to do nothing more than talk to people. It was not the sort of conversation he despised—the sort that passed around dinner tables and ballrooms and obliged a person to appear interested in the concerns of strangers. On the contrary, every person to whom he spoke had a memory of Pemberley to share with him, and that was a topic on which he could happily converse indefinitely.
After Elizabeth’s show of sentiment for the turn-out, it struck Darcy as odd that she did not come back to join him in talking to everyone when the maids brought out the refreshments. When she still had not appeared over half an hour later, he thanked the volunteers sincerely for their hard work and dedication to Pemberley and went in search of her.
“An express arrived about an hour ago, sir,” Matthis informed him. “I understand Mrs Darcy went into the park to read it in private.”
“An express? Do you know where from?”
“I do not, sir, but Mrs Darcy seemed rather agitated by the receipt of it.”
Darcy clenched his teeth. Could they go no more than an hour without more bad news? He thanked Matthis and asked him to direct Elizabeth to the saloon when she returned, then went there to await her. “And send some coffee.”
Elizabeth arrived before the coffee did, and she was, as Matthis had warned, all agitation. He went to her directly. “Is everything well? Matthis said you received an express.”
“Nothing iswrong. But there is something I need to tell you about. Can we sit down?”
No sooner had they done so than Elizabeth was back on her feet, pacing nervously before him. Matthis appeared with the coffee, and Darcy waited impatiently for him to serve it and go away again before reaching for Elizabeth’s hand and pulling her down next to him. “Just tell me.”
She took a deep breath and nodded. “Do you remember, just before the wall collapsed, I was running to see you?”
“I am not ever likely to forget it.”
“I had just made a discovery. That is, Mrs Lovell had. She found a stash of old letters in her room that belonged to Mrs Reynolds. I almost threw them away until I realised they had all been written by my aunt Wallis.”
“They knew each other?”
“They have known each other since they were children, apparently. I was concerned at first that it meant my aunt was party to Mrs Reynolds’s attempts to separate us, but she was not, because she did not know—well, neither of them knew—thatwewere who they were writing to each other about. It sounds ridiculous, but they did not know that we were us.”
“Ridiculous is one word for it.”
“It is almost impossible to explain, but that is hardly the point anymore. What matters is what else I have found out. After everything that happened with the house, I decided against telling you until I had written to my aunt for an explanation. Well, she has written back, and…Mrs Reynolds is withher.”
Darcy could quite happily have gone the rest of his life never knowing the whereabouts of his perfidious erstwhile housekeeper and was entirely unsure how Elizabeth expected him to respond. Mrs Reynolds being with her godmother meant only one thing to him: that his opinion of Mrs Wallis was in need of review.
He was, perhaps, silent too long; Elizabeth observably reined in her enthusiasm. “I know you are angry with her, but you may not be after I have explained it all.”
“She no longer works here. That is all there is to it.”
“That is not quite all. You see, it seems it was Mrs Reynolds who arranged for Lydia and Wickham to marry.”
“What?”
“Apparently, she took steps to ensure they wed on the assumption that if Wickham was my brother, you would never marry me, and that would keep you safe.”
Darcy stared at her incredulously, at a loss to understand why she was so much better pleased by the revelation than he. “Pardon me if I am missing something,” he said stiffly, “but this is not news likely to make melessangry with the woman.”
She winced. “I am not presenting it well. The material point is that she did it foryou. And to do it, she went to a lot of trouble and spent every farthing of her life savings. And now she has nothing left on which to live.”
“Then she ought not to have done it!”
“But cannot you see that she did it because she cared so deeply for you?”
Darcy rubbed both hands over his face. Why Elizabeth was attempting to defend the actions of a deceitful, and more to the pointdepartedservant, he could not fathom. “Mrs Reynolds perfectly demonstrated the care she felt for this house, this family—and me—when she left.”
