She went still.
A younger sister whose name had been Fiona.
The image came before the thought completed itself: the woman at the garden party, the one who had monopolised Fitzwilliam's attention with such practised ease. That nagging sense of familiarity she had dismissed in the chaos of the afternoon.
Not a stranger. A schoolmate.
Elizabeth picked up the letter again, her hands not quite steady, and read on.
I imagine you are rather surprised to receive this letter. Perhaps even more surprised when I tell you that we did indeed meet in Ireland, although I can hardly blame you for not recognising me. You were rather occupied with playing the hero that afternoon, were you not? I confess I panicked the moment I saw you — I was certain you would know me immediately. That you did not was either a mercy or an indictment of how thoroughly circumstances have altered me. I have not yet decided which.
I suspect you have worked it out by now. Yes, I was the woman attempting to secure Mr Darcy's attention at the Ahearns' garden party. I had quite forgotten that you had an aunt in Ireland. A foolish oversight, as it turned out.
How dare she write so casually about deliberate entrapment, as though it were merely an amusing misadventure to share with a friend? Elizabeth's hands tightened on the pages.
But she read on.
Knowing you as I do — or did — I expect you find my actions unconscionable. Certainly by any conventional moral standard, what we attempted was wrong. I am not writing to argue otherwise. But I beg you to continue reading before you pass final judgement on your old friend, because what I have to tell you may alter the picture somewhat, even if it cannot excuse it entirely.
Do you remember how my family was situated when we attended school together? The estate, the income, the comfortable future that seemed so entirely assured? It is gone, Elizabeth. All of it.
What followed was a history she had not expected, delivered without sentimentality, which made it worse. Mr Sempill's gambling had consumed first his ready income, then his investments, then the land itself, mortgaged piece by piece to creditors who showed no mercy and extended none. His drinking had deepened as the losses mounted, the one feeding the other in a cycle that left nothing intact. One night he had not woken. His heart had given out, too worn down to continue.
Mrs Sempill had lasted only months longer. Grief, Annabelle wrote, whatever the physicians chose to call it. A heart broken by watching everything destroyed, by the knowledge of what her daughters faced.
Fiona and I live now entirely on our grandmother's charity. She took us in after Mama's death, and we are grateful — we have nothing else to be grateful for. But she is elderly, and her own circumstances are modest, and she is frantic to see ussettled before she dies. She knows what we will be left with once she is gone. She knows, and so do we.
Elizabeth lowered the letter for a moment. The Sempills she remembered had been prosperous, their standing in their county entirely assured, Annabelle's future so certain it barely needed discussion. That Annabelle and her sister were now entirely dependent on an elderly woman's limited charity — it was difficult to reconcile with the girl she had known.
It did not excuse what had been attempted at the garden party. But it was beginning to explain it in ways that were harder to dismiss than she would have preferred.
She read on.
There is more, I am afraid. Something which makes our situation not merely difficult but desperate in a way that admits of no delay.
Fiona is with child.
Before you think the worst of her, know that she was genuinely in love — or believed herself to be. A gentleman who courted her properly, who spoke of marriage, who persuaded her that intimacy before their wedding was no great matter given the understanding between them. Then his family learned of our circumstances. He was ordered to break the connection, and he did so without hesitation or regret. Fiona was left with nothing — no prospect, no recourse, and a condition that will become visible within weeks.
When it does, what little remains of our reputation will be destroyed entirely. Our grandmother will be humiliated inher own community. Fiona will be unmarriageable for the rest of her life, dependent on whatever charity she can find. And I — my prospects were poor enough before all of this. After, they will not exist at all.
That is why we did what we did at the garden party. I am not proud of it. I am ashamed to tell you it was not the first such attempt, only the most ambitious. We had never aimed so high as Mr Darcy — a gentleman of his fortune was rather beyond our usual reach. But my grandmother had visited Castlewood some days before the party, posing as a passing admirer of the house. She was shown around quite willingly and identified the room best suited to ourpurposes. When Mr Darcy appeared at the party, it seemed as though fortune was offering us something extraordinary. We could not afford to refuse it.
We did not count on you.
The pages trembled in Elizabeth's hands. She thought of Fitzwilliam's expression that afternoon — the careful composure, the alarm barely contained beneath it. He would have done the honourable thing. He would have had no choice. He would have been bound to a woman he did not know, by a scheme he had no part in creating, for the rest of his life.
I do not write only to confess, Elizabeth, though perhaps I owed you that much. I write because I need help, and because you are the only person from my former life who might still show me a scrap of compassion. All my other friends have fallen away. I have no one else to turn to. No one who might remember who I was before desperation made me into someone capable of all this.
What I need — what would save us — is money. I know what I am asking. I know I have no right to ask it, least of all from you, least of all on behalf of a scheme directed at your own husband.
But if you could prevail upon Mr Darcy — if you could find it in your heart to speak for us — a sum sufficient to send Fiona abroad before her condition is discovered would preserve what little dignity we have left. There are places on the Continent where such things can be managed quietly. Where a child can be placed with a family who will care for it properly, and a young woman's past need not follow her forever.
I am not asking for much, by his standards. I am asking for everything, by ours.
If that is truly too much — and I would not blame you for thinking so, I would not blame you for throwing this letter directly into the fire — then write back. Tell me only that you remember I exist. That you have not entirely forgotten the girl I was before all of this began. That would be, perhaps, enough. It may have to be.
I heard about your marriage, of course. How the engagement was announced at the garden party itself, and the wedding following so swiftly after. I cannot help but feel that my schemes contributed to placing you in a situation you never sought. If my foolishness helped to trap you as surely as I hoped to trap Mr Darcy, then I owe you an apology for that as well, and I offer it without reservation.
