Chapter One
The gingerbread at Pemberley was the one thing in my life that had never changed. I had a plate of it resting beside the piano, warm and spiced enough to make my tongue tingle. All these years later it was identical to my first taste of it, when my baby teeth had been too sensitive for the hard biscuits so I’d sucked on them until they dissolved in my mouth. I had lost my mother, then my father and then almost lost my reputation, but Ruth still made the gingerbread the exact same.
For every page of music I successfully played, I rewarded myself with a bite, cleaning my fingers on the hem of my petticoat to ensure I didn’t get grease on the keys.
I fought my way through a particularly complicated section, one I’d been struggling to get right for weeks. My brotherand Elizabeth both insisted it sounded perfectly lovely whenever they heard it, but I knew what it was supposed to sound like. The notes in my head never corresponded to the ones my hands were playing. I’d tried it first on the harp and now on the piano—my last attempt to breathe some life into the melody in my mind. Otherwise I was going to need to learn to play some new instruments.
It still wasn’t right. My fingers flew over the keys as fast as I could make them go, but they tripped over one another and the notes weren’t crisp enough. The song came to an end, and a silence settled over the room, broken only by my sigh. I didn’t reach for a gingerbread round. I didn’t deserve one. Soft applause from the doorway interrupted my despondency.
“That was beautiful,” Elizabeth said, stepping into the room. “Is it finished?”
“No,” I said. “It still doesn’t sound like I need it to.”
“Well, it’s as good as anything I’ve heard in a music hall,” she promised, reaching out to steal a piece of gingerbread.
She looked very well considering the late hour she’d likely seen the night before. Pemberley’s monthly ball was one its revellers were never keen to quit early. The house was too vast for the noise to reach my apartments, but the staff grumbled to one another about the sleep of which they’d been robbed when they thought I couldn’t hear them.
Elizabeth sank into her usual chair by the window and took a moment to observe the view, golden in the last of the day’s light, before she focused her attention back on me. This wasn’t a casual visit to my drawing room.
“Your absence was noted at the ball last night, particularly since it was the second since your return from London and you have been seen at neither,” she began, her voice gentle.
My cheeks coloured. Neither she nor my brother had ever encouraged me to attend social events if I preferred the company of books and instruments, and I always preferred the company of books and instruments. The very reason I had been sent to London was to be tutored in proper social etiquette, and yet all it had instilled in me was a deep desire to avoid every social engagement that consisted of more than half a dozen people.
I was no good in large crowds, particularly when half the room was looking at me as a freshly instructed potential wife. In truth, I had no desire to ever find a husband. My interests lay elsewhere, but that was nothing I could ever tell Elizabeth.
Tucking my hands into my lap, I avoided Elizabeth’s eyes. I didn’t want to bring rumour and disapproval to Pemberley’s door. Before I could apologise, she continued.
“Word was you are in a delicate condition and have hidden yourself away in the country for the duration, or perhaps some travesty overcame you in London and left you quite disfigured.” Her words were musical, threaded with laughter she tried to suppress as she teased me. “Or, the most fanciful of all, that you met an untimely death in the city and are not here at all.”
I couldn’t help but pull a face. Finding myself the centreof conversation was little better than finding myself the centre of attention. At least if I was in the room, speculation was restrained.
“Am I truly all they have to talk about?” I said with a sigh. “Surely there is something more interesting, some real scandal.”
“Those who meet you, you intrigue, and those who don’t are left all the more curious for it,” Elizabeth said, getting up to rest her hand on my shoulder and squeeze it reassuringly. “You have your brother’s way of commanding attention, I fear. I tried my best to divert conversation elsewhere but with limited success. I would not make you do something you’d rather not, but perhaps show your face at the ball next month to assure people you are not dead, maimed, or with child?”
She went quiet for a moment, and I thought perhaps she was finished, but when she added a final point it was with a new air of solemnity.
“I heard your name mentioned alongside that of George Wickham. In the interest of preventing that particular storied gossip making a return, it really would be best to make an appearance so they have no reason to talk.”
I went still, fiddling my thumb over a chip in the end of one of the piano keys. No one knew the truth of what had happened between George Wickham and me, but the most vigilant had drawn their own conclusions. Rumours of the son of the former estate manager and the daughter of the house trying to elope caught like the driest kindling.
Time had quietened the whispers, but I knew they laydormant rather than dead, ready to be reignited by the right spark. It would still be better than the truth being spread, the one that involved a pretty girl and an unlocked door and a blackmail threat, but only marginally.
“I shall think about attending,” I promised Elizabeth.
It was the best I could do, stuck between two disagreeable notions. Evenings of stilted small talk and men stepping on my feet were far from my preferred way to pass the time. Still, the rumours Elizabeth spoke of had the potential to blacken not only my name specifically, but the Darcy name as a whole. My family had a reputation to uphold, and a wayward daughter had no part in it.
“Kitty will be able to accompany you next month,” Elizabeth said. “Being the topic of gossip never much bothered her, as I’m sure you’ll learn as soon as she gets here.”
When my brother married Elizabeth, I inherited what seemed like endless family members. For the longest time it had been just Darcy and me, with both our parents dead, but now I had a sister, and she in turn had four more, each more of a character than the last.
Jane visited often at Pemberley, her good nature making her a favourite houseguest of the household staff. Mary rarely left Longbourn but wrote often to Elizabeth, dreaming wistfully of Pemberley’s library. Lydia was welcome to visit but didn’t, on account of the invitation not extending so warmly to her husband, who himself was the reason I’d not met the younger three Bennet sisters. There had been a risk of him attending Darcy and Elizabeth’s wedding, which made itcertain that I did not. My brother would not risk me running into George Wickham, and it was a matter I would not argue with him.
Elizabeth had plenty of stories about most of her sisters, but Kitty seemed to inspire few of her own. She was often at Lydia’s side in a tale, but never the focus. While her sisters planted roots, she spent much of her time with Elizabeth or Jane. Her visits to Pemberley had not yet overlapped with my own, but now that I had returned from London to stay indefinitely, I would undoubtedly be seeing much of her.
“What time is she expected?” I asked.
Elizabeth turned to the clock on the mantelpiece, comparing it to her pocket watch and sighing when they didn’t match.
