"I am not going anywhere," Nana said. "In case you were wondering."
"I wasn't wondering. I know better than to expect you to leave."
"Good. Because my work is not finished." Nana looked at Elizabeth, and then she dropped her gaze deliberately to Elizabeth's stomach.
Elizabeth's hand went to her belly. She had not... she had not thought... but now that Nana had looked, now that the question was in the air, she counted back, and the counting took longer than it should have, and the answer at the end of it made her breath catch.
"Oh," she said.
"Indeed," Nana said. "Oh."
"How long have you known?"
"Since before you did, which is the natural order of things. I have seen a great many pregnancies in this house, Elizabeth, and the signs are quite unmistakable to a woman of my experience. You have been nauseous for days. You attributed it to the ball, to the house being unsettled, and you were not entirely wrong about the latter. But I have been watching you. The nausea preceded the unsettlement, and I know the difference between a woman who is anxious and a woman who is with child."
Elizabeth sat staring at Nana in shock, her hand on her stomach. She thought about the nausea she had blamed on Pemberley's restlessness, the food she had not been able to eat, the exhaustion that had pressed her down for days. She had thought it was the house. She had thought it was the ghosts, the investigation, the ball, the dread.
Some of it had been. But not all of it.
"I am going to be a great-great-great-grandmother," Nana said. She did not smile, because Nana did not smile when she could look satisfied instead, but her satisfaction was so complete it filled the room. "Which is the entire point. My mission, Elizabeth, such as it is, has always been to see enough of my descendants safely into the world that I need not worry about the line continuing. I have been here for a hundred and thirty years and none of my descendants have managed more than one child or at best two." Her expression grew, if anything, even more pointed.
"How many descendants, exactly, do you think would be a safe number?" Elizabeth asked. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears.
"I have really never considered that. I am not setting a number. I am merely saying that Pemberley needs its heirs, and I intend to be here to see that they are properly looked after."
Elizabeth looked at Nana. Nana looked back, implacable, eternal, a hundred and thirty years old and not one inch closer to moving on.
"You are going to haunt my children," Elizabeth said.
"I am going to ensure your children are raised correctly. There is a difference."
Elizabeth thought about arguing. She thought about pointing out that Nana had not, by her own frequent admission, always approved of how the intervening Darcys had been raised, and that her track record was therefore imperfect. She thought about reminding Nana that the living mistress of Pemberley was, in fact, Elizabeth, and that she and Darcy would raise their children as they saw fit.
She did not say any of these things. She would say them later. Nana would ignore them. They would argue about nursery arrangements, feeding schedules, whether the child should be taught to ride at three or four, and it would be exactly like every other argument Elizabeth had with Nana: fierce, exhausting, conducted with deep mutual affection that neither of them would ever admit to.
"I need to tell Darcy," Elizabeth said.
"Yes, you do. I shall leave you to it. Though I do think you ought to know that the east-wing nursery has the best light in the mornings and the warmest fires, and I have already put the thought into Mrs Reynolds' mind that she should start looking to the nursery linens."
"Nana. I've known fortwo minutes."
"And I have known for considerably longer, and I do not waste time. The linens are being aired. You may thank me later."
Nana rose from her chair, gave Elizabeth one last look of profound satisfaction, and drifted through the bookcase.
Elizabeth sat at her desk, with her hand on her stomach. She sat there for a long time, in the quiet parlour, wondering if the warmth in the walls was because Pemberley knew an heir was coming.
Then she went to find Darcy, because if Nana knew that meant all the other ghosts would know, and it was quite unfair that Darcy should be so far down the list of those who knew.
He was in the study, at his desk, dealing with some correspondence. He looked up when she came in. She closedthe door behind her. He must have seen something in her face, because he set down his pen and rose to his feet.
"Elizabeth?"
"Nana has just informed me," Elizabeth said, "that she is not going anywhere. Her mission, as she describes it, is to see enough Darcy descendants safely into the world that she need not worry about the family line. She says she's been here for a hundred and thirty years; she intends to see our first child born and properly looked after. She will not set a number of Darcys who will be sufficient. I think it possible there will never be a sufficient number, and she will haunt Pemberley forever. But at least our child will have a most devoted guardian."
Darcy looked at her. His gaze dropped to where her hand rested on her waist, and she watched him draw the correct conclusion.
He let out a shout of laughter. It was the most startling sound Elizabeth had ever heard from Fitzwilliam Darcy: loud, unguarded, joyful, a sound that belonged to a man who had just survived the worst week of his life and then been handed the best news of it. He laughed, came around the desk, took her face in his hands and kissed her.
