Page 73 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

And there is a door, in the wall between my bedroom and yours. With no lock.

I opened it tonight. I did not mean to. I was brushing my hair, and I found myself standing in front of it, and then I had opened it. Your room was dark and cold, with dust sheets over the chairs, and it smelt a little of you: of sandalwood, and old books, and the soap you use. I stood in the doorway in my nightgown and looked into it for a long time. I did not go in. I only left the door open.

It is open now. I am writing this in bed, with the candle, and I can see the dark doorway across the room, and it is the most foolish thing in the world, and it is the only thing that is letting me sleep.

Good night, my love. It is only four days. It feels like four years.

Your Elizabeth

P.S. Anne asks me to tell you that she has seen a hill, and that it has not killed her, and that she intends to climb it.

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Darcy House. Monday, 20th April

Elizabeth,

The weather in London is fine and dry and warm, which is an insult. The square is full of lilac. There are children rolling hoops under the plane trees. I resent all of it.

Your letter came this morning. I have read it eleven times. I know because Pearce came in to ask about the coal and found me reading it, and went out again, and came back a quarter of an hour later and found me reading it again, and went out again without asking about the coal at all. We have no coal. I do not care.

You made the coachman stop. You said there. I cannot write what that did to me. I will tell you when I see you.

I did not know a house could be so empty. It has two-and-twenty servants in it, and Richard, and my aunt Catherine, who is in excellent spirits and is conducting a war. And it is empty. I come in from the street and I stand in the hall and listen, and I am listening for you: for your step on the stair, or your voice in the green room, or your laugh. It does not come. The green room is shut up. Mrs Dawes covered the pianoforte. I went in last night and took the cover off, and sat at your desk in the dark for an hour, and did not light the candle.

I have left my door open too. Into your empty room. It is very foolish. It is also the only thing that lets me sleep.

You will want news, and I have some.

The Bow Street man has been at work. He has been through every banking house between Temple Bar and St James's with a warrant and a great deal of patience, and he has found an account at Drummonds, at Charing Cross, in the name of G. Wakefield, opened on the eighteenth of March with a draft for two hundred pounds. It was not drawn on any bank account. It was paid in gold, over the counter, by a lady's footman in plain clothes. The clerk remembers him because he was very tall and very nervous and had powder on his collar, as though he had changed out of livery in a hurry. He has been back three times since with more gold. The clerk thinks he could know him again.

Richard has had his leave extended, by a colonel who owes my uncle a favour, and has been to Brighton and back. Wickham has not been with his regiment since the eighth of March. Colonel Forster is beside himself. He has posted him as a deserter. If he is found, he will be taken up by the military, not the civil power, and there will be no paying him out of that.

My aunt Catherine has called on nine ladies in five days and reduced four of them to tears. Lady Sandridge has written to me herself, very humbly, to say that she has made it known in the proper quarters that the paragraph about Georgiana was an outrageous libel, and that she regrets having listened to it. She does not say who she listened to. But she has underlined "a person very near to Lady Matlock" twice.

And Caroline Bingley has written to me.

I will copy you her letter entire, because I think you will enjoy it: "Mr Darcy. I have not forgotten that I was accused, in my own brother-in-law's library, of writing to a scandal sheet. I have been making enquiries of my own. When I have something worth telling you, I shall tell you, and I shall expect an apology. C. B." I have never liked her. I begin to think I may be obliged to.

There is one thing I must tell you that I do not like.

My aunt Matlock called on Saturday. She is very unhappy with me. She thinks I have been cruel to Theodosia, refusing to let her see Georgiana. She told me that Theodosia called at Matlock House on Friday, in great distress, and wept, and asked where Georgiana had gone, because she had heard the house was shut up and was so afraid for her. And my aunt, meaning only kindness, told her. Pemberley.

I do not think it signifies. She cannot leave town in the Season without the whole world asking why. You said so yourself. But I wanted you to know. No secrets.

Richard says I am to stop writing now and eat something. He is standing over me with a plate of cold beef. I think he means to force it down my throat.

Kiss Georgiana for me. Tell Anne I forbid her to climb the hill until I can climb it with her. She will not listen. None of you ever do.

I love you. It has been seven days. It feels like seven years.

F.

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Pemberley. Thursday, 23rd April

My dearest,