Goodly Creatures: A Pride and Prejudice Deviation (26 page)

He and Anne still frequently called her
baby duck.
The name Miss Elizabeth had given her somehow suited her, even though the blond fuzz was gone and had been replaced by mercurial brown curls that sometimes shimmered with red and gold. He tried to put the young woman who had given birth to her out of his mind. But those eyes and hair made it difficult.

The baby’s presence had created a new, much closer bond between himself and Anne. She was determined to give him a son. The intimacy was agreeable, and they had settled into a pleasurable routine of days given over to enjoying Bethany and nights enjoying each other.

The suggestion to ask Lady Wolfbridge to become Bethany’s godmother came from Richard Fitzwilliam. Darcy felt at heart his cousin’s motive was that the two would have a justification for spending time together. Concern for her well-being was obviously also a part of his rationale. He had rushed to comfort her shortly after hearing she had lost the child she was carrying. Darcy struggled to remember whether he had heard of them being close prior to her engagement to Edmund. Richard had not confided in him; but then he had been busy with some secret mission in Austria. Still, Darcy had the suspicion that Eleanor’s true affections lay with Richard. Perhaps, she had married Edmund to please her father. The gossip at White’s had been that Mr Harding was looking to buy a title for his daughter, and Edmund and his uncle had definitely been in the market for her fifty thousand pounds.

He observed, during Bethany’s baptism, that both Richard and the Viscountess seemed miserable with their situation. As they stood at the altar, they exchanged glances full of remorse. Her marriage to Edmund would mean that even if the rascal died, they would never be able to marry.

He had intended to persuade Richard to confess his feelings for Lady Wolfbridge during a journey they made together to London toward the end of the Season. This relative who had been his best and truest companion since childhood needed him. It was his duty to persuade his cousin to accept the hopelessness of his situation. Darcy was also prepared to encourage his amiable cousin—even if it meant attending any balls being given with him—to meet a young lady, who would take his mind off the one he had lost to Edmund. Later he would realize that Richard had purposely deflected his cousin’s aims. It began when Captain Fitzwilliam said, “I am to see action again shortly. Where is uncertain, though there are rumours it might be Copenhagen.” For the remainder of the journey the two men spoke of little but war.

The reason for Darcy’s visit to London was to retrieve the painting of his mother by George Romney. He had loaned it for a retrospective of portraits done by the recently deceased artist. Mr Jarvis, the organizer of the event, had agreed to a personal showing with commentary for his generosity. The day he went to the exhibition hall, he had little expectation the exhibit would affect him so profoundly.

Darcy was shown into the main gallery where many of the paintings were of the same model. “It is these paintings which have made this so very popular—with
ton
and
cits
alike. In this room we have put together nearly all the close to sixty paintings Romney painted of Emma Hamilton. She is best known as the mistress of Lord Nelson, but long before her liaison with him she was Romney’s muse.” Darcy was entertained with details of the artistic obsession that had developed between the teenage ‘Emma Hart’ and Romney as they went from painting to painting.

Darcy was struck by how very young she appeared as they stopped before a portrait of Emma in a large hat with just the slightest hint of coyness in her expression. As they stared together at the painting, Mr Jarvis whispered his next snippet of delicious gossip. “You know, she was barely fifteen when she became the paramour of Sir Harry Featherstonhaugh. It is said she agreed to dance naked on the dining room table for the entertainment of his male friends at a ‘stag’ party at Sir Harry’s country estate.” His laugh was lascivious and he rubbed his thumb against his fingers in that universal gesture of greed. “I am certain there was money involved in their arrangement. A year later, she was living under the protection of the Honourable Charles Greville. It was he who sent her to the artist to have her portrait painted.”

Darcy, who had previously seen some of these paintings, shared his impression of the model with his guide. “I have always been intrigued by how lovely she was, but it was only as she represented the ideal image of Circe or Cassandra or a bacchanante. Today, you have caused me to ponder the irony of her otherworldly beauty in contrast to her wanton ways.”

You will see some very different portraits of Emma as Miranda from
The Tempest.
I hung them separately because they are so very unlike Romney’s other work. They are in the alcove off the gallery with Lady Anne’s portrait.”

After leaving his guide and his steady stream of juicy titbits, Darcy meandered through the remainder of the exhibit. He spent several minutes observing and considering the Fitzwilliam sisters. He had been instrumental in persuading Lady Catherine to loan her portrait to hang next to Lady Anne’s. Both were handsome women with expressions that proclaimed pride in their lineage. The familial ties were obvious in their features, but he remembered with pleasure that there the similarity ended.

Darcy preferred not to remember Shakespeare’s
The Tempest.
He determined to quickly view the paintings that were Romney’s interpretation of the bard’s final heroine. The first thing that struck him upon entering the alcove was that these works had none of the bucolic prettiness of most of the artist’s portraits of his favourite subject. Nor did they display any of the optimism Darcy associated with Miranda as she prepares to encounter a brave new world inhabited by goodly creatures. Instead, he was confronted by a very young girl in agony—a child really—her eyes haunted by some off-stage horror. For more than an hour, he remained in this room going from one depiction to the next, then returning to the first in the series in an attempt to unlock their mystery. Despite the queasiness they caused, he could not look away. Though none of the other portraits of Lady Hamilton had done so, these reminded him of Bethany’s mother. The wildness of her hair, the disturbed look Romney had captured in her eyes and the extreme youth of his promiscuous muse were elements that mirrored Darcy’s most persistent nightmare.

As soon as his mother’s portrait was restored to its rightful place in his study, Fitzwilliam immediately left London to return to Derbyshire. He desperately wanted to forget that exhibit.

He was greeted upon arriving home with the news that Anne was expecting a child. He was thrilled for many reasons. Chief among them was that this was precisely the news he needed to banish Miss Elizabeth from his dreams. He took very seriously Dr Wilder’s recommendations for ensuring Anne’s health. The cook was instructed to make all her favourite foods, and he made certain she ate them.

A walk was scheduled with his wife and daughter every day. Mrs Hinton made a sling for Bethany so Darcy would be free to hold Anne’s hand. The baby’s favourite position seemed to be facing forward so she could watch things. As always, he was amazed at how interested and delighted she was in her surroundings—her reactions reminded him of Mr Wordsworth’s words—for she truly found glory in each flower and splendour in even the simplest blade of grass he pointed out to her. Of course, sometimes he carried her nestled with her cheek against him, and it pleased him that in those instances, the thing she seemed to love most was his face and hair.

It was truly an idyllic time, and his marriage of convenience had miraculously become a relationship he treasured. In all honesty, he acknowledged it was not love as his parents had known; but it was an adequate substitute. The doubts he had struggled with—particularly those awakened during his last trip to London—began to fade from his consciousness. Increasingly his recollections of Miss Elizabeth was most often the sacrifice she had made soon to be jarringly replaced in his consciousness by the memory of her resolutely negotiating her pound of flesh. He had sent twenty thousand pounds to Mr Gardiner immediately upon her departure. At Bethany’s baptism, he had confronted his cousin about the three thousand pounds that was his part of the bargain. His refusal to pay had left Darcy both furious and chagrined that his family would be seen as though they did not honour their obligations.

One day, Anne begged off going on the walk because she wanted to nap. It was late October, and getting around was becoming more difficult for her. Darcy packed Bethany in the sling and they set out on a crisp day, redolent with dying leaves.

For the last month, Bethany had been babbling with the cadence of fully formed sentences. That the sounds were currently unintelligible seemed to him to be thought of by his daughter as the result of Darcy’s deficiency. Her eyes proclaimed an intuitive awareness she needed to proceed with patience as she shared her thoughts on the mysteries of the universe with her father. Today she concluded a long explanation of something or other by favouring him with her mother’s mischievous smile. She had learned early he would display a most unusual look on his face for her in response to that expression. The sides of his cheeks became dented.

They stopped, and he sat down with his back against the trunk of a massive chestnut tree. He took her out of the sling and cradled her in his arms. Her comical grin slid into an unrelenting stare that seemed to be trying to sketch his character. In an effort to thwart her effort and bring back her smile, he decided he should sing. He wished he knew the song Miss Elizabeth had sung to her but instead settled on one he had learned from his mother…
Scarborough Fair.
When he finished, Bethany first giggled and then said very distinctly…
‘Papa.’
In that moment, he became resolved to send Miss Elizabeth the additional three thousand pounds for Lord Wolfbridge, and another three thousand—not part of any bargain from him. Even though almost ten months had elapsed since he had sent Mr Gardiner the twenty thousand pounds, a demand for the additional amount promised had never been received. As he stared down at his daughter’s laughing eyes, it suddenly seemed the honourable thing to do. Besides, he had long thought he personally owed Bethany’s mother some tribute ever since he saw her kiss the baby’s fingers and heard her whisper words of eternal love. Regardless of her moral lapse, her sacrifice had been great.