~ 9 ~ Behind the shelf

Oh dear! Mary will be amazed when I tell her this... or maybe not. Mary's reactions to things I find interesting are generally hard to guess. But I am amazed, and I'm not the only one.

"I don't think we were supposed to see that, do you?" he asks, giving me one of his cheeky smirks again.

"Probably not," I agree.

"So... the best thing to do would be to close this secret door again and pretend not to know about it," he suggests.

"Probably yes," I agree, already walking towards the hidden passage that is just too interesting to be ignored. "On the other hand, though... who says the landlords even know about this?"

On the inside, it's more like a small square room than a passage, and there's a door on the other side.

"Locked," I realise trying to open it. "Of course."

But the lock looks... unusual, to say the least. It's huge and made of iron, nothing too strange about that, but for some reason it's coloured like a rainbow.

"I've seen something like this before," Finley says. "In Mister Darcy's office, I believe. It caught my attention the last time I was cleaning the furniture..."

"Why would Darcy need a coloured lock in his office?" I ask.

"It was not a lock. It was a key. But it had the same colours as this lock... maybe it's not a coincidence."

I look at him with wide eyes. "So you think whatever is behind this door belongs to Darcy?" Further elaborating on this in my thoughts, I come to the conclusion that it might be another reason for the current tension between my sister and her husband. What if he's keeping something from her, but she knows about it?

But Finley has a different idea. "Not necessarily. It was lying about in a cabinet... odd place to keep a key, don't you think? If you ask me, Darcy doesn't even know what it's for and thinks it's just decoration. So if we could just get our hands on it..."

We look at each other for a minute.

"Do you think Darcy will notice it's gone?" I ask after a while.

He shrugs.

"Meow!"

That came from behind the door. And we both heard it.

"Well, if Lady Hamilton thinks we should try it, then I guess we should," Finley says.

"Okay, but let's first get out of here before anyone sees us," I suggest.

Back outside, when he touches the book again, the shelf immediately flips back to its original position. Since I have no idea where Mister Darcy's office is, I tell Finley to lead me to it. The door is open and we can hear Lady de Bourgh's voice from metres away when we arrive.

"I'm not saying this on a whim, I'm serious!" she answers to whatever has been said in the room before.

It's Darcy's voice that replies. "How can you expect me to take you seriously? The truth is, you've been doing and saying a lot on a whim lately."

"But I've seen what this girl is capable of! And if you don't believe me, go and see for yourself. The clothes she sews are wonderful!"

"Is she talking about you?" Finley asks me under his breath.

"Seems like it," I whisper back, although I can't actually believe what I'm hearing.

"She says the fabric was expensive," Lady de Bourgh continues. "And you have more than enough money, my dear. You should give her some so she can buy her fabric without making deals with the merchants."

"And why should I do that?" Darcy demands.

"Don't make such a fuss, she's your wife's sister! A sister with a talent, so we should do what we can to support that talent or else it might be lost."

Yes, they're definitely talking about me.

"Okay," Finley says while the two in Darcy's office continue arguing. "I'll get us a candlestick, you go in there and get the key."

"What? Wait!" I say when he's about to go. "How am I supposed to do that? You're a servant. Can't you just pretend to be cleaning the furniture and snatch the key while no one's looking?"

"I already cleaned the furniture a few days ago," he reminds me. "Wouldn't it look suspicious if I did it again now? By the way, Lady de Bourgh is in there and she still wants me to get that book. I'll have to find a way to disguise the one in the library somehow before she sends someone else."

"Good point," I sigh. "Okay, then..."

"What are you two up to again?"

Spinning round in shock, I see Elizabeth coming our way.

"Nothing!" I quickly reply. "We were just..."

"Sorry, it's my fault," Finley interrupts. "I was told to clean some instruments in the music room, but I don't know where that room is, so I asked Miss Catherine for the way."

Coming to a stop in front of us, Elizabeth eyes him warily. "This is the second time you stay here with Lady de Bourgh, and you still don't know where the music room is?"

"Sorry," he apologises. "But so far it was always Mrs Reynolds who took care of the instruments. She would still be doing it if she hadn't been so... distracted lately."

Elizabeth rolls her eyes. "Yes, I know what you mean. I can't explain what's wrong with her these days... Okay, come with me, I'll show you the way," she offers before turning to me. "And you, young lady, I hope you're not getting up to any nonsense today."

"I hope you're not getting up to any nonsense today," I repeat, aping my sister's tone when she's out of sight. "Honestly, as if I had nothing better to do than getting on her nerves."

But since I'm up to no good today, Elizabeth's sorrows might be justified for once.

Now, how am I going to do that? I can't just break in on Lady de Bourgh and Mister Darcy's conversation, take the key out of the cabinet and leave. Not without raising questions, at least. I've never been in that office before, so I don't even know which cabinet it is. I've never had a reason to speak to Darcy either, so how am I going to explain that I want to see him now?

Of course, I could also wait until he leaves the room. However, Elizabeth told me on the way to the market that he likes to spend a lot of time in his office, so that might not be a good idea.

But then something else comes to my mind. Why didn't I hit on that idea before? My clumsiness has always caused me trouble up until now, but this time it might come in handy.

Not far from the door is a big vase that is filled with water and flowers. It stands on the ground, is about half as tall as me, and looks sturdy enough to survive being knocked over. I still don't want to risk breaking it, though, so I carefully turn it over, spilling the water and the flowers all over the floor. When the preparations for my intentional accident are done, I throw myself to the ground with a yelp, trying to make as much noise as possible and actually hurting my knee on the way down. But it's bearable.

Things work out as I intended them to. Darcy and Lady de Bourgh hurry out of the office to see what caused the noise and look startled when they see me in a puddle of water on the floor, next to the overturned vase.

"Goodness! What happened to you?" Lady de Bourgh exclaims as she hurries in my direction, closely followed by Darcy.

"I'm so sorry!" I say, trying to sound sincere, but not too much since I'm supposed to feel dizzy from the fall. "I was lost in thought and then I crashed into this thing... But I'm fine, I guess. I just feel a little..." Instead of saying the word, I rest my forehead on my hand as if it hurt.

"I'll take care of her," Darcy says to Lady de Bourgh. "You go and find a servant to clean up this mess."

While she hurries away, he helps me get on my feet and leads me to his office.

"There's a sofa in the office. You should lie down a bit."

"Thank you," I say, and when we're finally in the office: "I think I'm going to be fine. Could you get me some water? I'm sure that will help."

Being the gentleman he is, Darcy can't refuse, and as soon as he's out of the room, I suddenly get well again and start searching the cabinets. It doesn't take me long to find the key. It seems to be the only object of its kind in the office, and it has exactly the same colours as the lock in the library.

I have long since found what I came for by the time Darcy returns, but I keep up the play for another five minutes before I can leave without causing suspicion. Finley is already awaiting me in the library when I get there, and he brought a candlestick as he promised.

"Ready for a little adventure?" he asks.

"Let's do it!" I say, and with that, we open the door to the secret passage once again.

We soon find out how to close the door from inside; there's a switch sticking out of the shelf's wooden back side that returns the unusual revolving door to its common position. That's for the best because we can't be sure the library will remain empty for the rest of the day, especially since it's still Elizabeth's favourite room.

Once the secret door is closed, there's no way of seeing whether or not the coast is clear, so getting out again might be a problem. But one that we'll worry about when the time has come. For now we have candles to illuminate the dark passage and the key that, as we expected, fits perfectly in the lock.

On the other side of the no longer locked door there's a winding staircase leading downstairs.

"The dark secrets of Pemberley are about to be revealed," Finley says slowly in a deep voice that gives me the creeps. "I hope you've brought some garlic, holy water and a crucifix."

"No. Why?"

"No? Then get ready to run back upstairs at the sight of any coffins. We're obviously not prepared to meet vampires."

"Stop it!"

Fortunately, there aren't any coffins. Lighting the candles on the wall with his own candlestick, Finley reveals a small room that might have been a wine cellar before it was changed into something else. Huge paintings of animals lean on the wall. Apart from being very dusty, they seem to be in a good condition, much unlike everything else in the room. There are a few shelves that might fall apart if you look at them too intensely, and parts of their bright wooden surface are pitch-black as if they'd been exposed to fire sometime in the past.

"Do you remember what Mister Darcy told us about his great-great-aunt?" Finley suddenly asks. "He said she had a cellar room where she kept everything important for her work."

"You think this might be the room?"

"It makes sense, doesn't it? Look at the furniture. Or the ceiling."

Now that he mentions it... There's a big black stain on the ceiling which I thought was a shadow, but looking at it closely, it seems to be the same phenomenon as on the shelves.

"You're right. The room was eventually set on fire." Approaching one of the animal paintings, I add: "And these must be the paintings Lady Hamilton kept in her room... the room where I reside at the moment."

"Well, the question is..." Finley hesitates for a moment. "Why does this room have to be hidden behind a moving shelf in the library? There's nothing... terrible here."

"Sounds like you're gravely disappointed," I remark with a smile.

"To be honest, I am," he admits. "I was expecting to unveil some dark family secret... or perhaps some vampires. And what do we find instead? A few dusty paintings and burnt shelves."

"Seems like it."

"Boring!"

But I find it anything but boring. Looking around some more, I come across another painting, bigger than the others and the only one I've found so far that doesn't show an animal. It shows a middle-aged woman instead, reddish brown curls with barely visible grey strands surrounding her heart-shaped face. Her smiling red lips form a stark contrast to her piercing light blue eyes that look rather worried, but I find her pretty nonetheless.

"Look! Do you think this is Lady Catherine Hamilton?"

Finley wrinkles his forehead at the sight of the painting. "Not very likely. According to Mister Darcy, his great-great-aunt was rather ugly, whereas this woman is quite pretty."

"He didn't call her ugly. He merely said she was not a beauty of nature," I correct him. "But beauty is in the eye of the beholder anyway."

"Well, now that you mention it..." He looks at the painting once again. "He also said that the cat that later appeared reminded everyone of Lady Hamilton because of its blue eyes and reddish brown fur. If this lady turned into a cat, she would probably look like that too."

The longer I look at Lady Hamilton's shy smile, the sadder it makes me. Why is this painting down here in a room that is hidden behind a shelf, getting more and more dusty between old animal paintings and burnt furniture? Why is it not hanging on a wall in one of the countless rooms and corridors of the castle? Is this woman no longer allowed to be a part of her own family just because of some unusual choices she made in life?

I don't have to rack my brain about this to find the answer within my own family. After all, the same thing happened to Lydia – she didn't play by the rules, and now most of the family hates her. And the rules must have been much more severe by the time Lady Hamilton was alive.

"It must have been Mister Darcy's great-grandmother," I think aloud. "She removed all the paintings of Lady Hamilton and installed a secret door mechanism to hide them behind, however she did that. I guess burning her sister's life's work was not enough, she wanted to completely erase all memories of her."

"Hateful woman!" Finley comments. "I'd never do anything like that to my siblings if I had any, no matter what they've done."

"Me neither," I agree, thinking of Lydia once again.

If this small room wasn't as stuffed as it is, we would already be out of here again by now. But behind the shelves and paintings are other shelves and paintings, it's like a little museum down here. Another painting without animals shows two women, one of them being the middle-aged woman we assume to be Lady Hamilton, the other having the same blue eyes, but much darker hair, and a facial expression as if she had a pile of shit under her nose.

"This must be the evil sister," Finley concludes, and I agree with a nod. "But hey, look at that!" He points at yet another painting of Lady Hamilton that shows not only her face, but a lot of her dress as well. A very beautiful dress. "You think you'd be able to sew something like this?"

"No way! Look at all these colours, and the pattern seems to be rather complicated. I don't think I'm that skilled."

"You should try it!" Finley insists. "Every artist grows with challenges like this."

"But the fabric looks rather expensive as well," I point out. "Think about how much money would be lost if I screwed up."

"You must have faith in yourself! Or, if you need some kind of motivation, do it for me!"

Time to raise an eyebrow. "Finley, if you want new clothes, I'd strongly advise you to go with a suit or anything else with pants. I wouldn't mind you running around in a fancy dress, but don't expect everyone to be as tolerant..."

"No! I didn't mean..." He looks at me like he thinks I'm serious, but when he realises I'm not, we both burst out laughing.

Only for a while, though, because I can suddenly hear a voice nearby.

"Ssssh!"

It's the low voice of a female servant. Mrs Reynolds, I believe, but it's very hard to understand. "I don't know where she is. I haven't seen her today."

"Could you keep looking?" That's Elizabeth now. "I need to discuss something with her."

"Of course."

We remain silent, not even moving. Then, after a while, I whisper: "So... my sister is looking for me. But you know what? I'm not going back upstairs just yet."

"You're not?"

"No. There's still a lot to discover here," I explain, still whispering. "And I'm sure she can do without me for a while. From now on, this will be my secret place. Whenever the others annoy me, I'll come here and have them look for me."

"Don't you think that's a little childish?"

"They think of me as a little child anyway, so I might as well take advantage of that. And you... I will have to rely on you to keep this secret to yourself!"

Finley nods eagerly. "Count on it! After all, this is now my secret place too."

I suppose I can agree to that.