TRIGGER WARNING: SEXUAL ASSAULT IN THE LAST PART
First, Mrs. Reynolds showed Elizabeth to her rooms – a surprisingly spacious bedroom, a smaller sitting room and an adjoined study with a comfortable desk, an armchair, and walls lined with bookshelves.
Elizabeth could not suppress her smile; she knew her employer stressed the importance of independent learning, but he needed not to hint at it so heavily.
A wide watercolour landscape. White and beige walls, dark wood and houseplants in the earthen pots. She was glad that whoever had the room furnished did not fall victim to the previous decade's obsession with frills and gilding.
"I love it," she told the housekeeper, who puffed up her chest at the praise.
"The late Lady Anne – the master's mother – had the keenest eye for aesthetics, indeed. Pemberley has always been a great estate – but it was her who turned it grand, even though her tastes were surprisingly stark for an aristocrat. She claimed that only simplicity allowed beauty to shine. She hated the heavy curtains and velvet veils covering the walls that have been in fashion for years. She always said it made each room look like a bed." The housekeeper chuckled. "Well, the servants hated it too for different reasons. Ever since we removed the frilly things, only a fraction of dust gathers around."
"Beautiful and practical is the best combination," said Elizabeth and she could not help herself but walk across the room, her fingers caressing the backs of the books, the cold firmness of the wood. If she were to bolt right now, nothing stood in her path.
"Indeed, it is!" Mrs. Reynolds laughed. "Her children took after her. Both Mr. and Miss Darcy follow their mother's example of hatred towards unnecessary ornaments." The woman smiled, more to herself. "It does translate to their manners, which might seem odious to newcomers, but I've always found their sincerity refreshing."
Elizabeth knew not what to make of her employer's behaviour in his office. He did nothing ungentlemanly, but his manner of speaking made her hair stand on end. But perhaps, she argued, Mrs. Reynolds might be right. Perhaps what she perceived as curt and imperious, Mr. Darcy thought to be a mere time-efficient method of conveying his expectations. And he did seem pleased with her rather eclectic education. That was not the reaction she usually received.
When she had entered the seminary the five years ago, when she had passed through the mouth-like gate towards the school grounds, she had known with the stone-cold certainty she had lost every opportunity to follow every life-path the little Lizzy Bennet had dreamt about. In a way, she had ceased to be a woman in the eyes of the society the very moment the gate to the seminary had creaked open. She revelled in the fact yet. Not even Mama's nerves about her disgraced daughter becoming a bluestocking could taint the joy of letting go of the expectations she could not fulfil anymore.
"Now, we shall move further, Miss Bennet. Pemberley is vast and we shall not like the newest member of the household to get lost on her first day."
Mrs. Reynolds did not exaggerate. Pemberley would easily fit two Netherfields. As it had grown over the centuries, the halls and corridors formed themselves into the Derbyshire Labyrinth.
Her rooms were located in the upper part of the house, close to the family wing but still apart. The family wing was given a quick walkthrough without entering either room; although neither Elizabeth nor Mrs. Reynolds wished to intrude on their employers' privacy, both realized the necessity for her becoming familiar with the floor plan in case of an emergency.
Next were the public parts of the house, each magnificent in their own right. Large galleries, drawing rooms, ballrooms. A glass-walled atelier. A music room spacious enough to host a small orchestra, with a fortepiano looming in the centre, a harp standing next to the large window, and a string quartet stationed in the opposite corner. Countless flutes, hoboes and English horns were mounted on the walls in an organized pattern. "There are days when Mr. and Miss Darcy lock themselves in here and the house is filled with such sweet music it makes one's heart ache."
"We're yet to see the schoolroom."
"Oh, there's none," said Mrs. Reynolds. "There've… never been enough children in the house to require one."
Elizabeth did not pry. The single sentence carried enough weight to implicate the sad possibilities for the age-gap between Mr. Darcy and his only sister, and the lack of other siblings. The two women exchanged awkward looks, before Mrs. Reynolds cleared her throat and said: "I believe it's the time to see the true jewel of Pemberley."
The library of Pemberley spanned across half of the west wing and two floors. The balustraded gallery circled around the walls; two serpentine staircases connected the gallery with the floor below. Bright light poured in through the tall windows, multiplied by the number of mirrors. A row of unlit Argand lamps waited patiently on the shelf for the night-time. In the centre of the lower level was an octagon of bookcases; other cave-like nooks formed by pairs of standalone bookshelves, armchairs and end tables were arranged around the library. Elizabeth noticed a dark panelled door on the lower level. She asked Mrs. Reynolds where it led. Mr. Darcy's office was the answer.
As a little girl, Elizabeth had loved listening to her father's spooky stories. The most horrendous one had been the tale of the Burning of the Great Library of Alexandria. It had taken a thorough examination of the ancient texts to realise that the Alexandrian library had not been a mere oversized copy of her father's. She had seen the theoretical depictions, artists' imaginings of the shrine to the Muses. She had collected the engravings of what could have been. And yet, what she imagined the depictions lacked only for her to find in here: the sheer feeling of the knowledge at the grasp of her fingertips, the foreboding sense of the patience of multiple generations, the exhilarating buzzing of words waiting to be read, to be remembered, to be retold over and over well beyond one's lifetime…
She turned away. Her heart was beating fast against her ribcage.
The door on the lower level opened and she watched Mr. Darcy strode to one of the bookcases in the octagon. He must have realized he was being observed, as he glanced up and their eyes met. Quietly he nodded, took the book, and walked back to his office.
Theseus found the Minotaur.
. . .
Later in the village of Lambton, Elizabeth met with her Uncle and Aunt Gardiner. They were in the middle of their early dinner at the inn when she arrived. There was a plate with pork roast and asparagus fixed for her already.
"Lizzy!" First her Aunt then Uncle stood up when she entered. "I hope your meeting fared well."
"Pemberley is everything you described and more, Aunt Margaret," Elizabeth smiled, taking her seat. "Thank you for the dinner. I started to get hungry. I think the family keeps to the Town hours; the dinner is to be served in – "she glanced at the standing clock "– an hour."
For a while, they ate together in silence.
"Lizzy," Uncle Edward said with the heavy tone she learned to find tiresome. "Dear child, I hope you realize that this is not necessary. You don't need to throw away your future."
"I have nothing left to throw away." Her appetite was gone. She put down her fork.
"Your family misses you. You should return to Hertfordshire, I beg you."
"Hertfordshire can burn to ashes, for all I care."
"You don't mean that."
"The good folk of Meryton has known me since I was a babe. And yet they dragged my name through the filthiest mud when the first opportunity for a piece of salacious gossip appeared. If I were to return to my father's home, it would be only a matter of time for the rumours to run again, ruining my sisters' future," she snapped. "It is enough that the incident ruined me. I will not allow it to spread to anyone else."
. . .
She just turned fifteen. A curious creature on the brink of womanhood.
It happened on the land of Netherfield, at dawn. She told him she was expected home. She only went for a stroll before breakfast. He was adamant he needed to walk with her. She was too polite to refuse, and her throat felt suddenly so dry. She was like a little animal whose senses screamed, that there is a cat ready to pounce.
And he laughed, when he kissed her, and she pushed him away. His hands grabbed her by her wrists and twisted. She tried to scream, and his mouth swallowed her voice. The taste of iron of his blood when she bit him. The throbbing burn of his punch to her temple, the moist texture of his palm gagging her. The strange, dissociated sensation of his other hand under her skirts. The cold of earth beneath her, the stones and pebbles pressing into her back. The blue and red sky. Leafless hawthorn branches. His face.
She tried to shake him off her body, to kick, to crawl away. And then his manhood stabbed through her and again and again, each thrust sentencing her. The pain made her clench, and he mistook it for submission. His grip faltered for a moment and that meant freedom.
She was never so strong as that day when she managed to lift him off herself and bolt to her feet. She run, dirty and tattered, to her father's house.