A/N: If you wish to shun me and leave me mean messages because I suck at updating, feel free. I know I'm erratic and awful. I'm aware. Have pity. Oh, and I can honestly blame my computer for the delay. Let's just say that Microsoft is not on my good side right now. School is hectic, as is politics and auditions and such, but the loss of the computer really made updating impossible. So now I'm back, with a chapter that I hope you enjoy. Thanks so much for your reviews--you are all the very best.
The End - Part 4
When Lady Lillian Bradford, then young Miss Lily Darcy, first entered society at age eighteen, the vocabulary of the ton found itself severely lacking. Never was another adjective bestowed upon Lillian than that of the word lovely. Her sisters Anne and Clara were labeled controversial, proud, beautiful, sweet, amiable, shy, haughty, intelligent, fascinating, bold, unattainable, proud, well-mannered, and utterly remarkable.
Lillian was lovely.
And, truthfully, she was. Lily's voice was soft and kind; it calmed and soothed. Her husband, Lord Arthur, had once remarked that, was her voice projected for all the world to hear, she could say not but three words before the world would declare its problems solved.
Lily's face matched her voice. All kindness and blonde curls, she bore a rather striking resemblance to her Aunt Jane. However, Lillian's face was rounder and a bit darker than Jane's, her hair was not quite so luminous, and her eyes were not blue but rather a light brown. She was therefore declared, while still certainly a beauty, second to both Anne and Clara in terms of looks.
Lovely also was Lillian's personality. Her primary character trait was that of a mother. This was not a recent development occurring after the birth of her first son seven years ago—indeed, Lily had been a mother all of her life. She was mother to everyone – her friends, her servants, and when the occasion called for it, to her siblings.
The only two people to whom Lillian was never a mother were her own parents. Rather, in their embrace, Lily took on the role of child. This she did up until the day of her mother's death. Lillian could always weather the worry and despair that came with harboring such immense amounts of motherly love, for she knew that ultimately, she was still a daughter.
A mother's job was to bear the weight of her children's despair, worry, and anxieties. Lillian could always perform this duty so magnificently because, at the end of the day, she too had someone whose job was to hold the weight of her emotions, and this woman had never once failed to do just that.
Therefore, when the soft-spoken, well-grounded, and lovely Lady Bradford's mother passed away, she was shaken far more than anyone of her acquaintance, including her husband, could have guessed.
Upon receiving her brother's letter, Lillian's first instinct was to go comfort Clara. She was a mother before all, and her first reaction to any tragedy was wondering how it was to affect her children. She experienced her mother's death first from the point of view of sister to Clara, holding the girl for hours as she cried.
It was not until she got in her own bed that night that she allowed herself to mourn. She cried, loud, echoing sobs of despair that she could not bring herself to quiet even when she realized that there was a possibility her children might hear.
Arthur attempted to comfort her, his soft body and scratchy dirty-blonde beard never having failed to calm her before. But in his embrace, she could not but help worrying how seeing her so sad was affecting him, which only added to her current anxieties. What she truly needed was a mother, someone to shoulder her burdens upon, and this she no longer had.
Lillian knew that, to be a mother, you had to bear the weight of your children's worlds on your shoulders. Lillian did this every day, and then this weight she handed over to her mother.
Lillian didn't have her mother's strength. However was she to function without her?
When the sun woke her the next morning, bags under her eyes and her face blotchy and red, she crossed the room to sit at her vanity and look into the mirror.
She saw lines on her face. Her hair had lost some of its vibrancy. Was it possible, she wondered, that one night without her mother had aged her so severely?
Perhaps it was simply reflecting the truth that she had dealt with last night: Lily was no longer a daughter. With her parents vanished the image of the generous and shy little girl, the child that her father had always called "Angel" (and he was not ever one for terms of endearment).
The weight of her own world was now solely on her shoulders. Neither her heart nor her countenance reacted positively to this.
In the cold, early morning light, as she gazed upon the unsightliness of her lined visage and a tear rolled down her cheek, the former Miss Lily Darcy knew herself to be anything but lovely.
Clara should not have been so shaken. She had expected this. Awaited it, even.
But she simply could not help it. Clara had always identified herself as the third part of something bigger. Together, her father, mother, and herself lived in such harmony with one another, she always considered her identity to be grounded in the fact that she was her parents' daughter.
Now, she was not that. Nor was she her husband's wife or her child's mother. Clara was the only Darcy child utterly unclaimed, and she was discovering now that the one trait of hers that was not inherited from either one of her parents was a lack of surety in herself.
In reality, this would build in time, just as her father's did after his parents' deaths. But she did not know this now, and the lack of surety in her own person startled her immensely, especially as she prided herself as someone who was always sure of everything.
And so, when her mother died, Clara broke. If she was defined as her Parent's Daughter, and she could no longer bear even that title, then she was nothing at all.
She was empty. Or perhaps not. She was more…not there. She wasn't present, for her identity was too much entangled in the lives of her parents for her to know herself to be present, and her heart was too shaken at the loss of her parents for her to feel anything but utter despair.
Surprisingly, seeing as they had never been particularly close, it was Lily's arms that held Clara together in that moment.
It was Lily who embraced her, calmed her with her soothing voice. Clara was forever grateful for this, because, in Lily's embrace, she knew who she was.
She was Clara—beautiful and recently-orphaned eighteen-year-old with an uncommonly sharp wit and mind. She was Clara Darcy, the girl that everyone in the London ton was going to talk about next season when she was finally out. She was Clarabelle, the girl that, at age three, had crawled her way downstairs at one of her parents' balls and, to her father's anger at the incompetence of the servants and her mother's amusement, made quite the scene in the middle of the dance floor (she was allowed to stay downstairs for a while with her parents, and from that day on made a traditional appearance for about ten minutes halfway through every Pemberley Ball).
She was Miss Clara Darcy of Pemberley, the girl that had inherited her parents' strength.
She would get through this. Yes. She would get through this.
Really, she had no choice.
The carriage arrived at Pemberley on the second of December at midday. There weren't a remarkable number of spectators. In addition to a few servants, Edward was there, along with Anne and Henry.
Lillian rushed to her three siblings and they rushed to her, embracing each other tearfully through their smiles. In their youth, the four Darcy children had been remarkably close.
"How long has it been?" Lily wondered, her voice muffled by Edward's jacket and her arms around all three of them.
"Four years, eleven months, and nine days," Anne said. Lily raised her eyebrows at her sister before she remembered that she couldn't see.
The next few moments could not have been predicted by anyone. Clara, who was infamous for inheriting her mother's boldness, was standing demurely off to the side, not knowing her place in the embrace of the siblings that were much more, to her, aunts and uncles.
And then Anne, known for her insensitivity, noticed her sister standing awkwardly off to the side. In a move much more befitting Edward or Lillian, Anne discreetly pulled Clara into the embrace.
"It is so good to see you, sister," Anne whispered into Clara's ear.
Edward heard this exchange and noticed the smile on Clara's face, which resembled the look of a euphoric and loved child.
Well, Edward reasoned, she was only eighteen. Still practically a child.
Anyone privy to Edward's thoughts in that moment would have probably foreseen some troubles with Edward's future guardianship of Clara. It did not appear that he would be so very accepting of the fact that she was already practically a woman.
Then again, no one could possibly be stricter than their father, so really Clara was getting a watered-down version of what she would have experienced with him.
But there was no Elizabeth to reason with him, either.
It was going to be an interesting couple of years.
That night's dinner was a bittersweet affair. The four eldest siblings had almost five years worth of excitement to catch up on and three decades more about which to reminisce. Chatter was endless.
Clara had expected to feel very apart from her siblings during the four days that they would spend alone at their childhood home—she knew the four of them to be uncommonly close.
But, oddly, she didn't. Perhaps it was simply Edward and Lillian's inherent attentiveness, or Henry's particular fondness of his baby sister. Or maybe it was Anne, who, surprising everyone, was the most loving towards Clara of them all. After all, thought Anne, it was her who was there to witness Clara's very earliest years. And Clara did sometimes remind her a bit of Imogene.
Regardless of the cause, Clara felt very welcome and very loved despite the unavoidable feeling of obtrusiveness that plagued her when she was alone amongst the four of them. With her parents, she fit. Amongst her friends, she fit. In society, she fit. This was the one niche in which she couldn't find a way to be totally comfortable.
Irony reared its ugly head—one's family was supposed to be the one and only people with which you always had a place, and Clara found that they were the one and only group of people in which she didn't.
But they tried. Conversation was subtly twisted (in a way that only four people that have grown up amongst high London society can be) to include Clara completely. The reminiscing was, instead, storytelling. They told endless stories of their own childhood to Clara, regardless of how many times she had heard them all (She loved hearing them again; truly, life at Pemberley could be utterly hilarious at times. And then there was the matter of stories of her parents, which she had a new appreciation for.).
"Ooooh, Lily," Edward said after dinner that night, an uncommonly wide smile on his face and a far-off look in his eyes as he recalled with Lillian events decades past. "I don't know whether or not you'll have heard this one, Clara," he began. Clara was quite sure she had, but would not have mentioned that fact for all the gold in England.
The four days shared by only the Darcy children would have been utterly blissful had they not been clouded by the event which had caused their occurrence. The Darcy children seemed to have forgotten how very well they fit together, and this coupled with two new revelations made for a very pleasant reunion indeed.
The first discovery was that the children no longer needed their parents to keep the peace, for their own maturity took the place of their father's stern voice or, even worse, their mother's disappointed gaze. Perhaps, in time, the silly childish fights that come with sharing blood and home would return, but for those four days, they were nonexistent.
The second discovery was just how well Clara fit into their small group. It should have been expected, seeing as the original Darcy clan was joined by Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam and Clara was said to be a blend of their personalities. By day three, there was no needed effort on the parts of Edward, Lillian, Henry, and Anne to make the conversation gear towards Clara also. She was folded effortlessly into their group; really, she did just have about as much in common with them as possible for someone so unacquainted.
It was not that Lord and Lady Darcy didn't see their older children frequently; in fact, they saw them far more than usual for people of their age and location, always bringing Clara along to encourage those brotherly and sisterly bonds. But Clara knew all of her siblings as a child knows an adult, and they knew her in the same way.
In short, they were very pleased to find that they very much liked the older version of their baby sister.
And Clara was very pleased to find that her adult-self liked them and fit with them. For it was in that period of four days that Clara was claimed. She was no longer a daughter.
But she was a sister. And this was more significant than she ever could have guessed. For being a daughter or a wife or a mother meant that you were loved.
Being a sister meant that, also.
Henry Darcy's first thought as he woke up on the sixth of December was to be pleased about the weather. He opened his eyes to find himself staring at nothing more than the all-too-familiar sight of the top of his bed frame. However, this had been his room since he was a child, and he was very much acquainted with the different lights it possessed in sunshine, cloud cover, and darkness.
The grey hue of the light from the window told him that today would be stormy. Thus, his first thought was to be pleased about the weather. His mother loved storms.
And just like that, with nothing more than simply noting the hue of the light that first struck his eyes in the morning, he was remembering…
"Henry," Elizabeth Darcy whispered to her sleeping seven-year-old, pushing his hair back from his face gently. He didn't stir.
"Henry," she murmured again. He shifted in bed, his eyes opening ever-so-slightly and then fully opening when he saw her.
"Mum?" he asked, groggy and confused.
"Shhh!" she shushed him gently. "We do not want to awaken the house. Come with me."
Henry did not like to get up. It was his least favorite thing to do in a day. But as a young boy of seven with a particularly incredible mother, he would follow Elizabeth anywhere. Gladly.
So it was with great anticipation that he was led quietly through the deserted halls of Pemberley, back into the Master's bed chamber. She opened the door to her bedroom and took Henry past his sleeping father onto the balcony.
A storm was raging outside. The most peculiar light covered the already awe-inspiring grounds of Pemberley—that of a storm occurring while the sun is rising.
"Look," she said simply, and they leaned against the balcony together and watched the storm progress. Henry was of half a mind to ask whether or not they were in any danger, with lightning raging ahead. But the question came from his brain, not his insides. He was completely calm despite knowing that he should not be, and decided not to disturb the peace of the moment with silly questions.
After a while, Henry's father came out to the balcony also, his hair a mess and in his nightclothes, startling his young son by looking so disheveled. Henry had never seen his father looking anything less than prim.
"I was wondering where my wife had gone off to," he said in groggy early-morning felicity as he came to them and kissed a smiling Elizabeth on the forehead. "And stealing young children out of their beds, too!" he said, picking up his son and resting him on his hip (Henry hated being picked up by anyone but his father, and protested severely if the hands were not the big, strong hands of Lord Darcy).
"I couldn't help myself. It is so very beautiful," Elizabeth said in quiet awe.
"Should he?" Fitzwilliam mouthed to his wife in such a way so that his son could not see. Henry had had a very close brush with death once upon a time, and everyone but his mother treated him as something fragile, not to be standing in the rain, however warm it was, without proper clothing.
Elizabeth shook her head reassuringly. "It's so perfect," she then said, rubbing Henry's back. "I wanted him to see it." She smiled down at her son and looked into his eyes.
Fitzwilliam's brow was furrowed, but he looked reassured enough by his wife.
They stood in silence again for a time, just watching the storm.
"I wanted you to see it," Elizabeth repeated in Henry's ear. "I thought you would appreciate it."
"I do," he said as his mother took his hand, holding it at about her shoulder's height, for Henry was very tall in his father's arms. His father squeezed him a little in a discreet hug.
"I love it," he said. Low, rolling thunder sounded overhead, and Henry thought it to be the most beautiful sound in the world.
Well, second, perhaps, to his mother's voice.
During the funeral, it rained. The Darcy children were blank-faced. They all stood in upright, proper positions reminiscent of their father when he was in company.
It wasn't until they found themselves in a room in Pemberley sometime later, just the five of them, that they cried together. The storm made it appear to be late evening even though it was only afternoon, and the eerie light was fitting as Clara sobbed, Lillian soothed, Anne sat motionless, Henry cried quietly, and Edward wiped the tears as soon as they left his eye.
Edward stared at the fireplace for a very long time. Despite the servants and children and wives and husbands and guests milling about, Pemberley had never felt emptier.