"What?" Darcy shouted, shooting to his feet.
"That's impossible!" I cried, but then I was brought up short. "Darcy," I whispered, "come into the kitchen with me for a moment please."
Without waiting for a response I turned and almost ran into the kitchen and around the corner, out of sight of Lady Catherine. I turned around and Darcy was right behind me, his expression concerned.
"What is it?" he asked.
I looked at him for several moments, before choking out, "I do have a large, splotchy birthmark on my back."
Darcy froze, and stared at me. "Let me see," he said.
"No! It's not proper!" I gasped.
"We are married," he replied, "Impropriety doesn't exist between us anymore."
I took several steps back, and he just advanced. "Let me see," he said again, his voice a gentle mixture of pleading and an order.
I slowly turned around and he unbuttoned the back of my dress. My chemise was in the way so he wet a towel and pressed it to my lower back until he could see through the wet, white material. I heard him let out a slow breath before he was buttoning up the back of my dress and spinning me around to look me in the eyes.
"How the hell could that woman have known?" he asked, suddenly furious. It took me a moment to realize that he was not mad at me. He stormed past me back into the sitting room.
"How did you know?" he asked Lady Catherine, with something dangerous in his voice. The lady stood and faced him.
"The girl looked familiar, like her mother and sisters. I had my suspicions so I wrote a friend who lives near the Bennets. She sent me a picture of the girl that was drawn when she was three. I have it here with me." Lady Catherine dug around in her satchel and handed Darcy a small picture.
Darcy stared at the picture in his hand and then turned and held it up so he could compare it to me.
"Is there a resemblance?" I asked hesitantly. I wasn't all that sure that I wanted to be this long-lost girl.
"Unfortunately, there is indeed a strong resemblance. It's you," Darcy replied, and handed me the picture.
I stared at it for the longest time. It was me. I didn't know what to think. My mind was numb yet racing at the same time. I was someone's long-lost daughter and I had a family that was alive. So then how did I come to be with my family in America? Who were the people who raised me, from what I thought was infancy? Who I thought was my family.
I opened my mouth several times to voice these questions and closed it just as many. I eventually handed the picture back to Lady Catherine, but Darcy took it from me instead.
"If you don't mind," he said to Lady Catherine, "I'd like to keep this."
Lady Catherine merely nodded and I felt a sudden fury at her smug face. My life was just beginning to smooth out. I was happy, I realized. These past three weeks had been wonderful, and calm, and peaceful. And I had begun to get used to that and was beginning to expect to live like this for quite a while, until this woman showed up on my doorstep.
I could see what she was doing and from Darcy's dark expression, he could, too. So this was her scheme to get me out of the picture. I knew full well that unless she had an ulterior motive. She would never have done this for me, revealed to me that I had a family in England. She never would have gone to all this trouble, or even cared had I been anyone else's wife. This brought me back around to another question I had kept pushing back and trying not to think about: Who was Darcy, exactly?
I was shaken out of my thoughts by a hand on my elbow. I looked up to see Darcy looking at me in concern. "Are you alright?" he asked.
"I don't rightly know." I said softly.
"Well, I must be going," Lady Catherine announced, breaking the stunned silence.
"Wait!" I cried, "Before you go, could you tell me- if I am this girl- how I got to be here?" I asked Lady Catherine.
"There were many theories circulating about your disappearance and what could have happened to you. For you see, your family was in London at the time of your disappearance. It was rumored that you wandered away, got lost, got dirty, and were mistaken for a street orphan and picked up. Most street orphans in London are caught and sent to America to just get them out of the way. That is most likely what happened to you, and then you were either adopted or bought," Lady Catherine concluded. She then swept out the door, completely uncaring of the chaos she had just left behind.
Neither Darcy nor I so much as blinked an eye for a few moments. Then, I felt Darcy gently guiding me into a chair. He left and then returned with a glass of water, which I drank. Finally, I snapped out of whatever trance I had been in and looked at him.
"Now what?" I asked.
"Now... I'm not sure," he answered truthfully, pulling up the other chair and sitting in it next to me.
"I want to see, if it's true," I said, embarrassed at the desperation that was creeping into my voice. "But if I do, then she would win."
"Yes, I am fully aware of her plot to get our marriage annulled. I saw how her face lit up when I let slip that we haven't... consummated our marriage yet," he said, unsure of how I would react to it, exactly.
"I want to know for sure. And there is only one way to do that," I said, looking him right in the eye. "I am not running away. I just want to know for sure."
"I understand. I will begin looking into it and making the proper arrangements," Darcy promised.
"Tomorrow," I said. "It can wait until tomorrow. I just want to pretend for now that everything is as was it was before."
"Of course," Darcy said.
At that moment we both heard Georgie wail from her crib and I forced myself to stand up. I brushed my skirts off and then gave Darcy a forced smile. He didn't even smile back, just looked into my eyes in that serious, intense, searching way of his. I went up to get Georgie from her crib.
I spent the rest of the day, and the next day, in a daze. I cooked and cleaned, took care of Georgie, and said goodbye and hello to Darcy when he left and came home from work. Two days after our encounter with Lady Catherine, Darcy came home around noon.
"We are going to call on Lady Catherine and get the exact location of the Bennet family and see what else she knows. She has already visited us twice, I think it's time we repaid the favor," he told me as he came in the door. His tone alone told me that he was not overly fond of his aunt, or this situation.
In the past three weeks, I had finished my new dress so I put it on and then got Georgie ready. Soon after, Darcy pulled the carriage around to the front of the house. I climbed in and we set off.
At the last minute, Darcy decided that it would probably be best if we left Georgie with the Collins' during our visit, and I agreed. I remained in the carriage while Darcy took Georgie into to the Collins' house and briefly, with much editing, explained the situation.
Lady's Catherine's estate was massive, the woman obviously had quite a lot of money. The drive from the Collins' little cottage to Lady Catherine's mansion took five minutes, and the horses were at a brisk trot.
We pulled up to what could only be described as a mansion. A stable boy came out to take the wagon and Darcy helped me down. A butler answered the door when Darcy knocked and he ushered us in and through huge double doors to a sitting room.
"Mr. and Mrs. Darcy, ma'am," the butler said as he announced us to Lady Catherine.
Darcy and I walked through the sitting room, which was filled with such splendor that it almost hurt my eyes. We rounded the couch that was sitting in the middle of the room to face Lady Catherine. She was sitting with her back ramrod straight and her expression fixed in a permanent frown.
To Lady Catherine's left, on another couch, sat a pale faced young woman with a very sad look on her face. She appeared to be sickly, her face pale and sunk in. She glanced up at us as we bowed to Lady Catherine, but then fixed her stare firmly on her hands in her lap.
"This is my daughter, Anne," Lady Catherine introduced the woman to her left. "I trust your drive here was agreeable?"
"Yes, very agreeable," Darcy replied.
Lady Catherine did not rise and didn't offer us to sit either. We fell into an awkward silence and I used it to look about the room. There were pictures and tapestries adorning each wall and small sculptures scattered about the room on pedestals. The furniture, walls, ceiling, and carpeting were all very extravagant. Behind the couch, there was a beautiful piano.
"Do you play, Mrs. Darcy?" Lady Catherine asked, snapping me out of my thoughts.
"Only a little ma'am, and very poorly," I replied. My mother, or rather my adopted mother, had taught me to play simply when I was younger. And whenever I could, I would play on the pianos of my owners when they were not around.
"Nonsense, you shall play for us. I love music; I would have been a great proficient had I learned. So would Anne, had her health allowed it," Lady Catherine finished her little speech and looked at my pointedly.
Poor Anne just looked at her hands again and remained very still. I couldn't imagine growing up with a mother like Lady Catherine. The girl didn't look sick at all; she just looked like she needed a good day in the sun.
"Please ma'am, I truly cannot play well," I pleaded with Lady Catherine, but it was to no avail. She fixed me with a look and I walked meekly to the piano.
I managed to work my way through a rather simple piece without stumbling too much, when the butler announced lunch.
The lunch was just as large and fine as the house and estate. It made my cooking look truly pitiful, I thought. It was delicious though and thankfully mostly quiet except for a few questions from Lady Catherine inquiring about my age and other trivial nonsense.
By the time we were finished with dessert, Darcy had had enough with the pleasantries.
"Lady Catherine, I would like to speak with you concerning Mrs. Darcy's... situation," he said firmly.
"Of course," Lady Catherine replied. They both rose and retreated to the sitting room, closing the door behind them.
Anne and I looked at each other across the table for a few moments. I realized that the servants needed to clear the table then, so I stood up and began to wander around the dining hall. I was looking at the paintings when I heard Anne get up from the table. I turned around to face her.
"It's a beautiful day out. Would you like to take a turn about the gardens?" I asked her, the poor girl looked like she'd never been outside.
"Oh, I mustn't. Mother says that the fresh air is bad for my lungs and the sun is bad for my skin. It makes me sicker, she says," Anne said softly.
I stared at her. "Miss DeBourgh," I began, not quite sure how to put this, "fresh air is exactly what you need. You are probably so sickly because you are inside constantly."
She looked at me, startled. "But Mother says..."
"Let's just... pretend for a moment that your mother didn't say anything," I said, interrupting her, while thinking to myself how wonderful a concept that truly was. "Besides, you obviously are not getting any better staying inside all the time. At least try going outside. Take a turn about the garden with me and see what happens. I promise you, you will not fall down dead from a breath of fresh air," I said with a smile.
Anne looked at me uncertainly. "Well, if you are positive," she said hesitantly, "Let me get my wrap."
While I was waiting for Anne at the front door, I couldn't help but wonder what Darcy and Lady Catherine were talking about. I stared at the door to the sitting room and took a few steps closer when suddenly Anne appeared.
She was wrapped in a heavy wool shawl, even though it was a very warm spring day. She had also obtained a wide, floppy hat, as though she were afraid that the sun was going to eat her alive. It was amusing yet saddening at the same time.
We started out, going very slowly. Where I wanted to take proper strides, even willing to stay at a ladylike pace, Anne took such small, mincing steps that I was afraid it would take the entire day just to reach the gardens. We did reach the gardens though, and neither of us spoke a word the entire time. The gardens were beautiful. With perfectly trimmed hedges, and the flowers in perfect patterns and controlled growth. It was beautiful to be sure, but the longer I walked, the more stuffy it appeared. Not so much as a blade of grass was out of place.
At first, Anne appeared hesitant to even breathe, as though she were afraid the air would poison her. Once we reached the gardens however, and the scent of the flowers reached us, she began to take proper, deep breaths. The sun beat down, making the air very warm, and soon Anne was loosening her shawl.
"How long have you lived in America?" I asked, when the comfortable silence became awkward from us seemingly ignoring each other.
Anne started at the sound of my voice, "Around two years."
There was a pause and then she turned to me, "I'm curious about your past. If you don't mind my asking..." she trailed off hesitantly, as if she wasn't sure of my reaction.
"I don't mind you asking," I hastened to reassure her, and then told her shortened version of my story.
She listened attentively, her eyes wide as though she had never heard of such a thing. I was beginning to see just how sheltered her life truly was. There were several things that I would wish to unlearn, but the thought of being so ignorant of the world frightened me. I felt suddenly sorry for Anne, she had been more imprisoned than I, in many ways.
Our walk was interrupted then by Darcy walking toward us. He met us at the edge of the gardens, and told Anne that Lady Catherine was asking for her. The three of us slowly walked back to the house and none of us said a word.
When we reached the house, Anne turned to me, "Thank you for a lovely walk, and for talking with me," she said with a genuine smile.
"The pleasure was all mine," I replied, returning her smile.
Anne disappeared through the large front door, and Darcy turned to me, "Lady Catherine does not require us to bid her goodbye, so we may just leave."
I was quite relieved, and merely nodded. Darcy called for the carriage, and we drove back to the Collins's to fetch Georgie. Finally then, we headed for home. And I was surprised, yet pleased, to realize that I really was beginning to think of it as home.
Thanks for all of the reviews and PMs! I hope you enjoyed the chapter.