I lifted her onto my lap—she was my baby, after all—and cuddled her for a few precious moments. “Did you tell Susannah you were coming to visit Mummy?”
“Oh, but I don’t need to! She always knows where to look first!”
I squeezed her. “And what is the rule, my sweetest lamb?”
She looked up at me with eyes identical to my own. “But Mummy, what if she says ‘No’? And then I would have to be obedient, and I might miss you! Early mornings are the bestest times, before everyone begins asking you one million questions. And today will be worst of all because Bennet is leaving and I will miss him and Windsy was pretending to sneeze but she was crying, I know, and who will give me riding lessons and play hide and seek and pretend to let me win at chess? And everything just seems so, so terr’ble.”
Janey’s grief was genuine, but she was clever enough to point it out so that I would not immediately return her to the ever patient and longsuffering Susannah. Still, I snuggled her a bit more tightly.
“Do you remember what we are doing tomorrow?”
She immediately began bouncing on my lap with excitement. “Going to Auntie Tilney’s!” she squealed. “And Uncle Tilney’s! Oh, oh, and I can ride with you and Auntie Bingley and Catherine Caroline sometimes!”
The Bingleys had never been close to the earl and his wife—primarily, I believe, due to Georgiana’s dislike of travel and company. But once I had determined that my husband must reconnect with all his family, I dragged her and Bingley along as well. It was a tiny bit awkward, the first time that Jane and Bingley met at Matlock Court, but Tilney—obviously in the know—and Georgiana—obviously not—both contrived to put everyone at ease. And of course, the delight of the children—the Bingleys had three, two boys and a girl, with Catherine Caroline being Janey’s favourite—smoothed over any little embarrassment in the beginning. It had never occurred to me, before that meeting, how much Georgiana and Jane had in common, and they quickly became the best of friends, all the scars of the past fully healed.
But little Janey was not finished with her enthusiasm. “Papa will be on Thunder and Uncle Bingley will be on Gallant and they will want me to ride with them sometimes, and Windsy and Susannah will want me with them sometimes and Auntie and Uncle Martin will miss me if I don’t ride with them, too!”
I had never become entirely accustomed to calling my aunt by her surname of Martin, rather than Gardiner, although I never stumbled over it aloud any longer. But just before Edward was born, Mrs Spengler had died, and in an action surprising everyone, Robert Martin and Margaret Gardiner wed. They sold the Lambton property and built another house on the Martin leasehold, Mr Martin having no interest in resuming the running of the farm. Mr Darcy arranged for another profitable lease for his nephew, as Mr Martin’s son and new wife returned home to farm the Martin property. Mrs Martin the younger had a pretty sister, with whom Richard Williams grew smitten, and in less time than I could ever have expected, the shy steward was married and beginning a family of his own. His eldest son and my Bennet were fast friends, and I was delighted they would have each other in this new adventure.
Watching Bennet and young Richard happily playing, I had often reflected on history repeating itself. Once again, the steward of Pemberley had a son who was godson to its master. But Emma Williams, Richard’s wife, was nothing like old Mrs Wickham; an excellent and capable manager, she was a good mother and kept a happy home. Bennet had been as much a son to her, almost, as her own; Fitzwilliam and I felt likewise about young Richard. And of course, the boys had all grown up on stories of how a different Pemberley boy almost the same age as their papas had made all the wrong, mean, and selfish choices he could make, instead of helpful and kind ones, ultimately coming to a bad end, dying on a transport ship bound for Australia.
Pemberley, of course, was flourishing. Perhaps England had its troubles, but our little corner of it was idyllic. Our library was rather famous—nothing like the Bodleian in Oxford, certainly, but scholars from all over northern England took advantage of its vast wealth of knowledge.
Life was not perfect, of course, for no life ever was. The death of my sister, Mary, of a fever in ’31, had struck me rather hard. I had never been close to her, but she was my sister, a part of my youth, and my only real connexion to Longbourn, which she had loved more than any of us. I do not believe that Charlotte, for all she had given Mary a home these many years, truly understood her either. But she had written to me very sweetly, of all the kindnesses Mary had extended in devoted service to her family, and of the sorrow of her children at her loss. And then she’d added a startling observation: “Mr Collins is devastated. He loved her, you know, as she did him. Oh, neither of them ever admitted it, to themselves even, I am certain. And I have long been convinced I was put on this earth to keep them both sensible, for I seldom heard a practical thought from either. But with Mary gone, I suppose I shall have to listen to him much more than is my custom. I shall miss her every day for the rest of my life.”
“Mummy, will I meet my Auntie Philips? I don’t remember her.”
Since Janey sounded a bit worried, I hastened to reassure her. “You will, my darling, but you are not to be anxious. She is very kind. She met you at your christening and thought you were the most beautiful baby girl in the world. And Auntie Duncan will be there too, of course. You know her.”
Ellen Gardiner Duncan was her cousin, of course, but in Ellen’s several visits to us accompanied by her husband and children, it had been easier for Janey to think of and address her as ‘aunt’.
“Yes!” Janey said proudly. “And she will bring the twins! And she will paint us a big, beautiful picture!”
Ellen had married the son of her old drawing master, a Mr Ethan Duncan, himself an already-established portrait artist, and they worked together brilliantly. He and Ellen were meeting us at Matlock Court to begin work on my birthday gift from my husband—a portrait of Jane, Kitty, and I together, something I had grieved over not having done sooner, after losing Mary. Many examples of their exquisite work already hung in the Pemberley portrait gallery, as the Duncans had produced all of our family portraits for the last several years.
“Will Auntie Bingley be in the picture?”
“Not this one, darling. She is a Darcy sister, and this picture will have only Bennet sisters in it, and she says she needs all her attention to keep little Charles out of trouble. But your Uncle Bingley will have another commission for Ellen soon.”
“Of Catherine Caroline! She told me when she is twelve years old, she will go up on the wall by Auntie Bingley’s portrait when she was twelve! Yes! And we’re going to send a small Bennet sister picture to Auntie Bracket in ’merica,” Janey added.
I had written often to Lydia over the years, without any reply. For all I’d known, she had consigned them to flames, unread. But, since she gave no specific instruction for me to cease writing, I continued to do so, care of Mr Darcy’s man of business in America. My first letter was full of apologies, I think, but as the years passed, I wrote to her of simple, family things, such as I often shared with my other sisters. I ensured that she would know each of her nieces and nephews, if she cared to, and of all the doings of the Gardiner offspring.
But it was my grieving letter regarding Mary’s death to which she finally responded. My missive was one long letter of ‘Do you remember?’ anecdotes of Mary’s life—a few shared by Charlotte over the years, but most of them from when we were young and silly girls at Longbourn. I had recorded some of Papa’s sly witticisms at her expense—which she’d never understood—and Mama’s hysteria the time when, at the tender age of six years, Mary gave her bonnet to the goat because it was too ‘ostentatious’ for Sundays, she felt.
Three months later, I received a letter from Lydia in a package which included a miniature likeness of herself with her husband.
She looks exactly like Mama. I had laughed and wept to see it.
“Mama, are you sad?” Janey said, her sensitive little heart immediately perceiving my feelings.
“I was just a little lost in memories,” I replied. “But I am not at all sad. How could I be, when I have you, your brothers, your papa, your aunts and uncles and cousins and all of Pemberley, all to love, and a wonderful trip to Matlock Court to look forward to?”
“But why does Auntie Bracket have to live all the way to ’merica?”
“That is rather a long, sometimes sad and often happy story, in which there are several heroes and several fools,” I replied. “And some are both, at the same time. Someday, when you are a quite a bit older, I shall tell it to you.”
“Like Hans in ‘The Poor Miller’s Boy and The Cat’?” she asked, naming one of her favourite tales. “He was foolish, but it did not hurt him. Mummy, why do boys have to go to school? I will read every book in our library, and be smarter than them all!”